Fit-testing your ammo

In an update at Mike's Spot on his Citadel 1911, Mike casually notes something of much importance that many folks may not have ever tried before -- fit-testing your ammo.  I'll admit to not always doing this with defensive ammo, but curiously will do it with reloads for plinking, which is backwards.  Having a jacked up round not fire on the range isn't as big of a deal as hearing a "click" when you need a "bang" in a moment of great need, and so checking each and every round that you would potentially stake your life on is a good idea.  In Mike's case, he even found out that his barrel was out of specification and needed the attention of the manufacturer's machinery to make it right, which would be a catastrophe to find out in a gunfight.

To fit-test your ammo, field strip your pistol like you would for cleaning and while you have everything clean and pretty, take your barrel and drop each round of your defensive ammo into the chamber and see if the cartridge seats well; what you're looking for is the case head (bottom of the round, for the layman) is even-steven with the barrel hood.  I really need to snap a few pictures of this to give you a visual.  While you're handling each round, check to make sure the primers are seated properly and that the round looks serviceable.  I've found jacked up rounds before in both target ammo and premium self defense ammo.  Stuff happens with massed produced things and it's your responsibility to make sure your weapon is compatable with the ammo.

Torture is wrong

This post is about torture testing of firearms.  Andy has a post that links to a video where an AK47 is placed in a mud puddle and then picked up and fired as a way to showcase its reliability.

"It seemed that dirt simply didn't affect this weapon."

That is one of those perpetuated myths that keeps making rounds, much like the one the man says right before it that the M16 in Vietnam wasn't as reliable because -- he implies -- the rifle has tighter tolerances during machining and thus was built for accuracy and less for reliability.  Andy accurately points out that one little pebble could very well have ended his non-scientific reliability test of the AK, which is true of any similar test of any man made device that is built with complications.  Sure, his single example of a rifle fired just fine during the one test, and to give a hat tip to the AR family of rifles I could offer a similar but more in depth anecdotal test.  The thing about it is that it's one rifle put through a one series of tests.  Who's to say how many failures you would have if ten of the same rifles were put through the same series of tests?

The mud/sand/dirt/ceracoated-water-beetle tests are usually done on gun forums to show the AR fanboys that the AK family of rifles is more reliable in "dirty" environments.  I mean, AK rifles are used in dirty deserts by dirty people all over the world, and that's why they're so reliable, right?  Well, the reason AKs are used in poverty stricken countries is because they're so cheap to buy and easy to manufacture, not because they're any better than any other family of battle rifles.  I don't bother qualifying that claim because there's nothing to qualify: you won't find dirt poor militants fighting other dirt poor militants with FN F2000 rifles in dirt poor countries because they cost like $2,800, not because you can't bury one in dirt and expect it to fire.  Who buries their rifle in dirt, anyways?

Did you know that the M16 has a dust cover over the ejection port to prevent sand/dirt/mud/throwing-stars from getting into the action?  So does the AK-47.  Weird.  Now considering that, take a looksie at the receiver of a M-14 or M1 Garand.  Oooooo, there's no dust cover.  Do you think you could sling mud over the top of the action and have it fire without jamming?   Maybe it'll fire once or twice without jamming, but sooner or later it's going to.  Oh, CTone, everyone knows about the hell-and-back reliability of the Garand and M14!  Nothing can stop them!  I'm telling you that if you introduce foreign matter into a firearm's action -- any firearm -- it will not fire for long without a stoppage.  Likewise if you throw firearms out of airplanes; just because your gun survives a fall doesn't mean that it is airplane-drop-proof, it only means that it didn't hit the basketball sized rock six inches beneath the grass, and nothing more.

