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Updated: 11 hours 13 min ago

You’re on your own

Thu, 01/30/2014 - 09:27

Human beings are generally social creatures. Most of the higher order mammals tend to have some sort of social structure where groups of individuals work cooperatively to boost the odds of survival for everyone in the group. You see fairly complex social orders developed even among primates like chimpanzees and gorillas that scientists study to understand some human dynamics. It’s a safe bet that for however long human beings have existed on planet Earth, they formed at least small bands that were critical to survival. If someone was separated from the group either by some sort of unforeseen event or because of transgression against the standards of behavior for the group it was roughly equivalent to a death sentence…hence the reluctance many have to even disagree with people in a meeting room when nothing life-threatening is at stake. It’s ingrained that deeply to stick with the group.

Society as we know it is a very recent invention and in the long expanse of human history it represents but a tiny fraction of the human experience. We’re all inclined to think of the world in terms of our own experience, but stop and ponder for a second how many people in this world can make a phone call and have a pizza show up less than 30 minutes later. When you live in a society where you can make d

The best stage you’ve ever had

Wed, 01/29/2014 - 13:45

What’s the best you’ve ever shot in a match? Do you remember? For me, it’s burned into my memory: Bianchi Cup 2012, the Plates. I shot a 470-47x with a Tanfoglio Stock II in .38 Super. I was lucky, because I got it on video.

I’ve been chasing that performance ever since. It’s funny now, when I watch the video a year and a half later, I can see little things I didn’t notice at the time. At the start of the 25 yard string for example, I’m so jacked up on adrenaline from cleaning it through 20 that my hands are shaking. You can see my right hand tremble like crazy. I’m also happy now that I dropped that 5th plate on string 1. If I hadn’t, there is every bit the chance I would have totally choked on my second run at 25 yards and just dropped an entire mess of plates.

Still, that was probably the single best shooting performance of my career to date. The best shooters in the world shoot 470-47x on the plates with iron sighted guns all the time, and for a day, just a day I was able to hang with that.

What’s your best shooting moment?

Editorial: Getting shot doesn’t make you an expert on Gun Control

Wed, 01/29/2014 - 12:15

On January 8, 2011 Gabby Giffords was shot in the head by a crazy person with a gun. Her recovery from such a traumatic injury was heroic and inspiring to anyone who has been victimized by crime and survived.

Two years later, Mrs. Giffords along with her husband founded Americans for Responsible Solutions, a PAC that advocates for further restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms. Just this week, Mrs. Giffords was in my former home state of Washington to lobby in favor of a sweeping universal background check bill that will deeply infringe the rights of the citizens of Washington, many of whom are my friends and family.

I have nothing but the utmost respect for the guts and toughness it must take to overcome being shot in the brain and moving on with your life. However, in her advocacy for more gun control, Mrs. Giffords has placed herself on a pedestal above criticism simply because she was a victim of a mass shooting. This attitude of saintly victims is nothing new to the gun control community – Colin Goddard, a victim of the VA Tech shooting was for a time a leading

Quick photo: Ancient weapons

Wed, 01/29/2014 - 11:21

The DA revolver has been with us since the mid-1800s, and yes despite being nearly 200 years old continues to soldier on in holsters for CCW to this day.

CZ’s P-09 Updates

Wed, 01/29/2014 - 10:10

Have I mentioned I’m a CZ fan? This year at SHOTShow CZ brought to the table products that were better than brand new. They brought previously introduced products that had been given BIG updates for 2014. After all, if it ain’t broke… One such offering is the updated P-07 which now has the great features introduced last year in the P-09. These include interchangeable backstraps and the option to change between a manual safety and a decocking leaver. So the P-07 is now better but just a small P-09, so let’s talk about that bad boy instead.

From behind the retail counter I often handed women a steel CZ 75 (of some configuration, ie P-06, SP-01, PCR or P-01) with rubber grips that they almost always fell for, instantly. However, while some men appreciated the ergonomics of the grip, most found the slide too narrow for easy racking. That’s when I would hand them the P-09. (This is all assuming they aren’t dead set on the G17 or something. If that’s what they wanted I’d be happy to give it to them. But if they were shopping for

Photo of the day: Retro cool

Tue, 01/28/2014 - 12:30

Sometimes, the manual things are better. Yes, an M&P holds more bullets and a DSLR takes more photos, but there’s a certain satisfaction about going old school at times.

Either that or I’m just a terrible, awful hipster.

Story time with Jerry Miculek

Tue, 01/28/2014 - 11:30

Today on Jerry’s Story Corner, we have the Tale of the Tungsten Guide Rod. Enjoy!

Does IDPA reward accuracy more than USPSA?

Tue, 01/28/2014 - 10:30

The guys at Precision Response Training have a very interesting post up that looks a the oft-repeated phrase: “IDPA rewards marksmanship, USPSA rewards speed.” It’s a thoughtful post that takes the time to look at the various scoring systems and how they actual penalize poor accuracy. I don’t entirely agree with their conclusions, but that gives us the opportunity to discuss speed, accuracy, and how they affect scoring.

