Category Archives: Gun Fun

Nine billion rounds isn’t that much

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I’m trying to do my part to stimulate the economy by upping the number of rounds I’m putting down range each month and getting new shooters to the range. I figure we just about have to do it. The ammo factories hired new people and if we don’t keep buying the ammo they will get laid off, right?

Here’s the background story:

Bullet-makers are working around the clock, seven days a week, and still can’t keep up with the nation’s demand for ammunition.

…

“We are working overtime and still can’t keep up with the demand,” said Al Russo, spokesman for North Carolina-based Remington Arms Company, which makes bullets for rifles, handguns and shotguns. “We’ve had to add a fourth shift and go 24-7. It’s a phenomenon that I have not seen before in my 30 years in the business.”

Americans usually buy about 7 billion rounds of ammunition a year, according to the National Rifle Association. In the past year, that figure has jumped to about 9 billion rounds, said NRA spokeswoman Vickie Cieplak.

Nine billion rounds in one year with about 80 million gun owners in the U.S. works out to about only about 112 rounds per gun owner. I went through that many rounds both last night and the night before. I’ll go through probably another 200 rounds tonight and then another 150 on Sunday. What the heck is going on here? I’m figure I’m just doing my civic duty here and it turns out I’m doing the job of about 100 other people as well.

If every gun owner were going through just 100 rounds a month that would be nearly 100 billion rounds a year. That is a way to stimulate the economy and have something to show for it afterward–an armed and well practiced citizenry and respectful politicians.

Dr. Joe’s cure works for sports too

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Via email from Anthony who said, “I am amazed, no SHOCKED you have not blogged on this yet.”

Yeah, yeah. I’m getting slow in my old age. That and preparing for a pistol match on Sunday.

Here’s how you prepare for a sporting event:

India’s cricketers at the Champions Trophy in South Africa are being encouraged by their coach to have sex to boost their on-field performance, a newspaper reported on Wednesday.

The benefits of sex feature prominently in a secret document circulated among players by coach Gary Kirsten and mental conditioning expert Paddy Upton, the Hindustan Times said in a front-page report.

It came as India take on arch-rivals Pakistan in their first Champions Trophy match in Centurion on Saturday.

The large-selling broadsheet, which claimed to have a copy of the document, said the relevant chapter was headlined “Does sex increase performance?”.

“Yes it does, so go ahead and indulge,” the document said, before detailing the benefits of a good sex life and even suggesting “going solo” if no partners were available.

“From a physiological perspective, having sex increases testosterone levels, which cause an increase in strength, energy, aggression and competitiveness,” the document said.

“Conversely, not having sex for a period of a few months causes a significant drop in testosterone levels in both males and females, with the corresponding passiveness and decrease in aggression.”

The document quotes Tim Noakes, a professor and sports scientist at the University of Cape Town, Kirsten’s home town, as saying that “sex was not a problem, but being up till 2:00 am, probably having a few drinks at a bar while trying to pick someone up, on the eve of a game, almost always was.”

The document helpfully suggests a solution.

“If you want sex but do not have someone to share it with, one option is to go solo whilst imagining you have a partner, or a few partners, who are as beautiful as you wish to imagine,” the document said.

“No pillow talk and no hugging required. Just roll over and go to sleep.”

Dr. Joe’s Cure for Everything is validated yet again.

New shooter report

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Tuesday I reported on taking Priyanka to the range for her first experience shooting guns. It turns out that her officemate overheard us talking and asked to go with us. He had never shot a gun before either and really wanted to try it.

I didn’t really want to take two new shooters to the range at the same time when I only had one small booth to work in. So I offered to take him to the range on Wednesday (last night).

It’s always interesting to see what different students have trouble with and how to come up with an exercise to get them past it. Priyanka had trouble shooting fast and accurately. Shooting slow and accurate wasn’t a problem. By moving the target very close she could exercise the “fast” aspect without having to worry about the accurate part so much. Then when the target went back out to a more normal distance she was able to combine the two skills she had learned.

