New shooter report

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Some friends wanted to learn to shoot so Barb and I reserved the training bay at the indoor range near us for late Saturday afternoon.

I was surprised to find both of them were right handed but left eye dominant. Many people who are cross eye dominant end up shooting with the hand which matches their dominant eye (daughter Kim is an example).

I put them at about 5 yards from the targets and gave them stance, grip, and trigger operation instructions.

I started them out shooting left handed for a couple of magazines of .22 with a suppressor then had them try shooting right handed. They both opted to continue shooting right handed. As they continued shooting I showed them how to load the magazines and operate the bolt (Ruger 22/45s) and safety.

They shot a few hundred rounds of .22 with both suppressed and unsuppressed semi-auto pistols on single targets as well as multiple bulls-eye targets. We then put up USPSA targets with “hard cover” and had them shoot two shots on the same target starting from the high ready position. We also put up barricades for them to shoot around at multiple bulls-eye targets.

I offered them some low powered .40 S&W loads. They did fine with those. I offered them full power loads. They did fine at first but then started to falter with some of the shots going a bit wild. The shots were still on the paper but off the target so to finish up for the evening I put them back on .22s.

We ended with them saying they had a really good time, asked about the class Barb recently took, and said they wanted to do it again with us.

WP_20160716_16_39_07_Pro__highresWP_20160716_17_05_32_Pro__highresWP_20160716_17_20_07_ProWP_20160716_17_38_05_ProWP_20160716_16_41_24_Pro__highresTracie with her new shooter smile.WP_20160716_16_41_51_Pro__highresKurt with his new shooter smile.

Quote of the day—True Israelite‏ @1liberal2a

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white men have small dick so they compensate by buying big guns.

True Israelite‏@ 1liberal2a
Tweeted on January 8, 2016
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!

Via a tweet from QuackHead/PotterHead ‏@Duck_Hunter7.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Dr. Keith Ablow

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At least 84 people died Thursday night in Nice, France, when a terrorist plowed a truck into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day. Their deaths should free all of us, once and for all, from the toxic and seditious lie, spread by the likes of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, that guns–not madmen or radical Islamics–are a threat to civilized people in America, or in France, or anywhere else.

Dr. Keith Ablow
July 15, 2016
Bastille Day bloodbath in Nice proves that gun control advocates are liars
[Read the whole thing. It’s short and sweet.—Joe]

Govt proposed "Smart-gun" specs

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Is it just me, or do these draft smart-gun specifications have loopholes and problems big enough to drive a pod of pregnant whales through?

Update:

From Stephanie:

SmartGunLoophole

Quote of the day—Kevin D. Williamson

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Remember how, during the Tea Party rallies, so much attention was paid to the fact that some participants were obese and using mobility scooters? That wasn’t an accident. It’s loathing substituting for analysis. For much the same reason, cartoons purporting to depict gun-rights supporters after Orlando almost invariably depicted obese, aging, white, and downscale (rumpled, ill-kempt) subjects. That is whom the Left believes to be the problem when it comes to violence in these United States — and most other problems, too. The relevant psychology here is that of intellectual development arrested in adolescence. If you’ve ever heard a 50-year-old lefty raging about Middle America and thought that it sounded a lot like a 14-year-old raging about his stick-in-the-mud father, you’re not the first to whom that has occurred.

Kevin D. Williamson
June 17, 2016
The Left’s Phony War on Guns
[Markley’s Law is another data point supporting Williamson’s hypothesis.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Nick Selby

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Only recently, Richmond, Calif., had among America’s highest per capita rates of gun violence. In 2009, there were 47 homicides among 100,000 residents. Officials there theorized that a few bad actors caused most of the problem. As it turned out, 70 percent of their gun violence in 2008 was caused by fewer than 1 percent of the city’s residents. This isn’t unique: in Cincinnati, less than 1 percent of the city’s population was responsible for 74 percent of homicides in 2007.

Richmond developed an innovative, controversial program: They identified the 50 people most likely to shoot someone and engaged with them, even paying them to participate.

