While at the Gun Blogger Summer Camp last month I won a set of Crimson Trace laser grips–whatever set I wanted. I finally got around to asking for a set to fit a Ruger Mark II. I received them but haven’t installed them. I went to range tonight thinking I would put them on and try them out but wasn’t thinking ahead. I forgot to bring tools.
They look very cool but a full report will have to wait for a few days.
Six of us made it to the event (click on the pictures to see higher resolution versions):
Left to right, Phil, American Mercenary, Misty (wife of American Mercenary), Barb (my wife), and Gay_Cynic.
Barb insisted I should post a picture of myself as well, so here it is:
Joe Huffman and Gay_Cynic.
We had a nice time. No concrete plans to take over the world or anything. A report on Gun Blogger Summer Camp was requested. Gay_Cynic wanted to know if Tamara was as delightful in person as she is to read. I said she was but she seemed a little bit shy which I didn’t expect.
Phil and I talked about our plans for guns to take to Reno next month.
We talked about Seattle Mayor Nickels attempts to break the law and ban gun owners from carrying on City property. Phil reports Nickels will release his plans after getting an opinion from the state Attorney General. If I recall correctly Phil said that was due out on October 20th which will be in time for the election.
In response to something American Mercenary said about Democrats and socialism I said those people have a different set of basic assumptions about reality than I do and Phil says he will have blog post about that on Monday. I’m looking forward to it.
American Mercenary informed us about the use and misuse of full auto in the army. He explained a use I hadn’t really thought of before. He said a machine gun set up in a street can prevent anyone from crossing for many hundreds of yards but that same gun on a roof is of limited use.
Barb and Misty talked extensively about being the wife of a military man. Xenia will soon be in that position and Misty has been living that life for quite a while now. Barb arranged for Xenia to take some pictures, “When Misty has her baby.” Of course this was ambiguous to me. My first inclination was this probably meant during delivery–which seemed a little odd. But the shock on Barb’s and Misty’s faces when I wanted clarification on this point got me on the right track.
As mentioned before, there is going to be a gun/freedom blogger meet in Seattle next weekend. I received an email that the date has been changed. The new meeting info is:
10:00 AM
Sunday, September 14th
Eggs Cetera’s Blue Star Cafe
4512 Stone Way N
Seattle, WA 98103
Phone: (206) 548-0345
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:
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”?
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
SaturdaySunday, September13th14th
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 14th.
We now have another convert from the dark side. Caleb is now a believer in John Moses Browning.
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:
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:
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:
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.
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.
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:
This is like Disneyland for guns.
Tamera K.
August 22, 2008
While touring Blackwater.
[A few hours later Caleb said, “This is like Disneyland for gun nuts.” I asked if he had heard Tamara say something similar earlier. He had not. I think Sebastian also said something similar while on camera with Michael Bane. It’s really can’t be adequately described in less that 1000 words and/or several dozen pictures. Being less articulate I just say, “Awesome”.–Joe]
Uncle and I talked and he sent the shuttle out to pick me up before I even picked up my luggage in Norfolk. I ran into Kevin Baker before I even checked in. I met up with Sebastian, Rob Allen, Caleb, JR, Uncle, and Kevin in the bar across the parking lot. We talked for an hour or so and Tam showed up. About 11:00 or so Rob was crashing and that broke up the bar party.
Read (almost) everyone’s blog posting of people here on one web page.
Sebastian invited us back to his suite where Uncle, a local guy (a reader of Say Uncle) and I all talked until after 2:00 AM.
The bus leaves for Blackwater at 9:00 AM.
I’m waiting to board at SEATAC. You can follow my flight progress for the first leg to St. Louis here. The second leg to Norfolk is here.
Tomorrow I’ll be at Blackwater enjoying the company of several other gun bloggers and the hospatilty of Para USA.
I’m really looking forward to settling the bet with Caleb.
Update: I forgot to mention I plan to update Twitter frequently during this trip.
Co-worker Kris recently arrived here from Australia. Saturday he rode his bicycle from the Mount Rainer park entrance to the Paradise visitor center and then back down the mountain. The elevation of Paradise is 5400 feet and the temperature was 95 F. He estimates he burned 4288 calories and consumed 5.8 liters (1.5 gallons) of fluids. He also got hit by a car on the way up.
And he says eating Vegemite demonstrates Aussies are tough.
Well, not really “on the air” in the traditional sense.
Tomorrow night Rob Allen and I will be guests on http://blogtalkradio.com/gunnuts hosted by Caleb and Squeaky. The topic will be the Para sponsored training with Todd Jarrett at Blackwater this weekend. Caleb, Robb, and I (along with a bunch of others) will be participating. Caleb also wants to talk about our bet.
Listeners are welcome to call in so in addition to listening you should consider calling to tell me how silly it was of me to accept a shooting bet with someone I have never seen shoot.
Bonnie just got word the ATF trusts her to make explosives for me. Next April I will teach her–free of charge.
Doesn’t that just give you the warm fuzzies? If we could only let them know I’ll bet the Brady Bunch, the VPC, and numerous Cease Fire organizations would find their nightmares worsened.