However, here are a few puzzling items on the list:

• All handguns by Hi-Point, they are cheap and pretty ugly, but I’ve never read about them being inherently unsafe. There are several other manufacturers of “cheap” pistols listed.
• The Sig Mosquito, certainly a high quality manufacturer and I’d like to know why this is unsafe.
• The Walther P22, same as above.

It seems possible there is an attempt here to eliminate affordable guns that might be used for self defense by folks with fewer financial resources. We’ve seen “Saturday Night Specials” bans before and it, yes these cheap guns are sometimes unsafe, or used by criminals as throw away guns, but they are also used by folks who can’t afford more for perfectly legal means. The fact that there aren’t any reasons listed in the document is troubling. Even if someone like Hi-Point wanted to address the issues that these legislators “found”, there’s no info for them.

So Chicago, sorry you lost that big case, but show some good sportsmanship here, ‘k?

The first block of the day was all morning. An intensive 4 hour block from Rob Pincus of I.C.E. Training, yes that’s TV’s Rob Pincus. Rob’s program is called Combat Focus Shooting program. He spent quite a bit of time talking in the beginning about the program and how it developed as well as some specific thoughts equipment and safety. One point that was highlighted again was how congruent all the programs of the summit were. While there were some subtle differences, they could be attributed to a couple of things. As Rob pointed out, context is important, in day 1′s “Confined Space Shooting” block we did things a certain way because of the specific context, that is, dealing with threats at less than 2 arms reach when we are in a limited space. In Rob’s block we were dealing with a bit more distance and therefore some slight changes are warranted. The other factor is that there simply isn’t always one best way to do something in every situation. The differences are very subtle and there is a consistent training imprint from all the blocks during the summit. I was very impressed by Rob’s teaching style, he was very clear and articulate and injected humor to maintain engagement. It’s obvious that his courses are highly developed.

Once we were done with the talking, we started with the shooting. A key aspect of  Combat Focus Shooting is to not use the sights unless you need to. At very close range it’s important to get combat accurate hits on the threat very quickly. It’s not very important if your shot grouping is 1″ or 6″. At longer ranges, or with smaller targets, precision becomes more important. The fact that we aren’t using the sights does not mean that we aren’t aligning the gun with the target, it’s just that it’s a coarser grain of alignment based on the gun and our body positioning. We repeated several drills to practice this concept, fast shots on a large target, and slower, precise shots on smaller targets. The basic “Balance of Speed and Precision” drill was expanded over the course of the morning by adding additional actions such as the draw, off axis movement and after action checks.

One thing that Rob stressed during this, and all the drills, do not establish a training pattern. If you constantly train that your response to a threat should be 2 shots to the high center chest, then you are conditioning yourself to do that and only that. As we know, fights are chaotic and unpredictable, so when that response you’ve drilled into your head doesn’t work, you’re going to have a problem. We practiced shooting a self selected number of rounds for each command and actually visualized the threat stopping before we would stop shooting. This same concept applies to common gun handling. Every reload should be done as a combat reload, every time your gun goes dry you should initiate a reload, even if you’re out of magazines, every time the gun goes “click” instead of “bang”, initiate immediate action. Don’t let your brain be trained that “click” means anything other than “fix that gun NOW!”. This is a common theme I’ve seen with the quality instructors I’ve trained with.

After lunch, we were in the classroom for the rest of the day. The first block was Managing Unknown Contacts from Southnarc. This described and demonstrated how to effectively handle an unknown person approaching you. Obviously, everyone that might approach us is not a threat, so the response needs to be appropriate without compromising your own safety. Southnarc laid out a series of progressive responses that escalate as the probability of a threat escalates. This includes verbal commands from a simple, “stop right there, please” all the way up to something like “BACK UP RIGHT NOW!”. He also adds movement in a specific manner to maintain distance, and to help you identify additional threats. Remember, bad guys often work in pairs or groups. This module strictly covered the initial response, not what to do when the threat isn’t diffused by that. So there’s a future training opportunity. He also described some of the signs that may indicate that someone intends to do you harm. We concluded this block by pairing up and role playing these responses.

