Quote of the day—Granny

Posted on by

I thought they was Yankees.

Granny
From Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (America: A Cultural History)
[During World War II three German submariners escaped from Camp Crossville Tennessee. Their flight took them to an Appalachian cabin where they stopped for a drink of water. The mountain Granny told them to, “Git!” When they ignored her she promptly shot them dead. The sheriff came and scolded her for shooting helpless prisoners. Granny burst into tears and said she would not have done it if she had known they were Germans. The exasperated sheriff asked her what in tarnation she thought she was shooting at. Her reply is today’s QOTD.

A case could be made that the divide between certain cultures in the U.S. has just as much stress now as it did then.—Joe]

Rattlesnake Ridge

Posted on by

Barb, Maddy (Barb’s daughter), and I went on a hike up to Rattlesnake Ridge yesterday. It was cloudy and there was some precipitation but not bad. It was about two miles each way with quite bit of elevation gain. Because of the dreary weather I hadn’t anticipated there being any great photo opportunities so I didn’t bring my SLR with me.

The view was nicer than I expected and we took a few photos with our phones:

WP_20150320_002

WP_20150320_008

New shooter report

Posted on by

I took a former boss of mine, Marcello, to the range today. It was over two months ago that he had express an interest in going shooting for the first time but schedules hadn’t worked out until today.

Before we stepped onto the range we did the normal safety, grip, stance, and sight alignment stuff. I thing asked what he wanted to get out of this range session. His was a different story than I had ever heard before. He was a little bit scared of guns. He wanted to resolve that. He wanted to be either comfortable with guns or know for certain that it wasn’t for him. I’m sure nearly all of my readers know how this is going to resolve.

WP_20150321_001

Here is just the bull’s-eye:

WP_20150321_001Bullseyejpg

That is the result of firing his first 20 rounds of .22 LR from my Ruger Mark III into a target nine feet away. I verified on another target at 21 feet the sights are a little off. The gun is shooting a little bit to the right.

I would edit the picture to emphasize his smile but it is big enough to easily see in the picture above.

I put up a more difficult target (four diamonds) and moved it out to 15 feet where he continued to do extremely well. I had him put one shot on each diamond. I had him go from low ready to fire on one diamond. I had him go from low ready to fire one round on each diamond until the gun was empty. I had him go from low ready to fire two rounds on each diamond until the gun was empty.

He kept probably 80% of the shots inside the diamonds and his speed rapidly increased.

I had him shoot a .22 LR revolver in single action mode from 15 feet. First dry fire, then live fire. He did great. Then I had him shoot double action dry fire about a dozen times. It looked pretty good even though you could tell he was struggling a little to get a consistent pause between the cylinder rotation and the hammer falling. The first cylinder of live fire was not very pretty. Everything was on paper but not many were on the diamonds. The second cylinder was much better. Nearly all were in the diamonds.

He moved on to 9 mm. Dry fire followed by a single round in the gun. He was a little bit surprised at the recoil even though I told him it would be a lot more. Then I had him shoot two rounds. All the shots were great and I had him empty a magazine into the target. Again all good and his speed was picking up as well.

I had him shoot a few rounds of .40 S&W through my STI. He could tell there was more recoil and it was a bit more than he wanted. He went back to the 9mm and soon his shots were getting a bit wild. Still on paper but not the tight groups on the diamonds like before. It had been nearly two hours on the range and I was pretty sure he was getting tired and maybe developing a bit of a flinch. I suggested he might be getting tired because of the shots weren’t as good as he was doing earlier. He agreed and we packed up and left.

I told him about professional training available from Insights offered at the same range, different range options in the area, rental guns, and competition. He seemed interested and told him I would be glad to give him more lessons. He just needs to let me know when and next time he needs to buy the ammo.

Winning. One new shooter at a time.

Quote of the day—Bob Puharic

Posted on by

The fact is the US has no gun control and the fact is Americans don’t want gun control because they’re largely illiterate on the topic.

