Gun Nuts

Now that I’ve been submerged in all things 3gun for a minute or so, my understanding of the sport has gone from learning the basics, to removing the obsticles that are keeping me from moving forward. As a complete beginner I needed to learn terminology, rules, and the mindset that is needed in order to successfully get through a 3gun stage. Much of this information could have likely been found in a book. (While this would not have been the best way to learn these ideas, it could have gotten the job done…theoretically.) But the next step of the 3gun learning process is all hands-on. Here are the four biggest issues that have held me back, as my 3gun training moved forward.

You may have heard over the weekend that the district court for Washington DC recently overturned the District’s ban on carrying handguns. For more details, I’ll refer you to Alan Gura’s blog, since he’s the guy who won the case anyway. The meat of the decision is that in light of Heller and McDonald, the District court ruled that DC’s ban on carrying handguns was a violation of the Constitution and that DC must implement a system for lawful concealed carry. I assumed that DC would either 1) appeal the decision to the Supreme Court and that this would drag on forever, or that 2) they’d go the Illinois route and try to implement the most odious, Byzantine permit system possible. Then I read three tweets I thought I’d never read:

The perils of owning a gun shop: even though I should really know better, I kind of want one of these. The ParaUSA Expert 14.45 Stainless, buy it now for $599!

Donation Made in Honor of Sam Colt’s 200th Birthday

GASTON J. GLOCK style LP, a sponsor of the Sevigny Performance Team, is pleased to announce that Brooke Sevigny took home the Ladies Championship title, along with the 1st B-Class Title, in the Amateur Open Division at the Pro-Am Shooting Championship, held July 18th-20th, 2014 at the Universal Shooting Academy in Frostproof, FL. This was Brooke’s fourth time competing at the annual tournament.

Once more we have another real life lesson in the futility of the ficticious “gun free” zone, this time from Darby, Pennsylvania. A patient who had some sort of “history” with the institution decided he was mad enough to kill somebody and darned if the “gun free” policies of the place weren’t much backup to the murder-free policies of the state of Pennsylvania. It’s almost like the bad guy wasn’t dissuaded from his intentions by words written on a page somewhere in the slightest!

Looks like it’s a tie. The 1911 is a Colt, wearing Crimson Trace Anniversary Laser Grips, and the revolver is a S&W 986 Pro Series in 9mm.

Follow me on Instagram to see photos that don’t make the blog!

We spend so much time online talking about the terrible things that we see in relation to the shooting community. New gun control laws, tactical derp, cheating scandals; there is drama everywhere. Sometimes it’s easy to forget all the good things that are going on around us; the people who are working hard to support the sports, to educate and create new shooters. Today, I want to shine the spotlight on five people I know in the industry who are doing great things and helping ensure that we have a future in the shooting sports.

If this is the quality of the toy they’re expected to play with.

Reader Eric saw that for sale in a store in Chicagoland and sent the photo in. It’s pretty funny, in a tragic sort of way. Sure, it’s just a kid’s toy, but a magazine fed revolver? This is what happens when you outsource your gun shaped toys to China! A country with no gun ownership doesn’t know what they’re doing, we need to preserve our great cultural legacy of realistic toy guns and bring our water pistol manufacturing back home. American jobs for American Workers! MURICA!

Smith & Wesson and Ruger both ship most of their revolvers with this grip, or a grip very similar to it:

After training with top 3 gun pro-shooters for months now, I have begun to understand their methodology. I like 3gun as a shooting competition, because it’s all about assessing a situation and thinking on your feet. Every stage can be tackled a number of different ways and every shooter will have their own technique for approaching one. At this past weekends ATL3Gun match, a shotgun-only stage had my squad a bit puzzled. There were 18 clays spread throughout a “jungle” environment. Some clays were hidden behind trees and could only been seen from specific angles. Further, there was no obvious path through the shooting area.

In honor of #pumpday I did a 90 second (and change) review of the Remington Magpul 870 Tactical FDE Express. Wait, that’s out of order. It’s the Remington 870 Express Tactical Magpul FDE. That is the longest name for a pretty rad shotgun. For a more in-depth look, check out the Remington 870 Magpul Review.

From D.W. an 870 Wingmaster for 3-gun

Since a “regular” revolver’s capacity is 6, I’m pretty sure that makes these 7 and 8 shot clips “high” capacity. Also, I mentioned this on my Facebook page, but I love shooting moonclip guns because it gives me an excuse to say “clips” about ammo containing devices and be correct. “MY CLIPS ARE EMPTY!”

Last year, I shot the USPSA Area 3 Championship in a single day in Single Stack division. Last year, I was really impressed with the facility and the catering, but I thought the stages were a little heavy towards high round counts. Plus, I made the huge mistake of shooting the entire match in a single day, so I was totally and completely wiped out by the end of it.

In my quick post analyzing my classifier performance at yesterday’s USPSA match, I noted that my shooting hasn’t really gotten any better or worse in the last couple of years. I’ve been aware of this plateau for a while now, and have from time to time batted around ideas for getting off it and improving my shooting. The truth is that I know what I need to do if I really wanted to step my game up past the B/A class level – I’d need to devote significant amounts of time and energy to actually practicing. Madness, I know. But that’s a different post, because today I want to talk about what causes people’s gains to go flat over time. There are quite a few different things that can cause it, and in many cases it’s a combination of factors.

Mindset is important. Under stress the human body is capable of amazing things. But you can have all the mindset in the world and still have your body fail because it lacks the physical capacity to accomplish the task you’ve set out. I can have all the mindset in the world to run a marathon, but if I haven’t trained my body I’ll fail. I have the right mindset to dead lift 350 pounds, but if I try it tomorrow I’ll fail because I’m quite literally not strong enough.

I learned so much from my first 3gun match, but now, after a month has passed, I feel it time to boil down the data into a few simple lessons that other beginners might find useful.