Teaching people how to shoot well has been how I’ve made much of my living for many years. Shooting lessons, I remind the students, include the lessons about life that shooting teaches us. I just realized that I’d lost sight of that a bit myself of late.

One point I make is that an Unconscious Competence level of skill, the ability to do something well on auto pilot, is a wonderful thing but not attainable on demand. When performance on demand is of the essence, I recommend ratcheting down to Conscious Competence and taking an instant to think about what you’re doing.

I change guns often. Partly because testing different ones is another thing I do for a living, partly because my students all have different guns and I have to be familiar with all of them, and partly because I simply like to do so.  A few months ago I decided to forsake my ballistic promiscuity and stick for a while with one particular style, a polymer-framed pistol I’ll call Brand A. For the most part, that plan has worked, fulfilling the advice most of us give that if you stay with one “platform” you’ll become better and more reflexive with it.

There’s another side, though, that I’ve been reminded of in the last ten days. Testing polymer-framed pistol Brand B for a gun magazine on Saturday the 3^rd at an IDPA match in Jacksonville, FL, I managed to take First Master and top score overall in the Enhanced Service Pistol division with Brand B. On the weekend of the 10^th and 11^th, I took Brand A to Clearwater for the Florida State Championships…and absolutely tanked.

I’ll tell you right now, it wasn’t a “brand versus brand” thing. I consider the two guns equal in quality and inherent accuracy and “shootability,” model for equivalent model. The first match was smaller, 122 shooters compared to roughly 300 for the second, a deeper pool with bigger sharks in it, but as the guy behind the sights and the trigger both times, I have a pretty good idea why I shot quantitatively worse with the more familiar pistol.

With the less recently familiar Brand B gun, I was focusing on its subtleties. Its grip to barrel angle was slightly different than what I’d been lately habituated to, as was its trigger reach and length of trigger reset. I was running Conscious Competence pretty much every shot. With Brand A, the old familiar extension of the hand, I found myself going auto pilot and taking overconfident liberties.  There were stages where I KNOW I relaxed my grip, where I pointed rather than aimed, where I rushed instead of pressed the trigger.

Where I took my familiar gun, and my supposed skills with it, for granted.

We do that with people, paying more attention to the new folks we want to impress than we pay with our familiar loved ones.  It hurts us in the end.  Life lesson.  We drive our friend’s new Corvette Sting Ray with more care than our own casually-handled Impala, and it does us no good at the end of the day.  Same, same.

That’s why I say that shooting – like some other sports, and other seemingly casual undertakings – can reinforce for us the more important lessons of Life.

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St. Louis gun expert Tim Mullin knows his stuff. I quoted a couple of his books in the first volume of “Massad Ayoob’s Greatest Handguns,” and more of it in the forthcoming Volume II, of which I’ve just reviewed the galley proofs (should be out this year).

Tim has just come out with “MAGNUM: The S&W .357 Magnum Phenomenon,” published in the finest “coffee table book” style by Collector Grade Publications in Ontario (www.collectorgrade.com).

It’s every bit as well researched as his previous book on the Colt National Match pistol, and the photos will induce at least the same high drool level among connoisseurs as did the latter book.

The big revolver and its ground-breaking new cartridge – “the gun that took the ‘proof’ out of bullet-proof vests,” as it was advertised at the time – did much to popularize hunting big game with handguns.  Gun collectors know the ultimate “grail gun” was the very first “Registered Magnum,” given by the company to J. Edgar Hoover, later to disappear into “a private collection” after his death. Well, grail hunters…you’ll find a couple of pictures of it in this book. Hoover thought enough of the weapon to order several for the FBI, and many more agents bought their own, including legendary gunfighters Jelly Bryce and Walter Walsh.  Walsh, over 100 years old, is still with us, a living monument to the ideals the Bureau was meant to stand for.

Mullin delves deep into the history and the subtleties of this classic outdoorsman’s revolver. He points out that the first gun expert to write about it in The American Rifleman did so without ever actually firing one. While Tim details the .357s that followed it – from Smith & Wesson, and from other makers – he focuses on the original .44-frame model, later designated the Model 27 series.  Its mirror-polished finish, its checkered topstrap, and its hand-honed action crafted by the company’s most skilled artisans, made it a showcase of the finest American workmanship that could be applied to a firearm.

The $69.95 retail price is commensurate with super-high quality “coffee table books,” and worth it for the details of Mullin’s painstaking research. I for one enjoyed the heck out of it.

Is the classic Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum one of your favorites, too?  If so, come on into the comments section here, and tell us about it.

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Hope all y’all had a great Valentine’s Day.

Started the morning with true romantic spirit, sleeping in and watching “Zombie Apocalypse,” the Ving Rhames one, which turned out to be every bit as unintentionally funny as I’d been told.

High points for hilarity were a tie between the Browning M2 .50 caliber machine gun mounted on a shopping cart, and the zombie tigers.  The latter were kinda matted & ratty, as would befit their undead status, and the Ray Harryhausen-ish movements were about what you’d expect from a critter trying to “walk off” a pretty good case of rigor mortis.

Well, my valentine and I are both Calvin & Hobbes fans, and all we could think was, “Hobbes Twenty Years Later.” “Sooo, Calvin, you thought you could just abandon me at that dump when you went off to college, eh…?”

The live critters of our holiday were more fun, bearing in mind that we’d celebrated Valentine’s Day as a couple the weekend before, at a Glock match ably run by the Central Florida Rifle and Pistol Club in Orlando.  After an absence of prehistoric wildlife, the range pond now appears to have two resident alligators, one of which kept a wary just-above-the-surface eye on the loud doings a short distance away.  My valentine is a self-described “shooter chick,” and we were far from the only couple in attendance.  Nothin’ says redneck romance like volleys of gunfire.  A recovering big city denizen, my sweetie is in her element on the range, and loves living where she can carry.