Bob Puharic
March 11, 2015
Comment to The NRA Wins Again on Armor-piercing Bullets, But Common Sense Was Already Lost
[Wow!

I consider myself only semi-literate on gun control laws in this country because I haven’t begun to read all of the estimated 20 to 30 thousand laws we have.

Puharic is a stunning example of the Dunning–Kruger effect.—Joe]

Overheard

Posted on by

I was at the bank today while wearing a shirt with this image on it:

BS2005ShirtStaff2

As I was finishing up my business the teller and I had a short, off topic, conversation.

Teller: So, how do I exercise my freedom with explosives?
Joe: Once a year I put on a shooting event with high explosives as the target.
Teller: Oh! I thought maybe I would get to throw grenades or something.
Joe: Nope. The permits for those are much harder to acquire.
Teller: I would imagine so. Have a nice day.

Quote of the day—Sir Malta

Posted on by

holy shit kill yourself.

You realize the only people who want these are those who can’t legally get guns, right?

I can say this honestly: I hope you or someone you love is shot.

Sir Malta
January 6, 2015
Comment to 3D-Printed Guns Are Only Getting Better, and Scarier
[There are many legitimate reasons why one would want a gun without it being registered with the government. Sir Malta with his desire to see you and/or your family dead or injured is one of those reasons.

Via email from Jack M.—Joe]

From my ammo depot

Posted on by

I have been doing some organization of my ammo and shooting up the older and small quantity stuff. I noticed the packaging for CCI Mini-Mag .22 LR ammo has changed over the years:

IMG_2427Rotated

The leftmost is the oldest and the one on the right is the most recent.

On Tuesday I finished off the box on the left. I suspect it was getting close to 20 years old. Every round fed, fired, and ejected without a problem in my Ruger Mark III.

We need more of this

Posted on by

Via a post of Alan Andrews on Facebook we have Davenport employer offers cash bonus to conceal carry:

DAVENPORT, Iowa (KWQC) – Getting paid extra, to carry a firearm.

A local attorney said he is giving his employees a $50 bonus each month if they choose to conceal carry.

Not only does this help normalize the carry of firearms it probably is going to induce aneurisms in the anti-gun crowd.

We need more of this.

Quote of the day—Matthew

Posted on by

If you track the scoring, and the graded topics, over time it becomes clear they are publishing their own obituary in slow motion.

Matthew
March 17, 2014
Comment to Gun Control ‘Humor’ in regards to the Brady Campaign’s gun control “scorecard”.
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Mugme Street news

Posted on by

The following event occurred one block from what Barb and I fondly call “Mugme Street”. This has been my bus stop on the way home for a year and a half:

Police arrested a man who was seen counting his heroin stash Downtown Monday afternoon.

Bike officers were on patrol Downtown when they noticed a man acting strangely at 2nd Ave. and Stewart St. just before 1 PM. The officers approached the man and could plainly see him counting baggies of heroin, all of which were individually marked with a price.

Police arrested the man and collected the heroin as evidence.

I’ve had very strange people approach me at this location. When I’m waiting for the bus here I get and keep my back to the wall until the bus arrives.

I don’t want to work in downtown Seattle.

80% of the public is in support

Posted on by

We frequently hear the some large percentage of the public is in support of universal background checks for firearms sales. But it is easy to demonstrate that a large percentage of the public is either ignorant of the effectiveness of background checks or has evil intent.

Basically the problem boils down to a large percentage of the public has opinions on things they really don’t know much about. Brother Doug pointed out a great example recently:

A … survey in January conducted by the Oklahoma State University Department of Agricultural Economics found that 82 percent of respondents supported mandatory labels on GMOs. However, 80 percent of respondents also said they supported mandatory labels on “foods containing DNA.”

This is the reason we have a representative democracy with enumerated powers for the government rather than a direct democracy. Our representatives are supposed to carefully study and debate any potential laws and only enact laws that are beneficial to the majority of people and do not infringe upon the rights of anyone.

