Agree with me or not, the Second Amendment hinges on the necessity of a militia (National Guard or Reserve) for the protection of our country; not as an excuse for anybody with a few extra dollars, a chip on the shoulder, or a grudge, to become an armed vigilante.

Elliott Greenblott
August 30, 2008
Letter to the editor of Brattleboro Reformer
[Ironically he goes on to compare the Heller decision to the Dred Scott decision. In the Heller decision the right of the people to bear arms and throw off tyrants who would make us slaves was confirmed. But the Dred Scott decision said certain people were slaves and could not sue for their freedom. And his basic underlying assumption that the "armed vigilante" was the conclusion of the Heller decision is totally without foundation. I can only conclude he has mental problems.--Joe]

Take it from me, if it had ended differently, we would not be bogged down in Iraq, we would have pursued bin Laden until we captured him. We would not be facing a self-inflicted economic crisis; we would be fighting for middle-income families. We would not be showing contempt for the Constitution; we'd be protecting the rights of every American regardless of race, religion, disability, gender or sexual orientation. And we would not be denying the climate crisis; we'd be solving it.

Al Gore
August 28, 2008
[Notice he doesn't say anything about protecting the rights of gun owners so one has to wonder why he doesn't think his idea of registering all gun owners, support for the so called "assault weapon" ban, and restricting the right of free association at gun shows didn't show contempt for the Constitution. Would registering all homosexuals and outlawing gay bars not meet his threshold for "showing contempt for the Constitution"?--Joe]

He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.

William Drummond
1585-1649
[Also attributed by some to Lord Byron. Regardless, I would like to add that those that insist we should not reason wish to be our slave masters.--Joe]

At Blackwater last weekend we used ammo supplied by International Cartridge Corporation.

The ammo worked great. I have zero complaints about the performance of the ammo. Accuracy was excellent. We fired the ammo about five or ten feet from steel plates (that is what Tam was doing here) with only a hint of dust coming back when the wind was right. It is made of sintered copper and tin so it is non-toxic. Because there is no jacket the bullets can be made very accurate. The major factor in bullet accuracy is the jacket being of different thicknesses on one side than another. This puts the geometric center of the bullet at a different point from the center of gravity. As the bullet traverses the barrel the bullet rotates about its geometric center. As it exits it rotates about it's center of gravity. If the two centers are not the same it will "jump" a little to one side as it makes the transition. This will cause the bullet to go in a slightly different direction than that which the barrel was pointed. Hence the homogeneous, sintered, bullet can be made more accurate.

The bullets are also made with a lubricant for release from the mold during the manufacturing process. This lubricant is part of the structure of the bullet and is still present when the bullet is fired. Along with the tighter diameter tolerances (about 0.0005") the guns shooting these bullets run much cooler. Todd Jarrett told us of full auto guns having barrels cool enough to hold the gun by after emptying a complete magazine loaded with this type of ammo.

The ammo rep on-site with us said the price was about the same as hollow point ammo. He also said the bullets were not available for reloading. Something about them being too fragile and cracking in reloading presses. This seems a little odd. They didn't crack when we dropped them on the gravel in the shooting bays. They didn't crack when we dropped them on the concrete. The didn't crack when they were fired.

I also found where they are sold for reloading. From their dealer page click on http://www.frangiblebullets.com/. There you can find prices, loading data, and lots of other interesting information.

One thing you will notice about the bullets is they are much lighter than the same caliber lead bullets. This is because the materials used, copper and tin, have a lower density than lead. They can, and are, loaded to higher velocities and can reach IPSC major power factor in .45 ACP, 10mm, and probably .38 Super. Minor PF can apparently be reached with 9mm. .40 S&W appears to be unable to reach major PF.

If my blood levels of lead were on the high end of normal I would probably buy the bullets and reload them in my pistols for practice and competition. As it is my lead levels are on the low end of normal and lead bullets are cheaper (in .40 S&W about $0.18 versus $0.11). And in any case I don't think I would use the bullets for self-defense. I'm inclined to believe that heavy, deep penetrating bullets are better fight stoppers than light bullets that leave a lot of fragments behind upon entry.

Another reason I would be disinclined to use the light bullets is the recoil. For the same bullet momentum (Power Factor in USPSA terminology) you get more recoil. This is because more powder is used with the light bullets and the high velocity powder exiting the barrel adds to the total recoil. The recoil is also spread over a longer period of time with the slower moving bullet. Hence a light fast bullet causes a very "snappy" recoil which tends to be uncomfortable. I noticed this with the .45 gun I was shooting over the weekend. The recoil was much different than what I expected from a .45. I asked what the bullet velocity was on the 155 grain bullets we were shooting. About 1150 fps I was told. Normal .45 ACP velocities are in the range of about 750 to 925 fps and you feel more of a "push" than the "slap" I was feeling.

