Shooting 101 - My Gun Culture

Gun Word of the Day: Pill

September 13, 2011 By Tom Leave a Comment

Gun Word Of The Day

Pill [pil]

- noun

1. A small globular or rounded mass of medicinal substance, usually covered with a hard coating, that is swallowed whole.

2. Term used in place of ‘projectile’ or ‘bullet’ by some gun writers who have either written too many similar articles and run out of unique ways to express themselves, and/or aging males who have a subconscious need to purchase orally administered sexual enhancement products. Pardon us for being redundant.

3. Use of the word ‘pill’ in place of ‘bullet’, ‘projectile’ , ‘slug’ or even ‘lead’ is somewhat analogous to 40-something parents telling their kids’ friends to come “hang out and chillax betches.”

Remember, friends don’t let friends say silly things like “pill”

Filed Under: Shooting 101 Tagged With: new shooters, really?, shooting 101, terminology, too cool for school

410HandGuns.com – Judging the .410 Handgun

August 19, 2011 By Tom 1 Comment

hCharter Arms El Presidente 40mm Grenade

What's the effectiveness of your 40mm handgun?

Ever-vigilant in our efforts to bring you the latest shooting industry scoop, we recently crashed the POMA Annual Conference in Ogden, UT. In addition to learning that POMA is a front for a top-secret Zombie Apocalypse Preparation Society, we met some interesting folks with new ideas.

One of those was Gil Horman, frequent contributor to AmericanRifleman.org. In his spare time, Gil has designed and built a new standard testing methodology for the slew of .410 handguns and ammunition now entering the market such as the Taurus Judge, Smith & Wesson Governor, Magnum Research BFR and Bond Arms Snake Slayer. This new performance measurement philosophy is highlighted on a new site, 410Handguns.com.

As long as we can remember, standard testing protocols for standard handguns have been widely ~~abused~~ used. Set up targets at 25 yards, shoot at them from a free-handed hold position, report two or three inch groups, and not-so-subtly hint to the world what a great shooter you are while claiming to have ascertained the mechanical accuracy of the gun in question. Right.

But we digress. Whether or not the standard handgun testing protocols are horse-hockey or not, there is no real standard of any value for objectively measuring .410 handguns with various loads. Enter 410Handguns.com.

According to Horman, the idea is to establish meaningful measurements for different types of loads – bird shot and buck shot pellets – while documenting performance at varying real-world combat distances. The FIST Test Protocol establishes both percentage of strike and group size standards depending on the load type.

410Handguns.com does not only propose standardized testing methodology, it puts it to work. Having tested hundreds of gun / load combinations, 410Handguns.com presents tabular results that allow site users to see how various loads perform in their handgun, or vice-versa. Handy stuff.

Pressed to share in about future enhancements to the site, Horman was reluctant to offer details. However, we’ve learned that work is already under way on development of Huge@ssHandguns.com where the Charter Arms El Presidente Model will be tested with a variety of high explosive, incendiary, and armor penetrating loads. Horman refused to confirm or deny speculation that the site would launch at SHOT 2012 Media Day. Calls to the Las Vegas High-Explosive Zoning Commission have not been returned.

Horman was able to confirm some details of 410Handguns.com short term plans. Next on the testing agenda is .410 Rubber Buckshot. 410handGuns.com will be validating the relative effectiveness of the classic ”I’m rubber, you’re glue. Whatever you shoot bounces off me and sticks to you” defense. Results should be published shortly after infinity plus one.

Filed Under: Business, Concealed Carry, News, Shooting 101 Tagged With: .410, ammo, ammunition, handguns, on the web, shotguns, testing

Gunfire Erupts In South Carolina From Youth Gang Related Activity

July 25, 2011 By Tom 1 Comment

Scholastic Steel Challenge Gang Activity

Gunfire erupted in a Summerville, SC rural community over the weekend as a gang of teenagers, including some pre-teens according to witnesses, literally sprayed hundreds of bullets over a three hour period. According to some estimates, over 1,400 shots were fired before the shooting spree ended just before 1pm eastern time.

Witnesses claim the hoodlums committing these shannanigans were armed with typical ‘street guns’ including Springfield XD’s, Smith and Wesson M&P’s, and Glocks. “Typical Saturday night specials favored by criminals and thugs,” whined New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. “I can’t believe that gun companies are giving our children access to these things. My people tell me that Smith and Wesson even gave them one free of charge in order to encourage this behavior.”

Gang Member Boasting His Colors

Most of the youth involved exhibited no shame and brazenly walked around with their firearms in full view. Most had exposed belt holsters, belt-mounted magazine carriers, and other tactical equipment.

“These kids were armed to the teeth,” observed a passer by. “They had lots and lots of high capacity magazines. Every one of them had at least five from what I could see.”

