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So from rural Virginia comes this sad tale:

Father accidentally kills himself in front of children at grocery store

SPOTSYLVANIA COUNTY, VA (WTVR) – A father accidentally shot and killed himself at the grocery store Sunday evening, according to the Spotsylvania County Sheriff’s Office.

The father, a 45-year-old Spotsylvania man, was in his minivan with his children waiting for his wife to return a DVD to the Redbox outside the Giant Food Store in Harrison Crossing when he was shot, said Captain Elizabeth Scott with the Spotsylvania County Sheriff’s Office.

The wife said she heard a pop and when she ran back to the minivan, her husband told her he thought he’d shot himself, said Capt. Scott.

…

She said the initial investigation indicated when the man tried to unbuckle his seat belt, he hit the trigger of his .40 caliber Glock and shot himself in the hip.

It is unclear whether the man carried his gun in a holster or his pocket. The family friend says it likely was loose in his pocket. It has also not been determined whether the man was a licensed gun owner, however his wife indicated to investigators she knew he carried a weapon with him from time to time, said Capt. Scott.

“If you’re going to carry a concealed weapon, put it in a reputable holster,” Capt. Scott said when asked about general gun safety tips.

My heart goes out to these young kids who will now face the rest of their lives without their father because of a preventable lapse in safety. It still isn’t clear if this fellow had his pistol in a holster or not, but either way, modern guns simply do not fire if pressure is not applied to the trigger. Manipulating the pistol, including holstering, press checking, loading, unloading, all increase the chances for an unintentional discharge. Not only should futzing with the gun be kept to a minimum, but your mind absolutely needs to be in the now when you are handling it. Being tired, distracted, or just plain not paying attention is a recipe for disaster.

Just as important is to carry your piece in a quality holster. Like I mentioned here, the two Great Musts in holster selection are that the holster must present the pistol in such a way that the shooter’s dominant hand can obtain a full firing grip without having to move the gun first, and the holster must protect the trigger and safeties from intrusion and unintentional activation. A properly designed holster will have stiff kydex or reinforced leather protecting the trigger and trigger guard. If you must carry leather, do not trust a holster with only a single layer of hide around the trigger.

Every time you put your gun on, take the time to inspect your holster for cracks, wear, floppiness or other damage and take it out of service if you have any doubts.

Gun safety isn’t just the four rules. It’s an approach to life that allows you to go about your business armed to the teeth yet threatening no one that doesn’t threaten you first. If you choose to carry your gun every day, and you should, then do not neglect your equipment or mindset, even in small matters, because when you’re dealing with tools loaded with small explosives that launch projectiles at several hundred miles an hour, there are no small matters.

Did y’all know that HR 822, the national concealed carry reciprocity act, could come up for a vote on Tuesday?

I’m not a lawyer, but this seems like a great bill to me. I was initially concerned about this being a Federal backdoor into dictating CCW requirements to the state, but that isn’t the case. We’ve been making excellent progress in the courts and the state legislatures recently (Hello Wisconsin!), but merely holding the line at the Federal level. We haven’t had a chance to go on the offensive in Congress in forever, and this bill has an excellent chance to pass both the House and Senate. Even if Obama vetoes it, it’s still highly useful for 2012 and future leverage to get a straight up “Are you with us or against us?” vote from our congressweasels. And who knows? If we’ve got a few D’s who need to pander to us in 2012…

So take 5 minutes out of your Monday, look up your Representative and give them a PHONE CALL. Emails go straight into the bit bucket, but they can’t ignore a switchboard full of constituents.

Get off the damn computer for 5 minutes and let’s get this thing passed!

Over the weekend, I enjoyed reading through the comments to this post and this Metafilter thread here. The question of the day was: “What do y’all find quirky about America?”

Having married outside our borders, I was familiar with a few complaints (poor quality of our chocolate), a few praises (meat available at every meal as a main course, not a side dish or flavoring), and a few WTFs (stores expect to leave stuff out overnight and nobody steals it?!), but many were new to me. Anyway, both threads were a lot of fun and well worth your time.

Of course, foreigners being foreigners, some took it as an opportunity to bash Americans, and the old trope of the passportless American speaking only one language and never traveling abroad was trotted out as evidence of our narrow, feeble minds. I think this is a crock of shit for a few reasons, and betrays a larger ignorance about the nature of these United States as well as the usual (by and large) European insecurity.

First, people not living here have very little comprehension about both the geographical magnitude and cultural diversity of the continental USA. Our borders encompass everything from dense urban cities to swamps to pastoral farmland to mountains rivaling the Alps to deserts to tropical paradises and a goddamned rainforest. A family living in Cornhole Iowa can vacation in Miami, Boston, California, Montana or Texas, all by just hopping in their car and going, without showing anybody a slip of paper. All of these destinations are as different from each other as all the usual European tourist traps with the added benefit of no passport required and everybody speaking more or less the same language.

For an American, to travel anywhere that a passport and language skills are required would take an overseas plane flight, and all the expense and hassle implied. So the costs are fairly steep and benefits fairly low.

When it comes to language, outsiders need to consider that an American can travel from the north pole to the south pole and have a reasonable expectation of being able to speak English all the way. If we want to have to speak a different language, we have to go to Montreal or Salinas.

Second, people forget that everybody who lives here is a fairly recent immigrant. Talk to an American for a few minutes and eventually you’ll learn the family’s arrival story, even if it’s to brag about a family tree branch arriving on the Mayflower. This is relevant: nobody came to America because it was working out for them at home. Buried in that story is the reason why we all left, and have little interest in returning.

Implicit in all of this is the plaintive whine of the snooty (usually) Europeans when they complain about Americans: “Why don’t you people care about us? Pay attention to us!”

