Whew! Just got home from a week filming my segments for next season’s Personal Defense TV show. PDTV was the brainchild of outdoor sports authority and gun owners’ rights advocate Tom Gresham, who is the host and director of the program. Those who appear on each show are Clint Smith at Thunder Ranch in Oregon, the Gunsite crew in Arizona (both filmed on location at those excellent training facilities), and me. New regulars on the upcoming fourth season will include Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu instructor George Wehby, firearms instructor Tiger McKee, and to add a female-oriented element I find most welcome, Il Ling New from Gunsite.

Each season we’ve filmed my segment at a different venue: Gunsite the first season, my police department the second, and PASA Park in Illinois last year. This time around, we used the Del-Tone/Luth Gun Club range on the edge of St. Cloud, Minnesota, the home of some of the best three-gun practical competitions in the country, lots of traditional trapshooting, and most recently a “zombie shoot.” (Yes, you heard me.) Owner Randy Luth, founder of one of the world’s leading manufacturers of AR15 rifles, DPMS, was a wonderful host for the PDTV crew, and the same was true of his staff.

I got to shoot cool guns. Yep, all made by the show’s sponsors, but fortunately, we have sponsors who make good stuff. Ruger’s P345 auto pistol, and their new little LCR .38 revolver. The new subcompact 1911 .45 from Smith & Wesson, and the same company’s Model 686 service revolver. XD45, the new XD(M)9, and match grade TGO-II 1911 .45 from Springfield Armory. A snub-nose Tracker .45 revolver and a .410 Judge wheel-gun from Taurus. Had occasion to shoot while vertical, and while horizontal; left-hand and right-hand, and then doing it again for slo-mo shots on high-speed camera, close-ups, different angles, and all of that. Even sacrificed what little dignity I have left by demonstrating what to do when you’re legally carrying a concealed handgun in public, and have to drop your drawers in a public rest room.

The first couple of years, Personal Defense TV was one of the two most-watched gun shows on the Outdoor Channel, and some weeks, the most watched. Viewer feedback tells me it still has a very healthy audience, but since the group that owns the production company bought The Sportsman’s Channel, we went to that last year, and it’s not Nielsen-rated, so I don’t know the current numbers.

The season we were shooting for last week will begin to air next October. You can get it on cable via Sportsman Channel, or for a small fee can download it real time at www.sportsmanchannel.com. That website will also tell you more about the show, other cable networks where you can find it, etc. There are also DVDs of past seasons available.

If you get a chance to watch it, I hope you enjoy it as much as we all enjoy putting it together for you. Meanwhile, a Google search should find where you can listen to Tom Gresham’s great radio show “GunTalk” every week. It’s downloadable to iPod in podcast form, and is one of my favorites.

Setting up to film “the New York Reload,” live fire. Hay bales are to catch an empty handgun that will have to be dropped. Blade-Tech holster contains Springfield TGO-II .45 auto pistol.

Erik Fleischhacker lines up Camera 2 on Mas before filming demo of defensive shooting technique.

From left, host and star Tom Gresham, Mas, and lead cameraman Mark Ambroz review last scene in-camera as producer Scott Mayer takes notes on elapsed time. Revolver in Blade-Tech holster is S&W Model 686 .357 Magnum. All filming is done with live ammo, sometimes with remote-control cameras downrange.

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Think of your gun as a power tool. A remote control drill, if you will. You wouldn’t rest your chain saw with its blade in your lap even if you were sure it wasn’t turned on. What possesses people to treat more cavalierly the power tool we call a firearm?

One of my pet peeves has always been the practice common among sporting clay bird shooters to rest the shotgun with its muzzle on their shoe, with the “business end” of that power tool literally at muzzle contact with their foot. They’ll tell you, “Don’t worry, it isn’t loaded.” What’s that old saying again, about so many people being accidentally shot with empty guns?

Below, courtesy of a friend who is one of the top small arms experts living in my opinion, are some pictures of what can happen when such a practice goes wrong. I’m told the shooter was resting the shotgun’s muzzle on his foot when something (most likely an errant trigger finger) pressed the shotgun’s trigger to the rear.

This guy was lucky. The muzzle was resting in the space between the great toe and the next one. He may or may not keep the big toe. Had the gun been a couple of inches back, he might have lost the whole foot. I’m told that it was a light clay bird load of small #8 birdshot pellets.