On further examination, It turns out that the gang was participating in a Scholastic Steel Challenge Match. A source close to the group explained the gangs colors. “They’re wearing Techwear competition shooting jerseys,” explained a mysterious adult ring leader known as Coach Mike. “They have a really cool ‘Steel Stingers’ logo on the back. Totally bad if you ask me and the kids love ‘em.”

A Teaching Moment

The Palmetto Steel Stingers ~~gang~~ team is based at Palmetto Gun Club in Charleston, South Carolina. In addition to providing a great facility for the youth to practice and hone their skills, club members are exceptionally generous with donations, loaner firearms, and free coaching and instruction. National and local gun related companies have also thrown in their support. Smith and Wesson provided a team M&P 9mm, Winchester Ammunition provided big discounts on ammunition, and local retailer East Coast Guns has donated ammunition.

Safety is the number one priority with each new team member receiving exhaustive classroom training before stepping on to the range. Coach Mike also starts each practice session with a pop quiz on the four rules of gun safety and cold range rules.

Scholastic Steel Challenge is a division of the Steel Challenge Shooting Association designed for ~~hoodlums~~ youth ages 12-20. The basic idea is to hit five steel targets as fast as possible, without missing. A youth match consists of four separate courses of fire, each with a different combination of target shape, size, and range. At each course of fire, competitors shoot five ‘strings’ with the best four times getting logged in the books. As the event is timed, each miss costs precious seconds, thereby placing a premium on accuracy and smoothness over raw speed. It’s challenging, which probably explains the name Steel Challenge.

It’s not hard to see how these kids ended up in gun toting gangs. A look at their collective backgrounds tells the story:

Top of class in a prestigious junior high school
Practices drawing and getting fast sight pictures with a paintball gun and paper plates on the clothesline
Former International Irish Dance Champion
Various members of junior and senior high school cheerleading squads
A recent graduate of a summer Civil Air Patrol program

Dangerous group isn’t it?

Got kids? Know kids? Ever seen a kid? Expose them to something fun, safe and challenging. You’ll also get the joy out of scaring the bejeepers out of any hand-wringing pantywaists nearby. Check out the Scholastic Steel Challenge program and find (or start) a youth shooting team in your area! Please, do it for the children!

Filed Under: Competitive Shooting, Life, News, Shooting 101 Tagged With: competitive shooting, kids, youth

Top 10 Tips For A Successful Gun Store Visit

June 27, 2011 By Tom 3 Comments

Shopping with the President can help

While many gun stores are going full-auto retail and implementing 20th century ideas like greeting customers, being polite, and hiring helpful sales staff, you’re going to run into the occasional old school shop run by Clem, Bodean, and Clem’s other brother Clem. Here are a few helpful tips to get you through the experience with a bare minimum of angst and/or gunfire.

1. Don’t acknowledge anyone when you walk in the door. If this makes you really uncomfortable, you can give the briefest hint of a nod in the general direction of Clem, Bodean, and Clem. Don’t work yourself into a hissy about being rude – they won’t acknowledge you either. Under no circumstance should you brightly say “Hello! How are you today? Boy, it sure is hot outside isn’t it!”

2. Stuff your right cheek full of Red Man. Not Copenhagen – that’s for sissies and you’ll be exposed as a rookie poseur right away. If you have not done The Red Man before, practice in advance as uncontrollable nausea can result. If it’s a nice store with real floors, bring the styrofoam coffee cup you used at breakfast for your porta-spitoon. If the shop has a coffee maker, you can top off with a little joe while you browse. Careful, that’s week old coffee there.

3. Don’t remove your John Deere hat when entering the store. You are wearing one aren’t you?

4. If you want to look at a particular gun in the case, but are unfamiliar with the make and model, use the mouth full of Red Man to your advantage. Throw a little extra self-imposed unintelligibility into your request to see the gun. It’s OK, Clem will assume you know what you’re talking about as you have a wad of Red Man ‘sploding your cheek and a John Deere hat. After some practice, your request should sound something like this: “Cun ahhh hole thus mrggumpghphtt rahfull?” (Or ‘puhstull‘ as required)

5. When handing a rifle, aim it at the ceiling and look knowingly over the sights or through the scope as appropriate. Although you may be tempted, don’t try to gain street cred by saying something like “I kilt a buck with one like this last month.” You may be holding something like a Ruger 10/22 or Winchester 9410 and exposed as a rookie poseur. Just nod your head a lot, make grumbly noises, and hand it back when you’re done.

6. Keep your finger off the trigger. Yeah, we know, it’s meant for pullin’, but resist if you can. It’s especially bad form with rifles.

7. Whenever you look at a price tag, shake your head a bit and say “They sure are proud of this one, aren’t they?”

8. Make sure you don’t inadvertently aim at Clem or Bodean. It’s bad form and one or both will almost certainly return the favor.

