Florida school board shooting

I just got around to watching the video. 

There are a lot of things to be written about the incident by people who know far more about defensive gun use than me.  The stupidity of the sneak purse attack, the strangeness of the stenographer gathering her purse and keys after being told to leave, and the apparent lack of urgency by many people are all worth discussing and learning from. 

I think the biggest takeaway is this: if you were in that audience, with that maniac threatening your life, would you want to have a gun, or not have a gun? 

I'd rather have a gun. 

Time to ignore Joan Peterson's Commongunsense blog

Joan is the writer of Commongunsense.com, and apparently on the board of directors of the Brady Campaign.  The theme of her blog is her activism to reduce gun violence in the U.S., motivated at least in part by the murder of her sister by her brother in law, who used a gun as the murder weapon.  She talks about the murder openly on her blog.

It's a sad story and we all feel for her. But she's been using the tragedy to argue that gun ownership is inherently dangerous, because normal, educated law-abiding people like her brother in law can just snap and shoot someone.  In other words, gun violence is not concentrated among gang members, drug dealers, and career criminals, it's distributed equally throughout the population (Josh Sugermann's "the enemy is ourselves" argument).

Joan has been lashing out at anyone who pointed out government statistics confirming that most murderers have a prior criminal record... like here:

Then I suddenly get jolted by one too many comments. One such was from one who comments regularly. The man was somehow convinced that my former, now deceased brother-in-law must have been a criminal before he shot my sister to death. He must have had a record of some kind. After all, (I imagine him thinking) law abiding gun owners don't shoot people.

The commenter, Sean at An NC Gun Blog, was just pointing out the government stats, and didn't say anything about her brother in law, so Joan's strong, personalized reaction was surprising (and telling).  It turns out there was a book written that describes Joan's brother in law as a total nut job.  You can get all the details at Sean's blog.

If it's true that the brother in law had a record, then Joan has been completely disingenuous about the whole incident, and it really undermines her narrative.  She really appears to have misrepresented a personal tragedy to push a political agenda.

I had been fascinated by Joan's writing because of its unusual rambling style, her snippy reactions to the pro-gun comments, and her constant arguments by vigorous assertion.  It's interesting in the same way that Tommy Wiseau's 2003 film The Room pulls you into its bizarre world, free from any cinematic conventions, continuity, lighting, and social norms.  They're both wonderful in, well, their badness. 

But after finding out what she's all about, I think I'll stop commenting at her blog and writing about her here. Part of Joan's appeal was her sincerity and overzealousness, and now that we know she's in fact quite insincere, I don't see the point in paying her any attention.

I won a USPSA stage for the first time

This weekend's match had El Presidente as the classifier.  If you haven't seen it yet, you start the stage facing uprange in the surrender position, then turn and draw, fire two shots on each of three targets, perform a mandatory reload, and fire two more shots on each target.  It looks like this:



I finished the course in just under 7 seconds with 50 points, for a hit factors of about 7.1, or 66% of the top Single Stack Division score on record.  The next highest hit factor, for any division, was about a half point less.  I'm excited about my performance here because a few more of these will bump me up from C to B. 

My shooting has improved a lot in the past few matches.  I haven't been practicing more, but I've been obsessively reading Brian Enos' book Practical Shooting - Beyond Fundamentals.  He's really helped my mental approach to shooting.  It's hard to describe, and I really want to write about this more when I can articulate it better, but when I shoot a stage clean and fast, it feels like an out of body experience.  It's like I'm watching myself in a movie, automatically shooting and reacting, transitioning smoothly and making up shots without hesitation when I call a miss.  

Getting into that state of hyper-awareness is what has me addicted to USPSA. 

You must read commongunsense.com

If you can look past her mildly dyslexic writing, annoying repetition of her catch-phrase, and lame clip-art, the old lady at commongunsense.com provides a rare glimpse into the sick, twisted minds of the gun ban crowd.

I've only gotten through a couple of her posts, but her theme is to say how common sense dictates that no one should have guns.  Common sense dictates that the gun show loophole kills thirty million Americans each year.  And so on.  She doesn't ever really present facts to support her case, rather she just assumes she's right.