Wanna guess why military training and CONOPS don't include any procedures for running over or burying weapons in sand/dirt/mud or freezing them in a tray of mashed potatoes?  Because it's universally accepted that it will probably induce a malfunction when the weapon is fired.  I've never browsed an AK technical manual, but I doubt it will tell you that the gun is immune from jamming due to sand/dirt/mud/3/4" ball bearings, and I would bet a shiny nickle that it will tell you to keep the action clear from any obstructions, to include water.  Internet fanboys love pictures of SEALs, Rangers, and Recon Marines with painted faces coming up out of the water with their rifles at the ready, but what's not well known is that unless the gas tube of any rifle is clear of water, it will blow to smithereens if it's fired.  I bet there's a technique for not getting that to happen.  And sure, I've seen Elite Team Fighters dunk their favorite brand of rifle in a bucket of fluoridated tap water and then fire it without issue, but curiously I've never seen one of them pop out of a submarine in 50 feet of water and swim two miles to the shoreline, at night, while submerged, and then fire it two seconds after breaking the surface.  I just haven't.

Don't get me wrong, I love to see weapons tortured to see how tough they are.  But being a realist, I don't put much money on tests that try to show some resistance to foreign debris being forcefully transported either directly into the action, or right on the entrance of it, and then firing without a jam.  I also don't place faith in tests where an AK is fired out of a cannon.  You're basically only showing the favorable part of statistics.  The torture tests I like to see are ones like this, where an off-the-shelf production pistol is subjected to a lifetime of ammunition over several months, and lives to tell about it.  I can tell you that the only malfunction I've ever had in an M16 or AR type rifle combined was shooter induced.  I've actually found that as long as an AR rifle stays reasonably lubricated it will run like a sowing machine without cleaning for a long long time.

Me personally, I like to keep the nastiness out and off of my weapons.  They run better that way.  I don't clean them as often as I used to, but I make sure they stay lubed up with 10w50.

When it all goes bad

It has been said that practice makes perfect. I agree, and note that some people practice perfect, meaning that they practice things in an environment that doesn't include the chance that something might go wrong. When it comes to defensive shooting and the practice thereof, it's helpful to learn to shoot not only while standing upright with a functioning weapon, but also while moving, walking, crouching; while kneeling and prone; on your back and on your face; with your right hand and your left. The reason is because you may wind up in a precarious possition if ou are ever unfortunate enough to be attacked, and having the skillset to defend yourself like this may save you.

Another aspect that I've rarely ever seen practiced outside of the military is failure drills. Because, if you haven't heard, firearms can fail you at the moment of truth, and being able to deal with it could potentially be helpful. What do you do if your trigger mechanism fails, or a badguy's round disables your weapon? Hopefully you draw another gun! If you do that than you're not only a big dork, but you're a prepared big dork, and I like you. If you don't, than I hope you've tried to incorporate some failure drills into your range session so you have some idea of what to do if you draw your weapon and the slide and barrel stay in your holster.

Prepping in the news

Very surprising to me that this article and video doesn't smear the idea of preparing for a world without functioning ATMs and Food Lions, though I caution the use of the word "arsenal" to describe a 12 gun battery of .22 rimfires, shotguns, and a lone AK clone. There's all sorts of good ideas to be seen in the 5+ minute video, such as keeping a small trailer loaded up with equipment that can be used when the power grid goes down during the Red invasion. Keeping honey bees is one of the most practical ideas for a bona fide survival situation that I've seen, but sadly, I could never keep them because I'd be constantly fighting the urge to toss a burning five gallon gas can onto the hive to KILL THEM ALL WITH FIRE!!! I hate bees.

I'm sure there are naysayers out there that mock the idea of prepping; their plan in the wake of a devastating earthquake is to hide out in their therapist's office, living off the bowl of yummy lollie pops from the lobby until men with uniforms and guns rescue them. That's also a very smart idea -- the faster the unprepared die off from starvation, the more furry faced resources are left over for the screwy Mormons who stockpiled 7.62x39 for their assault thingies.

The luxury bunker thing is interesting. Without getting into details, I can tell you that being below ground when a large nuclear device goes off will give you a much better chance at survival, but I question the need for such a structure when you live 150 miles from the nearest city that anyone would consider attacking. It's like keeping tools, manuals, and provisions for an exotic car you will never own. I mean, who's really going to attack Bismarck, North Dakota? You guys up there don't need a bunker. Spend your money on ammo or board games or something.

