Some longer or more involved reading:
If you ever find yourself in the Idaho State [History] Museum in Boise, Idaho, ask to see the Elmer Keith Commemorative .44 magnum revolver. Donated in 1985 A.D. The gold inlaid engraving is fantastic.
If it's still on display when you get there, it will be on the bottom level of the museum. Walk down the stairs. There will be a glass enclosure displaying many things. Front and center you will see the revolver.
If you like weapons, you should also go to the Old Penitentiary which has a museum on the grounds with a large collection of historical weapons from roughly the Renaissance through WWII on display.
- Jon linked to this article--"The Apprehensions Women Have About Carrying a Firearm — And How Training Helps Overcome It"--which caught my attention because, like many of the articles aimed at women, it tries to create a false dichotomy between male and female shooters. In this case, the author begins: "For many women, carrying a firearm is not about politics, power, or recreation. It is about wanting the ability to defend themselves and the people they love if they are ever faced with a dangerous situation." What a degrading attitude toward men! Sure there are the exceptions (which seem to only show up in the comments online), but I don't personally know any men that daily carry for reasons of politics or power or recreation. Because daily carry is a pain in the butt, the people who carry daily, day-after-day, are motivated by defending themselves and the people they love. The article goes on to describe various fears that women have--fear of having an accident, making the wrong decision, fear of being judged or criticized by family or friends--but these are also concerns of most men. It is why so much ink is spilled on topics of safe gun handling and the law (and practicalities) of self-defense. I suppose the fear of criticism is perhaps less with men simply because men are not as driven by competition for social affirmation. The rest of the article continues with the false dichotomy because many of the concerns will be common to men who have no past experience with firearms and/or older men or men that suffer from physical disabilities. As I've mentioned before, when I see this false dichotomy, it seems primarily to be a marketing ploy to convince women that they need a female instructor.
- Jon has some commentary about Cooper's rules of gun safety, including the following about Rule 1: "All Guns Are Loaded".
This rule is not saying to treat all guns as if they were loaded. This rule is commanding you to keep all guns loaded at all times.
If you don't understand this, please read "The Modern Technique of the Pistol" by Gregory Boyce Morrison https://dokumen.pub/qdownload/the-modern-technique-of-the-pistol-0962134236-9780962134234.html Page 8.
Instructors who teach "Treat all guns as if they were loaded." Are telling you to PRETEND the gun is loaded, even if you know that the gun is not loaded. Col. Cooper is telling you to BELIEVE, not pretend, that all guns are always loaded, because you keep all guns always loaded, as a matter of safety.
So the "safety" rules of the IDPA matches, the USPSA matches, and the NRA courses that require you to unload your pistol when not actually shooting create horrible training scars, that you must be
aware of.
Later he adds:
That means always keep your gun loaded. That means a round in the chamber. This is a safety rule. With a loaded gun, you can defend the safety of yourself and your loved ones. With an unloaded gun, you cannot. No, as a matter of fact, you will not have time to chamber a round. No, as a matter of fact, you won't have a support-side hand available to chamber a round; you'll have to chamber the round one-handed, possibly support-side-hand only. As we saw in the above cited incident. You can do that, right? Because you've had training and practice regularly (weekly at least).
Last week, I stopped to eat at the In And Out burger shop in Twin Falls, ID. It was all cleaned up and running smoothly. We did notice 3 discreetly armed private security officers and one private security office with a full duty belt rig. All were directing traffic and patrolling around the parking lot.
I also noticed that the two ladies behind the counter were carrying concealed. Well concealed, I had to look carefully to see. Idaho has the best gun laws in the country, according to the anti-gun group EveryTown.
Check out his other commentary on the rules.
- I had recently linked to an article by Greg Ellifritz on the downsides of evacuating after receiving a bomb threat, with Greg specifically discussing a recent incident involving a high school in Tennessee. Jon adds some additional thoughts:
I have taken classes in which we were taught to never move people into well defined (as in written in a plan) rally points. Rather the instruction was to disperse them / send them home / send them to another site, etc.