Lastly, William Aprill gave a presentation on the psychology of “Violent Criminal Actors”. There was a lot of information here that I had never considered and understanding how a violent criminal will respond to something that seems like “no big deal” to me was enlightening. It’s good to understand how the built up context of different lives can affect what one might consider a reasonable response to a given situation.

This summit was a great opportunity to sample a variety of instructors at a very reasonable expense and travel. Thanks to Mike & Jim of NE Shooters for organizing, all the folks that helped execute, the instructors, and Pelham Fish & Game for hosting it. I look forward to doing it again next year.

The first event for my relay was Southnarc of ShivWorks. The block was entitled “Confined Space Shooting” and covered the physical mechanics required to defend yourself with a handgun in small spaces and at close proximity to both threats and innocents. The first part was the basic steps of drawing from a holster. While the pistol draw is something most shooters have a pretty good handle on, Southnarc has some very targeted specifics that keep the gun very close to the body and enable rounds to be accurately fired as early as possible. The focus here was being able to access your handgun while minimizing the opportunities for an opponent to interfere with the draw. We practiced each step of the draw and fired from both the compressed ready and extended positions. We covered the “nose over toes” stance that I’m familiar with and conducted several drills. One very enlightening drill was where we practiced engaging a target while surrounded by innocent bystanders, literally shoulder to shoulder. The mechanics of Southnarc’s draw stroke proved effective here as we were able to draw and fire in these very tight confines without sweeping any of the bystanders with our muzzles. Southnarc is very attentive during these drills, always right there to intervene if there is any hint of a safety issue as well as offering corrections. The session concluded with an overview of how to both shoot from, and properly exit a vehicle. The mechanics of this are way more complicated than you would think. Being able to exit a car without sweeping yourself or any of your (presumably friendly) passengers with your muzzle requires lots of forethought.

The entire Confined space block was very educational. Most of the techniques were small tweaks to what I’ve already learned in various other courses, but these small changes have big results. The only downside of this session was that I managed to slam my holster hard on the seatbelt latch when entering the car and I broke one of the screws. Having a pinwheeling holster isn’t conducive to range safety. Thanks to Chris for stealing a screw from one of his spare holsters and getting me back online!

The next block was taught by Chris Fry of MDTS Training, and I had the pleasure of assisting him teach. The class was based around dealing with carbine malfunctions. We started with a diagnostic test that shows basic gun handling at very close range.  A little tip if you ever find yourself in one of Chris’ carbine classes, at very close range, you need to account for the bore/site offset on the rifle and aim a bit high. We then covered what to do when your carbine stops functioning at various ranges from contact distance to 25 yards. This included muzzle strikes as well as both one and two handed pistol transitions. Finally Chris described and demonstrated all the common (and a few not so common) carbine malfunctions as well as his simple system to handle them without some of the problems of more traditional methods (like SPORTS). The culmination of this block is an exercise where students get a chance to handle multiple malfunctions under some induced pressure.

During a great lunch provided by the club, we enjoyed a lecture from Andy Langlois about Dealing with First Responders. Some good insights into what will be going through an officer’s mind if they are responding to a defensive shooting. Biggest takeaway from that, when an Officer says “DROP THE GUN!”, do it … now.

After lunch we had an overview of some of the many hardware options available for the AR platform. There are a lot of them.

After this I assisted Chris again with his carbine block for the 2nd relay of shooters, this meant I had to miss the block on Tactical Medicine, but I will be looking for more opportunities in that area.

Overall, it was a great day of training. The blocks of instructions were somewhat compressed, but there is a lot of information to be learned, and the opportunity to train with many instructors is a welcome one.

Thanks to the organizers and all the help from Pelham Fish and Game Club, which, incidentally, is a beautiful club.

Click here for day 2…

• Part 1, simple malfunctions
• Part 2, complex malfuntions

One would also be well served signing up for any of Chris’ training. He does a great job providing excellent training at an affordable price.