I appreciate the idea of being prepared. I don't have room in my teeny little house for cans of chicken with 15 year shelf life and a high quality reverse osmosis system. Hell, I don't even have much room for ammo! My food plan for the end of the world is to live off the abundance of squirrels, rabbits, and labradoodles in my crappy subdivision, cooking them on my MSR Dragonfly stove until we can bug out to somewhere with less of a population. That basically rules out 90% of Virginia; everybody and their brother has decided this is precisely where they want to live, so in the apocalypse you can expect half the country's population to meet their demise here when Starbucks sells out of vegetable paninis.

Don't re-chamber your self defense loads

Me personally, if I empty my pistol for whatever reason, the round I eject gets stacked at the very bottom of the magazine so that it will only ever be chambered twice. If I'm at all uncertain I have a drawer where I put them for range use. I don't re-chamber rounds over and over again.

Reason I bring this up is because there's a discussion at Pistol-Forum.com on how to cycle duty ammo, and the constant re-chambering came up. Here's a story from that thread that I think may influence people to be more careful:

THE FOLLOWING TRAINING ADVISORY WAS FORWARDED FROM GWINETT COUNTY POLICE DEPARTMENT - LAWRENCEVILLE, GA

In September of this year a GCPD officer was involved in a situation which quickly became a use of deadly force incident. When the officer made the decision to use deadly force, the chambered round in his duty pistol did not fire. Fortunately, the officer used good tactics, remembered his training and cleared the malfunction, successfully ending the encounter.

The misfired round, which had a full firing pin strike, was collected and was later sent to the manufacturer for analysis. Their analysis showed the following: "...the cause of the misfire was determined to be from the primer mix being knocked out of the primer when the round was cycled through the firearm multiple times". We also sent an additional 2,000 rounds of the Winchester 9mm duty ammunition to the manufacturer. All 2,000 rounds were successfully fired.

In discussions with the officer, we discovered that since he has small children at home, he unloads his duty weapon daily. His routine is to eject the chambered round to store the weapon. Prior to returning to duty he chambers the top round in his primary magazine, then takes the previously ejected round and puts in back in the magazine. Those two rounds were repeatedly cycled and had been since duty ammunition was issued in February or March of 2011, resulting in as many as 100 chambering and extracting cycles. This caused an internal failure of the primer, not discernible by external inspection.

This advisory is to inform all sworn personnel that repeated cycling of duty rounds is to be avoided. As a reminder, when loading the weapon, load from the magazine and do not drop the round directly into the chamber. If an officer's only method of safe home storage is to unload the weapon, the Firearms Training Unit suggests that you unload an entire magazine and rotate those rounds. In addition, you should also rotate through all 3 duty magazines, so that all 52 duty rounds are cycled, not just a few rounds. A more practical method of home storage is probably to use a trigger lock or a locked storage box.

FURTHER GUIDANCE:
The primer compound separation is a risk of repeatedly chambering the same round. The more common issue is bullet setback, which increases the chamber pressures often resulting in more negative effects.

RECOMMENDATION:
In addition to following the guidance provided above of constantly rotating duty ammunition that is removed during the unloading/reloading of the weapon, training ammunition utilized during firearm sustainment and weapon manipulation drills, should also be discarded if it has been inserted into the chamber more than twice. This practice lessens the likelihood of a failure to fire or more catastrophic results.

Of note about the above advisory is that if you do use a trigger lock, do not use it if the weapon is loaded. That's bad.

It's not just the primer that's effected by re-chambering; the seating depth is also effected, which is more critical in handgun cartridges because small movements of a thousandth of an inch can be all it takes to overpressure the load when fired, blowing your gun to smithereens. This is even more so with +P loads that are already running hot. If you're as safety minded as I am, it's not worth the $.50 in savings to keep reusing that Gold Dot, so stick in a range-fodder box after you eject it.

I'm a member of the Old Dominion Chapter

What Chapter of the Hoplorati are you in?

Shooting while pregnant?

My wife and I have had discussions about this in the past, considering her being pregnant for pretty much five continuous years. Will it hurt the baby?