It's hard to get a big bomb into a building. It's easy to get a big bomb into a parking lot. So drive the car or truck bomb into the parking lot and cause an evacuation into the parking lot. Lots of documented cases of such. So, if the plan is to evacuate to a well defined (written in a plan that the enemy knows, one must assume spies) rally point, the planners are idiots and should not be trusted, because they are not competent. In such cases, tell your children to run away, run home, run away and call you to pick them up. Tell your children to NEVER hang out in a well defined rally point.
This goes hand in hand with another terrorist tactic which is to set off a bomb, then, after first responders show up, set off one or more other concealed explosives outside the original target in order to kill first responders and people that have been evacuated. As Jon says, get out of defined rally point.
- And in defense of engaging in competition, Jon explains:
Disparaging competition shooting as not relevant or counter-productive to combat shooting because it is not realistic, is not intellectually honest. All training is not realistic. Because civilian trainers cannot tolerate 3% casualties and 1% fatalities in their classes. They actually strive for 0% casualties, including heat casualties. (See Greg's article elsewhere in this blog posting. "Two Contemporary Training Issues to Ponder" by Greg Ellifritz)
Even in our U.S. Armed Forces training, where 3% casualties and 1% fatalities are tolerated in combined arms exercises, the training is still not realistic. Because in combat much higher casualty and fatality rates are expected and tolerated. In the U.S. Navy, the surface warfare fleet expects a ship to continue functioning, being combat effective, with 50% of the crew dead. Sorry, that's just reality.
When I was young and stupid, I was working intel for an exercise. We told the command staff that the winds were too high and advised them to abort the jump. Lt. General Klingston ordered the airborne paratroopers to jump. Every Lieutenant aboard every aircraft ordered their men to jump (as would be expected of any officer). They suffered 3% casualty, 1% fatality. Now that I am older and smarter, I understand how essential such training is. Failure to train realistically ensures defeat in combat.
But the civilian self-defense industry would never tolerate such. Look at who attends your classes. They are predominantly there for entertainment and to have fun. It is rare to have a student who has recently survived a traumatic event that motivates her to learn to defend herself, because she knows that her life depends on the skills to be learned.
I believe it was Massad Ayoob who noted the competition shooting was as close to shooting under pressure that most of us will ever experience until we are involved in an actual defensive encounter.
Anyway, Jon has a lot more, so be sure to check out his newsletter.
Because of this I would like to stress (over and over and over again) the importance of accuracy to win a gunfight. Marginal hits with any caliber cannot guarantee a stop. Period. Full stop. Nor can marginal hits with “magic” bullets guarantee a stop. The latest, greatest hollowpoint - or now the “external hollowpoints” - cannot guarantee a stop without hitting something vital. To guarantee a stop, we must hit something that matters. Most of the human body is fairly unimpressed with handgun bullets. Someone shot with a pistol - unless hit in one of a few small areas - can continue to be a deadly threat to you for quite some time, if they choose to be.
Similarly, he notes, just because you are shot does not mean that you are going to be out of action.
- A link to an article about the Federal 8-pellet FLITECONTROL buckshot load for self-defense. It is hard to find these in my area. I had a source that carried them for a while (for those of you in the Boise areas, it was the bulk ammo store on 5-Mile between Franklin and Emerald streets, in the old Eddy's bakery building) but the last few times I've been in there, they've only had the 9 pellet version. Greg recommends as an alternative the Hornady Critical Defense because it also uses the same wad. But the problem with those is that (i) the pellets are bare lead rather than the plated shot in the Federal load and (ii) there is no buffering powder between the shot. They don't open up as bad as cheap buckshot ammo, but they do open up faster than the Federal rounds and the deformation of the pellets further increases the spread.
- Caleb Giddings tests some defensive rounds in .38 Special from different guns with different barrel lengths.
- An article on what makes a good holster. One thing in particular caught my attention:
Starting with the most important, a holster needs to safely hold a handgun in such a way that it cannot be inadvertently fired when in the holster. An object that won’t do this is not a holster as far as I’m concerned. It might be a very nice, tooled-leather gun-holder thingie you put on your belt, but a holster it ain’t. “But, Tam,” you say, “A lot of classic revolver holsters back in the day had cutaway trigger guards! For speed!” I think we can safely say we did a lot of things in those days that weren’t very safe in retrospect, like chain-smoke while pregnant or dump raw sewage in rivers. Let’s not do those things anymore.