Still the lead free frangible bullets have their place. I could see indoor ranges requiring lead free bullets or steel plate competitions requiring frangible bullets. I remember taking a pistol class once and the instructor telling us that for every class they usually have, on the average, one injury from the back splatter from the steel targets. They had about 10 students per class and were firing about 1000 rounds each on steel so there were a lot of bullets going down range and eventually the odds would catch up with someone. The injuries were always minor and required nothing more serious than a Band-Aid but still the injuries did occur. Wrap around eye protection and either directly facing the targets or facing away was required. Those concerns would be eliminated with ICC's frangible ammo.

Kim recently brought up the idea of modern-day privateering and I think it's a good one.  It's high time.

Col. Cooper recommended a 30 caliber machinegun for the purpose.  I tend to think he was right, but a machinegun is a necessarily heavy piece and not easily moved.  Two of those mounted, say, one bow and one stern, or one starboard and one port amidships, would be a good deterrent.  I'd think you'd also want some hand-held rifles (M4s or Kalashnikovs, etc) for portability.

For clearing a whole deck of pirates in a hurry, nothing would beat a modern Gatling gun.  My son and I came up with the idea of a 10 gauge or 8 gauge smooth bore Minigun, firing heavy loads of 000 buckshot at 6K RPM.  Yeah, that should about do it.  If there is armor involved, Ma Duce would be a good choice, and she's excellent at punching holes in engines and transmissions.

Now where do we get our licenses and tags?

If you ask any good sniper, he will tell you that making the kill is better than sex. If you offer this sniper an opportunity to shoot 12 enemy soldiers or hop in bed with a Playboy Playmate the sniper will choose to make the kills first--then he will want the girl too.

Hans Halberstadt
From Trigger Men: Shadow Team, Spider-Man, the Magnificent Bastards, and the American Combat Sniper, page 53.
[This is a very interesting book. Taken out of context this quote is a little on the scary side. It sounds like the mind of a sociopath but it is more about stopping the enemy before he or she kills a teammate or an innocent. Still it is soboring. I'm really enjoying this book because it explains the role of the sniper in our current war and how important their precision fire has become even, or perhaps especially, in an urban environment.--Joe]

Because my officemate, I, (and a few others) won an award for working some long hours last year and delivering on time we spent the money by taking a few others and going kayaking on Lake Union this afternoon. I updated my Twitter account several times and was wardriving with my cell phone while kayaking. Here are the twitter updates:

• http://twitter.com/JoeHuffman/statuses/899833135
• http://twitter.com/JoeHuffman/statuses/899858649
• http://twitter.com/JoeHuffman/statuses/899876994
• http://twitter.com/JoeHuffman/statuses/899900654
• http://twitter.com/JoeHuffman/statuses/899931397

My boss took some pictures and updated his Facebook account with them while still on the water. Ry (who wasn't even there) tagged some of the pictures with names before we made it back to work and dropped people off.

Both Kim and Xenia went back to school today. Xenia has the pictures and the story.

I wish I could have been there to give them hugs and say the usual stuff about being good and doing what the teacher tells them to do. But they are grown women now and it's a little late for that.

Tonight the Gun Nuts will have another show on the events from this weekend. I don't know for certain who will be on. I was invited again but thought I would just listen and let other people talk this time. The live show starts at 2300 Eastern, 2000 Pacific time.

Para USA, Blackwater USA, Blackhawk, International Cartridge Company, and Crimson Trace will probably all be topics of discussion and will all get well deserved praise.

Woke up this morning in Arlington VA (I fly back to AZ this afternoon), opened the motel room door, and this was the view.

The firemen say a room on the next floor burned up. After two trips thru the shoot house, this really isn't that exciting. Hmmm, a motel fire. Be careful not to trip over the hoses while getting some coffee to wake up.

David Hardy
August 26, 2008 4:46 AM PST

This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

Frederick Douglass
1857
[Very appropriate for gun rights activists. But what is even more interesting to me is where I found it. I found it in an anti-freedom blog post. I read it and it just didn't seem right. So I looked it up and found what you see above. The anti-freedom person used this one:

Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them.

What a difference the context makes! As always, they have to lie and obfuscate in their attempts to win. To be fair he did supply a more complete one in the comments when called on it. But initially he stripped out the lines that make our point better than his.--Joe]

I've done a lot of USPSA shooting but never anything in a 360 degree shoot house with a dozen rooms, real doors, and real hallways in it. As various people said in various ways during our visit to Blackwater "This place is made of awesome."