The bottom line is, the average American can happily go from cradle to grave without any understanding of Europe at all beyond knowing that’s where overpriced and unreliable cars come from, and that’s where most of our military budget went for about 50 years. When Europe does intrude on the lives of Americans, it’s invariably because they need to have their useless asses bailed out yet again.

The average European, on the other hand, is on a daily basis confronted with the cultural and military weight of the United States, and of course resents it. Consider how often you hear foreigners complaining about Americans, yet the only time Americans complain about foreigners is when they cost us lives or money, or they sneak into our country.

So IDPA decided to get all web.2.0 and hit the social media nonsense in a big way, and they picked my friend Caleb to do it.

I can’t think of a better person to front for Berryville. Caleb’s infectious enthusiasm for the sport, ridiculous energy level and relentless work for the 2nd Amendment makes him a natural for the gig. He isn’t a blogger that shoots every now and then, he is an honest to God Shooter who occasionally takes time out to blog something. He’s given more than a few opportunities to me, and asked nothing in return.

IDPA is some of the most fun you can have with a pistol, and I would love to see its membership and popularity grow. The only way IDPA.tv could be better is if he had a hot redheaded shooter chick as a sidekick. Oh, wait!

[FTC: I was paid nothing for this public kissassery, except Caleb did threaten to put me on the show if I didn't. Hopefully this will keep my slow, stumbling ass off the TV.]

If you’re still without a military pattern semi-automatic carbine, you may want to consider this offering from Palmetto State Armory. PSA is one of the new wave of AR clone parts houses and has a short but decent reputation for good parts, reasonable pricing and responsive customer service. I have no personal experience using their parts apart from examining a receiver set and a bolt carrier group in a shop. I am unqualified to judge them on dimensional accuracy, but the fit and finish were even and excellent, and the gas key screws on the carrier were correctly staked.

Anyway, if you’re willing to take the leap, PSA is offering a good to go 16″ flat top AR with a chrome lined, hammer forged barrel, 5.56 chamber, a Magpul rear backup sight, and an honest to Jebus Aimpoint Patrol Rifle red dot on a QRP2 mount and one 30 round GI magazine for $999.99, plus $15 shipping. Check it out.

I can’t honestly fully recommend it without seeing it in person, but you could do a lot worse for more money. I can, however, encourage you to buy one and wring it out and get back to me!

Then please watch this. You’ll thank me later.

Watch Does U.S. Economic Inequality Have a Good Side? on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

I am just as staggered that this interview originated on PBS, as I am amused at the interviewer’s stuttering rage and frustration as this guy relentlessly gores every single last sacred liberal ox. It truly is a thing of beauty.

[h/t: the disgustingly talented yet inexplicably blogless xman]

So TD finally bugged me for a picture of something that wasn’t The Mrs’ rack, and wanted to see my parts bin mixmaster AR-15 after I installed a set of used M16A1 furniture on it:

Before:

After:

Sharp eyed aficionados will notice that my “M16A1″ is wearing not only an A2 flash hider, but an A2 grip. This is half due to laziness, but my hands are just too damn big for the A1 grip to be comfortable. I also ditched the A1 sight aperture and installed an A2 with the ghost ring and 300 yard pinhole. The cotton GI sling is pretty much only useful as a carry strap. The 20 round magazine is a genuine metal follower Colt that I traded a PMAG for from this sucker. I generally use 30 round aluminum USGI or PMAGs, but a straight 20 is very handy for shooting off the bench or prone. If you can’t locate old Colts, I’m happy to report that you can get quality new NHMTG 20s from these guys for $13 a pop!

I’ve shot a few matches with the MuttAR wearing this getup, and I believe I’m going to not change a thing. It’s a light, handy rifle that delivers full 20″ ballistics while looking cool as hell. Every single match I’ve been to with this thing, I get pulled aside by at least one vet who asks me to have a look at it. I’ve never really fully grokked the attraction to the “and everybody at the range was looking at me!” quality of some guns, but I get this. The gun is a genuine pleasure to shoot.

The biggest drawbacks to this configuration are the poor choices for mounting optics on fixed carry handles (but I unreasonably want one of these), and the inability to mount a light or quick-adjusting 2 point sling. Considering this rifle’s shoddy genetics, it will shortly be sidelined as a cool range toy in favor of a 16″ flat top, but that’s a post for another day.

I think building a retro AR of your own would be a rewarding project, but I do not recommend doing what I did! I bought used and low dollar parts off of AR15.com and gunbroker and somehow ended up with a rifle that’s worked reliably without failures over the years, including an 1100 round weekend class shot with steel cased ammo, but it took me along time, lots of aggravation and I probably spent more money than I needed to. The one thing I did right was to source a high quality barrel. I bought a complete big-hole Colt SP-1 receiver and chucked the stupid big-hole receiver as soon as I could, but kept the Colt barrel. It’s good for 2-3″ groups at 100 yards off the bench with good ammo, and that’s more than reasonable. I’m not sure where to get a 20″ light profile chrome lined barrel these days, but I think BCM would be a good place to start.

For information and parts guides, definitely hang out at the Retro AR forum at m4carbine.net, and check out Retro Black Rifle (when it’s up).

If I was building this rifle from scratch today, I’d get my A1 upper and retro styled semi lower from NoDakSpud. Their products are highly regarded and have every variation you could possibly want. No matter what, avoid big-hole Colt uppers like the plague. Sell them to dumb Cult obsessed collectors and stick to standard pin hole sizes!

I bought my A1 stock set from Sherluk in Ohio, but I don’t see that stuff in stock now. A1 furniture is available if you shop around.

