We will have a show tonight! At 9pm Eastern time we’ll be live for the first time in 2 weeks as we work around my crazy work schedule. Join me at www.blogtalkradio.com/gunnuts for a discussion on when to clean guns, the use of the phrase “shoot to kill”, and other topics as they come up!
That’s tonight at 9pm Eastern time, live at www.blogtalkradio.com/gunnuts – be there!
We’re 11 days in to the month of August, and it’s time to check the progress of the 1000 round challenge! A while back I challenged readers to shoot and log 1000 rounds of ammo this month through their competition or carry gun. Not doing mag dumps into the berm at 3 yards, but actual training and practicing a skill. Here’s where I’m at for August:
My monthly total is only 270, so I’m behind just a little bit. I’ll get caught up soon and should hit the 1000 round marker with ease before August is over.
How are you doing?
One of the questions I get a lot is “how accurate is the Ruger SR9c?” My usual answer is “accurate enough to hit a 5’6 150 lb mugger in the chest”, because realistically that’s all you’re going to need to do with this particular gun. Last night however I had the opportunity at the excellent Bellevue Gun Club in Bellevue, WA to do some shooting at a the standard qualification target for the Spokane Police Department. It occurred to me that people wanted to know how accurate the SR9c is, and I’d never actually sat there and shot it for accuracy, so I ran the target down to 10 yards and fired 124 rounds at the target.
I let one get away from me high that almost broke out of the 10 ring, but for the most part all the holes are touching. Near the end of the 124 rounds, my finger was starting to get tired from pulling the trigger so slowly, so I got a little sloppy and opened up the group. Of course, this really isn’t a training exercise. While I’m not quite shooting bullseye slow, I’m definitely shooting slower than I would in a match or a self defense situation. There is some training benefit to this however, and that’s building patience. It takes time to develop the ability to break a clean shot, and to be able to back off the trigger when you know you’re about to take a bad shot. That flier at the top of the 10 ring? I knew that was going to happen, and should have backed off the shot. I didn’t, because I was in a hurry and wanted the accuracy test to be over with.
The Ruger SR9c has a pretty good trigger for a polymer carry gun. I imagine removing the mag disconnect would probably improve the trigger by taking a couple of pounds off the pull weight, and I actually believe that the gun itself is capable of far greater mechanical accuracy than I can wring out of it. So if you’re on the fence about the Ruger for a carry gun because you’re worried about the accuracy from a 3.5 inch barrel? Don’t be. It will get the job done.
Speaking of accuracy, the conversations about accuracy are always great to me, because it means different things to different people. I’ve even talked about it before, in a post with this same title. I remember a time when gun magazines would only test guns at 25 yards from a bench rest or ransom rest to see how accurate they were. While that’s an excellent display of mechanical accuracy, I don’t need the gun that I’m going to be carrying to be able to shoot a 4 inch group at 25 yards. “Accuracy” is subjective to the needs of the shooter and the needs of the situation. A gun for Bianchi Cup should shoot 1.5 to 2 inch groups at 25 yards, but an IDPA gun doesn’t need to be that accurate. In my estimation, what is farm more important than mechanical accuracy is my favorite made up word: “shootability”. What is shootability? It is the features of a gun that make it easy for you to do your desired task with the gun. For me, 1911s are very shootable. The Beretta 92FS has high shootability marks for me. The Ruger SR9c excels at shootability. Some don’t score well for me in shootability, because their controls are odd, or their ergonomics are weird, or whatever. But if you pick a gun, and you can get hits on target comfortably and rapidly? That’s a good score for shootability. I’m a big fan of the SR9c because it’s very shootable – the grip is small enough to conceal, but not so small that I can’t get a good hold of it for rapid fire.
Bottom line? The gun is mechanically accurate and physically easy to shoot. Not a bad deal in a carry package.
Here are the final interviews from the three contestants eliminated from Top Shot on Sunday night’s show.
As an aside, I’ve enjoyed the format of the last episode much better. Strictly as a viewer, I prefer the “Ultimate Fighter” style elimination where it’s entirely your performance and not politics. But that’s me only as a consumer saying what I enjoy watching!