The recommended usage is to load 1 Safety Bullet in the chamber and 1 in the top of the magazine with live rounds below that. If you actually need to use your firearm, you then rack the slide twice to get a live round in the chamber. If you forget to do that and attempt to fire, you have a gun that will not function and you will likely die.

Revolvers are even worse, you load a Safety Bullet in the next chamber to be fired. To use the firearm you have to manually rotate the cylinder one notch before firing. This is a rather delicate task, and if you lose count and attempt to fire 6 rounds instead of 5 (or 5 instead of 4, or 8 instead of 7, hmm how many rounds does this revolver hold again?), guess what? Gun locks up!

So, under the stress of an attacker beating down your door, or coming up your stairs or beating a loved one with a pipe, you will have to remember this procedure or render your defensive firearm inoperable. It’s well understood that under this kind of life or death stress, lots of things go out the window. Fine motor skill and complex reasoning (uhhh … like math) being the big ones. I will say it again, this is downright dangerous if used in a home defense firearm. Using it in a stored firearm would not have these issues, so I’m ok with it in that application, but that’s not how it is being marketed.

I’m all for safety and protecting our dear children, but this is just not an acceptable solution to me. If you’re concerned about your stored firearms, lock them up, even disassemble them if you like. If you have a home defense firearm please look into other solutions that don’t potentially disable the gun for the rest of your life. There are many quick access safes and locking devices out there that are much better solutions than this.

Nevermind that it looks like it’s just the Nordic Components kit around a 10/22 receiver, I’m actually OK with that (as long as Ruger properly licensed it). However, I don’t see the niche for this rifle. It sorta looks like an AR-15, but the safety, mag release, and charging handle are all different. This severely limits it’s usefulness as a low cost AR training platform.

Ok, so that’s not where it fits, maybe it’s just a cool looking plinker for folks who want something “tacticool” but don’t really care about AR training. Fine, but the MSRP of $625 puts it way higher than it should be for that. You could buy a standard 10/22 and  number of accessories to acheive the same affect for quite a bit less. The S&W M&P 15-22 is only $499 MSRP and is actually an AR pattern rifle.

In fact, the only advantage I can see of this rifle is that it can take 10/22 mags if you already have a bunch of those. Since a modified 10/22 will do that too for less money, I just don’t see where this rifle fits.

Regardless, I’m glad to see Ruger coming out with so many new products and responding to the market. I sincerly hope I’m wrong about this rifle and that they sell piles of them.

Since Montana appears to have The Constitution on their side, 10th ammendment state’s rights issues and all that, it will be very telling to see what the federal government does here.

I’ll be making popcorn, and packing all my stuff.

I’m writing today to share my opinions on several firearms related bills that are up for your consideration this week. I’ll be as brief as possible.

A01093/S01715: While this bill speaks to prevention of illegal sales, it has a provision requiring dealers to obtain liability insurance for the damage the firearms they sell could cause. This clause makes no mention of whether this insurance should cover illegal or legally sold firearms. Having a dealer carry insurance for what a customer who legally purchases a firearm may do is simply ridiculous. This will add an undue financial burden and put local dealers out of business driving more jobs out of NY state.

A00801A/S01598: This bill adds a 5 year expiration to all firearms licenses and adds a training requirement. While I certainly support the idea of firearms training, I am a certified NRA instructor, the criteria for this training is not specified. Who will decide what the training includes and what are the standards? What will the cost be? How often and where will this be offered? These details can turn a seemingly positive bill into a gun ban. The reasons cited for the 5 year renewal include the fact that firearms licenses are not automatically revoked when a person loses the right to own firearm. That is an administrative problem and does not require new legislation that will further restrict the right, as affirmed by the Supreme Court, of law abiding citizens to own firearms for self defense.

A01326: This bill would require that individual handguns be made “child-safe” through one of several means. Any of these means either compromise the handguns use for self defense, or introduces mechanical complexities that will reduce reliability.