The wonderful thing about the AR platform is the infinite variations on configuration that are available. The terrible thing about the AR platform is the infinite variations on configuration that are available, that can keep the first time buyer chasing his tail and wasting money on looks-cool parts without a good idea of what would work best for them. A great way to avoid this issue is to faithfully build a retro AR (or get a plain M4 off the shelf!) and shoot the crap out of it (take a class!) to get a better idea of what features would suit your requirements. That is a strategy I can enthusiastically recommend!

So since everyone else is doing it, (including another member of the clean your damn keyboard club) here’s what manner of knife rides in my pants these days:

It’s a Kershaw Blur tanto factory second that I picked up off a very large auction site about a year ago. I’m really digging the assisted opening even if the liner lock isn’t my first choice. It’s also sharp enough to shave with, and despite me being an all-thumbs retard, I have not yet managed to cut myself with it!

10 years have passed, several thousand servicemen have died, an order of magnitude more Enemy have been killed, including multiple leaders and dictators, two Enemy governments have been toppled, so why does it seem like we haven’t even started fighting yet? Is our lack of progress due to an intractable Enemy or have we hamstrung ourselves by worshiping Politically Correct pieties?

We cannot fly between our cities without being alternately X-rayed and groped, so why does it feel like we’re still as vulnerable as before?

We have voted into power a new and unaccountable surveillance organization, so why is it concentrating more on us and not our enemies?

We have faced larger and more dangerous enemies in the past who have the capacity for taking and holding territory and projecting power, and emerged victorious. Our forces have never been more effective, experienced and professional. Why can we not pacify a culture of rock throwing goat herders?

The problem with appointing a representative government to defend the institutions of a free market society appears to be that government is involved. Can we figure out a better way to keep it under control, or should we strike out for anarchtopia?

I don’t know, I’m not smart enough to know, I wish someone could tell me.

Remember that pistol class review I promised? You can read it at Gunup.com.

My childhood was practically narrated by The Muppet Show, Bill Cosby comedy tapes, and WRKP in Cincinnati. One of my favorite bits, and one my dad repeatedly pointed out to me, was this short scene where Venus Flytrap gives a young ne’er do well a lesson in physics:

But the important part of the lesson isn’t the actual knowledge of basic atomic structure. The real lesson here is that professional teachers and instructors are being paid to impart their knowledge to you. If you’re not getting it, it’s their job to make sure you get it. If you put down your money for firearms instruction and find yourself falling behind or not grokking something, it is your right and responsibility to ask the instructor for help, because that’s his job! If you aren’t keeping up, you’re not going to magically pick it up later by osmosis, the longer you go without asking for help, the further you’re going to fall behind.

Don’t be worried about holding the class up. A competent instructor should be able to cope with a request and keep the class moving at the same time. A very good instructor will be able to not only help you out, but make it a teachable moment for the rest of the class. Also consider that odds are, you’re not the only one with that problem, and even more probably, aren’t the only one who could benefit from another take on that material. And if the instructors just aren’t doing a good job of presenting that material, or if another approach would work better, they need to know!

This isn’t an invitation to get comfy on the short bus. Weekend firearms classes are typically fast paced and people tend to learn better when pushed past their comfort zone into the fail. But if you’re not absorbing the material, you’re probably not the only one, and you’re definitely not doing anybody any favors by fumbling along in silence.

I’ll have a more detailed review up later, but this past Friday I attended a Vickers Shooting Method class down in Salisbury with Defensive Concepts North Carolina. It was a tightly scheduled 8.5 hours that compared to an earlier class I attended, focused on fundamentals while glossing over some of the more add-on tactics. I felt this was an excellent tradeoff and I left with a clearer picture of what I need to work on. The class ran $175 including a $25 range fee, and we shot about 350 rounds each.

Pistols represented included the usual assortment of Glocks, including a fairly customized G34, some S&W M&Ps, a pair of Springfield XDs, and an H&K USP-45F with the LEM trigger. All ran well that I could see. All students carried their guns in some kind of Kydex holster with a couple of law enforcement students using their duty gear. It was strange to be in a shooting class without any 1911s or leather!

Students attending ran the gamut from n00b pistol owners to professional shooters with multiple classes under their belts. One older gentleman showed up unable to keep all his shots on paper at bad breath distance, but was monotonously making headshots a few hours later. A youngster with his XDm just couldn’t keep his support hand finger off his squared and stippled trigger guard, but some friendly ribbing from the instructors fixed his malfunction.

So who was That Guy? Well, if you can’t spot him…

Yeah, I’ve got work to do.

Okay, one thing I’ve seen in a few places, and I’m not naming any names, but it’s really been bugging the crap out of me.

So you’ve got a bag full of useful stuff in case of emergencies. Loss of civil authority due to riots, natural disasters, zombies, what have you. Cool. So if you’re a gun person, and if you’re reading this I presume you are, and if you’ve got a gun on you, and you damn well should, you might want to carry some spare ammo in your bag.

But for the love of Crom, please put that ammo in magazines! What in the heck good is 100 rounds of 9mm going to do you when it’s in BOXES?! I don’t object to carrying a box for topping up magazines, but why aren’t the majority of your rounds in magazines ready to go? Mags aren’t expensive if you shop around and buy in quantity.

Exceptions: ammo carried for guns that are traditionally loaded one at a time such as revolvers, shotguns, and lever guns. For revolvers, a cheap Desert Eagle magazine in .357 or .44 as appropriate makes a great stripper clip. A heavy ziploc of rifle ammo with the air pressed out will generally be quieter, more waterproof and take up less space than a retail box of ammo. For shotguns, a card with elastic loops keeps ammo correctly oriented and drops easily into pockets sized for AR magazines.