The late, great Colonel Jeff Cooper postulated four cardinal rules of gun safety. 1) All guns are always loaded, and treated as such. 2) Never allow the muzzle to point at anything you are not prepared to see destroyed. 3) Do not let your finger enter the trigger guard unless and until you are in the very act of intentionally firing the weapon. 4) Be certain of your target.

This case is a clear violation of Rule 2 and probably Rule 3. Public schools should teach certain basic safety rules to our children at a very early age. Right up there with “Don’t urinate on the electric fence or the third rail”; “Don’t eat the yellow snow”; and “Don’t stand in the doorway of a Harley bar and scream ‘Kawasaki rules!’; should be…

DO NOT POINT GUN MUZZLES AT YOUR OWN BODY PARTS!

Readers are invited to share anecdotes of their own in this vein

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At the National Rifle Association’s annual convention last week, Ruger announced their new SR556 rifle.  It’s an AR15 clone, chambered for the 5.56mm NATO/.223 Remington.  The “SR,” of course, stands for Sturm, Ruger.

The buzz on the Internet gun boards is one of disappointment. Ho, hum, another drop in the great sea of cloned AR15 semiautomatic rifles.  And, of outrage: “$1995 manufacturer’s suggested retail price?!? They’re out of their minds!!”

I have to respectfully disagree with both assessments.

The founder of the company, the late William B. Ruger, Sr., was a friend of mine.  He positioned his namesake company as a leading manufacturer of robust, high quality, high value firearms that were, for the most part, “sporting arms.”  Bill garnered the lasting enmity of hard core gun rights activists many years ago when he supported a ten-round magazine capacity cap, long before the Bill Clinton Assault Weapons Ban, which thankfully sunsetted in 2004.  I discussed it with him, and disagreed to his face. He told me he did it because he dealt face-to-face with the elected officials on Capitol Hill, and they told him that the anti-gunners were presenting themselves as the voice of reason and compromise, while the pro-gun people were seen in Congress as intractable and not giving an inch.

The introduction of this rifle by Sturm, Ruger strikes me as a positive turnaround in a number of ways that go beyond the hardware.  It follows the introduction of their tiny, pocket size LCP .380 concealed carry pistol and the reinstatement last year of sales to the general public of 20-round magazines for their popular Mini-14 .223 rifles. I see that as a tacit admission that, yes, defensive firearms and not just hunting or target guns are OK for ordinary people to own and use, dammit.

A few years ago another major player in the hunting/target rifle field, Remington, introduced their own AR15 clone, the R15, which they sell as a hunting rifle. (Remington is owned by Cerberus, which also encompasses two major AR15 manufacturers, Bushmaster and DPMS.) In a time when our new President has blatantly announced that he would like to ban such “assault rifles,” the Remington and now the Ruger introduction of AR15s signals a growing public acceptance of a paradigm shift that says even more convincingly, “It’s OK to have these rifles.”

“The Second Amendment isn’t about duck hunting or target shooting.”  I personally believe every law-abiding citizen has a right to have these guns. But it helps our argument when it is realized that the AR15 is the gun that for years has been winning the National rifle championships at Camp Perry, Ohio, and has been accepted as an ideal tool for eradicating large fields of disease-bearing prairie dogs, and for humanely destroying marauding coyotes.  And for that alone I say, “Good for Ruger!”

As to the price, careful analysis shows that it’s not really unreasonable.  First, this is a piston-action AR, which historically has cost significantly more than the original gas-operated Stoner design. Second, it comes with pricey, top-quality components such as MagPul magazines (high capacity, thank you very much, and three per rifle) and premier grade BUIS (back-up iron sights) from Troy Industries. Couple that with the fact that even in today’s sellers’ market, Rugers generally go out the gun shop door for less than MSRP. May not be the bargain of the century, but you’ll get good value received.

I hope to have my hands on one of these rifles next month. If that works out, I’ll let all y’all know how it performs.

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A week ago, when I was away from home, a dear friend was up late, unable to sleep because of something that felt like a combination of indigestion and, maybe, a hiatal hernia. Being about a year older than me – in the age group where one’s friends croak with alarming and saddening frequency – he decided that some medical attention would be in order.