First, a quick discussion of top level performance. The guys who win IDPA and USPSA matches are generally faster and more accurate than their opponents. What causes them to win is finding the appropriate balance of speed and accuracy together. To address the topic of IDPA penalizing accuracy more than USPSA, you have to look at how it applies to shooters within their own competitive set. A competitive set, or comp-set for short is a group of shooters that you’re on a relative par with in terms of skill. Unless you’re Dave Sevi

Private Citizens stop 16% of mass shootings

Tue, 01/28/2014 - 09:30

On the 24th, the FBI released one of the most fascinating and simultaneously frustratingly incomplete studies in recent memory: Active Shooter Events from 2000 to 2012. This paper looks at active shooter events over a 12 year span with the goal to assess law enforcement reactions and how to improve the response at the LE level. There is a ton of interesting data for us to unpack in this paper, but for today we’re going to focus on the section titled “Resolution of the event” because to the average CCW holder that’s the most interesting. This section uses 104 incidents for its base set. Note that for the purposes of the study, the average police response time was about 3 minutes. Out of 104 incidents, they had the following resolution:

  • 49% of events stopped before the police could arrive
  • 42% of events (44 total) resulted in the killer committing suicide, of which 29 killers committed suicide prior to police arrival.
  • 43% of events (45 total) result in the attacker being stopped with force, either by civilians or law enforcement.
  • When civilians intervene before LE arrives, they stop 33% of mass shootings.
  • Slightly less than 3% of mass shootings are stopped

Photo of the Day: SIG Sauer SSG3000

Mon, 01/27/2014 - 12:45

 

RIP Ammo – Radically Invasive Projectile

Mon, 01/27/2014 - 11:52

Unless you have been in a cave the last couple of days, you’ve probably seen the link to this new ammo called RIP, which stands for Radically Invasive Projectile. They have been running a truly impressive (and annoying, but more on that later) marketing campaign, to the point that their ammo has damn near gone viral. I’ve seen links to it on forums, facebook, had people email me and message me, so I guess it’s time to talk about the newest in trendy ammo. Let’s begin then with their own marketing video and go from there.

If you can get past the incredibly cheesy voice-over, the video basically consists of them shooting the 9mm RIP projectile into a bunch of different mediums in various unscientific ways. While I deeply enjoy footage of stuff getting hit by bullets in slow-motion, if you’re claiming that this is the “last round I’ll ever need” I want to see some actual barrier tests. But conspicuous in their absence are those barrier tests. Yes, they show the round going through a cinderblock, but they don’t show what happens in gel after that. They show some bare gel shots, but nothing that would involve def

Glock 42: First Impressions

Mon, 01/27/2014 - 10:51

It seems lately everyone has been asking me what I think of Glock’s new slim-frame .380. I didn’t shoot it at Media Day and I only handled it briefly at SHOT. Why? Because it’s a Glock. Imagine a slim-frame Glock .380. Congratulations, you now have an idea of what the Glock 42 is like. Everyone I spoke to who shot the gun said the same thing. Of course, a Glock-y Glock is far from a bad thing.

For Glock fanboys who don’t mind the .380-ness of the .380, it’s going to be a good deep concealment option. For people who want to complain about .380 not being powerful enough, it’s a great opportunity for them to do so. For people who are blatantly unexcited that Toyota has released a compact Corolla, well, they can go back to swearing at race guns and 1911s.

CZ’s New 3-Gun Ready Shotgun

Mon, 01/27/2014 - 10:00

As SHOTShow began, I made a bee line for the CZ-USA booth. The company has held a special place I my heart since I purchased my first pistol, a CZ 75 B, and they haven’t let me down since. I didn’t know it as I visited the CZ booth, but later that day I would find out that the first ever ladies only 3-gun major match was about to be announced. What made this news even more exciting was that it would occur in Covington Georgia, surprisingly close to my home in Atlanta. Thus began my crash course in 3-gun competition. Back at the CZ booth I was shown their brand new 3-gun ready 712 Practical shotgun.

If Caleb seems to be ready to jump on the Beretta bandwagon, then I guess the same can be said of me for CZ. Unlike the Beretta 1301′s heafty price tag, the 712 Practical seems ideal for the3-gun curious like myself, retailing for less than $700. CZ has also included five flush mounted chokes, a six position adjustable stock, and a fluted magazine extension from ATI. The tube extension brings the guns capacity up to 9+1 which is ideal for 3-gun.

The 712

Photo of the day: Anticipation

Fri, 01/24/2014 - 12:30

Bianchi Cup is one of the toughest tests of marksmanship in the shooting sports. It’s also an incredibly emotional sport. Here, Team Leupold shooter Tiffany Piper waits to see the hits in the 5 ring she knows will cost her a championship at the 2013 Bianchi Cup.