The city provided career help, training, resume writing and health care. It asked people what they feared and helped them create plans to mitigate those fears.

Critics called it “paying gang members not to shoot people.” It was more than that. And it worked.

From 2007 to 2012, the city experienced a 61 percent reduction in homicides.

Nick Selby
July 14, 2016
Forget new gun laws. Here’s what could really keep people from shooting each other.
[H/T Say Uncle.

At first thought I’m uncomfortable “paying people to not shoot each other”. It seems to create a perverse incentive. I.E. So, if I start shooting people on a regular basis will someone start paying me to stop shooting too?

But I’m willing to think about this more. If such concerns aren’t realized, the criminal homicides are dramatically decreased, and the costs associated with the programs are not extreme then I’m at a loss as to why one should be against it.—Joe]

Save lives! Ignore the Bill of Rights extremists

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It occurs to me that we need some common sense regulation to prevent the tragedies in Orlando and Dallas. The Bill of Rights is not a suicide pact and the 1st Amendment extremists need to compromise for the safety of everyone.

The five dead and nine wounded in Dallas was predictable, preventable, and should never happen again. All it would take would be a small amount of compromise by the extremists in this country who refuse to consider the most common-sense measures that almost everyone can agree on.

Nearly the same thing can said about the 49 murdered and 53 wounded in Orlando last month. Something like that is entirely predictable and preventable.

Here’s what everyone with a shred of common sense can obviously agree on:

  • The whole “black lives matter” talk should have been shut down as soon as the emotions started getting hostile. Yes, the 1st Amendment says we have a right to free speech but that was before social media, text messages, and email. Bad ideas can travel so fast that people don’t have a cooling off period before a critical mass has formed and we have mass demonstrations before the hot heads get a chance to think thing through. The 1st Amendment was fine when mass distribution of dangerous ideas by common folk meant standing on a soap box in the town square and hoping someone would listen to you.
  • There are virulent strains of both Christianity and Islam are literally deadly to the LGBT community. Again, the 1st Amendment is perceived as a block to common sense regulation by the 1st Amendment extremists. But that was a time when homosexuality not seen for what it is. We now know that, at worst, it is minor quirk of nature in expression of one’s sexual desires that is almost entirely harmless. It’s time to put an end to the violence. All reasonable people must agree that all writings and speech which speak ill of alternate expressions of sexuality or gender must be banned and vigorously rooted and and destroyed. Yes, people have a 1st Amendment right to religion. But there are lots of religious to choose from which are not so dangerous. And the extremists almost never mention the first part of the 1st Amendment, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…” My common sense proposal doesn’t establish a religion. It merely bans a small subset of religions that are incompatible with modern day society. So how can my proposals possibly be considered as an infringement? It’s just common sense.

Thousands of lives each year of depend upon these sort of common sense laws. We can respect the 1st Amendment and yet save countless lives every year if we don’t let the extremists get in our way.

[end sarcasm]

Gun cartoon of the day

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Simple things from simple minds:

EasyAccessth2DUXKJXV

After they explain how this wouldn’t violate the right to keep and bear arms they will then be required to tell me how easy it is to limit access to illicit drugs. Then I’m going to suggest they take point on the project of collecting the 10s of millions of guns already in circulation.

Quote of the day—David Hardy

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Some sorta academic clown suggests he and some buddies might storm NRA headquarters.

It’d be like “The Keystone Cops Storm Okinawa.” Amusing, but rather messy for the cleanup crews. Of course an anti gunner sees nothing wrong with homicide, that’s not really the issue….

David Hardy
July 6, 2016
It is possible he and his friends might make it to the elevators
[Delusions are often functional.

In this case my hypothesis is the academic clown is able to imagine some sort of control over his hated enemy in his delusional universe and this gives him comfort that he is lacking in the real world.—Joe]

Gun cartoon of the day

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This is what they think of you:

FirstBullet180644_600

Ahh, yes. The voice of tolerance and diversity.

