editorial

Going Ad-Free questions and answers

Posted on by Caleb

Every since I posted my crazy plan to make the internet a better place and go ad free (donate here!) I’ve had a ton of questions from readers and fans about the project itself. I want to take the time and answer those questions with this post.

1. How do I know the site will get better?
Well, to be perfectly honest, you don’t. In fact, what I think of as “better” and what you think of as “better” may be two completely different things. However, what I can guarantee if we get this funding is more content from a more diverse stable of writers covering topics we’ve never really gotten into before. That’s pretty cool and you know it. Right now, the site is pretty tightly focused on self-defense/competition shooting with handguns. I can’t count the number of people that have asked about hunting articles, or even more stuff about cars. Money allows us to expand this stuff out to more people.

2. What’s the money going to be used for?
Coke and hookers, duh. I mean not really, but I felt obligated to post that as an answer. It makes me laugh, what can I say. However, I’ll break the money out in a little bit more detail than I did in the original post. Obviously, the site has hosting fees etc, but the two big costs are 1) writers and 2) travel. Right now I have one regular contributor, Tim, who does really great work, he needs a raise, and I’d like to hire two more writers as well. So right there we can call that 10k right out the door per year. Assuming we get the full funding, that leaves me with ~10k per year to cover travel and all other expenses. Because honestly, if I’m going to have staff writers, I should probably pay for them to go places and cover stuff. It only makes sense. 10k goes by pretty quick when you’re talking about airfare and hotels, but by paying for writers to go places the site gets better articles and content. In a nutshell, that’s pretty much what this breaks down: hire more people and send them places. That’s where the money goes, and that’s where the new content comes from.

3. Have you lost your damn mind? 100k is a ton of money.
Probably yeah, I have. But this was never my only option. There are plenty of other ways to grow and fund a business like this, but this is the one that I like the best. Because it allows me a ton of flexibility in how the site grows.

Obviously, I want to answer any questions you have, so feel free to post them in the comments or simply email me at [email protected] and I’ll be happy to answer your questions. In the meantime, make sure to donate!

editorial

The Importance of Confidence

Posted on by Tim

Somewhere in my brain there are neurons that contain the memory of a commercial that aired pretty extensively when I was a kid:

 

Ol’ Jack’s tag line there made quite a dent in the popular culture of the time. Jack, if you don’t know, was kind of a tough dude. A coal miner, professional boxer, and a WWII bomber pilot before he turned to acting. I’m certain a lot of people bought Skin Bracer as a result of this ad, likely hoping to get  a little of Jack’s panache by wearing it. As best I can remember, Skin Bracer was some pretty low-rent aftershave made with a lot of alcohol and it didn’t actually smell “Great!”…but you wouldn’t know that listening to Jack. His confidence infused his performance in this ad, and subconsciously I’m sure a large chunk of the consumers who bought Skin Bracer hoped that a bit of his confidence would rub off on them, too.

Believe it or not, Jack’s kind of confidence plays a crucial role in self defense. Listen carefully to what is said in the following clips:

 

Ernest Langdon and Jeff Cooper are both talking about the ability of confidence to prevent the need to use violence.

To be clear, I’m not talking about the kind of “confidence” that comes from ridiculous self-affirmations spoken in a mirror. (That jackass is a senator now. And people wonder why our country is messed up.) That stuff is largely crap and it falls apart because the guy trying to talk himself up in a mirror knows he’s a fraud.

I’m referring to confidence that comes from accomplishment. When you put forth the time and the effort to train yourself to a high level of skill in something, you know it….and that knowledge infuses the entirety of your being. It colors how you think, speak, and act when you’re dealing with a situation that requires that skill set. This kind of accomplishment-bred confidence is visible to others you are interacting with and can have a profound impact on them as well.

In class with Tom Givens earlier this year, he told us about an occasion where he and his lovely wife Lynn were having dinner and they spotted a ne’er-do-well enter with a poorly concealed weapon. Tom’s experience told him that the guy was casing the place for a robbery…so Tom stood up and looked at the guy…and grinned. The bad guy got a look at Tom and ran away as fast as he could.