We finished up the 14^th at Starbucks, dropping two-dollar bills (to commemorate Starbucks’ refusal to knuckle under to anti-Second Amendment advocates boycott, see post here of January 28, 2012).  Thanks to all who did the same.  The barista who served us told us we certainly weren’t the only ones there for The Cause, and our collective presence was appreciated. (Tried their new Blonde Roast, a light, crisp blend for an afternoon cup.)

Guns, ‘gators, and zombie tigers…seemed like a righteous redneck Valentine’s Day to me.Also helped me to understand why I’m the firearms editor at Backwoods Home, and not the romance editor…

“O my Valentine, my love for you is as undying as, uh, this zombie tiger from ‘Zombie Apocalypse,’…”

Photo by Lara Solanki – © Syfy

It ain’t a REAL  redneck Valentine shootin’  match if ya ain’t got a pond ‘gator watching the range balefully… 

Shooter-chick celebrates Valentine’s Day by strafing down six plates right to left with a Glock 30 loaded with .45 hardball.  Notice spent casing from last shot just behind pistol’s slide, muzzle still on target as middle plate is hit. Strong women are the most interesting…

A $2 bill, symbolizing “2A support,” goes into the tip jar at the nearest Starbucks.

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A recent white paper from Cato Institute has some good info for those who keep guns at home, or legally carry them in public, for personal protection.  Link for the document: “Tough Targets”

They’ve done their homework.

The co-authors bring good credentials to the issue.  Clayton Cramer has long been a highly respected researcher in this field, and David Burnett serves Students for Concealed Carry as PR director.
Learn how a national news magazine’s supposedly impartial roundup of “facts” in the gun control  wound up understating the frequency of justifiable homicides in defense of self or others by more than half.

Read account after documented account of law-abiding men and women and even responsible kids who, in life-threatening emergencies, picked up loaded guns and used them successfully to save the lives of themselves, of loved ones, and even of total strangers who had come under violent criminal or animal attack.

Have a read.

Get back and let us know what you think about it here at Backwoods Home Blog.

True accounts of your own experiences in this vein, or documentable experiences of others you know, are invited as well.

Oh, and don’t forget a Valentine’s Day visit to Starbucks to support that company’s refusal to ban lawfully armed citizen customers.  A $2 bill in the baristas’ tip jar signifies “Second Amendment support.”

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Lots of folks have planned what gun(s) they’re going to buy this year.  An Internet friend on a closed forum has taken a different approach: his new year’s resolution is to spiff up the guns he already has.

I can march to that. Shortly before the end of the last year, I picked up a new Glock 17 with the RTF2 grip frame treatment. RTF stands for Rough Textured Finish, and this one is so aggressive that Glock is only making it now for police holster guns. I found it uncomfortable to wear in an inside the belt holster against bare skin under an un-tucked T-shirt; it’s much more abrasive than the standard RTF treatment on the current Generation 4 Glock pistols.  Significant Other likes the way it sits in her hand, though, and she enjoys Glock matches, so this one got some Dawson adjustable sights with bright fiber optic on the front post.  She is partial to light trigger pulls on match guns, and this will be a dedicated tournament-shooting pistol, so we’ve installed a 3.5-pound connector from Lone Wolf.

My favorite pistol since I was twelve has been the 1911 Colt .45 auto. Back in the Time of the Ancient Ones, as my children would call my prime of life years, I tested a then-new Colt Enhanced Lightweight Commander .45. It grouped about two inches for five shots with just about anything at 25 yards, and I don’t recall it jamming. I liked it enough to buy it, and set about making a project gun out of it for carry.  I figured I’d have the best masters do each bit of work. The legendary Dick Heinie installed one of his street-concealable speed-reload magazine chutes. Pete Single, perhaps the best checkering artisan in the business, checkered the frame for traction.

Time went by, and the project slid further and further toward the back burners. I won a Commander-length Bar-Sto barrel and bushing at a match, and will send that to Irv Stone IV for his masterful installation, which should bring it from a two-inch grouper to a “one-inch gun” at 25 yards, without sacrificing reliability.  I’m still trying to decide who I’ll ask to do the trigger – it’s pretty decent right now, but a plastic trigger is just not esthetically acceptable – and I’m trying to decide between Dave Lauck at D&L Sports and Hilton Yam at 10-8 for the heavy duty fixed night sights. When all that is done, it will go to Robbie Barrkman at Robar for a finish that’s impervious to weather and sweat.

When it’s done, it’ll be my “geezerhood gun” for retirement if I ever get that far. Light to carry, hard hitting, something I’m comfortable with…and, yes, there IS a nostalgia factor at work there.

I don’t usually give my guns nicknames, but I may call this one “Freddy the .45.” In the “Nightmare on Elm Street” movies, the monstrous Freddie was said to be “the bastard child of a thousand madmen.” This pistol will kinda be the bastard child of a thousand madly good gunsmiths.  (Well…maybe not a thousand…but writers are allowed poetic license, aren’t we?)

But, enough about my stuff. What’s your “grail gun” you intend to buy for 2012, or your project to customize a firearm you already have in your possession?  Share it here!

9mm GLock 17 RTF2 out of the box…

 …and same pistol retrofitted with Dawson adjustable rear sight and fiber optic front. Lighter trigger connector and oversize slide lock lever have also been added.

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