Quote of the day: 9mm NATO

Fri, 01/24/2014 - 12:00

From someone who would know:

“I’m not convinced the ball ammo in use by our troops is necessarily “crappy”. Graveyards have been built over the last 12+ years due to the fatal wounds inflicted by 9mm NATO Ball.”

This is the corollary to Rule 1 of a Gunfight, which is of course “have a gun.” Rule 1A is “have ammo in your gun.” We talk a lot about making good choices for your defensive pistol and defensive ammo, but at the end of the day you’re better off with a pocket .380 loaded with ball ammo than you are with a sharp stick.

Please don’t mistake that statement to mean that I, or Gun Nuts thinks you should be carrying a pocket .380 with ball ammo as your primary. Everyone should carry full sized handguns in serious service calibers all the time; those guns should always be loaded with the latest and best in defensive ammo.

But at the end of the day, a .38 loaded with 158 grain LRN is better than your fists; and a 9mm loaded with ball ammo is better than a sharp stick. I’d much rather see someone carry an SD9 with ball ammo because they blew all their money on training and practice than someone with a $1,000 HK full of Ranger T-series who never trains.

Ruger Scout Rifle Short Review

Fri, 01/24/2014 - 11:22

Before SHOT Show, I finally got the chance to take my Ruger Scout Rifle to the range and do some shooting. Not much, but enough to get a feel for the gun. The rifle is currently set up with the bipod and a Trijicon RMR as the optic. With the RMR, hits on a man-sized target out to 100 yards are easy, although I will need to get the rifle out and sight it in a bit better. I didn’t feel like doing a proper sighting session in four inches of snow.

What I like
Felt recoil was minimal. The gun has a huge recoil pad which does a great job of soaking up .308 recoil, and it’s also kind of heavy – over 8 pounds when loaded. It’s not like shooting a 5 pound super lightweight .308 that beats you up, the gun is built in typical Ruger fashion to be tough.

I like the trigger as well. I am not a “rifle person” so I don’t complain about this or that feature when it comes to rifle triggers, I just want it to be light enough that I’m not going to struggle when I pull it. I don’t with the Ruger Scout Rifle, and the trigger breaks clean enough th

Boom! Headshot

Fri, 01/24/2014 - 10:06

Every now and then when folks get to talking about pistol bullets and their terminal ballistics, someone will bring up an argument that goes like this: “Well I heard that BFE PD carries Round X in their guns, and they shot this guy in the head and the bullets didn’t penetrate his skull.”

This will always elicit an eye roll from me, because as it turns out the human skull is a pretty robust structure. It’s designed to protect the super-computer that keeps this show running, so it shouldn’t be a surprise when it does what it’s designed to do. Usually, when you hear about “failed” headshots on badguys, it’s because of one of the following circumstances:

  • Poor ammo choice
  • Poor shooting angle

Usually, the “creasing” headshot only happens when the shot is taken at the hardest part of the skull – the frontal area above the eyebrows. That’s one of the toughest bones in the body, the sloping shape of the frontal area can aid in causing projectiles to glance off the skull instead of hitting and sticking. I’ve

Quick Thought on Stopping Power

Thu, 01/23/2014 - 12:30

While there is no doubt that modern hollow-point bullets are scientifically better at incapacitating badguys and that no modern service caliber is “better” than any other, I have a pet theory that most pistol cartridges that have legendary reputations as poor performers don’t necessarily deserve that rep. The following theory doesn’t really apply to mousegun rounds like .25 ACP or .32 ACP, by the way.

The Caleb Giddings Theory of Historical Stopping Power: Cartridges that have reputations as poor performers before the era of modern pistol-craft may not have been as bad as the legends would have you believe. Pistol marksmanship prior to the Modern Technique was mostly an afterthought, and guns of the era also had tiny, hard to use sights. For example, perhaps the 158 grain LRN .38 Special round wouldn’t be known on the internet as The Widowmaker if officers of its era had better training.

Discuss in comments!

SHOT Show and the Rule 1 guns

Thu, 01/23/2014 - 11:18

Last week the gun industry put on the SHOT show, a trade show where manufacturers and vendors can show their wares to industry buyers and the press. New products typically make their debut here, especially firearms from the larger manufacturers. If you look carefully at the product debuts and marketing efforts happening at SHOT you can get a read on trends within the industry and what manufacturers are seeing.

The talk of SHOT show this year hasn’t been long guns…it has been small handguns like the Glock 42 (Glock is going to sell those by the boatload) or the Remington R51. Manufacturers see that orders for black rifles are dwindling from the Obama-panic highs and they’re looking at what products they can get in consumer hands to keep the revenue flowing. Glock, who is rolling in money anyway, is betting big on a small .380 handgun. Remington is hopping back into the handgun market with their first original offering in almost a century…and it’s a compact (sort of) single-stack 9mm. S&W still seems to be selling every Shield they produce to the point where it’s nigh unto impossible to find 8 round magazines for the darn things in the wild.

An instructor friend of mine,

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