Popular opinion can easily be shown, see above, to be a very poor way of determining, well, almost anything.

Quote of the day—Sandra Gonzales

Posted on by

That is beyond disturbing! He should be locked up for child neglect!

Sandra Gonzales
March 9, 2015
Facebook comment on the CSGV page in response to this photo found on Shyanne Roberts Facebook page:

ShyanneRobertsAmmo

Shyanne, a ten year old competitive shooter, posted the picture with the following comment:

Teee Heee the first shipment of ammo from my sponsor Steel Ridge Ammunition showed up today !! So I decided to forget about snow angels and make an ammo angel instead !

VERY, VERY happy and cant wait to hit the range, thanks so much to the entire team at Steel Ridge Ammunition!

[Would they also want someone laying on a stack of Bibles locked up for child neglect? Or is it just the exercise of Second Amendment rights they find disturbing?—Joe]

The most transparent administration

Posted on by

When Obama was campaigning in 2008 the one good thing I thought might come out of him being elected was better support for FOIA. My experience with FOIA and the Federal Government is that they completely ignore you unless you get a lawyer involved. That’s just wrong. If the people don’t comply with FOIA they should be prosecuted. That’s not what happens. If Obama could make some progress on getting better compliance with FOIA I would have praised that achievement.

It was just another Obama lie.

We are sliding further down the slippery slope into a police state:

The White House is voiding a federal regulation that subjects its Office of Administration to the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA  (incidentally the same act that discovered none of Hillary Clinton’s “personal” government-business emails since they were not even stored on government property!) which as USA Today explains, makes “official a policy under Presidents Bush and Obama to reject requests for records to that office.”

Update: More evidence:

The Obama administration set a record again for censoring government files or outright denying access to them last year under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, according to a new analysis of federal data by The Associated Press.

The government took longer to turn over files when it provided any, said more regularly that it couldn’t find documents and refused a record number of times to turn over files quickly that might be especially newsworthy.

It also acknowledged in nearly 1 in 3 cases that its initial decisions to withhold or censor records were improper under the law — but only when it was challenged.

Its backlog of unanswered requests at year’s end grew remarkably by 55 percent to more than 200,000. It also cut by 375, or about 9 percent, the number of full-time employees across government paid to look for records. That was the fewest number of employees working on the issue in five years.

Quote of the day—Alan Korwin

Posted on by

We face destructive hyperbole from an agenda-driven fear-mongering group in the nation’s murder capital, where obtaining even a government permission slip to keep and bear arms is virtually impossible. They get extensive “news” coverage, instead of ridicule and a demand for an apology. If such preposterous outrage were to appear over race, gender or any other civil right the media would howl with alarm. Instead, we find the lunatics are truly running the asylum. Guns save lives, stop crime and help keep you safe. The media should start covering that missing angle.

Alan Korwin
March 15, 2015
BRADY CAMPAIGN INSULTS ARIZONA BADLY
[This was in response to the Brady Campaign video I posted here.

I have nothing more to add.—Joe]

USPSA match results

Posted on by

I shot in another USPSA match on Sunday. It was raining. At times it was really pouring. At other times it was a mild drizzle. It never stopped.

One of the guys at the match has been to a couple of Boomershoots and I know both he and his wife from outside of the gun community. He came up to me, said hi, and I told him it seemed a little damp. He said, “I’m not staying. I just came to check on my stage.” He had a shovel over his shoulder and had dug a ditch to carry some of the water away.

It wasn’t the wettest match I have ever heard of but it was the wettest match I have ever attended.