Andrei had problems with pulling his shots low and left. Because of the Crimson Trace laser on the Ruger Mark II I could see that he was aiming well but just as the gun would go off it would dip low and left. Dry fire exercises enable him to see the problem as well. I told him to do most of the squeezing of the grip with his weak hand and concentrate on just moving his trigger finger so his dominate hand didn’t grasp at the same time as the trigger finger moved. Plus, pay less attention to having a good sight picture and more attention to getting a surprise trigger break. It was hard for him but more and more shots started going where they belonged.

After putting a 100 or so rounds of .22 LR down range he wanted to try the Gun Blog 45. Here he is looking for the little knob on the side of the magazine (like on the Ruger Mark II) to push the follower down:

I didn’t let him struggle for long and soon he was getting pretty good results with the .45:

Andrei is originally from Canada but is currently working for a company in California (this company is partnering with Microsoft on a project so he is in Redmond for a while). He asked about how he could buy a gun. What does he have to do? What kind of guns could he buy? I told him what I knew about the gun laws in Canada, California, and Washington and told him that California was more oppressive than Washington and Canada was much more oppressive but he could still have handguns in Canada if he put in enough effort. He said he wanted to stay in the U.S.

I had put on my holster and gun (Gun Blog 45 and the Blackhawk holster I got last year when I went to summer camp) as soon as we got in the car which I had parked off campus. As we left the range he commented on concealed carry and so I explained licenses, open carry, and the laws in Washington versus California. He seemed quite interested and eager to learn more. Next week is not available because Barb will be visiting but if he is still in town the week after I’ll offer to take him to the range again.

Quote of the day–Greg Hamilton

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Handing your permit under you license is a purposeful and proven psychological manipulation that produces better outcomes. There is no doubt in my mind at all about that. Maybe 1 time in 30 interactions has it produced the opposite affect and even then all that happened was I got the ticket I deserved in the first place. The other one ticket I received was given to me with no hostile intent because of the gun or permit, they just didn’t factor in at all.

Telling an officer you have a permit or gun WILL produce anxiety because the officer now has to react quickly to new data and it throws their script. He can’t just ignore verbal interactions or choose to act on the data at his own pace. Officers crave control, telling him he must deal with anything new and not on his plan makes him feel he is losing control. He will respond aggressively/dominantly as a default reaction to lack of control. An officer finding out you are carrying after interacting with you for an extended period will cause him to feel you have been holding out and been one-up on him without his knowledge.

Greg Hamilton
Chief Instructor Insights Training
August 24, 2009
From the Insights Training Center email list on the proper interaction with the police when you are carrying a concealed weapon and have a concealed weapons permit.
[I have used this method for years with good results. I’m strongly inclined to believe Greg has the psychology correct.–Joe]

Think about it

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I have taken something like eight classes (and some of those were taken twice) from Insights. I have put my wife and kids through some of the classes as well. I have been very impressed with their training.

Contrary to the stereotype of gun owners being stupid and just wanting to kill and destroy stuff I was always impressed with how smart the instructors were and how they taught us to avoid confrontations before deploying lethal force. I have been very, very impressed with how much thought they have given to the topic of self defense. They have distilled the concepts and present them in succinct form that you almost instantly recognize as, “Wow! That right!” Examples of such are some of the quotes of Greg Hamilton and John Fogh I have in my collection (not a complete listing):

Sean Flynn is similarly impressed with Hamilton and company.

Today Kevin Kerkam, also an instructor there, contributed a blog post that is another one of those insights (pun intended) that makes you think, “Of course! I should have thought of that but I know I never would have.”

New shooter report

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As I said yesterday I had arranged to take a new shooter to the range this evening.

She was a little nervous and at first you could even see her hands shake when she loaded the magazine of the Ruger Mark II. When she did some dry fire exercises I could see the gun shake as well. It wasn’t all nervousness though. She has very slender arms and the longer she held the gun out at arms length the more it shook and the more she bent her elbows.

Still, when she fired her first shots at about 10 feet away they were all “in the black”:

After several ordinary targets I put up a slightly used USPSA target and said, “This is a bad guy.” Here is the A-zone. Keep all your shots in the A-zone while shooting as fast as you can.

She had some problems. Many of the shots were going way low. I moved the target in very close about two feet from the muzzle and told her to point and shoot as fast as she could–the bad guy was very close. She shot fast and all the bullets were A-zone hits.