The walls were made of plywood covered 2x4s with steel plating on the outside walls to contain the bullets. The USPSA targets we used were mounted on bullet traps. We used frangible ammo from International Cartridge Corporation which worked extremely well (Sebastian has more on the ammo).

There were buildings in various configurations including one with the building named "R U Ready High School". We used range T7 that could have been an office building or a home.

In front of our building were walls and a gate that could be used for breaching exercises.

They have the repair materials for the breaching practice walls nearby.

The shoot house is a metal roof with partial walls coming down from the eaves to about 10 feet above the ground. The interior with the walls, doors, hallways, targets, etc. has a smaller footprint and has about eight foot walls. Some shoot houses had catwalks overhead. T7 did not have the catwalk and the video guy had to use a ladder to peak over the walls and get his footage.

Just 100 feet or so from our shoot house was this hulk. Apparently used a different type of exercise.

This sticker was on the inside of the plane wreckage.

The white board on the front of the building shows this is really a classroom not just a place for fun. Rob Allen is supposed to report on what we saw on the white board. You won't want to miss that post.

More pictures, and drooling, about the shoot house is available here.

Because we could only run one person at a time through the shoot house we spent a lot of time standing around talking. Here Caleb* explains how things should be done to the rest of us.

This was also the place where Caleb and I settled our bet. Originally I had suggested an El Presidenta and Caleb agreed. But it was clear it was going to be a hassle to find and set up a range for that so we agreed to use the shoot house course since that was to be timed and a winner determined anyway. I was concerned about the 9mm versus .45 aspect which the USPSA rules for the El Presidenta would have taken into account. But we were using USPSA targets here and I figured we could use the time and the hits and again use USPSA scoring and have the 9mm versus .45 disadvantage compensated for. But then the scoring was announced by Todd to be merely time with a miss counting as a three second penalty and a hit on a hostage to be a five second penalty. This put me at a disadvantage. I was shooting a high recoil gun with a Light Double Action trigger with a bug that had been haunting me anytime I tried to shoot fast versus Caleb shooting a light recoil gun with a single action trigger which was working well for him.

Caleb was the second person through the shoot house and what sounded to me like an okay time. Not great but not bad. 24 rounds in most types of environment should be completed in about that many seconds for an average IPSC shooter. But with the eight round magazines, numerous doors to open, and it being a surprise stage it should have taken me about 30 to 35 seconds. Caleb did it in about 46.3 (I forget the exact number on the tenths) but he hit a hostage which, according to the rules, gave him a 51.3. All I had to do, in my mind, was not make any mistakes. I went through immediately after Caleb and had at least three malfunctions of various types with the gun. I also ran down a hallway that was a dead end and had to back up to go the proper way. I made a bunch of mistakes but still turned in a time of 49.89. Good enough to win but not anything to be proud of. Caleb now owes me free ammo for life**.

As reported earlier Caleb only cried for a little while***. The brown paster on his chest is his "badge" for shooting a hostage.

* I'm kidding. Caleb was not the least bit arrogant or a braggart. I think we both knew shortly after the shooting started on Friday that it was going to be a close match.

**  Just kidding, it's two hundred rounds of 180 grain FMJ .40 S&W.

*** Again, I'm kidding. The "crying" incident was two days earlier. I don't know how I managed to get the above picture. I just took so many pictures that one of them "fell into my lap" for exploitation.

I won the bet with Caleb today. Caleb reported it live from the range. I won only because I made fewer mistakes than he did. In a second run through the house with a different configuration I again beat him by a slim margin because I made slightly fewer errors than he did. In both runs through others beat us. My second run was good enough for second place and I won a set of Crimson Trace laser sights.

You have the potential to be a world class shooter.

Todd Jarrett
August 22, 2008
To me while on the Blackwater range. He was making a joke for the video being made for Michael Bane's television show.

Due to requests from the Tamara Fan Club Unwashed Masses (see the comments) the pictures are heavy on Tamara.

I also took the first picture on JR's post.

Caleb has pictures up too.

The view from in front of the hotel a little after 7:00 AM this morning.

Soybeans in the background.

Almost ready for the trip to breakfast.

Our guns have lasers in the grips by Crimson Trace and they have people here shooting with us.

Rob showing off our transportation while on site.

Kevin Baker.

Say Uncle.

Dave Hardy.

John D.


JR.

Tamara.

Kerby Smith is the guy behind this from Para USA side.

Todd was able to make an improvement in Robb's shooting. Say Uncle in the background.

Tamara.

Rob Allen.

Caleb is going to be a formable opponent for our modified bet.

No. Tam is not pissed and about to try shooting Todd with an empty gun.

Don Gwinn and Michael Bane.

Crimson Trace rep, Sebastian, and Say Uncle.

