Steel match results

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Saturday I went to a steel match at the Holmes Harbor Rod & Gun Club on Whidbey Island. It was raining in Bellevue when I left home but as I got on the ferry the rain had stopped, the fog was lifting, and the cloud cover was breaking up. I had forgotten my coat and was extremely pleased with the change of weather.

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As is usual the stages were well done and interesting:

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My .22 worked well. I had one failure to feed but other than that it was great.

My STI DVC Limited gun broke the ejector and when I took the slide off to clean it Friday night the ejector fell on the floor. The front peg had broken off flush with the frame. I didn’t have a spare ejector so I ordered an ejector, ejector pin, and a special ejector drill bit from Dawson Precision. Of course I wouldn’t have it in time for the match the next day so I had to use a backup gun. It worked fine until the fourth stage when it locked up and wouldn’t cycle. I removed the slide but couldn’t see anything wrong even though, at first, it wouldn’t work right even with the recoil spring and barrel removed. Then it started working, I put it back together and finished the stage. Then on stage five the hammer started not resetting. The first time it happened I racked the slide again and continued without incident on that string. Then on the next string it happened twice and I just thumb cocked it. It was almost as if I were shooting single action in a cowboy match—without ever practicing that way.

Yesterday I cleaned and examined my backup gun. I think the disconnector was worn so I replaced it with a spare I had. I’ll take it to the range and test it soon.

Even with the gun problems I shot well enough to win in both classes (I was the only shooter with a iron sighted rimfire pistol, so that doesn’t really count even though I had a good time):

Holmes Harbor Rod & Gun Club February 2016 Speed Steel Scores

Name Class Time
Brian Lawson RF-RI-O 41.59
Steve Mooney RF-RI-O 43.10
Brian Lawson RF-O 45.96
Steve Mooney RF-O 47.13
ED RF-RI-O 55.45
Jeff Kanter RF-RI-O 55.66
Joe Huffman RF-I 65.67
Dennis Bohling RF-RI-O 72.73
Brian Lawson RF-RV-I 76.32
Jim Dunlap RF-O 77.53
Larry Languille PCC-I 85.82
Rev Barchenger RF-O 86.53
Joe Huffman CF-I 92.33
John Hamilton CF-I 93.73
Ken Wu CF-I 106.10
Jeff Kanter CF-I 106.14
Jeff Sparks CF-I 115.59
Dennis Bohling CF-I 140.70
Scott Bertino CF-I 170.78
Bruce Barchenger CF-I DNF

RF-RI-O: Rimfire Rifle Optics
RF-O: Rimfire Pistol Optics
RF-I: Rimfire Iron sights
PCC-O: Pistol Caliber Carbine Optics
RF-RI-I: Rimfire Rifle Iron sights
CF-I: Centerfire Iron sights
PCC-I: Pistol Caliber Carbine Iron sights

In the video below I only included one of the better runs for each class of gun I shot on each stage except for when I shot the string cocking the hammer by hand. I edited one string of fire to included a comment from the Range Officer after I finished which Barb liked. I’m hoping this will be a more interesting video and not so long and boring. Also seeing things mostly done correctly is probably better than seeing a lot of errors.

Quote of the day—Bacon @Baconmints

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The funniest kind of coward is a gun nutter nra coward. Their lack of self awareness makes them easy targets. #bok #tinycockclub #gunsense

Bacon @Baconmints
Tweeted on December 23, 2014
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!

Via a Tweet from BFD‏ @BigFatDave.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Citizen1787

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No one needs to own a semi-automatic rifle for hunting or self-defense. No one. I have never heard a convincing argument why a civilian needs a semi-auto rifle. In nearly every mass shooting there is a common weapon: a semi-auto rifle. They should be banned.

Citizen1787
February 26, 2016
Comment to Kansas gunman served with restraining order just before shooting spree, police say
[Don’t ever let anyone get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns.—Joe]

Confusion over Idaho law

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I received an email from Frank G. in Spokane today. He was confused by something he read in the Spokesman-Review (Spokane Washington) newspaper. The Spokesman-Review says:

The Idaho Senate has spiked legislation that would have expanded the list of the worst kind of felons banned from owning firearms.

Senate lawmakers voted 29-6 on Friday to reject including terrorists, criminal gang members, human trafficking and felony riot convictions as qualifiers to lose one’s right to own firearms.

Frank asked:

I don’t know a LOT about gun laws, but I’m pretty certain that federal law prohibits all convicted felons from owning firearms. It doesn’t matter if they were convicted of murder or embezzlement. Felony conviction? No guns for you.