She wanted the target further away so gave her another slightly used USPSA target and she moved it to about 15 feet away and opened fire:

This time nearly all the shots were solid A-zone hits and she had a big smile on her face (Update: she didn’t like any of the pictures of her face so that photo has been removed).

I showed her my Gun Blog 45, hollow point bullets, FMJ bullets, and emptied a couple magazines. One at slow speed with maximum accuracy and one as fast as I could shoot and keep them on target. She declined to shoot the .45.

I showed her a S&W .22 revolver and let her shoot that. She much preferred the semi-auto pistol.

We had a long talk about self-defense and “who needs a gun”. She explained that in India it is very difficult to get a gun and very few people have them. Here many people have them and people use them to hurt other people. Why is it that people can get a gun so easily here?

I told her it was a choice everyone needs to make for themselves. She lives across the street from work and goes to work and gets off during daylight hours. It is in a nice part of town. She has no abusive ex-boyfriends. Other people may go to work or get off work very late at night in a very bad part of town. Everyone needs to make their own decisions. I told her of one of my first students who was a very petite middle-aged woman who told me she was a judge and some of her “customers” were very unhappy with her decisions. She had seen some of these people watch her as she left the courthouse. She had never considered owning a gun before let alone carry one when she went to/from work or when she went to the store. She sometimes traveled on her job and would spend the night alone in a motel many miles from home. She and her husband decided she needed to have a concealed carry permit, a gun, and training. She bought a gun and I taught her to use it defensively. The sheriff issued her a permit and she now carries the gun. I think she made the right decision. I told her of the person searching for “what means of self defence will you use as a woman when you are been raped by a man” who found my blog. And I told her of John Fogh’s advice for such a situation.

I told her of my Just One Question and what the numbers were on criminal use, defensive use, and suicide. I told her how a gun made it possible for a weak 85 year-old woman to defend herself against a large young man.

She said she had a wonderful time and I dropped her off at her apartment–she took all the targets with her.

Quote of the day–Priyanka

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I never imagined I would even just hold a gun in my hands.

Priyanka
September 22, 2009
[Priyanka is from India. She is my mentee at work and now at the range.–Joe]

Reaching out

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When I read something like this in my referral logs I want to reach out to them and give whatever advice I can:

Domain Name newcom-intl.com ? (Commercial)
IP Address 204.14.45.# (Karib Cable Kelcom International)
ISP NewCom International
Location
Continent  : South America
Country  : Saint Vincent and the Grenadines  (Facts)
State/Region  : Saint George
City  : Kingstown
Lat/Long  : 13.1333, -61.2167 (Map)
Distance  : 3,954 miles
Language English (U.S.)
en-us
Operating System Microsoft WinXP
Browser Firefox
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070309 Firefox/2.0.0.3
Javascript version 1.5
Monitor
Resolution  :  1024 x 768
Color Depth  :  24 bits
Time of Visit   Sep 21 2009 9:44:19 pm
Last Page View Sep 21 2009 9:44:19 pm
Visit Length 0 seconds
Page Views   1
Referring URL http://www.google.co… by a man.I want to
Search Engine google.com
Search Words what means of self defence will you use as a woman when you are been raped by a man.i want to
Visit Entry Page http://blog.joehuffm…date,2009-04-13.aspx
Visit Exit Page http://blog.joehuffm…date,2009-04-13.aspx
Out Click  
Time Zone UTC-8:00
Visitor’s Time Sep 21 2009 9:44:19 pm
Visit Number 599,244

Send me an email or even call me (208-301-4254).

Tomorrow evening I’m taking a young woman to the range. She has never shot a gun before. I’m nearly certain she asked to do this because she is adventuresome and thinks it might be exciting to shoot a gun (she wants to try some explosives next month). But I’ll be explaining the utility of multiple jacketed hollow point bullets and the advice of John Fogh while I’m at it.

The End Of An Era: Kalashnikov Maker To Seek Bankruptcy

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Via email from Chet.

