This weekend I spent a bunch of time culling the 1000+ pictures I (and a few others) took at Blackwater into a slide show set to music.

It's 11 minutes long and 31+ MBytes but here is the result. I like to play it with the volume cranked up to just below "noise complaint to the police"--especially at the beginning.

Update: Embedded version:

Para-USA Gun Blogger Summer Camp 2008 from Joe Huffman.

Something I did not know...

I received this on an email list I'm on:

From: Mike Brown
Sent: Monday, September 01, 2008 3:45 PM
To: LewistonPistol
Subject: [LPC] Air Travel with Firearms

For those of you who travel with guns, I received the following
response from TSA to my question as to whether I could use non-TSA
recognized locks (i.e. the little ones that they have the key for) on
my gun case.

"Passengers should not use TSA-recognized locks to secure firearm
cases.  Regulations state that the passenger must be the only one who
retains the key or combination to open the case.  TSA-recognized locks
on firearm cases do not meet this requirement.  If TSA needs to open
the case, the passenger must open it."

They also have some photos on their website of do's and don't-- cases
have to close securely (no being able to lift up an edge of the case
and see the gun.)

I bought several of those TSA-recognized locks so I would have some for my gun cases and now I find out that we are not to use them for guns. It makes sense but I'm not used to the TSA making sense so it is quite a surprise to me.

Here is the link Mike mentioned to the TSA requirements for firearms and ammunition.

Phil of Random Nuclear Strikes and Gay_Cynic of FreeThinker (in email to me) are suggesting a blogger meet in the greater Seattle area:

I'm debating throwing together a monthly brunch in the PNW for pro-gun/pro-liberty bloggers.  Nothing fancy, nothing formal, just food, BS'ing, and the occasional mad conspiracy to demonstrate the essential foolishness of Nickels & Co and his regrettably common fellow travelers.

Maybe call it the "Fluffy Bunnies from Hades Brunch Group"? <evil grin>

Think you'd be up for it? Know others that might be?

If  you are interested send me an email or leave a comment somewhere.

Update: The time and place has been decided:

10:00 AM
Saturday Sunday, September 13^th 14^th
Eggs Cetera's Blue Star Cafe
4512 Stone Way N
Seattle, WA 98103
Phone: (206) 548-0345

Update2: The date has changed to Sunday the 14^th.

The Apex of The Triangle of Death just sent me another wheelbarrow full of cash to tell everyone about their new website--Gun Ban Obama. This is your one stop site for information on how anti-gun Obama really is. Lots of quotes and other material that leave no doubt as to his true colors.

That wheelbarrow of cash sitting in my vault reminds me of something I forgot to report on. Last Wednesday I had breakfast with Pepper Petersen, "Advancement Officer", from the NRA. He is one of the people that collects the truckloads of cash so others can distribute it in wheelbarrows. We had breakfast in the Microsoft cafeteria and after telling me, "I never ask for money on the first date", we talked about Boomershoot quite a bit as well as various other Microsoft gun people we both knew. He may make an appearance at the Gun Blogger portion of Boomershoot 2009 and help make reactive targets as well as trying to connect with some long range targets on Sunday. He and his wife have a baby due about the same time so it's a little bit iffy at this point.

The Harrold Texas school district went through a careful deliberate examination of the situation and came up with the obvious conclusion:

The biggest champion of the school district's policy, superintendent David Thweatt, said his goal is to arm the good guys in order to deter the bad who might want to turn tiny Harrold, with its 100 students, into the next Columbine, the Denver-area high school that was the site of the infamous 1999 shooting that left 15 dead, including the two student gunmen.

School massacres of the past have shown they can happen anywhere, Thweatt said,

Two geographic factors make Harrold's school vulnerable, he said. It is only about 1,000 feet from the four-lane U.S. 287, yet it's 18 miles away from the local Sheriff's Office.

"I don't want to call a parent and say, 'Some bad guy came in, and your kid's dead, and we didn't have a good plan to prevent it,' " Thweatt said last week from his office.

...

Lee said that Thweatt isn't unreasonable either when he talks about the school's remote location. The 999-square-mile county is patrolled by no more than three deputies at any given time. Should his men be on the wrong side of the county during an emergency at Harrold's school, it might take 25 minutes for them to arrive, Lee said.

But the Brady Center has their heads in the sand as well as talking out of both sides of their mouth:

According to the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, a gun-control advocacy group, fewer than 1 percent of school-age homicide victims are killed on school grounds or on their way to or from school.

"Schools are amongst the safest places in America," said Brian Siebel, senior attorney at the Brady Center. "Homicides at schools are the extraordinary, exceptional situation. Our no-gun policies are very effective."