Hillary’s inauguration day

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Via Tyler Durden:20160712_inaug_0

Nope. I think the Clintons and most of the people around them are so comfortable lying on a regular basis that it wouldn’t even cross their minds there is something ironic about taking an oath defending the constitution. In their minds, the restrictions on government by the constitution are no more real than that moral restrictions imposed up them by the divine dictates of the three eyed, flying, spaghetti monster.

Anti-gun congressional staffers and gun free homes

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Via JPFO:

Nice work!

Lesson learned

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We often hear from anti-gun people things like:

It’s an argument that’s often echoed by gun nuts – as though their fully-loaded AR-15 with 100-bullet drum will keep them safe from Predator drones and cruise missiles.

Or this:

If you’re someone who honestly believes that you can stage an armed rebellion to overthrow the United States government, you’re too mentally unstable to own guns.

Is it asking too much for these people to learn something from the number of police being shot up in Dallas? ONE guy murdered five armed police officers and wounded several others in the span of a few minutes. He didn’t make it out alive, but still there are some things that could be learned here.

How many “gun nuts” would it take to overthrow, or at least completely remove the majority of those in control of, a small city government they thought was corrupt? Or a large city government? Or a state government?

Think about the resources tied up for a month when the two D.C. snipers were active. Think about the time and number of police it took to find, surround, and finish off the one rogue police officer in Los Angles a few years ago.

Multiple that by, picking a number, 3% of the number of gun owners in the U.S. (about 100 million). For those anti-gun people who may be arithmetic challenged that is 3,000,000. And 3,000,000 is much, much, larger than one or two. And there is a synergy with larger numbers that cause a systemic failure such that it would far worse than just 3,000,000 times the effect of one or two acting on their own. Nearly all of those 3% would do virtually nothing more than show up, look around, shrug, and talk among themselves about the replacement government to put in place.

Or looking at it another way, think about what might happen if ISIS, with a few thousand fanatics, decided to put together an ongoing, diversified, guerilla attack against us with a dozen or so people per team.* The evidence supplied in Dallas demonstrates our police would not do well. The military doesn’t have enough people to protect every local government or vulnerable target. It would require some percentage, maybe 3%, of U.S. gun owners to help defend our homeland—to protect “the security of a free state”.

See also my previous post on the topic, Boots on the ground.

But don’t expect anti-gun people to change their story. They believe what they want to believe. Facts are apparently not something within their domain of expertise. They work more with insults.

* I’ve seen some of the training tapes our military found in the caves of Afghanistan. One of those was about ambushing and killing police officers.

Quote of the day—Michael Krieger

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In my writings, when I first came out of Wall Street, I focused on debt, I focused on economics and I focused on financial markets. I did all of that stuff, but I stopped doing that for one simple reason. It was obvious to me . . . that this thing had only one way to go, which is a complete collapse of everything. We’re going to need to start over. There’s too much debt. There’s too much corruption. There’s too much BS. There’s too much war. There’s too much everything that is bad in this world, and debt is one aspect of it. Are we going to have to wipe out the debts one way or the other? Of course, we will. I guess the reason I have stopped talking about that and writing about that is because it is so obvious. So, what I have been doing over the last three years is getting people aware and engaged on everything, not just the economics, but the political corruption. Every single industry in this world is basically hitting peak corruption, peak shadiness, peak violence and peak everything. So, it’s not just the debt or the economies that are going to collapse, it’s everything, the political establishment and the social fabric. All of these things we have been living under our entire lives will be replaced by something else. . . . The only question is, are we going to get something better or are we going to get something worse?

Michael Krieger
July 3, 2016
Disintegration & Overthrow of Global Elite Regime-Michael Krieger
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Noah Smith

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What liberated us? It might have been the printing press, or capitalism, or the sailing ship. But it might have been the gun. And if it was the gun that liberated us, then we should be very worried. Because when the Age of the Gun ends, the age of freedom and dignity and equality that much of humanity now enjoys may turn out to have been a bizarre, temporary aberration.