WP_20150315_003

WP_20150315_004

WP_20150315_005

MRCPS USPSA MARCH 2015
3/14/2015
Match Results – Limited
Place Name Member # Class Division PF Lady Mil Law For Match Pts Match %
1 Hoang, Vinh TY55787 M LTD MAJOR N N N N 786.2780 100.000 %
2 Hong, Andrew A83199 M LTD MAJOR N N N N 783.4298 99.638 %
3 Huffman, Joe TY29386 B LTD MAJOR N N N N 617.8207 78.575 %
4 Banks, David A79458 C LTD MAJOR N N N N 604.0272 76.821 %
5 Baleros, Rae A83018 B LTD MAJOR N N N N 549.8423 69.930 %
6 Leander, Mike A28558 M LTD MAJOR N N N N 522.8482 66.497 %
7 Glines, Sterling A81856 U LTD MAJOR N N N N 503.5897 64.047 %
8 Domiolio, Noel A85786 C LTD MAJOR N N N N 347.6279 44.212 %
9 Bell, Eric A32654 A LTD MAJOR N N N N 230.1977 29.277 %
10 Stephens, Scotti A73026 none LTD MAJOR Y N N N 141.6806 18.019 %
11 (DQ) Huggins, Rick A88883 C LTD MINOR N N N N 0.0000 0.000 %

This is a much better outcome that previous matches. Only two master class shooters were ahead of me. Another B, an A, and a Master class shooter were below me. Although clearly they were having a “bad day”. I came in at about the 73rd percentile of the shooters. This is much better than the 52nd percentile, and 59th percentile of the previous two matches.

I have been practicing and then testing myself with El Presidente. Here are the results from January 30th of this year. To make it easy for the spreadsheet and to reduce the need to tape the targets I only track the strings where I got all A-zone hits:

Mean Draw Time: 1.79
Mean Split Time: 0.60
Mean Transition Time: 0.72
Mean Reload Time: 2.086
Mean Total Time: 10.36

This sucks. I had no idea how slow I had become until I did this test.

And from February 12th:

Mean Draw Time: 1.60
Mean Split Time: 0.54
Mean Transition Time: 0.64
Mean Reload Time: 2.43
Mean Total Time: 9.83

Better but not by much. Things still weren’t clicking. I had to really go slow to get the A-zone hits. This was especially true with the first shot after the draw and the split times for shots on the same target. It shouldn’t take almost as long for a second hit on the same target as it did for a transition to another target over three feet from the previous one. Why was it taking so long to get on target with the sights and pull the trigger? I just didn’t know.

From March 11th, a few days before this match:

Mean Draw Time: 1.75
Mean Split Time: 0.39
Mean Transition Time: 0.63
Mean Reload Time: 2.30
Mean Total Time: 8.45

The splits on the same target got a lot better. I had been practicing with a .22 on multiple shots on the same target when it suddenly just clicked. The splits just happened without me having to think about them. The sights lined up and the gun went “bang!” without me having to think about it. When I substituted the .40 caliber it still happened.

When I shot the match on Sunday things felt a lot better. The gun went bang without me thinking about it. There were some very short range shots where either I didn’t let up on the trigger enough to get a reset or I was cycling the trigger faster than the gun was cycling the slide. I’ll have to do some tests to find out what is going on with that. And for all except the stage with the 50 yard targets I got good hits. My speed improved without problems with my accuracy.

8.45 second El Presidente’s are still slower than they used to be. I’m pretty sure I was doing them in the mid to high sevens years ago. More practice is needed. The transitions need work. I know this because of this. I should be able to remove at least a tenth of a second. I would then get down into the low 8’s for El Presidentes.

I’m going to the range tomorrow and doing a bunch of transition work with the .22. I’ll do another El Presidente test on Thursday.

Quote of the day—Bacon @Baconmints

Posted on by

Uh oh, the #tinycockclub aka nra lapdogs, are losing their shit because I called them on their insecurity. Score. #gunsense #fuckthenra

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

Via a Tweet from BFD‏ @BigFatDave.—Joe]

USPSA match results

Posted on by

I finally found the USPSA match results from last month when I shot a match the day after Valentines day. One stage was particularly well themed:

WP_20150215_002
Shoot them in the heart. The black is considered “hard cover”.