Say Uncle getting a lesson on cleaning a 1911 gun from Todd Jarrett.

Kevin hitting 8" plates at 35 yards.

This is the gun (with part of the serial number obscured) I have been shooting:

Custom guns just for us knuckle dragging gun bloggers! How cool is that?

I had some problems yesterday and finally figured out what was going on (with a simpler repro of the problem by JR). If the gun cycles, you let up on the trigger to the first click, squeeze (it will hit a hard stop without firing), then let up until the next click, then pull the gun will lock up. You have to manually cycle the slide (roughly the equivalent to a computer reboot) to recover. I mentioned this to Kerby, the Para USA guy, and he said, "Yes. It will do that. Don't do that. After the gun cycles move you finger until the nail touches the front of the trigger guard then do your pull." He went on to explain that this is because I've been shooting single action guns for a long time. Others that shoot double action or Glock type actions before using a Light Double Action (which this is) don't have this problem.

At Microsoft we call a bug that is easily reached and causes the program to crash a Priority 0 bug. Priority 0 bugs must be fixed before the product is shipped. Telling the customer, "Don't do that" isn't really an option for a released product.

Yesterday I had many failures to feed as well. After oiling the gun this morning those problems went away until very late in the day when the gun got dirty again. And after adapting my shooting technique to avoid the system lock up (and the required reboot) I did pretty well. On the last big "stage" at the end of the day with shooting on the move, shooting movers, and plates racks I had the best run of anyone (possibly even Todd who fumbled some reloads and had other problems) until Caleb shot the stage with a borrowed gun that had 18 round magazines. The rest of us used eight round magazines and I required five magazines to complete the stage.

At the end of the day several of us, including me, were able to hit the eight (?) inch plates at 35 yards half the time or better.

I have to conclude the gun works well as long as you don't run into that one bug.

Draw your own conclusions as to whether the gun (your version would look like this) is for you.

I learned more in the last three hours than I have since I've been shooting.

Say Uncle
August 22, 2008
Referring to instruction from Todd Jarrett while being taped for Michael Bane's television show.
[I had told him, several times, that professional instruction would make a big difference. Not that he ever disagreed with me. But it's nice to hear him confirm what I had been saying. This is not to say that his shooting was particularly bad. Just that you learn a lot from someone who knows what they are doing and how to teach.--Joe]

One of the things we talked about last night was how much harder it is for an anti-gun mole to penetrate the gun rights movement than the other way around. One of the reasons is it is much easier for us to speak their language than it is for them to speak ours. I've mentioned this general topic before but it's worth reposting the gun portion:

...I worked on a political campaign to oppose a anti-gun initiative (I-676) a few years ago.  The people on the phone lines would tell stories about the anti-gun people that would call and try to get information about our plans.  You only had to ask one or two questions and the anti-gun people would, figuratively, fall in heap on the floor.  If the lines weren't very busy then they would play with them for a few minutes and have more material for the story telling later that evening.  They would just ask something like, “What type of gun do you have?“  “What caliber is it?“  They would get answers like “Glock“ and “.357 Magnum“ (only revolvers shoot .357 Magnum and Glock doesn't make any revolvers).  Or “Shotgun, I'm not sure who makes it, but it's a 9mm.”  With a little bit of suggestive questioning you could get them to agree to the most incredibly outrageous things.  It was great sport making fun of the people that were trying to do us harm and now I realize that it can be more than just sport.

You can get a better hour by hour update on my Twitter account but here are some pictures:

Leaving the Norfolk hotel to get on the Blackhawk bus.

This is the Blackhawk bus. It's very nice inside.

Gun bloggers picking up their holsters, shirts, belts, and other super tactical stuff at Blackhawk headquarters. They have some very cool stuff.

Todd Jarrett doing some classroom stuff.

This is not something you want to see. The muzzle of Todd Jarrett's gun.

Say Uncle gets his two minutes of fame with Todd Jarrett, Michael Bane, and video crew. Sebastian and I also got a couple minutes with them.

End of the shooting for the day and we walked from the cafeteria to the Blackwater hotel.

Despite us bloggers being no smarter than chimps everyone has been treating us like royalty. This has been an awesome day!

Currently the vote is 81% to 19% for me to win the bet between Caleb and I. That must because they expect the "old age and treachery" cliché to have a grain of truth. I must set the record straight on a few items.

There is no truth to the suspicion I arranged a false positive on the explosive sniffer as he went through TSA security yesterday.

There is no truth to the suspicion I poisoned him this morning so he couldn't eat.

It is true that I shot him while on the range at Blackwater (splatter from the steel).

Update: Bitter created a logo for the poll on who is going to win the bet: