On January 8, the Brady Bunch suggested a lighting of a candle as a protest to gun violence.
Awww…how sweet.
The 8th, of course, was the one year anniversary of the grotesque mass murder in Tucson, Arizona by Jared Lee Loughner. His most famous victim, left brain-damaged for life, was Arizona Congressman Gabby Giffords. She was clearly his intended target.
The gun-banners made much of the fact that Representative Giffords was shot with a Glock 19 9mm pistol. They neglected to mention that Gabby Giffords had, prior to the shooting, proudly stated that she owned and had a license to carry a Glock 19 of her own. The mass-murderer was put to the ground and captured by courageous citizens, including ARMED citizen Joe Zamudio, who was carrying a pistol of his own at the time, a Ruger P95 9mm.
But lighting a candle will prevent the Jared Loughners of the world from carrying out their monstrous deeds? Good Lord…it’s like the candlelight vigils from the Take Back the Night Movement.
It’s nice to know that people care. Hell, I care. I’ve spent an adult lifetime learning how to ward off monsters such as Loughner, and sharing that knowledge with others.
Some pro-gun bloggers got together and did their own January 8 counterpoint to the Brady thing. I wish I had contributed more to that: all I did was take a picture of some strong women with candles and nine millimeters at a Glock match in Clearwater, Florida on the 8th. (Great match, by the way, and kudos to the Wyoming Antelope Club in Clearwater for putting it on.)
The decades have taught me that women won’t take back the night by marching with candles. They’ll take it back when those who prey on them learn – some the hard and final way – that their intended victims can be more dangerous to them, than they are to their intended victims.
Those you see below have it right.
If some monster tries to rape or murder a woman I care about, I don’t want him to see the flickering light of a candle.
I want him to see a muzzle flash, from the front.
I hate to paraphrase Al Capone, but a candle and a Glock will earn women more safety than just a candle. From left: Gail, Kitty, and Lisa Marie of the Alabama Holster Company’s all-girl pistol team, January 8, at Glock match in Clearwater, FL.
The Evil Princess’ grandson is in town for a shooting visit. At 18, he has made a commitment to join the Marine Corps. He signed up having fired a real gun exactly twice in his life, having grown up as a city kid in one of our nation’s most anti-gun municipalities.
We started him off on Friday, working from the bench to start the hard-wiring between trigger finger, eye, and brain as to what he should see and feel to make a perfect shot. By the end of the day, he was shooting palm-size groups from offhand at 25 yards, and sub-two inch groups in “position-shooting.”
What he had in his hands was my Smith & Wesson Military & Police 15 in .22 Long Rifle. With exactly the same manual of arms as an M4 or M16 (except that it lacks the ability to turn the fire control switch to full auto.) Today he went to an Appleseed event with his grandma, to which he’ll return tomorrow.
That little M&P15 .22 is, I think, an important rifle. It allows young folks to learn marksmanship with the kind of platform they’re likely to be running as their primary small arm if they ever enlist in our nation’s armed forces.
Today, he was one of six or so out of thirty who shot a qualifying score on the Appleseed’s preliminary run with their AQT, or Army Qualification Test. And he did it with the standard iron aperture sights that my friends who are Marines tell me he’ll start with in Marine Corps Basic, shooting against folks who mostly had optical sights.
It appears that the little Smith & Wesson rifle was worth its space in the gun rack. The first of the week, he’ll graduate to 5.56mm, and the Beretta M9 service pistol.
So…I just finished teaching a class with a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolver as my teaching gun…and out of 21 students, only one was using a revolver instead of a semiautomatic pistol. He was 78 years old. This told me something.
That said, though, he finished with a score of 220 out of 250 possible with his snub-nose Ruger SP101, and there was at least one instructor on the line with the same kind of gun to show him how to work it, since the “least modern gun” on the hips of my staff instructor cadre was a 1911 .45 auto, and all the rest had Glocks, S&W M&P autos, or the Springfield XD. Today, I start an advanced class, and have seen the writing on the wall: I’ve switched to a polymer Glock 26 9mm autoloader as my teaching gun for this week.
About ten days ago I was in Phoenix, competing in the South Mountain Showdown, and using the S&W in Stock Service Revolver class. Significant Other and I found ourselves shooting one stage with some other revolver fans. “Cool,” I said, “we’re in a nest of revolver shooters.”
“Or maybe a gaggle of revolver shooters,” she suggested helpfully.
“A cylinder-full of revolver shooters?” I ventured hopefully.
“Or a speedloader of revolver shooters,” she said supportively.
Now, I know the proper term.
We were obviously a “museum” of revolver shooters.
Help me out here…I’m not the LAST dinosaur, am I?
It’s hunting season, for Heaven’s sake. How many of you are going to be hunting birds with a good old classic double barrel shotgun, and how many are going after the Thanksgiving turkeys with a shotgun made of Fiberglas and synthetic stocks with Sorbothane recoil pads? How many will be stalking the winter venison with good ol’ bolt action or lever action rifles made out of blue steel and walnut, and how many will be using something that’s plastique fantastique and tactique-al?
Like that guy said to Clint Eastwood in the first “Dirty Harry” movie… “I got to know.”
It’s 11/1/11. I managed to escape most of that monster October nor’easter one step ahead of the massive snow, and get to someplace warm. Hope all y’all made out OK.
Hunting season is upon us. Time to enjoy the great outdoors, and maybe take some of it home with you for dinner. There’s a primal satisfaction in feasting on turkey or venison you bagged yourself in the woods.
If hunting is not your cup of tea, or something you just don’t have time for, see about shooting a match. The latter is true for me, but I was able to squeeze in a GSSF shoot over the past weekend and plan to shoot an IDPA event the next. Nothing pushes you to keep your skills sharp so much as shooting in friendly competition.
I see the importance of fitting guns to smaller bodies constantly in my “day job” at Massad Ayoob Group. (http://massadayoobgroup.com ). A few weeks ago in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, we had some excellent shooters in one of my MAG-40 classes. More than half shot 300 out of 300 on the final qualification run, which encompasses 60 timed shots including strong hand only, non-dominant hand only, standing, kneeling, etc. The tie-breaker win for overall top shooter went to a young lady who kicked mucho male boo-tay to do it.
She came to us already a very fast action pistol competitor, and on the skill-set side of the class, we concentrated on sharpening up her accuracy. She clearly was listening. She started out with a CZ75 9mm, a rather large Czechoslovakian pistol, and wound up switching to a Smith & Wesson Military & Police pistol in the same caliber. As noted in the above-linked article, this gun has interchangeable backstraps to adapt fit in general and the trigger-reach dimension in particular, to the shooter. This was the gun she used to win the “shooting contest,” capturing the pot of a dollar each from all the shooters in the class. (We do that the Bill Jordan way: “No Second Place Winner.”)
It was her focus, skill, dexterity and mental discipline that captured the victory, but a firearm that perfectly fit her small hand was a part of it, too.
“If it doesn’t fit, you won’t hit”… at least, not as well as you might have. And that goes for the guys as well as the gals.
With spent brass from the last shot still in the air, this young lady is already on target for the next with a well-fitted S&W M&P 9mm, as the stopwatch ticks…
…and she finishes at the top of her class, beating all the men, with a 300/300 “qualification mode” score, and a high 590s out of 600 tie-breaker in “competition mode scoring.” Scoring key for qualification mode can be seen at upper left of the B27 silhouette target.
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