So, is the idea that “the worst kind of felons … terrorists, criminal gang members [and people convicted of] human trafficking and felony riot” would be SUPER DUPER prohibited persons?

The confusion is because under Idaho law a convicted felony who as served there sentence may own a gun unless they have committed certain types of felonies. Basically non-violent crimes, such as embezzlement, do not put you on the Idaho “no guns for life” list. But under Federal law you could be convicted of using the wrong packaging for shipping shellfish and end up prohibited of possessing firearms for life.

Here is the Idaho law.*

The legislature was attempting to add terrorism, arson, theft by extortion, human trafficking, felony riot, hijacking, racketeering, and supplying firearms to a criminal gang as bars to further firearm possession. It failed, as Frank pointed out, in the Senate 29-6.

The question one would ask is, “With Federal law prohibiting all felons from firearms possession how does Idaho restoring firearms rights after completion of their sentence help anyone?”

Perhaps some lawyers can answer this better than I can, but I would say it means these people have to get the attention of a Federal Prosecutor who probably has “bigger fish to fry” then some little old lady who embezzled a few thousand dollars a decade ago who now wants to defend herself in her home with the gun her husband left in the dresser draw when he died.

I would like to suggest it might be a “good first step” to get changes in Federal such that it is similar to Idaho law. It’s just common sense.

* Note, that except for things like murder, after five years a person convicted of other things including counterfeiting, unlawful possession of destructive devices, rape, and kidnapping, may apply to the commission of pardons to get their firearms rights restored.

Quote of the day—William Lehman

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You guys (the left) really want to stop pushing quite so hard. The political pendulum has never, in the history of humanity, stayed on one side of a swing. The back lash from over reach has always been proportionate to how far off center it went before coming back. (Hint, that’s what started the whole prohibition thing, and it’s also what started the 60s, was backlashes) Well right now we’re staring at a whole hell of a lot of the country (about 80-90% of the land mass, as well as about 50% of the population) that is FED UP. You really don’t want those guys to decide that the only way to fix it is to burn it down and start over… REALLY! Most of these folks are vets, and the children of vets, they’ve had guns in their hands since middle school or before, or they’re still serving either in the regulars, the reserves, or the NG. If it goes to armed insurrection, even if the left wins, (highly damn unlikely) it will be a mess worse than reconstruction, worse than the Balkans. For the love of the country that I’ve served for over three decades, start seeking peace now.

William Lehman
September 16, 2015
Thoughts on the road
[Last weekend I heard people people say it would be a good thing if Seattle burned down. They figured it was a lost cause and their solution was to prepare to protect themselves and their family and turn their back on what used to be a city they loved.—Joe]

We knew that at the time

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Jared Keller complains, What We Talk About When We Don’t Talk About Gun Control Why are Uber and iPhone security more important than solving our national gun problem?

The national conversation has largely moved off of gun control, a trend we’ve seen since the Newtown massacre when support for gun rights increased despite the slaughter of 20 children and six teachers.

This, it seems, is the cycle of our political will when it comes to guns. A mass shooting leads to calls for control from lawmakers, a flurry of reporting from media outlets, and a spate of social media campaigns, then poof: The American public moves on.

After whining a bunch more he quotes Dan Hodges who tweeted the following on June 19, 2015, two and a half years after the Newtown tragedy:

In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the U.S. gun control debate. Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over.

I wouldn’t have expressed it that way, but we knew Newtown was the last stand for gun control a few days after it happened. No retrospection required.

When guns are outlawed, outlaws will have grenades

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Some people just don’t understand markets. If a demand exists then markets will find a  way to supply it. Furthermore if, from a legal standpoint, possession of a revolver is no different than owning a grenade someone intent on intimidation and criminal violence might as well get grenades.

Of course the anti-gun people will dismiss such logic as “crazy talk”. But, as is usual, we have the evidence:

Grenades have become the latest “must have” weapons being sold by underworld arms dealers at knockdown prices.

And a special Mirror investigation has found that the terrifying trade is booming.

Following the killing of two unarmed policewomen in a gun and grenade attack on Tuesday, we uncovered the shocking array of firepower available on the streets today.

The death-dealing “shopping list” includes guns for hire for as little as £100 and bullets priced at anything from £5 to £15.

Sources say the evil trade is run “just like any other business” with “gun librarians” setting prices for those looking to rent or buy.

The black market dealings are said to be worth hundreds of thousands of pounds each year. And we can reveal that high-level criminals are now turning to grenades to beef up their armoury. The most commonly used are the Swiss-manufactured British Army-issue L109 and the Yugoslavian-made M75.

In the three years to March 2010, there were 14 grenade attacks in the UK – including seven in the North West in just 10 months.

When the anti-freedom people claim they yearn for U.K. style gun control, let them know the reality is that when guns are outlawed, outlaws will have grenades.

Tamalanche

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Sunday morning (the 21st) Tamara linked to my post about concealed carry changing the political and legal culture in the U.S. It wasn’t an Instalanche but it was more than half of one:

TamAlanche

Thank you Tamara.

Quote of the day—Brandon Smith

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The communists were very careful and deliberate in ensuring that the actions of the internal police were made valid through law and rationalized as a part of “class struggle.” Such laws were left so open to interpretation that literally any evil committed could later be vindicated. Man-made law is often a more powerful weapon than any gun, tank, plane or missile, because it triggers apathy within the masses. For some strange reason, when corrupt governments legalize their criminality through legislation or executive decree, the citizenry suddenly treats that criminality as legitimate and excusable.

Incremental prosecution and oppression is effective when the establishment wishes to avoid outright confrontation with a population. Attempt to snatch up a million people at one time, and you will have an immediate rebellion on your hands. Snatch up a million people one man at a time, or small groups at a time, and people do not know what to think or how to respond. They determine to hope that the authorities never get to them, that it will stop after a few initial arrests, or they hope that if they censor themselves completely, they will never be noticed.

Brandon Smith
February 24, 2016
A Warning To The Feds On Incremental Prosecutions Of The Liberty Movement
[I believe Smith is correct about human nature. In Washington State and some others it’s against the law, I-594, to loan your hunting rifle to your life-long friend for the weekend. If you were to assume the claimed motivation for the law is to reduce violence crime is true then it’s an incredibly stupid law. But I suspect many people avoid breaking that law and if they were prosecuted would blame themselves rather than the law and those who voted for it.

As you follow your nature please remember what Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn said:

And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family?

It’s entirely natural to follow the law. But sometimes that which is natural is not what is best for you or society as a whole.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Chris Hsu

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Like it or not, guns are a necessary evil for maintaining a free and democratic society in which we live. However, when the gun falls in the hands of some problem people, it becomes a weapon to kill. That is the difficult challenge we have to face in an imperfect world in which we live. Of course, some people today tend to think that gun rights are for hunting, recreation and self-defense. Perhaps, but that was the last thing in the framers’ minds when they drafted the Bill of Rights.

Chris Hsu
January 28, 2016
Letters: Gun rights are essential to the freedoms we enjoy in America
[I don’t get the “necessary evil” part but Hsu does reasonably well in the rest of his letter.—Joe]

The Gun State

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Interesting. Idaho is state most dependent on gun industry, report finds:

Idaho depends more on the gun industry than any other state, according to a study by the financial website WalletHub. Idaho ranked No. 1 among states and the District of Columbia based on firearms industry activity in the state, gun ownership and overall prevalence, and gun politics — specifically, contributions by gun control and gun rights groups to members of Congress.

Idaho, The Gun State*. I could live with that.

* Idaho’s official nickname is The Gem State.

Quote of the day—Bubblehead Les

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Do you realize that Obama has more time at the White Board diagraming Saul Alinsky’s “Rule for Radicals” than he has Trigger Time?

Bubblehead Les
February 2, 2013
Comment to Quote of the day—Sebastian
[After spending 20+ hours (about 2000 rounds in the Intensive Handgun Skills class) of “trigger time” this last weekend my mind is stuck on “trigger time”. I’m constantly amazed at how fast, and accurately, people can put lead downrange.

At Boomershoot people can and do put bullets into seven inch square targets at 700 yards on nearly every shot. I know people who can hit eight inch steel plates 25 feet away at a rate of six to seven rounds a second—with a 12 gauge shotgun! With a pistol (concealable, as opposed to a long gun) people put bullets into different eight and 12 inch circular targets from 25 feet away at the rate of two to three rounds per second. At conversation distances it’s eight to 10 rounds per second.

Every day of the week during normal wake time hours you can go to the local range here in the Seattle area and see people practicing. On the weekends and many week days you can find competitions where people hone and display their skills to levels that are mind bogglingly sharp even by my standards of being a competition shooter for over 20 years.

There are roughly 80 to 100 million gun owners in this country. That “extremist organization”, the NRA, has “more than five million members”.

People “White Board diagraming Saul Alinsky’s ‘Rule for Radicals’” as they plot to destroy our freedom don’t realize just how dangerous a fire they are playing with. As I pointed out in this post about the number of Al Qaeda members:

According to intelligence estimates reported by the New York Times in 2010 the answer is “fewer than 500” in Afghanistan and “more than 300” in Pakistan. A 2011 article in the Wall Street Journal put the number in the range of 200 to 1000 with “affiliated fighters or funders” making up thousands or tens of thousands.

Since allied forces in Afghanistan haven’t “finished the job” after more than a decade against less than 1000 poorly trained and funded fighters which side do you bet on if they were fighting a few million well trained and well funded fighters? If the would-be tyrants push us too far, just how much trigger time do each of five or 10 million people, skilled with the tools of freedom, need to put an end to the threat? Do the arithmetic.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Matthew Green (@matthew_d_green)

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If the US government dictating iPhone encryption design sounds ok to you, ask yourself how you’ll feel when China demands the same.

Matthew Green (@matthew_d_green)
Tweeted on February 17, 2016
[H/T to Tyler Durden.

Of course, as I posted before, Lyndon Johnson once said:

You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered.

The problem being that it is difficult for many people to see the “unintended consequences” in foresight. If there is the possibility of a good outcome they will focus on that. In a lot of ways it’s like gun control. “People might be safer if guns are banned because the bad guys won’t have guns to commit crimes with.” Overlooking that the good guys won’t have guns to defend against the bad guys with.

The gun control analogy is an even a better fit when you remember that at one time the U.S. government insisted encryption was a “munition” and was mostly banned from export. It would seem to me that if the Second Amendment were well respected by Congress and the courts then a good lawyer could make the case government resistant encryption is protected by the Second Amendment as much or more so than it is by the First Amendment.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Joe College (@newguy42)

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@StrippedLower @grassfed_butter For starters, my wiener is bigger then 3 inches so I don’t need a gun.

Joe College (@newguy42)
Tweeted on October 19, 2015
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!—Joe]

Quote of the day—Kim LaPointe‏1 @kimoui

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I think the notion of any private citizen owning guns is absurd.

Kim LaPointe‏1 @kimoui
Tweeted on February 17, 2016
[Don’t ever let anyone get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns.

After having it pointed out that the right to keep and bear arms is a basic human right she followed up with, “can’t take ignorance GO shoot yourself”.

I found this last contribution particularly interesting. She was the one exhibiting the ignorance but insists the person trying to inform her is ignorant and demands the more informed party cause themselves harm. These people have mental problems.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Sally Miller

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With the election coming up she can’t afford any sort of loose end. She’s the closest thing you can imagine to Al Capone. I don’t think she is going to rest until she puts me to rest.

…

I think the Clintons are capable of anything. Do I live in fear, no – because I’m armed too, I’m prepared. You have to be when you think perhaps your life is being threatened.

Sally Miller
February 16, 2016
EXCLUSIVE: ‘He put on my frilly nightie, and danced around playing his sax.’ Former Miss Arkansas says Bill Clinton was so-so in bed and confided Hillary was into sex with women. Now she fears Hillary vendetta and sleeps with loaded semi-automatic
[I can’t offer anything as to the veracity of her claims Hillary is out to get her. But I’m convinced she is correct about the general character of the Clintons.—Joe]

Reasonable conclusion

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I love humor where someone literally interprets something resulting in a completely different message.

From Steve at work who found it on a Facebook page for police officers and former officers (Steve is the latter):

NoBerettas

Speer Gold Dot Short Barrel

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As I mentioned a couple times before Speer makes a self-defense bullet intended for lower velocity loadings. They call it “Gold Dot® Short Barrel®”. I needed these for handgun students with difficulty handling factory loads. I loaded 301 rounds (I purchased three 100 round boxes and ended up with 301 bullets) over 3.9 grains of Bullseye and delivered 100 rounds to one of my students last Saturday.

Here is what the 180 grain bullets look like in .40 S&W:

IMG_5293

IMG_5295

I’m expecting a velocity of about 850 fps at the muzzle with my STI DVC (5 inch barrel). This compares to about 1025 fps with 180 grain Winchester Rangers out of the same gun. The difference in recoil is significant.

I’ll run them over a chronograph and do some water jug testing (only valid for simple expansion testing) the first chance I get.

Quote of the day—Yankeesfan66 @Rangersfan66

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I’m not talking about violent crime, I’m talking about homocides of children. There is quite a diffrent, the shrink can help

Yankeesfan66‏ @Rangersfan66
Tweeted on February 18, 2016
[In what universe does this guy live such that homicide of innocent children is not a crime?

These people have mental problems and projection issues.—Joe]

Update: I got a response on Twitter from this genius in response to this blog post:

Now you know why I remember psychiatrists for you gun addicts…

Mr.shawn has a point.

A pleasant introduction to competition shooting

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Via Eric:

 

Good choice in her handgun (she uses the same make and model, perhaps in 9mm instead of .40 S&W, as I do).