The only thing I thought about as far as being harmful to the baby was the noise. Unborn babies can hear voices (no, not the creepy kind!), such as the mother and father's, and can also hear music and stuff. No doubt the noisy blast from a firearm can cause damage, or at the very least scare the poor kid. For those reasons, my wife hasn't fired a gun in years (it breaks her heart. . .(not really)).

I didn't even think about any of the other things that might be harmful. With that information especially, my advice is to not do it. I found that article on ARFCOM from this thread on the subject.

And knowing is half the battle. . . . (that brings you back, doesn't it?)

An aptly named county for such a Sheriff

Wright said,"Liberals call me and tell me the chain-gang form of justice isn't working. Well, let me inform you, your form of justice isn't working either."

He said Lance should not have had the right or opportunity to "violate a good, upstanding woman."

***

Wright said, "It's too bad someone with a concealed weapons permit didn't walk by. That would fix it." He said people are tired of doing the right thing and criminals
getting away with their actions.

He said several times, "I want you to get a concealed weapons permit."

It's a start. There's plenty more where that came from, from a Sheriff that seems to have his heart and mind in the right place. He seems to genuinely understand that his town will be a better, safer place if the good folks at large are able to stop scumbags with something that works much faster than a cell phone.

I understand his anger, too; there have been two more attempted abductions in my AO since my last post on the matter, and police don't believe any of them are related. That would mean there are lots of twisted creepys running around, not one. This place is saturated with wonderful kids that need to be protected, and hopefully the community is up to the task.

That song is playing in my head again

It's the song they call Tinnitus, played by a band called IneverworehearingprotectionwhenIwasyoung. It goes like this: EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

When I was a kid, all I did was shoot guns. All day. I had several counties of woods and fields to wander and hunt, and that was what interested me. Even before I could drive I was competent with big magnum rifles and handguns, and had taken down countless deer with a 7mm Magnum and a .300 Winchester Magnum I borrowed one hunting season. When I was in High School, while all the cool kids were out getting liquored up and partying, I would be proned out on mom's dining room table with a Marlin Glenfield Model 25 sniping crows in the back yard out the back door. It made me a decent marksman, but it also gave me substantial hearing damage.

Back then hearing protection came in the form of foam plugs, or dad's cigarette butts. Either way, to keep the song from playing after you broke a shot you had to completely block out ambient sounds, which was not desirable if you wanted to also be able to hear your quarry. Spending so much time in the woods, I never wore hearing protection at all for more than half my life; and because of that I have recurring tinnitus.

It happens randomly several times a month and usually goes away within an hour or two. Not this weekend, though; I woke up Saturday morning and my left ear was ringing so bad that it made my hearing in both ears almost non-existent, and continues now as I write this post. My wife came home from work and was wondering why the hell I had the TV blaring so loud. I could barely hear it, like I was underwater. My kids would be talking to me not two feet away and I just couldn't make out what they were saying. It gets really bad like this several times a year, and can take a week or two to go away.

In my youth, I knew damn well I was damaging my ears with all the gunfire, but I didn't care because I thought I was tough. Now I see what a moron I was, and I wish I could go back in time and kick my own arrogant ass, then sport the dollar or so for some ear plugs. Idiot. I'm right handed, which means my right ear is turned slightly away from the muzzle when I shoot, so it's the better ear of the two. Both ears are bad enough that I had to get a waiver to get into the Marine Corps and Army National Guard because of a wide range of sounds that I could no longer detect, which shouldn't be the case for anyone under 60 years of age.

These days there are electronic hearing protectors that amplify ambient sounds, but cut out the gunfire. When you shoot, instead of the muffled "pop" that you hear with foam plugs, the electronic muffs let you hear the shot as if it was normal, but your ears are spared only the most damaging pitch. On top of that, they're affordable, so there's no reason in the world not to buy a pair and use them, even in the woods while you're hunting. I noticed that with my cheapo pair of Peltor tactical muffs, I can hear distant sounds clearly as if I were there that I cannot hear without them. They'd be a huge advantage in the woods while hunting, and would also keep the worst of the gunfire from making your ears play that song that you cannot get out of your head, ever.

