Category Archives: Training

Another Useless Government Mandate

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Good to know: Study on firearm safety pours cold water on anti-2A storage law assumptions.

The frequency of safely storing firearms in the home is unrelated to legislation requiring safe storage. It was highly correlated with firearms training which included safe storage.

The referenced study is Locked and Unloaded: Assessing American Gun Owners’ Safety Training and Use of Secure Firearm Storage Mechanisms:

The objectives of this study were to analyze the prevalence of firearm safety training and secure gun storage practices among American gun owners. We used nationally-representative survey data to estimate the impact of previously untested predictors of secure firearm storage. Findings show that older gun owners, gun owners living in metropolitan statistical areas, and low-SES gun owners are less likely to use secure firearm storage methods. Gun owners who receive formal, informal, or both forms of safety training are more likely to store firearms securely than those who receive no training. Additionally, results indicate that state-level secure gun storage laws have little influence on gun owners’ use of mechanisms to securely store their firearms. Findings suggest that firearm safety training has a demonstrable impact on improving gun owners’ use of secure firearm storage mechanisms.

Smart Laser Training Pistol

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I don’t keep up, at all, with the latest firearm hardware and when I got an email from Mantis asking if I wanted a free TitanX to review I almost deleted the email without looking into what it was. I had never heard of Mantis. I am so glad I took a few seconds to look into them and conclude it was a real product and not a malicious link I was clicking on.

There were no conditions on my review. Just here it is and tell people what you think of it.

The TitanX is a Glock like training pistol with a built-in laser and rechargeable (USB-C) battery. It comes with a really nice case, and two properly weighted magazines. Surprising to me there is an app for your phone. I was skeptical of this. What are going to do with an app and your training pistol? Oh… Wow! It is amazing. The phone app provides all types of drills, watches your (slightly specialized) target, keeps score, and will playback the gun movement before and after your trigger pull. It is AWESOME!

You can purchase the targets or just download and print them yourself from here.

You don’t have to use the app. And I usually don’t. It takes a little time to set up the target, mount the phone on something steady, and point the camera at the target. Most of my use has been just straight out of the case with targets from JV-Training (my son-in-law).

Here is a 15-second video of how I use it:

The gun and trigger is nothing like my STI 2011. But because with this tool, dry fire is now fun I don’t mind that it doesn’t feel like my match gun. I almost never did any dry fire before getting the TitanX. I would rather go to the range and shoot a few hundred rounds of .22 in a conversion kit for my 2011. The trigger resets and feels, pretty much, like a striker fired gun trigger.

To see the app in action, (very cool) watch this video. He is set up for far better videos than what I could do in a month:

Visit their website and learn more about this awesome training aid.

Father’s Day Present from JV Training Accessories

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For Father’s Day two of my children chose stuff from my Amazon Wish List for my car and my underground bunker in Idaho. Xenia and husband John gave me .products from his business, JV Training Accessories.

Among other things, John makes and sells 1:9 scale USPSA targets as dry-fire targets for your refrigerator. I think putting them on your gun safe is a better idea. In case of a bad accident, you will probably do less damage hitting your gun safe than your refrigerator.

Cool stuff.

Here is my set of dry-fire targets on my gun safe where they belong:

The full size USPSA target is for scale and not a permanent fixture.

Make Tyranny at Scale Costly

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Quote of the Day

Remember:

A well-armed people make tyranny at scale significantly more costly.

Firearms Policy Coalition @gunpolicy
Posted on X, February 22, 2025

Related (via 🇺🇸2A Renaissance🇺🇸 @2ARenaissance):

Train and Practice for Close Up Tyranny, Far Away Tyranny, and Lots of Tyranny at Boomershoot 2025. Sign up here.

Here is a sample:

Shoot them in the Dick

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Quote of the Day

In a defensive scenario you never want to go for the face. You always want to go Center Mass or my personal favorite the dick.

If you make it the mistake of trying to rob me oh you freaking dumb ass. Guess what? You’re getting a shot towards a dick.

Reason being the pelvis actually holds up the whole entire body. If you take that out they are now immobile. And, you get to shoot them in the dick more.

Body armor? No problem shoot them in the dick!

Someone’s taller than you? No problem! Shoot them in the dick!