Remember, fellow paranoid armed citizens: willingness is a state of mind, but preparedness is a statement of fact!

I think this is the dumbest crock of shit I’ve read on the internet this week. To sum up, the proprietor of a commercial gun blog that is largely boring and unoriginal and generates traffic by copying other people’s original posts, is whining that nobody links to him other than Glenn Reynolds, and therefore he’s the target of an organized but silent boycott.

Taking the points in reverse order, 1) LOL. Have you looked around the gunblogosphere recently? You seriously think we’re organized enough to unanimously join in on and maintain a boycott and keep it secret? I reiterate, LOL.

Secondly, you get linked by Instapundit. One instalink is worth a dozen little links from us nobodies. But on the other hand, if you post about mall ninjas, you get a serious spike.

Like Alan mentioned already, maybe it’s because you suck. I’ve flipped through TTAG a few times and not liked it enough to return. Sayuncle, Everyday, No Days Off, and The Firearm Blog do a better job of the daily link roundup thing, and aren’t cluttered up with SEO nonsense or that whole plagiarism thingey.

Anyway, Robert, please publish evidence of this blacklist, or retract the claim. The accusation that there’s some secret gunblogger cabal preventing people from speaking their minds is insulting as hell.

So, there’s your link. Enjoy!

Continue Reading »

So this weekend, Tam was kind enough to point us to a yootoob showing off the stunning martial feats of a bunch of disorganized clownshoes calling themselves American Defense Enterprises. The amount of fail and buffoonery in this single video could be blogfodder for weeks, but I’ll try and keep it short. Hopefully this will help y’all avoid dangerous shooting schools in the future.

This video is in a 3 minute nutshell, every caveat and buyer beware you could want to avoid when shopping for professional firearms instruction. ADE aces my trainer bullshit detection checklist:

- Ratings and comments disabled on YouTube videos, no public forum, or dissenting opinions rapidly squashed on a forum by a gang of uncritical nuthuggers.
- Emphasis on who they have supposedly trained, not whom they have trained under. Legitimate trainers are all constantly learning from each other, as our art is an open, collaborative process, not a secret handed down from the mountain by a guru.
- Excessive guru worship, not invented here syndrome.
- Emphasis on guru qualifications, but handwaving the details. So Bill Beasley was supposedly in the special forces in some manner. When? Where? Who served with him? You won’t find out from ADE!
- Poor or nonexistent range safety.
- Non sequitors or ad hominiems defending poor or nonexistent range safety
- Students running team drills with people they have never met before.
- Emphasis on flashy drills and tactics while disregarding the fundamentals of shooting.

But let’s get to that video, shall we?

[Important update! While the original has disappeared down the memory hole, the internets is forever and a new and improved version lives on here!]

1. Drills Are Not Scenarios, And Scenarios Are Not Drills

The first thing that really puzzled the crap out of me (apart from the 30 year old doctrinal stances, more sweeping than a curling match and many other safety violations) was this curious exercise at 1:05.

As you can see, two shooters are standing facing the target, then all at once, the front shooter drops to the ground, both shooters draw their pistols, and they both shoot the target. Disregarding the obvious safety rule fails here (but I’ll come back to it later), I cannot for the life of me figure out what this drill is supposed to teach. If it’s designed to hone a particular skillset, say, shooting a target after getting knocked to the ground, why is the rear shooter there endangering the life of the forward shooter? If it’s to rehearse a tactic, under what conditions would it be a good idea to drop to the deck in front of a close threat?

This kind of doctrinal sloppiness shows up in poorly run schools with insufficiently thought out curriculum, or cribbed from better schools without a fundamental understanding of the material. There is a big difference between shooting drills and shooting a scenario. We repeatedly shoot drills (which are by nature usually unrealistic in context) in order to develop shooting skills. We don’t expect to have to transition to our sidearm 30 times in a row, but the Meltdown drill is still extremely useful for hammering the rifle to pistol transition into shape.

We then put our thinking skills to the test in a scenario, where we attempt to solve a problem with the shooting skills we’ve learned. Scenarios are sometimes roleplayed by other instructors, or have some element of theater to them. We might also rehearse a common tactic that we expect to use in the future. But the point to a scenario is not to repeatedly run through the test until we get it right, but to run through a test to get it wrong, to harshly show what we need to work on.

Approaching firearms training like a grocery list (“Okay, we’ve done page 1, get ready for the falling buddy drill!�?) diminishes the utility of both drills and scenarios by reducing them into rote checklisting. When confronted by a lethal threat, you shouldn’t be running through a menu of options that may apply to the situation but reacting to the unfolding, dynamic situation by applying your learned skills. There are no cookie cutter fights, and “training�? like you can pigeonhole your opponents and their actions is setting yourself up for failure.

It’s fun to ace a test. However, we don’t go to school to have fun, but rather to learn something. And we learn more by failing than by getting an attaboy and a cool martial arts title.

2. Safety Is Always, Always, Always Important.

The first redoubt bottom feeding “training�? outfits retreat to when confronted with their dangerous range practices is to belittle safe shooting rules as being unrealistic “square range�? silliness or to mock the critic as cowardly and paranoid. “There aren’t any range rules on the street, kid!�? “We run big boys rules here!�?

This is a crock of shit, and I will show you why.

Here we have an event from a few years ago. For reasons of either poor training or inadequate attention to detail, a police officer disregards Rule 3 and negligently cranks off a round into the street right in front of a proned out suspect.