Need a suit and tie for CCW?

Check out these 10 helpful tips if you ever have to have a suit taylored around your carry piece. There's some really good advice in there, things I had never thought of.

Handy reloading tip

I have found that saving various empty boxes makes for utility later on down the road. The best ones in my opinion are plastic bullet boxes, as I have found use for them for holding small reloading parts like comparators or gauges:



One for my bullet puller inserts; another for bump gauges that are used to set up dies; one for the FAT Wrench attachments, and one for my comparator inserts for measuring bullet seating depth. The green boxes used to hold .224 caliber Sierra Match King bullets, and the red cardboard box is from Hornady. As you gain further addiction to reloading, you will acquire all sorts of tools and measuring devices that need an orderly place to stay. These boxes fit the bill perfectly, cost nothing, and will last a lifetime.

I also recommend saving cartridge boxes. Sometimes I will load up some obscure loading and don't have any MTM plastic boxes lying around, so I'll stick them in a Remington Core-Lokt box and place a mailing label over the ends and remark them with a Sharpie. Also, the used cardboard boxes are easier to carry in the field and don't make noise like the hard plastic boxes. There has never been a time when I've complained about having too many, and all of the 308 boxes in this picture have been recently re-filled and then emptied on the range:



All of the .45 ACP and .380 boxes are filled, and there aren't many 9mm boxes left in there. I really do use them all the time, and keep every factory ammo box that I empty.

Looking for a chronograph? Here's some helpful tips:

Buy a cheap one.

Having started out with a Shooting Chrony F1 model, and then stepping up to a Competition Electronics ProChrono Digital, and now to a Competitive Edge Dynamics M2, I can tell you that you most definitely DO NOT get what you pay for. In fact, from the research that I have recently done, it seems that chronographs are all basically built from the same cheaply made bargain bin parts and sensors, and that spending more money on one may give you more flashy features, but not reliability.

I was duped into buying the CED M2 because of the manufacturer claims of being more reliable than the rest, and less prone to errors due to light issues, but I see now that I ended up with the least reliable chronograph on the market. Looking back, the Shooting Chrony gave me about the same level of errors as the M2, maybe a little less, but in that I knew nothing of the limitations of these devices, so one could say that errors would be expected. It was only when I bought the CE ProChrono that I read up on the fact that light makes them very fickle; to operate reliably, they need bright sunlight.

If you are having problems getting your chrono to read, make sure you set it up where it will have either full sunlight or full shade or, in the case of the CED M2, don't bother setting it up at all because it won't work regardless. Make sure that there are no shadows across the sensors, and if there are, put up something to completely shade them. If you are shooting rifles, set your chrono up at 12 to 15 feet from the muzzle, and maintain that distance for each shooting session.

If you have the CED M2 chrono, and don't feel like heeding my warning about not bothering with it, make sure to place the display device on a separate table several feet away from the gun or you will get crazy errors. I found out this weekend that you can shake the display on the M2 and get a reading from it despite the fact that the sensors were 15' away. On previous shooting sessions with the M2, I often got two readings for one shot, on an interval of about 1 in 10 shots. Very frustrating. If there are others shooting near you, make 20 feet or more of space in between the chrono and them, as well as the display or the M2 will read their shots too. Also, you will get readings when the wind gusts, so keep that in mind as the display will make all kinds of cool calculations for you, which don't mean squat when you have six velocity readings of 112 fps from the wind queering your shot string. Something else of note is that when I failed to get a reading from my third shot yesterday, I picked up the display and the numbers on it faded in and out, prompting me to install a brand new battery, with the same results. Not what you would expect from a $200 device advertised as being super fancy pants reliable and better than the competition.

I hope this information helps somebody. I was hugely let down this weekend as I had new loads for the 308 from my recently acquired IMR 8208 XBR powder that I believe will end my temperature and consistency problems, and the M2 chrono decided it didn't feel like working that day. Having a working chronograph for load development is a must, and I expected more from the M2 than I got. I din't get a single reading from it, so instead of ruining my test by continuing to fire the rounds, I called it a day.