That turned out to be a damn good move. They found a 95% blockage in the anterior descending coronary artery, a situation that some cardiologists call “the widowmaker.” The folks at the hospital handled it swiftly and efficiently. He now has a stent in place, inserted through the femoral artery, and by yesterday he was not only out of the hospital but shooting on the pistol range with me. His prognosis is excellent.

Ah, the wonders of modern medicine…and, ah ha, the wisdom of listening to your body (and knowing what to listen for), and not waiting until the pain closes deep inside the center of your chest like an iron claw before you start to take action.

Tonight, though, he and I spent some time talking about something else. I hadn’t learned of his near miss until four days later. When it went down, he and his wife were too busy to notify their friends.

My friend had a lot of time to think in the hospital. It occurred to him that if he had just blinked out, his wife would never have known how much his guns and his guitars are worth, and might have been ripped off and lost their value after he was gone. We talked, and now he’s going to take some time to put together a detailed list of what everything is worth, including the accessories. Some of his collectibles are worth literally a hundred times as much to another collector or enthusiast as a lay person would price them by guesswork at a yard sale or auction. Lists will be made of people who can guide his widow in disposing of his worldly goods to her best financial advantage.

When life-threatening crisis is upon us, there are too many more urgent things to do than to tell everybody that someone is really sick, or hurt really bad. A group of us decided tonight in my living room to put a phone tree network together, and share names, phone numbers, and both snail mail and email addresses of people who should be notified at such times. When the time comes – not “if,” but “when,” because the final exit will come for all of us – pulling the trigger on that list will allow the closest of the loved ones to do the most important things while the next ring(s) out can be handling the less imperative notifications.

I’ve seen too many people die intestate, seen too many people defer the recognition of their own mortality and not keep their last will and testament up to date, and not plan for inheritance taxes…and, as a result, have watched helplessly as what those good people wanted to go to certain designated heirs, instead was devalued and blown away like sand in a duststorm. Or, worse, was stolen by the vultures who prey on the grief of the bereaved. My “after I’m outa here” distribution has been locked in place for a long time (and kept regularly updated), but I learned some things this week. The notification process, and the reaching out and gathering of the extended family and friends circle, are gonna be a LOT better in order now.

The one thing certain in this life is the leaving of it. We all need to remember that if we want the aftermath of that to go the way we want it, it’s up to us to put the mechanism in place now, while there is still time.
The Reaper tends to make his visits unannounced.

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I’m hearing a lot of folks screaming that Eric Holder, our new attorney general, is spitting on America’s police. This is because he’s carrying the message that the Obama administration wants to cut death benefits for officers slain in the line of duty by almost fifty per cent.
Now, Mr. Holder would not have been my first choice as the nation’s chief law enforcement officer. That said, I think he’s getting a bad rap on this one.
A careful reading of the proposal (SEE LINKS ATTACHED< AP and FOX) shows that the individual death benefits to slain officers’ family survivors will remain at $300,000 plus per fatal event. The administration wants to reduce the budget because fewer officers are dying.
The relative reduction in police death toll is something to cheer about. Body armor, invented circa 1970 by Second Amendment advocate Richard Davis, has played a big part in this. So has improved training in weapons and tactics. Another big part of the death toll reduction is attributable to the tremendous advances that have been made in the practice of emergency trauma medicine in recent years. When I came on in the early 1970s, the only trauma dressing in the patrol car was a box of sanitary napkins, placed there for precisely that purpose. Today, I know departments where cops are issued Israeli battle dressings to carry in the cargo pockets of their uniform pants on routine patrol. Things have gotten better.
It doesn’t mean that it’s safe to be a cop. Yesterday, I spoke on the phone with Interim Sheriff Ed Spooner of Okaloosa County, Florida. Two of his deputies, both fine and courageous public servants, were murdered a few weeks ago. Sheriff Spooner and I agree that there are lessons other cops can learn from this tragic sacrifice, and I’ll be getting back with him in a few weeks after the Florida Department of Law Enforcement completes its investigation. In recent weeks we’ve seen the murders of four officers in Oakland and three in Pittsburgh.
Police work is still dangerous. But, I have to say, the Attorney General does not seem to deserve the hard knocks he’s getting on this particular issue.

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