This is of course an inexcusable violation of the rules, and I’m glad that everyone walked away. But what’s interesting to me is that for a few seconds the officer is completely and utterly bewildered and has no earthly idea what just happened. She finally recovers and holsters her pistol, but for a few heartbeats, she might as well have been tasered or flashbanged. If the suspect had not been equally surprised, he had plenty of time to jump up and disarm her. That single moment of carelessness nearly turned a routine arrest into a tragedy, and not directly because of the bullet she unexpectedly launched, but due to her reaction to it..

If you’re in a hostile confrontation and unintentionally fire a round, or even worse, fire a round while disregarding your muzzle direction and drill a family member, friend, or uninvolved innocent, do you think you’ll be able to recover from the shock and confusion before your opponents act on your hesitation?

The Four Rules aren’t just for practice or the range. They’re even more important in a self defense situation because the stakes are so much higher. Your safe gun handling means the difference between life and death, not just for the people downrange of you, but for yourself as well. Legitimate trainers understand this and will begin instruction by emphasizing safety and enforce safe habits throughout the class. Frauds won’t let a little matter like range safety get in the way of puffing up into Billy Badass.

3. Quadruple Decker Stack of Failburger.

Receiving instruction in superficially cool but ultimately irrelevant skill sets is one of the biggest clues that you’ve crossed the border into mall ninja territory from the land of sensible. There are many reasons for instructors to run their students through drills such as stack and entry, Australian peels, bounding and other fancy team drills, none of them good. Some schools, insecure in the quality of their instruction, ratchet up the coolness arms race in search of prominence. Or the forbidden fruit turns into irresistible marketing (“We teach you the ninja skills others won’t!�?).

Now, I’m not going to blanket condemn the teaching of civilians whatever skills they want. A person may reasonably expect to fight in a building, and the techniques of pie slicing, and light and space management used in house clearing might come in handy. Why shouldn’t someone want to engage in training with friends or family he expects to be around a lot? But these are specialized concerns and when you find yourself being pitched these goods in the marketing for a fundamental level shooting class, alarm bells should go off.

When instructors use team tactics to increase the cool level of a class, you can be quite sure that you will be instructed wrong and probably dangerously, because the point of the exercise for the instructors is the cool, not the team tactics. You’re being sold the sizzle when you’re seeking the steak. Ask yourself, self, why am I rehearsing this with people I’ve never seen before and will likely never see again?

Postlude: The Big Problem.

I believe my readership is more firearms savvy than the average dude who ends up filling out a 4473. I say this not to brag, but to point out that while you and I and pretty much everyone who’s commented at Tam’s aren’t likely to be fooled by ADE’s antics, the videos are slickly produced and look cool to the uninitiated and clearly have entrapped more than a few suckers.

The firearms instruction business has gone from one school in the Arizona desert to hundreds of independent instructors all over the country. This is both wonderful and terrible, since while you no longer have to travel across the country to seek training, you now risk choosing the wrong school and not only learning the wrong things in the wrong way, but potentially putting your life in danger!

So how are we to separate the legitimate teachers from the hucksters? And more importantly, how is the newbie supposed to even know that he has to beware of fraud? While you and I can immediately recognize ADE as being dangerous incompetents, to someone new to the whole gun thing, ADE and Gabe Suarez and Front Sight look pretty much the same as legitimate schools.

An industry certification process would probably help, but I think that like every other consumer good or service, ultimately those who know have to speak loud and long and spread the word about what is good and what is bad. As we see dangerous, fraudulent, stupid asshats like ADE and others pop up, we need to call them out on it. The fight against idiocy is one of constant vigilance, not a single decisive battle.

Bonus! General WTFery:

Mmmm yeah, honey, work that business. Come to pdb. I’ll clear your malfunction.

BLUE STEEL!

Put that thing away. I said PUT THAT THING AWAY. Why are you holding it there? PUT IT AWAY. (He didn’t put it away).

Fix your grip. I said FIX YOUR GRIP. FIX YOUR GRIP GODDAMNIT. (She didn’t fix her grip).

Yes, everybody is shooting here. I mean, at this point, why not?

What, are those ninja knives? Are you kidding me? Weren’t you just holding a gun? Wait, but… Jesus, forget it, just fuck off.

So now it’s my friend Caleb’s turn to point out obnoxious point-shooting fail. I know I keep telling you people to pony up for some pistol training if you carry regularly, but not all schools are created equal. Picking the wrong school can be even worse than getting no instruction at all.

Let’s have a look at that video, shall we?

First, notice the lack of trigger finger discipline by the student. This is just plain unacceptable and should be taken care of before the student handles live rounds on the line. Also, they have the student shooting into the gravel at five feet with NO EYE PROTECTION. If you see something like this go down at your class, this is where you ask for a refund and leave quickly.

That’s just the safety problems. Note that the student’s grip, arm position and footing are limp and highly variable as she shoots. You can’t count on having the time to assume a ideal stance and grip in a confrontation, but it’s foolish to practice as if you can’t.

This is the biggest problem with training to shoot unsighted fire only. The traditional, industry standard method of focusing on the fundamentals of maintaining a correct sight picture via a strong consistent grip, rigid arm position and rehearsed footwork is a far better platform to build on than point shooting because a mastery of these fundamentals gives you all the tools you need to shoot without sights. If you are a fast and accurate shot with your sights, you can do coarse yet fast shooting without your sights by using the body index and grip that you’ve learned.

The body points, the eye verifies.

Point shooting, on the other hand, does not lend itself to a later concentration on accuracy. You literally can’t get there from here. It is a developmental dead end. (Note the video never shows us her paper groups).

Like I said before, there are no shortcuts in learning how to shoot. It’s not even that big an investment! A total n00b can get a thorough grounding in the fundamentals in a single weekend of competent instruction. Hone that with a couple evenings a week of holster presentations and dry fire, and a few boxes of ammo a month, and you’ll be ahead of the game.