Moral of the story? I’m probably going to shoot you in the dick, honestly.

SHORTSHOT TONY
February 20, 2025
Aim for the other head! #selfdefense #shortshottony #9mm #glock #detroiturbansurvivaltraining

Via Chuck Petras @Chuck_Petras.

This is reasonable advice if your attacker does not have a gun of their own. Adjust appropriately for non-males who are an imminent threat to innocent life.

I’m reminded for the woman who committed murder with a shotgun blast to “the pubic region” of a woman. The victim had been talking to the murder’s ex-boyfriend.

This happened in Orofino Idaho where I went to high school.

Ouch!

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Do not shoot guns into the air. Always know your target and what is behind it:

Via Chuck Petras @Chuck_Petras -> BattlecockActual @TheBattlecock

Planning Against the Poor Planners

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Quote of the Day

If you survive the blast, and you survive the fallout, you’re going to have to survive the constant threat of mass home invasion from those whose disaster planning is just 3 days.

Tirno
December 19, 2024
Comment to Evidence of the Idiocracy

This is an excellent point. But once made, you realize there are going to be some exceptions. Maintain a large buffer zone between yourself and the hordes with poor planning. Doing this can minimize your risk of contact. The risk can be driven to almost zero.

Let time, distance, and others “thin the herd” before the Seattle hordes reach your underground bunker in Montana. Give yourself some good alarms and a thousand yards of open space in every direction. Then, with the right guns, ammo, optics, and shooting partners, you should not have a problem against the low life.

Of course, this is far easier said than done.

Expert Firearms Rating Means Nothing

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Quote of the Day

“Navy, earned Expert firearms rating.” And everybody who actually knows anything about shooting knows that an Expert rating means literally fuck all and nothing. As a rule of thumb if you see somebody bragging about qualifying Expert in the military on twitter, what’s about to come next is almost guaranteed to be fucking bullshit.

“I’m comfortable with handling weapons.” Totally fucking irrelevant, and also, by my standards, probably blatantly false, and assholes who talk like this, odds are his idea of a shot timer is a sun dial.

Larry Correia @monsterhunter45
Posted on X, April 25, 2024

Other than firearms instructors who teach special forces, and one Army ranger who just barely edged me out, all the military only taught people I have knowingly competed against were… less than competitive.Most were not quite at the sundial for shot timer level but their accuracy was as bad as their time and they might as well have zeroed the stage and the match.

Their constitutional law qualifications were less impressive than their shooting ability.

Now is the Time

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Quote of the Day

If you’re untrained or rusty in the use of personal arms, now is the time to take a class or get in some range time. Remember, If innocent life doesn’t immediately depend on it—don’t shoot. And if it does, don’t miss.

Alan Korwin
October 14, 2023
Page Nine: Even Israeli Intelligence Didn’t Spot Them In Time— IS HAMAS HERE? Are we ready? (typepad.com)

The “If innocent life..” quote is often attributed to canebrake on Firearms Talk.

Closely related to the quote above…

This picture is from almost five years ago:

That girl is now a young woman in college. She and her father are meeting me at the range this evening so she can get some more trigger time.

This Explains Something

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This explains something that I have sort of wondered about for years:

Back in the late 1990’s a gun range near where I worked had an accidental shooting death. A church youth group had gone to the range and one of the new shooters, a young woman, after shooting a few rounds with a smaller caliber handgun was given a .44 Magnum by one of the more experienced people in the group. He stood behind her and on the left. The right handed, young woman fired one round without apparent incident. When she fired the second round the gun recoiled up over her left shoulder and fired a second round through the neck of the young man. He was killed.

I never quite understood how the double action trigger was pulled the second time during recoil unless the woman gripped her hand from the stress or something.

Now I understand. The recoil was so great it twisted the gun past her hand and wrist normal range of motion to the point the gun was cycled through the complete double action.

There are some lessons to be learned here:

  1. Always put just one round at a time in the guns of new shooters until you are certain they follow the safety rules when the gun fires (they sometimes turn around with a loaded gun and their finger on the trigger).
  2. Always put just one round at a time in the guns of new shooters until they can handle the recoil when the gun fires.
  3. As a range safety officer, always stand behind and to the strongside of shooters. It is easy for them to point the gun over the shoulder of their weakside at you. You can stop their rotation in either direction by blocking their shoulder. But you can’t block the shot over the weakside shoulder.