Noah Smith
March 11, 2014
Drones will cause an upheaval of society like we haven’t seen in 700 years
[We all know that the gun is civilization so that condition is met, but it’s not entirely clear to me that drones will eliminate the power of the gun. And drones are in the hands of private citizens as well as the government so it’s not a complete loss of power by the individual even if drones somehow make guns essentially obsolete.

But it is something to think about and I think a very real concern. Especially since the government is ahead of the curve some and is requiring registration of drones in this country. They missed the window of opportunity on registration of guns but they nailed it on drones.—Joe]

20 percent of Democrats say guns should be illegal

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Via a tweet from the NRA we have this:

Among Democrats, 20 percent said all 11 guns should be illegal, while 15 percent of Republicans said they should all be legal.

One of the guns was clearly a flare gun and marked as such. A flare gun!

Don’t ever let anyone get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns. One out of five Democrats want it to be illegal to own a hunting rifle, a common shotgun, or even a flare gun.

Steel match results

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Ry and I participated in the steel match at the Renton Fish and Game Club yesterday. We got rained on a little bit at the beginning of the first stage but it cleared up quickly.

Except for the first stage the courses of fire had small targets some distance away with fairly large transitions:

WP_20160710_11_58_49_Pro__highresWP_20160710_12_39_32_Pro__highresWP_20160710_09_58_37_Pro__highresWP_20160710_11_06_18_Pro__highres

This, of course, slowed the shooting down. This was especially true for the younger kids in the match. Compare my times on the various stages to those of Joey Meboe, Isabelle Meboe, and Matthew Meisner. Look at how close we are on stage 1 and how different we are on the other stages.

But I still did well enough that I was happy with the results.

The entire match results are here. My average time per hit with Rimfire Pistol Iron sights (RFPI) was 0.7406 seconds:

RFPI
Final Name USPSA Class Division Time Stage 1 Go Fast Stage 2 In And Out Stage 3 Focus Stage 4 Pitfall
1 Sailer, Christian A86982 U RFPI 33.86 5.91 9.00 9.61 9.34
2 Paczosa, Connor A628860 U RFPI 41.39 8.41 10.53 12.12 10.33
3 White, Alex U RFPI 44.64 8.47 10.24 13.81 12.12
4 Miner, Bradley Jr U RFPI 44.89 8.85 11.47 11.30 13.27
5 Larson, Addison U RFPI 54.60 11.05 13.26 14.80 15.49
6 Huffman, Joseph U RFPI 59.25 9.89 15.39 17.41 16.56
7 Morris, David U RFPI 60.19 9.71 15.41 18.67 16.40
8 Mortell, Jeffery U RFPI 64.83 11.80 16.68 18.13 18.22
9 Meboe, Joey U RFPI 69.25 8.90 16.84 26.15 17.36
10 Bakken, Lance U RFPI 70.42 13.10 18.23 21.25 17.84
11 Meboe, Isabelle U RFPI 72.71 11.16 20.63 20.26 20.66
12 Meisner, Matthew U RFPI 131.20 11.88 36.36 37.68 45.28

With Iron Sighted Pistol (ISP) combined with Production (because they are very close in equipment) I won with an average time per hit of 0.911 seconds. I would have come in second place had I been competing against the people with open class guns:

ISP
Final Name USPSA Class Division Time Stage 1 Go Fast Stage 2 In And Out Stage 3 Focus Stage 4 Pitfall
1 Huffman, Joseph U ISP 72.89 12.35 20.33 21.35 18.86
2 Miner, Brad U ISP 101.74 19.84 26.27 31.17 24.46
3 Reeve, Tod U ISP 140.16 13.80 40.63 45.23 40.50
PROD
Final Name USPSA Class Division Time Stage 1 Go Fast Stage 2 In And Out Stage 3 Focus Stage 4 Pitfall
1 Komatsu, Jeff U PROD 79.52 13.36 22.94 19.95 23.27
2 Roe, Shawn U PROD 79.97 14.09 20.42 23.55 21.91
3 Sulcer, Charles U PROD 81.49 18.52 23.07 17.06 22.84
4 Mortell, Jeffery U PROD 82.69 15.20 26.10 20.65 20.74
5 Pacczosa, Dan A492542 U PROD 87.77 10.95 30.11 24.05 22.66
6 Meisner, Michael A10203 U PROD 91.39 14.16 26.31 28.11 22.81
7 Meboe, Greg U PROD 91.74 16.12 26.19 28.87 20.56
8 Larson, Bob U PROD 100.27 17.09 26.76 27.08 29.34
9 McKenzie, Don U PROD 104.46 15.41 27.83 34.10 27.12
10 Blackston, Rick U PROD 108.86 18.48 29.62 28.17 32.59
11 White, Eric U PROD 117.96 16.88 25.82 46.85 28.41
12 Wolfer, Cole U PROD 130.14 25.09 32.57 42.13 30.35
13 Femino, Jason U PROD 153.09 18.88 52.55 35.85 45.81