Shortly after posting my review of carrying a G19 with a Streamlight TLR-1 flashlight concealed, Iain Harrison of Crimson Trace emailed me and asked if I wanted to have a look at a new pistol light they were developing. After he promised not to lick my head, I agreed, and my copy arrived a couple weeks ago. I’ve been messing with it since, and here are my initial impressions. Part 2 will be the shooting review, then Part 3 will be after I have a holster built for the G19 wearing the light and have carried it for a bit.

Anyway, the Light Guard is a super slim pistol light that assembles around the trigger guard and is activated with a momentary contact pressure switch that sits under your middle finger when you grip the pistol. It’s made out of a durable plastic and assembles onto the gun with a couple of super tiny screws that thread into steel inserts that are molded into the plastic. There’s also a master on/off slide switch at the front of the light so you can store it without the light getting inadvertently activated.

The light itself is a LED that’s powered by a CR2 lithium cell. It’s impressively bright, and casts more of a wide angle flood than the focused beam of the TLR-1:

The light took some fiddling to get onto the gun, but once on it is pretty secure. It should really be thought of as a semi-permanent addition to the gun, not an accessory that you’re going to be putting on and taking off a lot. I’m still skeptical about the durability of the tiny screws, because you’ll want to take the light off to replace the battery once a year at least. But I was unable to make the light budge on the gun either by grabbing it and twisting. I also banged the light on the kitchen counter hard enough to leave marks on the plastic, and it was still functional and securely mounted.

As you can see, the light is very narrow, even more narrow than the Glock’s slide. It is a LOT smaller than the TLR-1 and should be much easier to carry.

The Light Guard should MSRP at $149 when it becomes available.

So far, my only misgivings are the mounting screws and the light activation. Since the light is turned on every time you grip the gun properly, you either have to become accustomed to the light being on every time you draw, or get good at using your middle finger to control the light. This seems possible after dry firing at home, but I’ll know more after a long range session with it.

Which should be shortly! Stay tuned.

So Mrs pdb and I shelled out a staggering amount of cash and took Jack to see his first movie on the big screen. Between seeing Cars about 23000 times and owning about enough Pixar merchandise that we probably have an ice cream dispenser named in our honor at the Pixar campus cafeteria, we of course went to see Cars 2.

Short version: Jack loved it, and sat in rapt attention all the way through (which is more than I could say for a couple of tweens two rows ahead of us). I liked it, but in my personal pantheon of Pixar, I put it in the basement with Monsters Inc., and Ratatouille. It’s not a bad movie, a better car flick than all the Fast ‘n Furious movies put together and wrapped up with bacon, but it pales in comparison to Cars and the movie Cars 2 could have been.

I think the Cars movies have always been unfairly judged by critics, who are probably all effete urban metrosexuals who despise personal transportation and don’t understand the affection normal people have for their automobiles. Thus it has been extremely gratifying for me that Cars 2 has been handily raking in the cash despite the disapproval of the critics.

On first viewing, Cars was a cute but simple story of friendship between anthropomorphic cars. But on (many (many)) repeat viewings, subtle depth appears. I believe Cars was one of the most purely Zen films to be released in recent years. Note that the brash young race car, Lightning, never actually wins anything. Instead, he finds fulfillment in the accomplishment of a mundane task and the pursuit of self improvement. He learns that loyal friendship is the most valuable treasure of all, and honor is its own reward.

Indeed, nearly all the major characters of Cars experience an arc. The wizened sage learns to trust again and forgives the world that had forsaken him. The other residents of the town rediscover their honor by applying their unique talents for the sake of excellence.

(Incidentally, I am perplexed by people criticizing Cars as being a retelling of Doc Hollywood. Hellllooooo, it’s a KIDS MOVIE. KIDS are not likely to check out a 20 year old Micheal J Fox flick. Kids are not also likely to be Kurosawa fans and A Bug’s Life is a great way to sneak them some Seven Samurai without them knowing it. Sheesh.)

This is what Cars 2 is missing. None of the characters experience any growth or even any lasting consequences to the adventure they had. We just get to watch a bunch of friends have wacky hijinks all over the world and go home to applause. This is not a bad thing, but it is a little disappointing given what Pixar has delivered in the past.

Visually, Cars 2 is breathtaking. The detail and atmosphere of the settings and backgrounds are completely convincing and uncritically immersive. The race scenes (what little there are of them) are thrilling and emotive in ways that are impossible to convey with real cars but yet don’t push the limits of believability enough to break the mesmerizing hold the cars have on the audience. There are some good sight gags for the kids and enough gearhead in-jokes that it’ll take years to list them all on the wiki page. The plot moves along snappily and has good lessons about friendship, duty, heroism and identity. If nothing else, I hope kids take home the lesson that you are what you do, not what people think or say about you.

This is the end of the good news.

The action scenes are perfunctory and lack any real sense of peril, despite the deaths (?) of two cars depicted during the movie. There is of course the annoying eco-fascist assumption that oil is bad and should be replaced by something “sustainable”. This is offset somewhat by the promoter of the new environmentally friendly fuel being a slimy huckster and villain. Like I said above, the characters all seem to arrive and depart the stage unchanged. Lightning McQueen is hardly in the movie, we spend a lot more time with Mater and his new spy friends, so if you’re irritated by Larry the Cable Guy, you’d best bring earplugs.

The movie comes across as a 2 hour commercial for themed merchandise instead of a fully realized artistic vision. Again, this is not a bad thing, #DEITY knows I don’t mind a bit of crass commercialism and Cars merchandise has made Jack more enthusiastic about everything from long car trips to sleeping in a big boy bed to eating and drinking.