9. If you do end up buying a gun, and still don’t know what type of ammo you need to go with it, just add some more Red Man and say something like “Gimme 3 boxes too.” Keeping it generic will make Clem assume you know what you’re talking about.

10. Last but certainly not least, don’t dress like a Mall Ninja for the occasion. It’s not as cool as you think.

As an extra bonus tip, if you want some extra-special service, see if you can accompany the President on his next visit to a gun store.

Filed Under: Shooting 101 Tagged With: customer service, gun stores, shooting 101, tips

Gun Word of the Day: Hammer

June 23, 2011 By Tom Leave a Comment

Gun Word Of The Day

Hammer [ham-er]

- noun

1. The part of a firearm designed to provide energy to the firing pin in order to strike the primer of a cartridge. Some hammers, such as those on older revolvers, have the firing pin attached to the hammer and directly impact the primer. Others, generally on more modern designs, impact a transfer bar or mechanism to provide energy to the firing pin. The hammer of a gun does not have to be exposed or visible. For example, the Smith and Wesson 642 revolver and M1 Garand semi-automatic rifle both have internal hammers.

It's Hammer Time!

2. Easily confused with similar terms. For example, Hammer Time is not an appropriate usage in the context of guns. Unless you got slick moves and a pair of parachute pants capable of providing wind power for San Francisco or maybe smuggling dozens of illegal immigrants across the border. Otherwise, you can’t touch this.

Important Safety Tip: While it’s OK to cock your hammer, don’t ever hammer your… Umm. Never mind.

Filed Under: Shooting 101 Tagged With: gun words, hammer, satire, terminology

Whirling Fan Blades of Death

June 16, 2011 By Tom 5 Comments

My Certified Shooting Instructor

Don’t believe everything you hear.

Even if it’s in a gun shop. Even if you hear it from a “Certified Instructor.” Over the course of many years of shooting, I’ve learned that the following groups all claim to be Certified Shooting Instructors:

All members of the National Rifle Association
All shooters who claim to be members of the National Rifle Association, but really are not
Everyone who has ever posted on GlockTalk.com
74% of tween males with internet access
Larry the Mall Ninja

So take any sources of gun knowledge with a grain of salt. There are lots of genuine Certified Shooting Instructors out there – and the good ones won’t mind direct questions. So don’t be afraid to challenge and validate advice you get. It’s your life on the line after all.

Which brings me to the point of this story. Years ago, I took the state required eight hour concealed carry course. From a genuine, state certified concealed carry instructor. Let’s call him Cleetus. Not his real name, but not that far from it, and certainly befitting of his style.

After about six hours of epic and boundless braggadocio we go to a discussion about hollow point ammunition. By the way, Cleetus spent most of the first six hours telling the class how he would win any gunfight he was in because he would just stand there, cold as ice and devoid of fear, while bullets flew by him. He’s been shot at before of course, and gunfire in his direction doesn’t faze him. Anyway, Cleetus would prevail because he would stand firm, cool as a cucumber, take careful aim, and end the altercation. At this point, most of the class was ready to test him on his claim.

Back to hollowpoints. A student asked why hollowpoints were more effective. Cleetus responded with the following answer:

“Hollowpoints is a ferocious man stopper because they’s designed with sharp petals. As the bullet flies through the air, the petals come out like whirling fan blades of death over an inch wide. It flies through the air like that and tears up everything in it’s path. Ain’t no man livin’ through that.”

* While much of the content in this site is, well, a tad exaggerated for cheap attempts at humor, this story is 100% true. Unfortunately.

Filed Under: Shooting 101 Tagged With: bad advice, ccw, instruction, new shooter

About A Gal Who Shoots .30 Cal

June 6, 2011 By Tom Leave a Comment

Anette Wachter - .30 Cal Gal with her Jim Cloward Special

Today we’re taking a look at a different facet of the shooting sports – high-power, long-range rifle competition. While our crack investigative team was surfing the internetz, we ran across .30 Cal Gal, known in civilian circles as Anette Wachter. Anette seems to think that it’s humanly possible to shoot at targets up to 1,000 yards away using iron sights. Right. As if you can even see anything 2/3 of a mile away. On further investigation, we found that she’s actually telling the truth. Not only do she and her husband Charles shoot at targets almost over the visual horizon, they actually hit them. Frequently. Apparently scopes are for sissies.

To read the complete interview with .30 Cal Gal, see the full article on AmmoLand.com

Filed Under: Have You Heard?, People, Shooting 101 Tagged With: competition, interviews, new shooter, women

Jesus Ain’t Gonna Load Your Gun!

May 31, 2011 By Tom 6 Comments

Rangemaster Defensive Pistol Class

So went part of our instruction at the Defensive Handgun training class taught by Rangemaster this past weekend at the LuckyGunner Gun Blogger Shoot.