I suppose it depends on how you determine "effective". If they means in terms of disarming victims, then yes, they have been very effective. And disarmed victims means more deaths of innocent children in our schools. But when confronted I'm certain they won't admit to that interpretation. They prefer to believe letting the good guys be armed is a bad thing.

If the Brady Center claims bans in guns in schools are a good thing then they must rejoice when a nut-case shoots up a school unopposed by an armed innocent. Oh, that's right, they do dance in the blood of the innocents.

McCain (and Feingold) did serious damage to our rights under the 1^st Amendment, Barack Joyce Foundation Obama has worked hard to infringe our 2^nd Amendment rights, and now there are Marxists anarchists for Obama suggesting repeal of the 19^th Amendment because of Sarah Palin's selection as the VP candidate.

The fight for freedom will never be completely won.

Update: Lisa says "anarchist" is a better match than "Marxist". Sorry about that.

We now have another convert from the dark side. Caleb is now a believer in John Moses Browning.

Despite the increasing presence of Democrats such as Brian Schweitzer, Russ Feingold, Jim Webb, and Bill Richardson who are embracing our Second Amendment rights, it seems that gun policy for the Democratic Party is still being dictated by the likes of the Brady Campaign and the Violence Policy Center instead of by Democrats themselves.

Isn't it time our party found its own voice on gun legislation?

Doesn't our party deserve better than to be snared by the pitfalls of the past?

Standing at that podium, Obama could have made one small change to his acceptance speech without compromising his own core values: "Don't tell me we can't guarantee the right of law-abiding Americans to own AK-47s while keeping them out of the hands of criminals." A small change in wording, true, but one that would have added a new dimension of clarity to Obama's gun policy.

Right Democrat
August 31, 2008
Tester says Obama is no threat to gun rights
[As a libertarian with a focus on the right to keep and bear arms I wish the Democrats would see the light and stop being so divisive on this issue so I could move on to other issues. It's a specific enumerated right and gun restrictions don't reduce crime so why do they keep trying to further infringe on our rights? The cynical see it as a desire for power and a need to remove guns from society to achieve their goals. I'm not sure what to think about their motivation but I do know Barack the Savior Obama uses weasel words on the gun issue and cannot be trusted.--Joe]

The good looks came from my mother's side. And of course witchcraft.

Xenia Huffman-Scott
August 27, 2008
Referring to the looks of herself and her sister Kim in their back to school pictures.

Barb and I have made plans to attend the Gun Blogger Rendezvous in Reno this October. We won't be there the entire time. We are first going south to Tonopah where Barb's father lived for several years. We will be in Reno sometime on Friday afternoon or evening and will be there all day Saturday. Sunday we probably will do something that isn't particularly gun related such as hiking or museums but if others want to hang out with us that would be fine.

I probably will bring my .300 Win Mag for long range fun on Saturday, at least one handgun, and my shot timer.

If you listened to the Gun Nuts on August 19 you would have heard me wonder how Jarrett was going to handle the wide range of shooting ability in the participants when we showed up on August 22. I believe I had the most training going in. A partial list of my firearms training:

• General Defensive Handgun
• Intensive Handgun Skills
• Low Light Handgun Skills
• Handgun Retention & Disarming
• General Defensive Rifle

Most of the others had not had any formal training. Other students who have taken courses from multiple schools have wisely told me that when attending a new class you should approach the class with an open mind and if you can take just one good thing away then the class was worthwhile.

Jarrett did a great job of dealing with the disparity. He obviously had to get everyone up to speed with the fundamentals such as grip, trigger control, and sight alignment. He did this on the first day mostly in the classroom. On the second day he did something everyone was impressed with. He made marks on our hands that helped us get the grip right:

Robb Allen's hands with the Para USA LDA .45 in full recoil. Notice the smoke leaving the ejection port?

Notice the mark on Robb's right thumb just below the joint? There is a matching mark on his left hand. These two marks line up when he was holding the gun properly. It's difficult to see but there is also a mark on his right hand directly behind the beaver tail safety underneath the slide. This mark should be directly in line with the long axis of the gun and the axis of the shooters arm.

When I saw what Jarrett was doing with these marks little shivers went through me. This was a brilliant teaching aid. I was the next to the last person to get the marks and he told me I was the only person to already have the proper grip. John D. to my left and the last person also got it right. I had made a very slight modification to my normal grip when I showed it to him. I had to shift my right hand just a little to get the proper alignment. The single stack gun is much narrower than what I am used to and once I got the marks on my hands I began practicing my draw making sure that the lines matched up even when I was drawing at full speed.