Boomershoot Thank You Email

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Quote of the Day

Hi Joe,

It has been a long time since I was last able to attend the event you put on.  I stayed on your mailing list with the hopes that the kids get old enough (mature enough) for me to take them to one of your events.

While I have not been able to attend in over a decade, I do enjoy reading about the event and watching videos when they become available.  I have very fond memories of the 2 day clinic and the official shoot on day 3.  I learned more in the 2 day clinic than I had in 15 years of shooting (including DCM/CMP competitions).

With warmest regards and a heartfelt thank you for keeping this event alive,
From the enemy occupied territory of California,

Thank you.

Joe M.
February 27, 2024
Via email.

We barely cover expenses with the entry fees so things like are our real rewards.

If you have never attended this should give you a clue as to what you have been missing out on.

Don’t miss out this year. Sign up now! https://entry.boomershoot.com/

An Introduction To Gun Safety For Kids

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This looks like some good material.

Kids and Gun Safety: A Complete Guide

Quote of the day—Maj Toure (@MAJTOURE)

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I ALWAYS bring a knife to a gun fight.

I also bring a gun.

Maj Toure (@MAJTOURE)
Tweeted on December 10, 2022
[I bring two knives. Knives are for when thing end up being at contact distance. A knife on both the left and the right side makes it more likely access to at least one of them is unobstructed.

Learn how to use your defensive knife.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Tom Gresham @Guntalk

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Mental Health Reminder: Before you get into an online shouting match with someone, remember that it’s quite likely that there is no one there. It’s a bot. Often best to move on, putting your efforts into something that’s actually productive. Like reloading. 😉

Tom Gresham @Guntalk
Tweeted on October 21, 2022
[This is probably good advice.

Reloading, practice, and building your underground bunker.—Joe]

Why You Aren’t A Better Shooter

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I was going through my list of unprocessed suggestions for blog posts and found this one from almost six years ago. The outline is:

  1. You don’t believe you are capable of being skilled
  2. You don’t know what skill looks like
  3. You don’t have a goal
  4. You don’t have adequate training
  5. You aren’t surrounded with people who are better than you
  6. You have poor physical conditioning
  7. You aren’t willing to fail
  8. You aren’t using the proper equipment
  9. Your shooting range is inadequate

Read the whole thing for some good insights.

She didn’t say this in the article but my guess is the order is by priority of things to work on for the average person.

My excuse isn’t listed. I haven’t been going to the range or matches enough. I have my own range well suited to the type of shooting I want to get better at but it’s 300+ miles from where I currently live.

Midway USA Birthday Pricing

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A fair amount of my online gun related purchases are from Midway USA. The prices are reasonable, the shipping is quick and the selection is excellent.

They also have something I haven’t seen other places. This is Birthday Pricing:

This fantastic program is available to you once per year to help you celebrate your special day.  Your special promotion code is activated 7 days prior to your date of birth and expires 7 days after, or once it has been used.

It is a nice bonus that I took advantage of this year to purchase a set of steel targets for my new gun range. I had planned to wait until next spring but I was shopping for something else and the alert about Birthday Pricing popped up when I visited the Midway USA site. I thought about it some and then a couple days later decided I probably wasn’t going to get a better price on a complete set of Steel Challenge targets. Last weekend I put them in a dry place for the winter:

20211204_095757

The castle wall

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Yesterday someone pointed out the walls for my current home project look a lot like castle walls. He was correct. And from certain angles this is especially true:

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I expect the project to be completed by the end of next week or the beginning of the following week. When it is done I’ll supply more pictures.

Range construction details

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Sebastian asked about the details of the base for the ecology blocks on the walls around my range. Here are some pictures and additional information.

The ground this time of year is really hard. It took a large dozer and a heavy excavator to get down to, essentially level. The range has a 1% grade down range to the target berm. A mini excavator was used to dig the footings about another six to eight inches deeper and three feet wide. This was filled with four inches of compacted and wetted, 3/4” with fines, gravel which was carefully (it took two people about two days complete this stage) made level. This deliberately did not match the 1% grade. Being level allowed for the back wall to be straight and have interlocking corners.