Here's a gem from her most recent post, responding to a thoughtful, articulate comment from someone on our side saying that gun violence is concentrated in certain groups, not spread equally through the population:

I concede that it's possible that many murdererers have prior felony records. It's not actually easy to find good information about this so it's hard to make a point on either side. Sometimes otherwise law abiding gun owners do just snap, though, and shoot people.

Oh thanks, hon.  This is like when I get in a stupid argument with my wife, and I know I'm entirely wrong but still keep arguing because I have nothing better to do, and the next day I give a half-apology saying bullshit like "Who's to know what's right or wrong?... things got heated and we both said things we regret... mistakes were made on both sides."

Anyways, it looks like the commongunsense.com chick is having a bit of nervous breakdown over there because 99% of her comments point out how wrong she is.  Keep 'em coming, boys.  Maybe then she'll relax and take up gardening instead of trying to save us gun owners from ourselves.

Harvard researcher David Hemenway makes a great case for concealed carry

Here's an excerpt from a great article from Harvard School of Public Health's David Hemenway, comparing criminal vs. self-defense gun uses...

The opportunity for a law-abiding gun owner to use a gun in a socially desirable manner--against a criminal during the commission of a crime--will occur, for the average gun owner, perhaps once or never in a lifetime. It is a rare event. Other than self-defense, the use of a gun against another human is socially undesirable. Regular citizens with guns, who are sometimes tired, angry, drunk, or afraid, and who are not trained in dispute resolution, have lots of opportunities for inappropriate gun uses. People engage in innumerable annoying and somewhat hostile interactions with each other in the course of a lifetime. It should not be surprising that inappropriate, socially undesirable "self-defense" gun uses by people who believe they are law-abiding citizens outnumber the appropriate and socially beneficial use
of guns.

I couldn't think of a better way to explain the rationale for concealed carry.  Here we have a Harvard PhD, funded by the Joyce Foundation, saying that the average person (not even a high risk person!) should expect in his lifetime one confrontation during which he'd be perfectly justified in using lethal force.  I interpret his statement as justifying the daily carry of my concealed pistol.  When that one situation comes, when you're faced with imminent grave bodily injury, there's no better way to deter or stop the threat than with a gun.  He counters this with a specious argument that CCW people will kill indiscriminately when faced with life's everyday annoyances.  Sorry, David, during two decades of shall-issue concealed carry, it hasn't happened.  The evidence is in, and your side clearly lost. 

In addition, Hemenway implies that there exists a distribution of risks.  If the lifetime average number of grave, imminent attacks the average person faces is somewhere between zero and one, then how fat is the right tail of the distribution?  In other words, there is some fraction of the population who can expect two, three, four or more attacks in his lifetime.  I hypothesize that this risk vector includes such factors as urban location, poverty, non-white race and female gender.

These risk factors highlight the racial discrimination and sexism in our gun laws.  When people like Hemenway push to ban civilian gun ownership, they seek to take away the ability of minorities and women to defend themselves in the one or two life-threatening home invasions, muggings, and rapes that they should expect to face in their lifetime. 

It's not the gun banners' proximate intention to further weaken the most vulnerable and at-risk in our society, but that's what they would do.  And it's immoral. 

Listen to Daria Bruno on 920 AM WHJJ Providence

This past weekend I took the NRA Pistol Instructor course from Ken Wilkinson in Niantic, CT.  (More to come about Ken's great class).  

One of the instructor candidates was Daria Bruno, who hosts an AM talk show in Providence, RI.  Webcasts of the show are also available at her website if you miss the live show. 

Be sure to check out Daria's website at sticktoyourgunsradio.com. 

Josh Sugermann's misleading suicide article in Huffington Post

Josh Sugermann, a leading gun ban advocate and federally licensed D.C. gun dealer, published yesterday in the Huffington Post what is perhaps his most misleading article to date. And that's saying a lot, given his record.

He cited two figures - the crude suicide rate of all Michigan residents (11.7 per 100,000) and the crude suicide rate of Michigan concealed carry licensees (17.6 per 100,000). He concludes, without any further analysis, that "Michigan concealed handgun license holders have a higher rate of suicide than the state's general population."