I once trained with a police officer who fielded a call about an armed robbery at a convenience store. When he arrived the robber had the clerk at gunpoint while two other officers with guns drawn repeatedly screamed at him to drop the gun. He took a look at the scene and without a sound maneuvered around the other two officers into a position to take a head shot on the multi-strike felon holding the gun on the clerk. The felon saw this and instantly surrendered, dropping his gun. When asked why he suddenly gave up later, he nodded toward that third officer on the scene and said “That *CENSORED* was going to kill me!”

Why would a would-be robber get scared away by an older gentleman who grins at him? Why would a would-be hostage taker act defiantly in the face of two police officers pointing guns at him but wet himself out of fear when a third officer shows up pointing the exact same gun?

Both of these individuals had trained extensively with their weapons and had made important decisions about how and why they would use them long before the moment of need arrived. Deliberately cultivating their skills with a sidearm left them in absolutely no doubt about their ability to handle the problems they were facing. They knew that when they reached for their pistol, some stuff was about to by-God get solved and in a hurry. This colored their demeanor and behavior to the point where bad guys who had never laid eyes on them before nevertheless recognized they were screwing with the wrong hombre.

The person who reaches for their sidearm in expectation rather than hope is less likely to fire a shot in anger with it because that confidence and competence is perceived by the criminal aggressor early in the encounter, and it’s often sufficient to convince them that continuing to press the matter would be foolish. They often react to the covers coming off of those assets like most people would react if they turned a corner and found themselves face to face with a 500 pound male lion.

There is certainly more to self defense than the development of technical skill with a weapon (or empty hands, frankly) but the cultivation of those skills to a high degree of proficiency has a number of positive effects when it comes time to win the fight…or in many instances preventing one in the first place.

The great thing about this kind of confidence is that it’s not a superpower. Anyone can have it…all it takes is work.

Be honest with yourself. Challenge yourself. Do the work. Deliberately cultivate your skills.

The benefits are worth it.

 

 

 

Crimson Trace/self defense

Red dots vs. lasers for self defense pistols

Posted on by Caleb

Two topics we’ve spent a lot of time and energy on here at Gun Nuts: lasers on defensive pistols and red dot sights on defensive pistols. It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of both ideas for a lot of reasons, and that I recommend Crimson Trace lasers for any serious defensive pistol. But what if you only have the money for one electronic sighting system? Which should you choose, a dot or a beam?

Kahr TP9 Gen2

First, let’s look at the pros and cons shared by both systems, and then some of the pros/cons that are unique to each.

Pros

1. Allow the shooter to keep his/her eyes on the threat
This is actually a big one. To me, the biggest advantage of red dots or lasers is the ability for me as the shooter to keep both eyes open and focused on the bad person who is intent on doing bad things to me. That means I can see their hands, see their movements, and just generally have a better idea of what they’re doing. This is especially useful from an LE point of view, where you may be required to hold someone at gunpoint for an extended period of time. It’s also still useful as an armed citizen.

2. Easier for new shooters to pick up
The interface is pretty simple. Assuming the dot/beam is properly sighted in, it’s “put dot where want bullet go, press trigger.” No worrying about sight alignment or anything like that, just point and click. Too easy.

3. Works at night
Night sights are important, that’s generally something we can all agree on. Dots and beams have the benefits of night sights, but again are easier to manage in most circumstances owing to their nature.

Cons

1. Batteries
Hey, no one likes to talk about this, but it is an issue. Despite the fact that most modern dots/beams have a battery life measured in years, this needs to come up. It needs to be brought up because if you’re the sort of person that forgets to change their oil and lets the smoke detector beep at you for two weeks, you’ll probably forget to change the batters in your fancy electronic sight. As a side note, Trijicon makes an RMR that doesn’t use batteries, which is cool.