This first picture is looking down range from near the up range end of what will be the right wall.

20210805_094928

This is the compactor in use along the left wall:

image

A four inch drain tile was put just inside the back wall (as seen on the right in the picture below) which exits under the right wall in the foreground:

image

Another drain tile, parallel to the first, will be placed 15 feet from the back wall and will catch drainage before it reaches the target berm. This will connect to the first drain tile with a Y a few feet outside the range.

The floor of the range will be covered with four inches of compacted, 3/4” with fines, gravel.

Black Friday sale on Insights Training

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Almost all of my training has been through Insights. I highly recommend them. They are having a sale on their training. Here are the details:

Your mission this weekend: save on training

The more you buy the more you save!

1 day $245/day
2 days $240/day
3 days $235/day
4 days $230/day
5 days $225/day
6 days $220/day
7 days $215/day
8 days $210/day
9 days $205/day
10+ days $200/day

Follow this link to Black Friday goodness…

Prices go up $25 per day in 2021, but you can save up to $75 per day. With this deal you’re training even cheaper than 2020!

2021 Classes will be posted on the website very soon

We know ammo is going to be an ongoing problem so we will start allowing 22LR for a portion of our mainline classes. We will have .22LR ammo available, .22LR conversion kits, .22LR semi-autos, plus we’re working on an ammo deal to be able to provide 9mm at a reasonable price.
We will be running:
Basic Handgun
General Defensive Handgun
Handgun Fundamentals
Intermediate Defensive Handgun
AR-15 Fundamentals
Home Defense Tactics
Street and Vehicle Tactics
Plus some cool new classes:
Pistol Caliber Carbine
General Purpose Rifle
Battle Rifle
Precision Rifle Prep
IDPA/USPSA Prep
Direct Action – Dynamic Clearing
Urban Operations – Surveillance
and more!

The fine print: Offer ends at end of day Monday, November 30, 2020, and is not valid for “Red Dawn” classes. Training day funds are valid for tuition only and do not include additional equipment or rentals. To use your sale funds for a class, please call the office to register.
For more information about all of our classes, visit InSightsTraining.com . To register, go to the website, call us at 425.827.2552 or email us at: info@insightstraining.com.
Stay safe and we’ll see you in class!

Copyright © 2020 InSights Training Center, All rights reserved.

New shooter becomes new gun owner

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Six weeks ago I took a new shooter to the range. Today we went to the range again for her to try out numerous guns in preparation to buy a gun and take a class.

I brought:

  • Suppressed .22 Ruger 10/22
  • Ruger P89 (9mm with lightly loaded 147 grain bullets)
  • STI Edge (.40 S&W with lightly loaded 180 grain bullets)
  • The Gun Blog 45 (.45 Auto with lightly loaded 230 grain bullets)

I had to correct her stance and give her some hints on the grip but after that she did really well. There were a few flyers but most were good solid A-Zone hits.

The rifle:

20200301_101647

The stock was too long and she ended up putting it on top of her shoulder to get the proper eye relief and get it close enough she could hold it up. Still, she had great hits.

20200301_102620(0)I had her shoot the Ruger P89 only in single action mode. My goal was to see how she handled the 9mm recoil in a fairly heavy gun. If that worked out okay I would have guided her to Glock or S&W M&P style gun.

Great hits (smaller holes are from the .22 rifle):

image

Then the STI Edge in .40 S&W:

20200301_103308

There was one flyer:

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She said she liked that gun the best so far.

On to the Gun Blog 45. Even though these were light loads with a MV of just under 775 fps (PF of about 178) she fired one shot and said that was enough.

I rented a Sig 238 (.380 Auto) and she liked it before she even touched it. We did a little dry firing, then actual shooting. She really liked it. She had great hits and after shooting about a half dozen magazines said she was done. She really liked the .380.

20200301_105734

She had three flyers. But she shot a lot more good solid hits.

image

We put away the guns, washed up, and went to the store where her husband ordered and paid for a Sig Sauer 238 and two extra magazines.

I will probably do some more coaching to prepare them for the May General Defensive Handgun class from Insights.