Ry had an open class gun but no holster for it. When starting from the low ready with something other rim fire guns they add three seconds per string to your time. This was a huge penalty for him.

OPN
Final Name USPSA Class Division Time Stage 1 Go Fast Stage 2 In And Out Stage 3 Focus Stage 4 Pitfall
1 Rathjen, Michael U OPN 59.44 10.74 15.79 18.35 14.56
2 Lai, Daniel TY44166 U OPN 80.72 14.13 21.28 24.72 20.59
3 Kanter, Jeffrey U OPN 100.39 15.58 34.94 27.87 22.00
4 Jones, Ry U OPN 121.29 23.14 31.79 41.32 25.04

For me, the difference between starting from the low ready and from a holster is 0.6 seconds or less. So… Let’s assume a holster would have slowed him down 1.0 seconds per string. With 16 strings for the match, we should subtract 32 seconds from his time to get a better idea of what his capability is. This would put him at about 89 seconds for the match with a much more competitive time.

Dillon Precision

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I’ve had Dillon Precision presses for ~20 years. No idea how many rounds I’ve loaded, but I remember buying primers by the case several times. Not quite this level, but enough to give the anti-gunnies conniptions. The Square Deal B is my go-to press for pistol cartridges. I’ve not used it in a while, though, between work, kids, writing, and everything else.

Anyway, when I went to assemble some 38 Special ammo today it wasn’t feeding primers reliably. Long story short, I call Dillon Precision’s tech support (they have a toll free number), get charged nothing, get my answer, and they are sending some replacement little plastic gizzies (technical term, that) which go on the end of the primer feed tube, mailed out tomorrow at no charge. He also told me how to clean the primer feed tube by pushing an alcohol-dipped Q-tip through it with the primer follower. That got quite a spectacular bit of corrosion / crud out of it, and it definitely feeds better, now. Not quite perfectly, but a great improvement.

Dillon presses are not the cheapest on the market, but I have never been disappointed by the presses or the technical support. As a former tech-support guy myself, I have high standards, and they meet them every time. If you plan on doing reloading, you can do much worse than Dillon.

Investing advice

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Sometimes information can move in two different directions on the same communication link. This may mean you can utilize your enemies communication channel for your own purposes.

I received this via email:

Hey Joe,

I hope you don’t mind me contacting you. I came across a website through the magazine The Week. The website is called goodbyegunstocks.com. Their goal is to drive people to funds that contain little or no gun related stocks. I just used it to discover one of my funds was 0% gun stocks, I then proceeded to use the same website to find another fund that was more heavily invested in gun stocks and transferred a chunk of money to that one.

I don’t have the reach that bloggers like yourself have so I thought I would alert you to this. Wouldn’t it be great if we could co-opt this into a way to direct MORE money to gun friendly business?

Just a thought.

Thanks

Sam

Quote of the day—SusanBerman‏ @TripleMinority

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@AdamPiersen @JoeHuffman @TANSTAAFL23 @MarkAWebster1 @NeLoNe79 @FShagW yes which is y I never date gun nuts. No little puny cocks for me 🙂

SusanBerman‏ @TripleMinority
Tweeted on January 8, 2016
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!

Via a Tweet from Adam Pierson ‏@AdamPiersen.—Joe]