M&P9 with Crimson Trace and RMR

2. Cost
Again, dealing with reality here. There are a lot of people who balk at the idea of putting a $200 laser on a $400 gun, or a $500 optic on a $500 gun. I get that. Money is a real issue, and after you’ve already followed my advice and spent $500 on a Glock 19, plus another $100 on a quality holster and belt, the thought of dropping basically all that again just to get some fancy electronic sight? Seems crazy.

3. Mounting and holsters
Here’s the last issue. Say you do want a dot, well now you have to mount it. That means either mounting in the rear sight dovetail, which isn’t a very durable long term option, or getting your slide milled by a machinist, which means another $200-400 out the door. Lasers have a similar problem, because if you’re unlucky enough to have a gun that Crimson Trace doesn’t make a laser grip for, you’re going to need a special holster just to fit your rail mounted light/laser combo. That can get expensive depending on your gun.

Red dot sights have a specific con of their own; the dot is slower to pick up for the first shot than traditional iron sights for experienced shooters. My personal experience shows that novices and less skilled shooters are quicker with the red dot; but that’s a training issue. Lasers have an issue as well, in that they could give away your position. Personally I think that’s a stupid objection to their use unless you’re planning on fighting ninjas in the dark, but if I don’t mention it someone will.

But the real question is which one is better? That’s complicated, because there are a lot of variables in that equation. I’ll try to eliminate some of those, and we’ll assume that this purchase is for a moderately experienced shooter. Let’s say IDPA Sharpshooter class, they’ve taken a scattering of classes here and there, they practice sometimes – basically 80% of my readers. For that shooter, I’d actually recommend the laser, and especially a Crimson Trace Laser Grip. Don’t get my wrong, I love red dot guns, I really do.

Ruger LCR 22 with laser activated

Ideally I’d say get both, but if you could only have one and you fit the shooter profile listed above, I think the laser is the better choice. The instinctive activation that Laser Grips offer coupled with all the advantages of keeping both eyes open and being able to focus on the threat make it a no-brainer anyway. When you add in the fact that you can track the dot in recoil and it makes shooting at moving targets comically easy (try it sometime) I can’t really think of a single good reason to not get the laser.

That being said, I have guns with lasers, guns with dots, and guns with neither. I really try to let whatever I need the gun for drive the train of how it’s going to get used. But for the shooters I’m talking about, I think the laser is the best choice.

 

Looking for the best deal on Lasers or Red Dots? Check out what Short Round Supply has to offer!

Lone Wolf

Things that are good: Tango Down slide-stops

Posted on by Caleb

As I continue on Project Lone Wolf, I want to take a moment and talk about one of my favorite, and most important Glock parts. The slide stop/release/whatever. There are all sorts of different options for the slide stop on a Glock, but the two available from the factory sometimes leave a little bit to be desired.

Tango Down slidestop

To understand why the Tango Down slide stop is so good, you have to first understand what’s wrong with both of the factory Glock designs. Before we continue, if you’re a super hardcore operator bro who never uses the slide stop to do reloads, you can probably skip this post. However, if you do your slidelock reloads by hitting the slide stop, welcome! This post is for you. Now, back to the good stuff. The factory lever on the regular Glock is a decent design. It’s just a little small. I have big hands, so I’ve never had any trouble using it, but sometimes if my hands are sweaty or it’s raining, I’ve had problems. It’s just small enough that under adverse conditions like that my thumb can slide off without dropping the slide. Shooters with smaller hands have issues reaching it at all.

Glock “solves” this problem with their extended/competition slide stop:

glock extended slide release

That little bump at the end makes it accessible to pretty much any hand size, and makes it nearly impossible for my hand to slip off it when I need to hit it. But it also creates problems of its own; if you have freakish truckasaurus hands like me, it’s really easy for your support hand to contact the slide stop when you’re firing. This will either cause the gun to go to slide lock early, or to not go to slide lock at all, depending on how your hand hits it. That sucks. It sucks on a competition gun because it will jack up a stage, and it would suck even more on a fighting gun, because it might get you literally killed in the streets and/or by ninjas. In all seriousness though, having the gun go to slidelock when it’s not supposed to, or not go when it is are bad things that we don’t want.