That's not exactly true; I threw a great big fit about it and hurled the M2 display into the woods at a shown 324 feet per second, but at least I didn't shoot it. For some background, the Shooting Chrony met it's fate on the edge of darkness two years ago when it was not recording shots from my AR15 while shooting offhand. I started shooting closer and closer to the sensors in order to get a reading as the sun was going down until I was shooting a half inch above the unit, and the inevitable happened when I put a 55 grain round right through the display. That was an accident though. The exact same thing happened to my CE ProChrono a couple of months ago when I skipped a round off the top of the display, ruining my OCW test, which prompted me to immediately toss a C-Products magazine in the general direction of the chrono that - as fate would have it - smashed in the display screen with a perfect shot. I had no other choice at that point but to finish it off humanely with a magazine of 100 grain hardcast rounds from my Kel-Tec.

Doesn't someone out there make a chronograph that doesn't suck? I mean, damn, we can send people to the moon; we can replace a human being's heart; we can split atoms and use that technology in a bomb to end the world, and yet there's no one out there that has mastered building a device that can clock the speed of a bullet. Really?

Sheesh!

Now comes my dilemma. CED makes an infra red light kit for the fancy pants M2 that is reported to end the problem of light sensitivity. Thinking about it though, the M2 is reported to end the light sensitivity problems without the IR kit, so I have my doubts, and there's also the issue of the display fading in and out, so their overall quality is in question. I could shell out the $90 on the IR kit and maybe have a working chrono, or I could spend the same amount on another Shooting Chrono F1 and have one that at least works some of the time, which would also allow me to take my M2 and set it on fire in the yard and dance around it in a loin cloth while screaming profane gibberish. I really like that idea. For what it's worth, when my F1 chrony took a round to the face, it still worked, except to say that the bullet hit both sensors and ruined them. So it's at least tough.

I think a nasty letter to the manufacturer is in order, and I have already left a review on the Sinclair International website where I bought the CED M2, which as of this morning hasn't posted yet. I'll keep checking that though.

If you come across this post, which I'm going to go ahead and call a Competitive Edge Dynamics M2 Chronograph review, my advice to you is Caveat Emptor. Don't bother wasting your dollar on "advanced software and digital circuitry" that was put together from Radio Shack seconds and packaged in a cool looking plastic package. Buy the cheapest chronograph you can find as they are all made from the same 1950's technology, and maybe the recent breakthroughs in IR technology will bear some fruit and make these things not suck.

*Update* I found this post on Sniper's Hide about folks building their own IR light source as the kit from CED doesn't sound all that reliable.

Nice package

This is pretty good advice: don't leave your empty big screen TV and entertainment system boxes by the trash can where the heathens can see it and get ideas; but then again, perhaps leaving your OD green Mossberg JIC tube leaning against the wall outside of your door may give potential thieves an understanding of how your Christmas went, and they may pick another door to kick in.

The Organ Trail

. . .you don't want to die from Exposure on the Organ Trail, so follow these handy tips to ward off the fleshy sickness:

• Stay alert and be aware of your surroundings and don’t wear earphones.
• Walk, run, hike and bike with a partner or group.
• Let someone know when you are on the trail and when you expect to come home.
• Don’t use paths or trails when it is dark out.
• Carry a cell phone.
• Carry a .357 Magnum handgun loaded with poison-laced teflon-tipped bullets made of lead and adamantium.

Actually, the Loudon county sheriff's department left that last bullet out, but I thought it made sense, so I put it in there.

Weirdos who like to show their satchel to random joggers don't seem to me like they fear spandex clad trail wanderers with cell phones. However, broadcast a story over national news about how a trail lurking pervert got a little too hands on with a running lady and ended up with a sucking forehead wound and I bet you that they might think twice about showing their wares in public.

You are worth defending

This post at Excels at Nothing is right on. If you could kill an attacker to protect your child, you could kill an attacker to protect yourself.