But Cars 2 is a decent flick where it could have been a great one, and I think that’s where my irritation lies. I hope they do a better job with #3.

ps: Here is the single biggest problem I have with the Cars movies:

This car is carrying a mattress. Why is that? I said, why is that?

So I needed a concealed carry holster for my Glock 17. For reasons that will become clear later, I was looking at not having my Glock 19 available to carry for a couple weeks. While I’ve shot several matches and more than a few practice rounds with my 1911A1 without failure, I wasn’t looking forward to carrying a gun of that weight for 14 hours a day. The only holsters I had to fit the G17 were a variety of OWB kydex that just wouldn’t work for concealment.

I would have ordered a Grandfather Oak Hidden Companion, but they’ve gone and screwed it up. I recently ordered another one for my G19, and the design has changed. They’ve gone to a thicker grade of plastic and the body shield wraps completely around the top of the slide, making the holster annoyingly wide where it doesn’t need to be. I don’t understand what this adds to the design except maybe ease of manufacture.

Anyway, a flip through a Cheaper Than Dirt catalog revealed that Blade-Tech‘s injection molded Phantom IWB was now $19.99 plus shipping! I ordered one up and it was on my doorstep 4 days later.

After giving it the once over, adjusting the loops and cant and giving it a few dry runs with an empty pistol, I started carrying it immediately. The injection molded plastic is softer to the touch and a bit more pliant than the usual stiff kydex holsters are made from. But it still has rubber and screw standoffs to adjust the tension, a full body shield, adjustable belt loops, pull the dot straps, and adjustable cant. All for $20!

The holster is supremely comfy, even carrying the full sized G17. Centering the holster loops over my pants 3 or 4 o’clock belt loop locks the holster in place in both fore and aft and cant so that I don’t have to adjust anything during the day. It also holds the gun close enough to the body that it doesn’t grab my cover shirt as often as my CTAC usually does.

Draw and reholstering is nice and easy. The holster is plenty strong to remain open without the gun inside, the hardest part of reholstering is finding the mouth of the holster with the muzzle.

I’ve been trying for two weeks to find something negative to say about it, but the only disappointment is that I didn’t order it sooner. I’m going to order Phantoms for my G19 and 1911 next time I get anything from CTD.

Did I mention it’s only $20? This continues to boggle my mind. How is this only $20? It’s like I’m cheating someone!

I think this product totally demolishes any excuse for buying a crappy Fobus, Serpa or ‘fits many’ nylon holster. I cannot completely express how superior the Blade-Tech Phantom is to any of the above holsters. If you have bought a Fobus, Serpa or Passport by mistake, please cut it up, send it back from whence it came and buy one of these. You will be so glad you did!

Which brings me to the title of this post. In 14 years of pistol ownership, I’ve owned a lot of holsters for a lot of pistols. Soured by a Fobus holster early on, I bought leather holsters for many years, from a variety of manufacturers and several different designs, ranging in price from $30 to $120.

This $20 plastic holster is better than any of them.

Leather works okay for OWB carry, until it deteriorates and starts to get floppy. Inside the waistband, leather soaks up sweat, leaches oil and dye onto clothes, it gets floppy and loose, won’t stay open after you draw, and eventually it falls apart. This is expensive, annoying and ultimately dangerous.

Kydex does none of these things. You also don’t have to wait a year for your holster, and it actually stands up to daily carry. Okay, it doesn’t look as nice, but if it’s concealed, who cares?

Islam is a disgusting, vile, oppressive and brutally misogynistic totalitarian ideology. It is fundamentally incompatible with modern pluralistic civilization. Nations dominated by its followers produce nothing of value, generate no scientific discoveries or engineering feats and are entirely dependent on extracting minerals from the earth to finance themselves. Inside western nations, it appeals to the shiftless, unproductive and avaricious, spawning movements that seek to enrich themselves through violence and terror.

But it should not be illegal.

In a free nation, it cannot be illegal.

Free people oppose tyranny with more freedom, not more tyranny. Like cockroaches, the most effective method to fight Islam is with light, not darkness. Strong associations of free people, loudly, obnoxiously proclaiming the truth is a sharper sword than banning unpleasant organizations.

And it does not matter if you reclassify Islam as a political movement, instead of a religious one. It does not matter. We do not ban the Nazis or Communists or Democrats from organizing, and doing so to Islam would be wrong and counterproductive.

Legislative action gives the cancerous organization stature and legitimacy it cannot generate on its own. A legislative ban is also a victory for the tyrant because it makes us act like them without a shot being fired or an inch of ground surrendered. Banning opposition movements or parties is what loser countries like China or the UK do. The idea of the American Experiment cannot be extinguished by a 7th century ideology spread by rock throwing goatfuckers and it is insulting to claim that it could be.

Which brings us to Herman Cain.

“Our Constitution guarantees separation of church and state. Islam combines church and state,�? Cain argued, as host Chris Wallace maintained that separation of church and state permits mosques to exist in any community. To Cain, however, the problem was not Islam as a religion, but Islam as a set of laws. “American laws in American courts,�? he repeated, a mantra he used in the latest Republican primary debate. “It is not just a mosque for religious purposes.�?

Wallace argued that he did not quite understand what was wrong with Murfreesboro that would prevent a mosque from existing there without controversy– “this isn’t Ground Zero in New York City, it’s not hallowed ground. Don’t Americans have a right, of any religion, under a Constitution which you speak so much about…�?

Cain retorted that “to the people of Murfreesboro, it is hallowed ground�? and that he agreed with them in their objection to “the intentions of trying to get Sharia Law.�? “They’re objecting to the fact that Islam is both a religion and a set of laws,�? Cain continued. So Wallace asked the inevitable question: does any community have the right to ban mosques? “Yes, they have a right to do that,�? Cain replied, without skipping a beat. He later added that, while he is not willing to discriminate based on religion, “I’d rather err on the side of caution.�?