WP_20150215_003
This (quasi) heart shaped outline on the ground is the shooting box.

The results for my division are as follows:

MRCPS The Love Zone

2015-02-15

Match Results – Limited

Place Name USPSA Class Division PF Lady Mil Law For Match Pts Match %
1 Hoang, Vinh TY55787 M LTD MAJOR N N N N 675.1016 100.000 %
2 Hong, Andrew A83199 A LTD MAJOR N N N N 599.5350 88.807 %
3 Huang, Jemy TY71576 B LTD MAJOR N N N N 548.9420 81.313 %
4 Leander, Mike A28558 M LTD MAJOR N N N N 528.9624 78.353 %
5 Olson, Kevin A51227 A LTD MAJOR N N N N 528.2475 78.247 %
6 McClure, Dave A71541 C LTD MAJOR N N N N 443.7927 65.737 %
7 Rick, Huggins A88883 D LTD MINOR N N N N 424.4684 62.875 %
8 Harris, Brad A54628 A LTD MAJOR N N N N 419.2345 62.099 %
9 Rae, Baleros A83018 C LTD MAJOR N N N N 418.2772 61.958 %
10 Huffman, Joe TY29386 B LTD MAJOR N N N N 412.9623 61.170 %
11 McNees, Don A21888 C LTD MINOR N N N N 406.3468 60.190 %
12 Tsang, Keith A71578 B LTD MAJOR N N N N 391.8932 58.050 %
13 Tod, Sherman TY37515 C LTD MAJOR N N N N 319.1640 47.276 %
14 Russ, Kimberly TY59608 D LTD MINOR Y N N N 293.3518 43.453 %
15 Shatto, Rollie TY18977 C LTD MAJOR N N N N 290.2087 42.987 %
16 Wall, Gary TY41939 B LTD MAJOR N N N N 285.7136 42.322 %
17 Garcia, Edwin PEN U LTD MINOR N N N N 257.2086 38.099 %
18 Workman, Rob A88068 U LTD MINOR N N N N 247.2043 36.617 %
19 Harding, Matt A87093 U LTD MINOR N N N N 246.3886 36.497 %
20 Bregante, Carlos TY4508 C LTD MINOR N N N N 123.7345 18.328 %
21 (DQ) Mathena, Lee A85475 D LTD MINOR            

As you can see I didn’t do all that great. There were ‘C’ and ‘D’ class shooters who came in above me. Among other things, on the last stage I had a major brain fart and fired six shots on the wrong side of a shooting line. That was worth 60 points of penalties. It didn’t even give me any advantage to do so. I just forgot I needed to be on the other side of the line to shoot those targets.

This match was shot before (February 15 versus February 22) that last USPSA match I reported on. In that match I came in at the 59th percentile. In this match I came in at the 52nd percentile. That is a little better but it is essentially unchanged even though there was some practice between the matches.

Prunes!

Posted on by

Why should the word “prunes” be followed by an exclamation mark? Because they’re MY prunes, or rather they were planted on the property I currently own, long before I bought it.

Do you know the difference between a prune and a plum? I didn’t, though of course I’d heard several of the theories that float around, at least in the Pacific Northwest. According to the orchard owners hereabouts (and who would know if not them?) a prune has a free pit, meaning that if you rip the fruit open the pit falls right out, whereas a plum has an in-grown pit and you have to cut, or chew, around it. That would mean I have prunes.

I’ve heard that there are peaches with free pits and peaches with in-grown pits, and they’re all called peaches, so go figure.
Continue reading →

Quote of the day—David Hackett Fischer

Posted on by

Race slavery did not create the culture of the southern colonies. That culture created slavery.

David Hackett Fischer
1989
Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (America: A Cultural History)
[See also this post about the same book.—Joe]

Gun cartoon of the day

Posted on by

NraAccomplice

This is what the cartoonist thinks of supporters of the right to keep and bear arms. They believe we are insane criminals who should go to prison for the crimes of others.