I have an obligations to my family: I owe my kids a father, and my wife a husband. I can't make good on that if I'm not alive.

LTE on spree shooters

Written by a former FBI Agent in The Free Lance Star, it mostly covers the elements of stopping a active shooter from a law enforcement perspective.

"All patrol cars must be equipped with military-style rifles and sufficient ammunition to sustain a firefight. The length of many institutional hallways is beyond the marksmanship capabilities of most police officers armed with handguns. A competent and aggressive rifle program must be part of every patrol officer's skill."

That might make some people suck air, but if you were a cop responding to a shooter in a building, would you rather enter with a rifle or a handgun? I would pick the rifle every time, and agree that a good rifle program is paramount.

As for the other elements of the equasion:

"Teachers, administrators, students, and others are most likely to confront the shooter. Some adults must be armed, trained, and courageously willing to defend themselves and other innocents."

Again, I agree. To some, if a person is not wearing some sort of uniform with a shiny thing on their chest then they are totally incapable of handling a weapon. How ridiculous.

I have heard the arguement that teachers are too busy concentrating on students to be able to handle a weapon, and that multi-tasking in that way will cause them to, like, randomly fire rounds in every direction in the event of a shooting or something. They simply can't do day-to-day things with a firearm on their person. It's too complicated.

I don't think that they realise that cops don't wander around with their hand on their weapon all day, and that most of what they do does not involve using it. If they can write tickets, break up fights, chase down bad guys, and chew gum while walking with a holstered handgun, then so can any other human being. Sending school faculty through a voluntary firearms training course and having them qualify annually, if not more, would put them on a level where they would be of use in the event a spree shooting.

If none of them volunteer, then so what? I'm sure many teachers in many states wouldn't want to participate, and I'm not saying that they would have to. But they shouldn't be denied the opportunity.

The last taste of the article, which should be read in full, is this:

"For many reasons, we will experience more of these incidents in businesses, restaurants, shopping malls, and religious centers, as well as in institutions of learning. In particular, shooters seek "gun free zones," because they know they will more likely not be opposed."

"Instead, let's be ready for them."

That's sound advice.

Hand to hand combat

I've often wondered what would be a good, all around type of martial art to learn that would suit the needs of an average joe like me on the streets.

Over at Hell in a Handbasket, James suggests boxing, as it is easy to learn the foundation to make for useful combat; even against multiple opponents, which is what my main concern would be. He has a very compelling video on that post that stresses his point. Go check it out.

Violent scumbags generally work in multiples, so a single based approach to empty hand techniques would be training to fail in my case. Also, I'm the exact opposite of flexible, and any attempt for me to do a ninja roll would result in torn things inside my body. While I'm sure you have to be limber, boxing doesn't look like it focuses on the more complex techniques that will require a greater deal of flexibility.

I will have to look into boxing in the near future.

Gun sales help Cabelas

I guess if you're going to invest right now, it pays to put your money into a company that is full of guns that people oh so desperately want to cling to.

Chilling self defense interview from a victim

. . .and by victim, I mean the 70 year old gentleman who survived the violent attack that saved his life, and the life of his wife, and not the two masked gunman who died from eleven .40 Smith & Wesson rounds fired from said gentleman's weapon.

". . for sure; there's not a doubt in my mind that my wife and I would be dead, if I didn't do what I did. . .and I would do the same thing over again."

This interview raises the hair on the back of my neck. Of note is that Tec-9 used by one of the scumbags was allegedly stolen from the local PD.

Words of wisdom:

". . .there's nothing you can do if you don't react quickly and have something to defend yourself with. I would be dead if I didn't."

This guy could easily be your dad, grandfather, neighbor, or whatever, and him and his wife are alive today because he was adequately armed despite being locked inside of his own building.

The company you keep

I'm all about capitalism and entrepreneurship, but when you have a store that sells pipes and rolling papers, you may attract more than just the friendly neighborhood stoners. You would have to take that into consideration when running such a business, right?

I'm not knocking their merchandise; I'm just saying to be prepared for the dredges of society as well.