What? Do they only have enough money for food or something? I thought they could always find money to fund their hate of capitalism and buy more Kalashnikov rifles. But perhaps not:

Russia’s largest small arms manufacturer, the Izhevsk Mechanical Works [Izhmash], could be declared bankrupt. It became know today that a corresponding petition has been received by the arbitration court of [the Republic of] Udmurtia from the enterprise.

…

This largest Kalashnikov assault rifle manufacturer now stands idle. No state order means no money to pay employees, nor to repay debts to creditors.

I know where I’m Christmas shopping for the girls

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This Christmas I’m going shopping for the girls at GlamGuns.com where I can pick up stuff like this:

It’s never to early to learn demolition. Hard targets are no longer a challenge with the Glambo Signature Series EZ-Boom Oven. Locked out of the clubhouse? Fight back! Includes enough of her patented, quick-setting mix to make one pound of plastique and will provide your child with hours of fun. (Safety armor not included.)

My girls just loved “My little Pony” but now that they are all grown up it’s time for grown up toys fully loaded with nostalgia:

The Glambo Signature Series “My Little Pony” M4A1 carbine with forward handgrip and AN-PVS4 night vision sight. This fully functional weapon fires standard 5.56mm ammunition — great for those AR-15 fans with extra ammo lying around the house or even extra parts! (Note: the full-auto selection has been disabled in this model in favor of three-round-burst. This product cannot be shipped to California.) The perfect way to introduce your little princess to the wonders of nocturnal wet-work!

There are also Hilton Handcuffs and Martha’s Mines–just the thing for stocking stuffers at the Huffman-Scott compound and bunker complex.

H/T to Kris who sent me the link in an email.

A mild rant at STI

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I needed some repair work done on my STI Eagle 5.1 and from my phone call to them I expected to have it back in about 10 days. It arrived at their factory on August 12th. I received it back yesterday. That was exactly 35 days.

I started getting a hint that things weren’t going so well about a week after they got it when I got a call and instead of them telling me it was on it’s way back David told me he had just briefly looked at it and, “that’s a really old gun”. Hmm… And your point is? It turns out there was far more wrong with the gun than I knew and that a lot of things are built different now compared to when the gun was new. That meant some replacement parts weren’t just drop in. They were going to have to do some machining on the frame. Stuff that wasn’t going to be covered under warranty. Fine, give me an estimate and then I’ll decide.

Nearly a week after that on August 31st I had an exact amount and sent David (yes, to him personally rather than STI) a check for $231 for the non-warranty work. He also told me there were things wrong that he couldn’t really fix and but it would still be good enough for “What we down here in Texas call a ‘truck gun'”. Great. My STI is now a “truck gun”. But for $231 I would have functional gun that would be far better than any other gun I could buy for $231.

To be fair the stuff he didn’t want to work on were things that I had long suspected were messed up by the original gunsmith (who shall remain nameless because he is no longer working as a gunsmith anyway) who built it from a kit. Nearly the first thing I did when I got my hands on the gun back in 1998 was check the slide to frame fit when the gun was in battery. I was shocked and disappointed that there was quite a bit of movement. I looked up in surprise and the gunsmith said that he had asked me if I was going to carry the gun or just shoot it in competition. I told him both. So he made the tolerances much greater than a competition only gun. He said that he was taught that a carry gun needed to have looser tolerances so it would be more reliable. I asked if it could be tightened up and he told me that for all practical purposes the answer was no. Rather than rejecting the gun due to a misunderstanding I took it. I really couldn’t complain about the accuracy. It wasn’t what I expected but there were very few stages which I competed in for which the accuracy was a limiting factor.

But that wasn’t the only problem with the gun.

The lugs for the barrel link broke on the original STI barrel after only about 20K rounds. The gunsmith figured it had to be a defective barrel. STI didn’t see it that way and I paid for new, non-STI barrel to be installed. A few years later I told someone else about this and he told me the only way that break occurs is if the barrel was installed wrong. David, at STI, told me the “new” barrel was installed incorrectly as well but it isn’t likely to break–it just doesn’t lock up quite right and the accuracy is degraded.

So, I took the gun to the range tonight and it functioned well. The new safety fits better than the old ones (I had the first gunsmith replace a one that broken once before) ever did but it required some machining on the frame to get the new safety to fit. I’m glad I didn’t try to do it myself because I don’t have access to a milling machine to do the type of cuts that were required–besides not knowing that the frames were built different now and that the frame cuts were required instead of removing material from the safety.