Herman Cain is fundamentally wrong about the nature and effects of the tradition of religious and associative freedom in this country and has disqualified himself from representing it. I have previously supported the Cain campaign, finding a lot to like in a man who comes naturally from the productive class instead of creepily spending his entire adult life preparing for a position of power. But whether by ignorance or prejudice, this position is not one that should be held by the leader of the free world.

Someone else, please.

Shot the monthly IDPA match at WGTS in Tallapoosa GA this weekend. Despite humid, 95F weather, I had a great time. 7 interesting stages over a few hours with a good squad.

Lessons learned:

• One layer of Bullfrog applied early in the morning is insufficent protection against 7 hours of cloudless Georgia sunshine.
• Do try and test fit your awesome new boonie hat with your eye and ear protection before you hit the range.
• Boonie hats are awesome.
• It was really refreshing and strange to squad up with a bunch of guys who were literally racing each other to paste up and reset targets between shooters.
• Bill Wilson’s rules for the order in which you engage targets are arbitrary and stupid, and I have a procedural to show for it.
• Saw two firearm malfunctions. A Colt 1911′s trigger locked up hard, and what looked like a parts bin AR with an unlined bore and chamber had a tough time chambering commercial reloads.
• I got to shoot a skateboarder. A lot. I am at peace.

Scores, pictures and possibly a video later.

Nobody is a bigger fan of dropping bombs on unelected wog dictators and their vile henchmen than me, but I do not think I am alone in wondering just what in the wide wide world of sports we are doing in Libya. Our military has been engaged in “time-limited, scope-limited” kinetic action (but not a war, surely not no) for a solid 90 days with little to show for it but some bad PR, raising the stature of a still defiant wog dictator, depleted PGM stocks and a double handful of dead civilians.

No matter what thread you tug at, the story unravels into pure farce.

We have stated no clear political goals for this action. Our dependent allies have been exposed as comically unable to sustain a meaningful sortie tempo beyond their boarders against a fourth rate IADS. The faction we have backed is increasingly revealed to be unsavory in racially ironic ways.

As Clausewitz explained hundreds of years ago, and Mahan more recently, war is not about the means, but the ends. We do not send our forces to clash with our opposition for the sake of destroying their men and equipment, but to force a political correction on the enemy via that destruction. In the absence of a declared, required change in our enemy’s political condition, war is obscene, pointless murder and the futile risk of our servicemen and equipment.

Military action in Libya may or may not advance our Nation’s interests, and our Commander in Chief ought to express an opinion one way or another. Instead, we are presented with the puzzling declaration that “We are not engaged in militarily-driven regime change.”. How, then, shall we to enforce our will? By destroying the dictator’s forces and materiel? What is to prevent him from obtaining more? Do we really think he will run out of soldiers, camels and AKs before we run out of JDAMs? What does this telegraph to our other current and future enemies?

If the situation in Libya presents enough risk to our national security to justify the use of force, then the President should articulate these reasons, seek Congressional approval and direct his subordinates to decisively prosecute the operation in the most efficient manner possible. I don’t see how this procedure is at all controversial and is probably the least worst way for a Republic to wage war, but instead, this administration has mumble mouthed and prevaricated about the reasons for engagement, dodged its statutory requirements to Congress and engaged the enemy in a timid, irresolute manner that only serves to maximize both the risk to our forces and the unintended consequences on the ground by needlessly prolonging the hostilities.

This is what happens when you let hippies run a war, folks.

If it’s one thing that I hear in excess from the anti-liberty coalition, it’s that the stupid, redneck cousinhumpers who make up the pro-gun camp need to compromise on this issue and trade away half of their liberty now instead of all of it, and everyone’s supposed to be happy with that. Recently, the strangely superstitious who blame the implement rather than the wielder are renewing their call to federally register all gun sales, both commercial and private, by passing them through a federal background check or requiring all transfers go through FFL dealers.

I am of course opposed to this on both practical and moral grounds. It obviously fails the Jews in the attic test, and will be a unconstitutional single point of failure for people buying guns. It is also a undue burden on the poor, who may not be able to afford a $25-100 transfer fee on top of the price of the gun. You would have to be an idiot to think that noncompliance wouldn’t be sky high, so it’s clearly only a first step to a more comprehensive registry and restriction system. It won’t do a damn thing to reduce crime, as we have seen again and again, since people with mayhem in their hearts are not deterred by the possibility of the death penalty or a lifetime prison sentence, they are not going to be deterred by a law against them buying a gun.

But I am willing to take the opponents of freedom at face value, and will accept that this is all they will ask for in the future, and that they sincerely believe this will make us safer. However, I object to the process that dictates that they get something, and we should just be happy because they don’t take all of our guns away. This is insulting and dishonest, so I appeal to their sense of fairness and bipartisanship and ask that they give us something in return!

Here are some helpful suggestions:

• Nationwide concealed carry reciprocity.
• Repeal of the 1992 and 1994 import bans and 1968 pistol import restrictions.
• Move suppressors off the NFA list and make them equivalent of a title-1 firearm.
• Removal of SBRs, SBSs, and AOWs from the NFA list.
• Repeal of the 1986 full-auto ban.

Since clearly who gets the guns is the concern, not necessarily what kind of gun they get, surely they cannot disagree with these simple, common-sense steps! I would suggest that the anti-rights people choose three of the above items in exchange for previous “compromises” not handing us anything either.

So come on fascists! Are you honestly willing to “compromise”, or are you lying as usual?