This statement, implying that guns cause suicide and therefore should be banned, is so misleading because it compares an outcome between two very different groups. If, and only if, the characteristics of the populations being compared are the same, can one make a valid analysis like this. 

CCW holders in Michigan are not like the general population in Michigan.  A few obvious reasons include:

• CCW holders are at least 21 years old, while the general public includes children and teens.
• CCW holders are overwhelmingly male, while the overall population is half male. 
• Veterans are overrepresented in the CCW group compared with the overall population.

Differences like these are what make the crude suicide rate higher for CCW people - but that in itself doesn't mean anything.  The difference is caused by confounding factors, determinants that have nothing whatsoever to do with gun ownership. This is why it is so disingenuous for Sugermann to link CCW with suicide - the two have little to do with each other.  He knows this, yet he puts the lie out there for people who don't know any better.

What would be a valid comparison? Here's a start: comparing two samples of adult males with similar demographic characteristics, one sample being non gun owners, the other being CCW holders. I'm not sure if the Michigan data Sugermann cites have this granularity, but we do know that Michigan males 20 years and older have a suicide rate of 20 per 100,000, lower than the CCW population. This is a good preliminary indication that men who lawfully carry are actually at less risk of suicide.

Josh Sugermann runs the VPC, an organization funded solely by the Joyce Foundation and that has zero popular financial support. He publishes garbage like this to get headlines and keep the money coming in.  It seems to me by the tone of his recent articles that he's more or less given up at this point, that he really doesn't have the fire under his butt anymore.  Is this really the best he can do? 

I'm also amazed that Sugermann gets media exposure for this article. It would be as if he wrote the article "People admitted to hospital in past year face greater risk of death," and newspaper editors and websites published it as serious analysis.  His suicide comparison is no less absurd.

I work in a gun-free zone

Here's what I see every morning walking into the Jamaica Plain VA...

 

In other words, the Department of Veterans Affairs makes it a point to post a large sign, at every VA entrance, advertising to criminals that every civilian on the property is unarmed, and cannot counter a violent attacker with lethal force.  VA campuses can be dangerous; they're open to the public generally, with large, poorly-lit parking lots.  They're an attractive location for violent criminals. 

Title 18 Section 930 (cited on the sign) is short and to the point, though I'm not sure how to interpret it.  It basically says that lethal weapons are prohibited on federal property, but there's an exception for carrying incidental to hunting or other lawful purposes.  Common sense dictates that "other lawful purposes" would mean a licensed civilian like me carrying concealed.  Like most gun laws though, it's ambiguous and confusing. 

The VA clearly wants ordinary citizens to think it's illegal to carry on their grounds.  But I do suspect there are a lot of civilians carrying on federal property, ignoring the sign, and just not talking about it.

Does VA Secretary Eric Shineski post a sign on his front lawn announcing the fact that his house is a gun-free zone?  No, because that would be irresponsible and dangerous for himself and his family.  Then why does he force this nonsense onto his department's employees?

Disabling a 1911 firing pin safety

Is it safe to do this? 

Yes, but only for a competition gun.  It would be foolish to disable any safety mechanism on any gun you might use for self-defense.  The DA and civil lawyers will have a field day with you.  Don't disable any safeties on a carry or house gun.  Ever. 


What's the problem?  

I've been having misfires on my S&W 1911 due to light primer strikes.  We tracked the problem down to the Schwartz firing pin safety.  This system consists of a plunger in the slide that blocks the firing pin unless it's levered out of the way by the grip safety.  The flaw here is that it's possible to activate the grip safety just enough to allow the trigger to release the hammer, but not completely move the plunger out of the firing pin's path, causing the pin to graze the plunger, losing enough momentum to cause a light primer strike. With my skinny hands, this happens a lot. 

How to fix it?  

Two steps.

1) First remove the plunger, spring and plate from the slide.  To do this, unscrew the rear sight and drift it out.  The three parts will come out of the top of the slide very easily.  It'll look like this:

Note the plunger is marred from contact with the firing pin. 

2) Modify the lever so that it doesn't get caught in the newly empty hole in your slide.  If you leave the lever as is, it's very possible for the tip to get caught in the hole (heh heh) during recoil, damaging the lever and hammer pin, and possibly other parts.