In defense of the holsters with cutaway trigger guards, I would note that they are perfectly fine for the single-action revolver because with such weapons the exposed trigger does not enable the firearm to be fired inadvertently, assuming, of course, that the hammer is down. (The downside to such holsters is that they more easily allow dirt and grime to enter the action). Just don't use them--the holsters--with more modern handgun designs.
- An article that asks the question: "Does Temperature Affect Bullet Point of Impact?" The answer is "yes" because temperature can affect the burn rate of the powder. Unfortunately, the test outlined in the article only tested the temperature of the ammo, but not the ambient air temperature which can also affect point of impact because cooler air is more dense than warmer air. (See, e.g., "How Air Temperature Changes Bullet Trajectory"--Ron Spomer Outdoors).
- A very detailed article with advice on choosing a carry gun. One point in particular that stood out to me was the advice on portability because it runs contrary to what you often hear from people that should know better:
Like cost, portability is sometimes viewed as a secondary consideration. I think this is a mistake, because it is one that I have made. It's often said that a carry gun, "should be comforting, not comfortable." I disagree. I have too many things competing for my energy and attention to endure an uncomfortable gun. As a result I didn't actually carry very much when I chose guns that were too large. I have tried to carry hardware that was too large, or too uncomfortable. After a few months when the novelty wears off it becomes very easy to talk yourself out of shoving that big holster in your pants and lugging two pounds of steel around all day.
- Finally, it is a well known maxim that the average gun fight takes place at 3 yards, last 3 seconds, and expends 3 rounds. It has been noted by John Correia, after watching thousands of security footage of armed encounters, that he has never seen a civilian self-defender have to reload their handgun. But, although the odds may be incredibly rare for the civilian, there are still the outlier cases, some of which have been collected into an article, "Self-Defense and the Law: Cases Where Magazine Capacity Limits Cost Lives."
Greg has a lot more, so be sure to check it out.
Some — dear Lord — 20 years ago, Libertarians who were friends of mine became very alarmed that our standard for who was human and a life worth keeping had changed. Now, it had effectively become “You’re human if mommy says you are.”
No? Look at when a pregnant woman gets killed. Whether the child gets counted as another homicide depends on whether the child was wanted or not. A lot of states have not only abortion till birth but, like Colorado — COLORADO! — you’re allowed to kill the baby for some time after birth with no consequences.
You’re human if mommy wants you.
If mommy doesn’t want you, you stop being human even as labor pains start. She can say “My body, my choice, I want the fetus terminated.” If mommy wants you, on the other hand, she’ll send your sonograms at two months around with “Look at my baby. He has my nose.”
And that decision can change in a minute. Sometimes on a dime.
This is not tenable. It is particularly not tenable for a secular humanist society. (Religious societies have their own answers to abide by. That’s different.)
It’s not tenable because “humanist” rests on “humans” and if what a human is depends on the whim of the woman (and usually a woman who is stressed, hormonally off-ballance and possibly exhausted and ill) the foundations of the society crumble.
Secular humanism rests on a Christian moral foundation, but that is a topic for another time.
- "Have You Ever Kippled?"--Chicago Boyz. This article is mostly about the enduring popularity of Rudyard Kipling and his works--at least among normal people. For one of the more interesting parts of the article was this comment:
This topic was brought to my mind when I commented on David Fosters’ Amelia Does Kipling post – that admitting to a liking for and knowledge of the prose and poetry of Rudyard Kipling is a kind of secret conservative/libertarian handshake, by which we recognize another of our kind. Recognizing and readily quoting something like The Gods of the Copybook Headings, or When the English Began to Hate, The Sons of Martha, or The Dane-Geld, and being familiar with his vast and varied body of work is something which goes bone-deep among us but also leaves those of a woke inclination utterly cold. ...