Tomorrow the hiatus ends! I’ve finally got my schedule down so that Gun Nuts Radio will return Wednesday night at 6pm Pacific time/9PM Eastern time. The show remains the same at www.blogtalkradio.com/gunnuts, but I can say for certain that it will be nice to be back in the saddle again and hosting. Join me tomorrow night at 9pm Eastern time for the return of Gun Nuts Radio at www.blogtalkradio.com/gunnuts!
Crimson Trace, the leader in laser sight products for civilian, law enforcement, and military use is now shipping the LaserGuard for the Ruger SR9 Compact. Like the lasers produced for the Ruger LCP and the sub-compact Glocks, the LaserGuard mounts to the front of the pistol, but still retains Crimson Trace’s intuitive activation. With main switch in the on position, gripping the pistol will activate the laser and place the red dot on your desired target.
The design of the LG-449 follows the sweeping lines of the SR9c to produce an appealing accessory that looks natural to the pistol itself. The same texture pattern on the frame of the pistol is carried over to the texture of the LG-449 making the combination of the superb handgun and laser aiming device seamless and unobtrusive.
For those that have been following the Quest for Master Class and the shooting I’ve been doing with the Ruger SR9c, you’ll know that I definitely endorse it as a carry gun, and the addition of a LaserGuard from Crimson Trace will round out the package to make it a top flight defensive weapon.
Disclosure: I have in the past received lasers and other promotional items from Crimson Trace. That doesn’t change the fact that I’d buy their stuff regardless of how awesome they’ve been to the blogging community.
In last night’s Top Shot (available on Hulu) when Colby talks about the HK93 he didn’t call it an assault rifle, or a military rifle, or any of the terms you see the media slipping in to demonize these weapons. What did he call it? A semi-automatic sporting rifle. Word for word. Don’t believe me? Check it out on Hulu right around 19:51.
This is what’s good for the shooting sports about Top Shot. We’re winning hearts and changing the dialog on firearms with shows like this.
Hey hey, spoiler alert. Recap beneath the jump.
There are two great big pet peeves that I have with concealed carry, one with the actual firearms community and the other with non gun owners. Both of them center around this issue of killing, and how it has taken an unfortunate center stage in the minds of many people.
The issue I have with non gun-owners is the oft repeated saw of “you’re only carrying a gun so you can kill someone” which we all know isn’t true; but it persists and part of it is our fault. You see, that pet peeve ties directly to my pet peeve with the CCW community, which is the usage of the phrase “shoot to kill”. Every time I hear that it causes my brain to twitch and spasm. The problem is one of language, and to a certain extent we as CCW holders and gun owners have allowed the language to get corrupted both in popular media and our own terms from time to time.
I’ve said before (in fact, a comment I left this morning was the inspiration for this post) that as CCW holders the words “shoot to kill” should never pass our lips unless being uttered in the sentence “I don’t shoot to kill I shoot to stop”. While it may seem like a semantic difference to some people, allow me to elaborate further. We do not, contrary to Elite Warriorz Videos “shoot people to the ground”. If you are forced to deploy a firearm in a dynamic critical incident in defense of your life or others, your goal should only be to stop the threat. This is why we train to shoot for the center of mass on targets, because placing bullets in those areas are most likely to induce the threat to cease their hostile actions. It is an unfortunate side effect of human physiology that putting bullets in those places also carries a significant likelihood of killing that person.
This is where the anti-gun person then jumps in and says “See, you do want to kill people!” This is an opportunity for us to be perfectly clear, because what creates the difference between “shoot to kill” and “shoot to stop” is your mindset and intent. Here and many other blogs have talked about making the decision now, in the light of day to do what you must to survive a violent assault, and this is a large component of that you. Shooting to stop is legally justifiable – you fire only as many rounds as it takes to produce the desired result (the bad guy stops) and no more. In some cases, that means not firing a shot. In other cases, one shot, or two, or more. But because you’re mentally prepared to stop this person, you’re going to do what you need to do an no more.
That’s the line that anti-gun people don’t understand. I don’t want to kill anyone. If I had to use my firearm in self defense and someone did die, I can assure you that the emotional trauma of that moment would live me for a lifetime. The bottom line is that I don’t carry a firearm to kill anyone – I carry a gun to defend my life and the lives of others – I carry a gun to stop a threat.