The draw was one of the areas where Jarrett cut some corners on the training. He talked about it some but didn't have us do any drills specifically working on the draw. He focused on doing a safe draw but not much on speed. This probably was a wise thing considering the other things that were going to be a lot more fun and new to the more advance shooters but in terms of self-defense shooting this probably was more important.

We shot at 8" plate racks from about 15' as we were pushed to shoot faster and faster. This was very frustrating for me because my plates would go down hard enough they would bounce back up. Some plates I put down three times only to have them remain standing.

We did some 25 yard slow fire shooting to verify our trigger control and zeros. On an silhouette target my gun was giving me head shots when I aimed at the chest. Jarrett verified it did the same for him and adjusted the sights for me.

Our range had the capability to give us moving targets:

Looking carefully on the left you can see the remotely reset steel plates then the turning targets. The two rails on the right are for targets that, from the shooters perspective move horizontally left and right. All of these were utilized.

This was nearly all new to me. In competition I have shot at moving targets and moved while shooting but I have had near zero formal training on it.

We shot at the turners. We were given two seconds to empty our eight round magazines into silhouette targets.

We shot over, around and through barricades:

Me, shooting at a steel plates over a barricade. Photo by JR.
Yes, I was taking advantage of my height when everyone else had to use two different shooting positions to get access to the same targets.

Me, supervised by Todd Jarrett, shooting around a barricade. Photo by JR.

We shot on the move. We advanced on the targets while shooting (photo by JR):

We shot at horizontally moving plates while standing still. We shot at plate racks while we were moving horizontal.

We shot at horizontally moving plates while we were moving both left to right and right to left.

The things I took away from this was:

1. Follow through on your shots with the moving targets. Keep the gun pointed at the target even after you fire. The gun just happens to go bang every once in a while as you are pointing it. It got so I could hit the moving targets almost as fast as the stationary targets.
2. When you are moving you need to keep your knees bent to keep yourself level.
3. Walk like you are on a tight rope or balance beam. This keeps you from rocking from side to side as you walk.

Me, supervised by Todd Jarrett, shooting at a steel plate while advancing. Photo by JR.

See also this video from Sebastian:

We did some rapid fire from the hip shooting at a steel plate about 18"x24" in size from just a few feet away from us. The point was to be able to get the gun on target in a close quarters situation. Below you can see Tamara, having just completed the drill, getting a little further instruction from Jarrett on the topic:

We then did some plate shooting from 35 yards. Here is Kevin hammering the plates (and having them bounce back up) at distance. 

One thing that I found as a glaring omission was learning to reload quickly. It was appropriate given the time constraints and disparate training of the students but I was hoping for some "fine tuning" of my reloads.

My biggest surprise was how useful laser sights are for training. I'm not convinced they are particular useful for the shooter as he or she is actually shooting but as an instructor or by video taping as the student is shooting a lot can be learned and taught. I was previously of the opinion the most useful aspect of them was as a toy for dogs and cats. One small example is to have the student shoot rapidly and watch the path of the laser on the target. It should track nearly straight up and down without overshooting the point of aim. Similar lessons can be learned and taught in transitioning from one target to another.

The most fun was the shoot house. I already have a full post on that and won't go into that again except to say that I disagree with Kevin with what was happening while we were taking turns going through. Kevin is of the opinion ninjas from Gunsite Ranch were spying on us. I think this was actually a vulture from the Brady Campaign hoping for some blood to be spilled:

The lines are being more clearly drawn on the gun issue. One day after Senator Obama made it clear that he thinks assault weapons should be banned in a remarkable portion of his speech, here Senator McCain selects someone who is not only proud to be endorsed by [the NRA], an opponent of that ban, but apparently is pretty enthusiastic about the guns themselves.

Dennis Hennigan
Legal Director for the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence
Newsweek: On the Hunt--Sarah Palin, a moose-hunting, lifetime NRA member guns for D.C.
[You got that right Dennis. So what this means is this election is going to have a significant component that is about the right to keep and bear arms. The contest in November will be about those that recognize a specific enumerated right and those that want to infringe upon it. It will be between the Brady bunch, the Violence Policy Center, and a handful of lesser known (and knowledgeable) groups composed of a few 10s of thousands of members versus the NRA, GOA, CCRKBA, and dozens of other pro freedom organizations with several million members. Not everyone agrees with me but I think it's game over man, game over. There is still work to be done in the trenches until November but some of the generals are going to be planning for a Sarah Palin/Bobby Jindal ticket in 2012.--Joe]

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.