I’m a little annoyed at STI for taking five weeks when I expected something closer to one week. And the non-warranty work being done via a direct payment to David is a little unprofessional. But except for the slide to frame fit everything on the gun looks very good to me. I’ll probably continue to use the gun in competition for quite a while longer. Maybe next summer I’ll be able to justify (money, it’s a lot of money) a new STI (Eagle 5.0 or maybe an Eagle 6.0–any suggestions?) and put this one “behind the seat of the truck”.

Regardless of my irritation with STI I still say–I shoot a STI gun in competition, I carry a STI gun and you should too.

Utah Concealed Carry Permit?

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I have an expired Utah license and because it has been expired too long I have to reapply as a new applicant. I’m seriously thinking of taking this Utah Concealed Firearm Permit Class on September 26th.

Anyone else want to show up at the class and hang out with me? It’s just four hours on a Saturday.

Update: I was reminded by Barb that her schedule is changing and I will be in Idaho on this weekend. And with her new schedule none of the Utah classes listed match my schedule.

Don’t try this at home

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Via email from Kris:

New Shooter

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I’d taken my nephew Ben out shooting several times, including the Boomershoot last Spring, and he’d liked it well enough he decided to tell his cousin Matt about it.  Matt decided he wanted to learn about rifles and marksmanship, so they called me and we set up a date.

This Winchester AK-47 is in recoil as a cloud of dirt erupts from behind the 100 yard target.  Ben is behind the controls (or is that terror rifle controlling him?  OMG!!);

Below is Matt firing a Colt AK-47 HBAR from the bench.  After starting out on a Marlin .22 rimfire AK-47 and graduating to the 1894 Winchester AK-47 chambered for the old .30-30 Copkiller cartridge, both off-hand with open sights, this Colt AK-47 shown below with its 4x Trijicon ACOG telescope was as easy for him as, well, something super easy;

And Matt again below, with a Springfield AK-47 HBAR chambered in .308 Massmurder, and a Billybob 3-9 x 40 scope on an ARMS #18 mount.  The deep space telescope on the T&E mount at left is for spotting bullet holes;

The ARMS 18 mount sits nice and low over the receiver, but that nice lowness creates a problem.  Several shots from each magazine result in a failure to eject due to cases hitting the mount.  During Boomershoot I was told that standard M80 ball works fine and dandy with this config.  We were using some super accurate, deadly at 37.25 miles, sniper rounds in this AK-47, but I had tried the far-less-dangerous-to-the-climate-and-all-things-holy, M80 earlier, and the claims made by some military shooters at Boomershoot seem to be correct.  For some reason, I’ll guess op-rod velocity, the .mil stuff seems to run without being stopped by the ARMS mount.  My preferred load for this AK-47 though is the Black Hills 168 grain Match/Terrorist/AngryRacistMob round.

By the way; if you’re contemplating installing ANY receiver scope mount on an M1A (sorry– AK-47) you must plan on hand-fitting it, or having it fit by someone who’s aware of this issue.  Your chances of a drop-in fit are quite low, from my experience, and from talking with many other users.  That includes a Springfield mount on a Springfield rifle too.  It took me hours of file-and-try, file-and-try, to get this ARMS mount to sit on there correctly.  The catch is; it SEEMS to go on OK with the first try, but if you tighten the receiver bolt, you’re potentially distorting your receiver, mount, and bolt threads, as the mount is being forced into a position it can’t fit.  You then notice, either before you’ve spent hours at the range in frustration, or after, that the mount’s rail isn’t near well enough aligned with the barrel to get a zero.  That’s if you’re lucky.  If you’re unlucky like I was when I installed my first Springfield mount, the rail will be close enough in alignment that you can actually get a zero, and then things go all to hell afterwards as your mount and receiver slowly peen together, and the zero never stays in one place for long.  If the mount is fit properly, the design and function is quite successful, other than the aforementioned ejection issue.  This Springfield AK-47 has never had a single stoppage otherwise, either.  ‘Course, if you have the standard barrel version, you solve all this time and heartache by using the UltiMAK M8 forward mount.  One problem THERE is; a lot of owners don’t really know which barrel weight they have, and SA was making it worse for a couple years by naming one of their medium weight barrel models the “Loaded Standard”.  Yeesh.  But they fixed that since.