The stock lever looks like this when it's in its highest possible position.

 

Blacken the exposed part with marker, then do a detail strip to remove the lever from the frame.  Once it's removed, simply grind or cut off all the black part, plus a few 100ths more.  The idea is to make it so this part can never get in the way of the slide.  

Here's what it looks like in the frame after grinding and, of course, deburring.  

In it's highest position, the lever is just below flush with the frame. 

That's really all there is to it.  I want to really emphasize that if you're having problems with your S&W 1911 firing pin safety, the best thing is to call their great customer service department, and send it to them for adjustment.  Only disable the safety in this manner if it's strictly a competition gun, and you know what you're doing.  

USPSA single stack Smith & Wesson 1911

Here's my main gun for now.  It started as a stock S&W .45 1911, and I've been customizing it part by part for the past year.  I'm using it to compete in the USPSA single stack division.

Here's what I've changed so far.

• Smith & Alexander magazine well
• Hi-viz fiber optic front sight
• STI titanium trigger with short, flat aluminum insert
• Wilson Combat extended magazine release
• 14 lb recoil spring, 19 lb hammer spring
• Carbon Creations red grips

My next small project is to disable the gun's firing pin safety.  I've been having misfires when the grip safety isn't pressed all the way.  It's likely the plunger rises enough to just snag the firing pin and slow it down enough to cause a light primer strike.  I've been wrapping a ladies' hair elastic around the grip for a while, but this can't continue!

I'll post all the details and photos of how to remove the plunger from the slide, and grind down that lever so it doesn't get stuck in the hole when the slide moves rearward.

I won't be flying anytime soon

Even before the TSA started bombarding travellers with full-body X-rays, or the alternative punitive sexual molestation, I hated flying.  I can bear being on the plane for a long time, just as long as I have ear plugs, plenty to read, and the person next to me is not too gross. 

I hate flying because of the incompetent security theater of the TSA.  We will never catch a terrorist by making everyone remove their belt and shoes; it just wastes time.  Randomly sampling the crowd for extra pat-downs wastes even more time (think grandmas and 3 year-olds).  And confiscating liquids... sheer stupidity. 

It's been said over and over by security experts that the Israeli model works because they look for terrorists, not things.  I really do hope that we move towards this effective, inexpensive, low-tech way of spotting bad guys at airports.  All they do at El Al is talk to passengers, ask where they're going, if they have a one-way ticket, where they've been.  And it works.  The US should do the same. 

So, if you do fly a lot and hate the security theater as much as me, be sure to make your voice heard.  Opt out of the X-rays this Wednesday and embarass the TSA knuckleheads so badly that they're forced to smarten up.  It'll inconvenience a lot of people for one day, but it's for the greater good.

I'm also going to make a prediction about the idiotic reactiveness of the TSA.  Some lone terrorist, at some point, is going to try to take down a plane with a cavity bomb.  Then the era of probing airline passengers will begin.  It's the next logical step, and virtually guaranteed to happen.  Send the TSA a message this Wednesday that they've gone too far already.

PPC is hard

I shot a semiauto PPC match for the first time in a while this past weekend, and I really want to make it a point to shoot this competition any Sunday there's not a USPSA match.  After reading Brian Enos' book, I'm really convinced that if I ever want to be a Master shooter, I have to shoot accurately - one ragged hole at fifty feet.  I am not there yet.

In the first match I scored 432 out of 600, then 436 in the second - not good at all.  What really killed me was shooting lefty (my weak hand) from behind the barricade.  This is a problem I've been having shooting my 1911, but not revolvers.  With the semiauto, I need to put the front sight along the left edge of the paper for the bullet to even hit the paper.  Most of them end up being misses, some low and centered, some low and right.


I've asked some good shooters for advice on this one. One guy who has the same problem has been compensating by aiming at the target's right shoulder.  He's shot this way for years and scores high 500s in PPC.  He thinks that astigmatism is at least partly to blame, and there's not much that can be done other that to trust your new sight picture when shooting cross-dominant.  At least one other knowledgeable instructor agrees.  