The folks at LuckyGunner.com, Sellier & Bellot, MagTech, and Rangemaster partnered to host a shooting event of epic proportions. 50 or so infamous gun bloggers were invited to a top secret range for a weekend of shooting free ammunition, testing a wide variety of fully automatic weapons, and participating in an abbreviated defensive handgun class.

Tom Givens taught most of the class with assistance from his wife (and Rangemaster instructor) and a few others of the Rangemaster staff. While handling a class of 28 gun bloggers was an exercise in herding cats, especially since I was not the only one with a short attention span, the Rangemaster staff succeeded in teaching us some solid foundational principles about safe gun handling, gun manipulation under stress, dudes that need to be shot and how to avoid harm from them.

Tom is the only instructor I’ve met that has managed to make discussion of the 4 rules of gun safety both informative and funny.

I went into the class figuring that I learn something new every day so I might as well learn something new about handguns as a defensive tool. While not everything was new, the class gave me a number of things to think about.

Don’t look in the fiery death end of your gun. While SayUncle beat me to the punch on posting this, it stuck in my mind as a pretty good learning to share – again.
Store your trigger finger so that it’s in the ejection port (if you can easily reach) as it provides a tactile reminder that your finger is not on the bang switch.
When discussing the debate over whether to finger check a chamber to verify that’s it’s clear (in addition to visual checking) the question was posed – why would you ever want to clear a chamber in the dark?
Hold your semi-auto pistol with both thumbs high and pointed upwards rather than at the target. Because it helps ensure that your grip is as high as possible while minimizing potential interference with the slide lock.
A rifle is easier to shoot than a pistol primarily because the weight of the gun is more than the weight of the trigger pull (attributed to Larry Vickers)
About follow through and recovery after a shot: what you really need is another hit on dude.
You keep shooting until one of two things happens: the bad guy falls down or runs away.
It takes two sight pictures to fire one successful shot. One to aim and one for the follow through.
A partial gangsta grip can be beneficial in some situations. When shooting one handed, tilting the gun inwards about 45 degrees can help control muzzle flip – if you can deal with the weird sight picture.

Those are just a few of the more fun and interesting tidbits I picked up in the class. All in all, I love the style and quality of training and am anxious to sign my family up for the full two day course.

Now back to Jesus…

During a passionate discussion about the importance of reloading your gun during any perceived lull in the action, Tom warned against being caught in the middle of a fight with an empty gun, with the natural result of thinking “Oh, Jesus!” While He may choose to intervene in other ways, He’s probably not going to load your gun, so you might as well.

Filed Under: Shooting 101

Gun Word of the Day: Rack

May 23, 2011 By Tom 1 Comment

Gun Word Of The Day

Rack [rak]

- verb

1. To cycle the slide of a semi-automatic gun. Usually refers to the procedure of operating a handgun where complete cycling of the slide ejects an empty cartridge case (if present) from the chamber, while moving a new cartridge from the magazine into the chamber. This action basically clears the chamber of an existing empty, or full, cartridge and prepares the gun for firing a new cartridge. Repeated ‘racking’ of the slide will eventually empty the gun of all cartridges. Racking the slide is also used to clear jams or malfunctions. On the range, or in a competition, a command to rack the slide may be used in a couple of different circumstances. When a semi-automatic gun is first loaded, the slide must be racked to load a cartridge into the chamber so the gun is prepared to fire. Second, a range officer may issue a rack the slide command when shooting is finished to verify that a gun is empty.

2. Ummm. This should describe it…

Filed Under: Shooting 101 Tagged With: firearms, new shooter, pistols, terminology, word of the day

Gun Word of the Day: Caliber

May 18, 2011 By Tom Leave a Comment

Gun Word Of The Day

Caliber [kal-uh-ber]

- noun
1. The interior diameter of the bore of a gun barrel, usually measured in inches or millimeters.
A gun barrel with an interior diameter of .357 inches in diameter is technically .357 caliber. Caliber measures the diameter of the bullet and has nothing to do with length or weight of the actual bullet, although calibers have taken on broader meaning in casual conversation. If someone refers to a caliber of 9mm, then they are really talking about a 9mm Luger cartridge and all the assumptions that go with that.

2. A sinister plot by gun people to make things extra-confusing for new shooters.
For example, .38 caliber really means .357 inches in diameter and .380 caliber really means .355 inches in diameter. 9 millimeter also means .355 inches in diameter. To keep things plenty confusing, .40 caliber really does mean .40 inches in diameter. Same with .45 caliber - that means .45 inches. However, .44 caliber really means .430 inches. Of course, .32 ACP (caliber) really means .312 inches. .30 caliber rifle bullets are particularly easy. Some are .308 inches and others are .311 inches. Got it? See, isn’t this gun stuff easy?