THIS is an AK-47

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A a good joke is based on at least a little bit of truth. Examples are here and the variation here.

Life imitated art just down the road from me (even closer to home is that Ry, son James, and I used to work in the building next door):

Kirkland police, contacted today for more details, said a passerby on their way to the local farmer’s market called 911 saying that they thought they saw someone walking down the street with an AK-47 about 4:20 p.m.

Here is the AK-47:

How to get off the line of attack

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A few days ago I posted about the need to get off the line of attack when someone is charging at you. I didn’t elaborate on what that really means and how to do it. I “knew” the answer because I had seen it done in training at Insights but I could really put it into words as well as I could demonstrate it with real people and fake guns (or fake pepper spray–the same principles apply).

I would be difficult for me to over-emphasis the importance of knowing how to do this. If you know what you are doing and have the right tools you can easily avoid blood loss from a knife attacker starting at less than the normal 21 feet.

John, being the expert trainer and having taught this technique, drew us a picture and put it into words. Words to live by.

Is it just me?

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This is mostly to the other bloggers that went to Summer Camp with me last year but I thought it might be of more general interest as well.

When I went to the range last night I was wearing my Blackwater USA (recently rebranded to “U.S. Training Center”) cap and t-shirt. I’ve worn the hat there before but never the shirt. The staff was extraordinarily friendly to me. They had a big smile on their face and didn’t ask to see my ID card and had my stack of free targets in their hand and extended to me before I even reached the counter.

Has anyone else noticed people treating you differently when you are wearing Blackwater branded clothes?

A few minutes of fame

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I was invited to be on Blog Talk Radio tonight. I’ll be talking (or maybe mostly just listening) with a bunch of Gun Nuts. The official description of tonights show is (links added):

Joining us tonight will be a veritable cornucopia of blogging awesome, as LabRat, Stingray, Kevin Baker, Joe Huffman, and Robb Allen will be joining us to discuss blogging and current events. Don’t miss it!

Caleb also has a post up about the show.

Update: Breda says, like herding cats. She also says, “notorious for their independent, quick-witted, and sometimes even contrary characters”. The others on the panel are definitely very quick-witted I won’t think of witty things to say until an hour after the show is over. However, Barb will vouch for me being “notorious” and “contrary”.

Get off the line of attack!

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Via email from Say Uncle:

I thought IDPA was supposed to be about real world defensive shooting. If so then why didn’t the shooter get off the line of attack? In my training at Insights we did a LOT of that. I kept wanting to push off to one side just watching this video.

Robb Allen also has some comments on the video.

Pistol recoil pictures

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As I mentioned on Twitter yesterday I had a request for permission to use some of my pictures in an Italian magazine and blog. He told me:

Both on my site and on my articles, I write about reloading, especially for pistols.

One of my elaboration led me to examine the correlation between recoil intensity and bullets weight. I will public this article both on my site and on “Armi Magazine” journal. Now I am searching some pictures about recoil.

This email to ask you if I could use some of beautiful photos from your blog, in particular that in attached (have you the HD format ?), for sure I will mention your name on the pictures.

Here are the pictures (cropped down to the interesting parts) I sent him:

Some of you will recognize the guns and others will recognize their own hands.

Update: I have a .pdf file of the completed article now. Only the first picture above was used (Robb, your hands may soon be famous in Italy). Once the article is actually published I should be getting a link to it and I will post it. Here is the title of the article:

“Tiro dinamico: palla leggera o pesante ?” – “Dynamic shooting (IPSC): light or heavy bullet?”

Sub title: “Rilevamento e tempo di riarmo di una pistola in funzione del peso palla” – “Recoil and slide time as a function of bullet weight”

As I have been shooting IPSC (now USPSA) for nearly 15 years this is a topic of great interest to me. From what I can tell looking at the graphs and picking up a few words and numbers in the article this is a very interesting article. I’ll probably spend the time to run it through an automated translator to get a better idea of what it says.