Quote of the day—Bubblehead Les

Do you realize that Obama has more time at the White Board diagraming Saul Alinsky’s “Rule for Radicals” than he has Trigger Time?

Bubblehead Les
February 2, 2013
Comment to Quote of the day—Sebastian
[After spending 20+ hours (about 2000 rounds in the Intensive Handgun Skills class) of “trigger time” this last weekend my mind is stuck on “trigger time”. I’m constantly amazed at how fast, and accurately, people can put lead downrange.

At Boomershoot people can and do put bullets into seven inch square targets at 700 yards on nearly every shot. I know people who can hit eight inch steel plates 25 feet away at a rate of six to seven rounds a second—with a 12 gauge shotgun! With a pistol (concealable, as opposed to a long gun) people put bullets into different eight and 12 inch circular targets from 25 feet away at the rate of two to three rounds per second. At conversation distances it’s eight to 10 rounds per second.

Every day of the week during normal wake time hours you can go to the local range here in the Seattle area and see people practicing. On the weekends and many week days you can find competitions where people hone and display their skills to levels that are mind bogglingly sharp even by my standards of being a competition shooter for over 20 years.

There are roughly 80 to 100 million gun owners in this country. That “extremist organization”, the NRA, has “more than five million members”.

People “White Board diagraming Saul Alinsky’s ‘Rule for Radicals’” as they plot to destroy our freedom don’t realize just how dangerous a fire they are playing with. As I pointed out in this post about the number of Al Qaeda members:

According to intelligence estimates reported by the New York Times in 2010 the answer is “fewer than 500” in Afghanistan and “more than 300” in Pakistan. A 2011 article in the Wall Street Journal put the number in the range of 200 to 1000 with “affiliated fighters or funders” making up thousands or tens of thousands.

Since allied forces in Afghanistan haven’t “finished the job” after more than a decade against less than 1000 poorly trained and funded fighters which side do you bet on if they were fighting a few million well trained and well funded fighters? If the would-be tyrants push us too far, just how much trigger time do each of five or 10 million people, skilled with the tools of freedom, need to put an end to the threat? Do the arithmetic.—Joe]

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9 thoughts on “Quote of the day—Bubblehead Les

  1. I’m reminded of the — possibly apocryphal — story of a Swiss general who was given an opportunity to see the German army at exercise, circa 1910. The German general said “we have twice as many soldiers as you have — what would you do if we invade?”
    The Swiss general’s reply: “fire twice and go home”.

  2. I am at best a mediocre shot. In honesty, I am a beginner handgunner, despite the thousands of rounds of my own money I have turned into noise and holes in paper.

    I am better than average most days at my range here, near Austin, Texas, based on group sizes compared across the range lanes. That is probably because I am shooting with 10 year old kids supervised by parents, girlfriends and wives completely unfamiliar with guns being taken to the range by their husbands and boyfriends, young men who thought a Glock 23 in fortay caliber or a .45cal Sig was a great choice for a first handgun to learn with, and older retired men and women shooting their .357 Magnum revolvers and Sig 230s in .380 with arthritic hands.

    But the thing is, while my groups may be smaller than many of theirs, they are still hitting within the body outline on the target most shots. And it isn’t 10 shots on target in the 10 ring that will be important in a crisis, it is the first shot hitting somewhere “center mass” on a violent criminal that will most likely count in their favor, or mine. They are impressive, and they know what they are trying to do.

    Every few trips to the range, though, there is that guy or girl quietly practicing a few lanes over that I eventually start watching. Their target stays out at 3 yards, or 7 yards, or 10 yards, instead of being run in and out each magazine. And the holes don’t wander here and there across the paper. I’ve learned a lot just watching them hold their handguns and pull the triggers. They are impressive, too, and they know what they are doing.

  3. Everyone needs to remember; It’s not the Constitution (and the government’s proper, uncorrupted governance under it’s restrictions) protecting us from them. It protects them from us.

    The same principle applies to proper, uncorrupted policing. It protects the criminal far more than the law abiding citizen.

    When either fails, the people are known to take matters into their own hands.

  4. “When either fails, the people are known to take matters into their own hands.”

    Yeah, but who exactly are “the people”? The point is there are gun owners from nearly all political and idealogical categories. They don’t make up one, great big, monolithic block of principled libertarians with an understanding and appreciation of American history. Far from it.

    If it ever came to a shooting war, methinks it would be closer to a circular firing squad than to the American Revolution and let’s not forget that during the American Revolution there were entire battles fought between American loyalists and American rebels (no British involved).

    The seemingly massive support for D. Trump suggests that there is no “one side” in opposition to the Democrat/socialist/authoritarian movement. In that case, the (claimed) enemy of my enemy is certainly NOT my friend. For every principled opponent to a particular collectivist movement, there are nine or ten more opponents that are simply rival collectivists. One despot wanting to replace the other.

    Then there is the inevitable mass incursion of all manner of enemies of America, which would be happy to jump into the fray and complicate things.

    Then there are the desperate unprepared. At the time of the American Revolution, we were not yet such a specialized industrial society that most people were helpless without the infrastructure. Now we have millions and millions of people relying on municipal water supplies, prescription drugs, the power grid, the fuel supply, etc. Those in the cities would be out of heat and out of food and medicine within minutes to a few days; millions of those all doing their lame best to survive by any means, without principles, nothing to guide them but fear, hate and desperation, or the nearest would-be generalissimo with a loud voice, a gun, and a hot meal to offer. Thus the picture of the circular firing squad (all shooting at one another) is not unrealistic.

    • That’s a scary picture, especially with at least one presidential candidate clearly auditioning for the role of generalissimo.

    • Who says it has to be ‘war’ (depending on your definition, or course).

      There’s no need to fight pitched battles, or even high levels of violence. In any situation, you determine the schwerpunkt, then a few ‘changes’ here, a few there…..et voilà!

      • True. And the one “good” thing about a dictatorship is that the schwerpunkt is very small. (Unfortunately, it’s also usually well defended.)

        • No one said any worthwhile endeavor was without a certain level of risk. 🙂
          Of course, I forgot to add a parenthetical ‘s’ to schwerpunkt.
          4GW, you know.

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