I don't buy it though, and here's why.  Whether I'm shooting strong hand or weak hand, I'm aiming and seeing the same sight picture with my right (dominant) eye.  I squeeze the trigger, and when the shot breaks, the gun doesn't care which hand is holding it, so the bullet should impact the same place.  So there's something else causing the bullet to hit right of the target, and it can't be that my defective football shaped eyes see differently when shooting lefty - it just doesn't make sense.

So there are a few things that could be happening.  Most likely, I'm flinching without even realizing it.  I'm yanking the trigger at the last instant, or blinking and losing my sight picture right before the shot.  I am convinced this is the cause, so I'm dedicating at least 100 rounds a week to practicing left handed.  It's also possible that the gun is recoiling differently as the bullet is traveling down the bore.  Everyone's weak hand is, well, weaker than their strong hand, and I think it may be worth firming up my grip and seeing how that affects my groups.  But still, my trigger control has to be the dominant factor here.

If anyone has advice on this issue, I'd love to hear it.  I can't go through life with five or six misses on the third string of PPC! 

Another shooting in my neighborhood

I shoot at the range in Dorchester one or two nights a week. Sometimes I swing back to JP Licks on Centre St. to get my wife an ice cream.

Two days ago, at about 7:30 at night, a couple of thugs decided to have a shootout at the pizzeria across the street from there. Three of them have died, and one innocent person was shot in the leg, probably by a ricochet. There's no word yet about whether they were all properly licensed, but I'll venture a guess that they were not.

This all happened less than a half mile away from my house. It really drove the point home that there are bad guys out there, and a lot of them are armed. I don't want to the only sucker caught up in a bad situation without a gun.

It is scary how little control I would have in a situation like that. I'm across the street, my Ruger SP-101 tucked in my IWB holster, ten extra rounds of Speer Gold Dot 125 grain .357 hollowpoints in my left jacket pocket, coming out of the store with my ice cream, then all hell breaks loose. The only thing I could do is go for hard cover. The thugs are blasting away at each other with tunnel vision, without any care as to what's behind their target. Ideally I would run my ass out of there, and for thirty seconds be the fastest man alive. But then again, do I really want give up my cover when there are bullets flying?

There's nothing I can do here except wait it out behind the thick concrete planters by the sidewalk, hoping the gunfight doesn't come my way. But what if the shooters do come my way? At what point would I unholster my revolver? At what point can I use lethal force to protect myself against grave injury?

I have to admit here that I don't know. I really need to take a concealed carry course at GOAL, or maybe splurge on one of Massad Ayoob's courses. The possibility of me being caught near a gunfight is real, and I have to know what to do to survive. This isn't hypothetical stuff, it's real life in the city.

Or maybe it's time to get the hell out and move to New Hampshire.

Occupations worthy of CCW

On September 1, three thugs brutally murdered pizza delivery man Richel Nova in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Boston.

Under Mayor Tom Menino's orders, the Boston Police issue unrestricted Class A licenses to carry only to doctors and lawyers (and the politically connected). Now would be a great time for the Mayor to add pizza delivery to the list of occupations that "need" a concealed carry license.

Granted, it's rare for a delivery man to get killed on the job, but surely robberies and muggings are common and never make the news.

Why won't Menino modernize Boston's concealed carry licensing, and allow the next potential victim to have a fighting chance?

Gun grabbers in the headlines

I've been noticing that whenever I see an article that argues for gun control, or stirs up fear of .50 caliber (or .30 caliber or .22 caliber) rifles, it's quite often based on a new "study" by this Violence Policy Center. Go to their site and see for yourself the kind of media exposure they get.

There's a pattern here. Many of the news stories refer to rankings compiled by the VPC. A Los Angeles newspaper headline might read "California Leads Nation in Drive-by Shootings." The next day's El Paso newspaper headline is "Texas Second in Drive-by Shootings." And the local media eats it up without any critical thought!

The problem with ranking states like this is that some state has to rank number one, some state has to rank number two, and so on. The rankings tell us nothing about the distribution of gun crimes among states, or over time. This stuff matters. The many VPC ranking studies aren't meant to enlighten, they're meant to generate scary headlines, and nothing more.