A05844/S03098: This bill requires “safe storage” of firearms. The primary issue I have with this is that it requires ammunition to be separately stored from the firearms. This makes it nearly impossible to keep a firearm in a reasonable state of readiness for defense within my own home. Having to retrieve the firearm from a locked box or device and then having to retrieve the ammunition from yet another locked box and then load the firearm will make that firearm all but useless in a stressful and time sensitive situation.

A02881/S02379: This bill attempts to ban “frangible ammunition”. The primary purpose of frangible ammunition is safety as it disintegrates immediately upon hitting any hard surface. It is useful for training to prevent ricochet and in self defense to prevent over penetration. There is no reason why this should be banned.

A02882: This further expands the use of the COBIS system. This system has been shown to be completely ineffective and a waste of state funds.

A03211: This bill bans the possession of .50 caliber firearms. Overall this is poorly written as it is never specified what .50 caliber firearms are being regulated. .50 caliber is simply a statement of bore diameter. As written this would ban most muzzle loading hunting rifles, almost all shotguns, several handguns, several .50 caliber rifles, and the .50BMG rifle. The .50BMG rifle is used for long range target competition throughout the country. It is just another lawful firearm and should not be singled out.

A06157: This bill expands the existing “Assault Weapons Ban”. The federal government did not renew a similar ban on the information that the ban did not affect crime rates. The bill promotes several fallacies such as “spray fire” and generally prays on fear. This bill includes a provision for confiscation of current legally possessed firearms from NY citizens. This would simply be a disaster. Once again this is an attempt to control crime by managing law abiding citizens.

A06468/S04397: This bill requires handguns to “micro stamp” ammunition. This will simply cause manufacturers to not make NY compliant pistols, and put the manufactures in NY state at a severe disadvantage, encouraging them to relocate to another state. This technology is also completely ineffective as it is easily defeated within minutes.

In summary, I urge you to OPPOSE these bills:
A01093/S01715, A00801A/S01598, A01326, A05844/S03098, A02881/S02379, A02882, A03211, A06157 and A06468/S04397.

Thank you for your attention,

OpenOffice to the rescue! Since Verizon makes call details available as a CSV download, they can be easily sucked into a spreadsheet where you can do all sorts of unholy data manipulations.

Here’s the, somewhat ungraceful, procedure I worked out to find out who we call the most. I’m sure things could be automated more, but I’m also pretty sure it would take me a lot longer to do that than this took. All this stuff should work in Excel too, but no promises.

1. Login to your Verizon account, Go to My Bill then Bill Details.
2. Select the date you want and the number you want.
3. Hit the Download to Spreadsheet link to download your call data into OpenOffice, you’ll need to repeat this for each number on your account separately. The default import options should work fine.
4. Get all the data pasted into 1 spreadsheet page. I did a page per month, but you could mash it all together too.
5. Turn on Data->Filter->Autofilter.
6. Filter out the calls to other Verizon numbers that don’t count towards minutes.
   1. Click the pulldown that appeared at the top of the Usage Type column.
   2. Select each type of in network call. The are listed as M2MAllow, M2M Allow,CallWait, IN Allow, or IN Allow,CallWait. Depending on the date of your statement. You may also want to filter out nights and weekends (N&W), but I left that in since I really just wanted to know who we call the most regardless of time.
   3. Select all the filtered rows and delete them, repeat this for each type. Don’t delete the header.
   4. Select All in the filter to get back to the remaining data.
7. Now, here’s the good stuff, select the entire sheet and go to Data->Subtotals.
8. Select Number for group by, Minutes to calculate subtotals for, and Sum as the operation. Click Okee Dokee.
9. Violin! The little elves will group all the unique numbers and place a subtotal of the minutes under each group. If you click the little 2 on the far upper right, you can collapse it so you only see the subtotal lines.

Just go and pick out your top 10 from there, easy peasy, well, easier peasier.

Now I’m off to buy a 25mm rifle.