Enter the Tango Down slidestop. It’s the same length as the factory Glock part, but it’s profiled out from the slide a little bit further. So my support hand doesn’t contact it during normal firing, but the extra width makes doing slidelock reloads a lot easier. Here are two really good reloads and one terrible reload using a gun with the Tango Down slidestop:

Bottom line? I think these things are great. Every Glock and Timberwolf I own wears one, because for my dollar it’s the best Glock slide stop solution on the planet. I like them so much that I actually buy them out of my own pocket.

editorial

Make Gun Nuts Ad Free

Posted on by Caleb

I want to make Gun Nuts ad free. Now, the easiest way to do that would be to just shut off the ads, but “Gun Nuts” isn’t just a blog, it’s a business that generates revenue and has costs associated with it, so I can’t just turn my revenue stream off. So I’ve set up a Go Fund Me page where you, the readers can donate to make Gun Nuts ad free for the next 5 years.

bold move cotton

Now, if you’ve clicked the link you’ve seen how much money I’m asking for, $100,000 and you probably have questions. That’s fine, I have answers. The first question is probably “Why go ad free? Don’t you work in the advertising sales business?” As a matter of fact, I do, and that’s part of why I want to take the site ad free. Gun Nuts is part of the GunUp network, which is owned by Media Lodge. I work for Media Lodge. I sell ads on sites all across the network, but I’d be damn liar if I said that Gun Nuts wasn’t always first in my heart. And it always will be, and that’s what we like to refer to as “a conflict of interest.” Which means the best way to keep the site running for the next five years is to shut the ads down, and ask my readers for donations in order to keep things going. So that’s the big part of the why.

The second part of “why” is because I want the site to grow, but to do that we need money. Money to pay exisiting writers to produce more content, money to get more writers to do more content, and money to cover expenses for sending people to classes, events, etc. I want to take Gun Nuts to the next level, but I can’t do that without your support.

Thirdly, and most importantly, going ad free allows me the editorial freedom to really say what I believe on any given topic. I’ve had to reign myself in frequently ever since this became a business with advertisers, and that means I’m not giving the readers the best content I can. It’s difficult to tell you that Blastomatic XYZ sucks without losing my credibility when there’s an ad for it running in my sidebar, you know?

The last reason why I want to take the side ad free is simple: you. I’ve lost track of the number of times over the years that people have come up to me and thanked me for an article I wrote, a review I did, or a video I made. I’ve also lost track of the number of times people have told me I’m stupid, an idiot, and shouldn’t be allowed to have an opinion on anything ever. Both of those are important, because they tell me that people are passionate about what they’re reading here, and that’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. I want to give you, my readers, the best content I can, because you are passionate about it.

Now to the elephant in the room. $100,000 is a LOT of money. I get that. But it’s also enough money to fund the site for about 5 years, which is an extremely long time in blog years. But it’s also a realistic figure, because it works out to about 20k a year to run the site and grow it. I know that about 10,000 people will see this post today, and if each of them dropped 10 bucks in the hat, I’d be done. Ads would go away tomorrow (except for ones I’m contractually obligated to run) and we’d be wild and free. I don’t think that’s going to happen, but if it did it would be awesome.

Bottom line: this is about you. Nothing that I’ve done here at Gun Nuts would be possible without my awesome readers, who have taken this site from tiny little blogspot blog into a well read, well know, and maybe even a little bit respected site. But to get to the next level, I need your help. Let’s make Gun Nuts a better blog, and donate today.

editorial

Awareness

Posted on by Tim

Let’s talk a bit about the topic of awareness.

It is often cited in discussions of self defense, but the citation is usually as deep as the discussion goes. “Be situationally aware!” It’s not bad advice, but I find that people don’t really know what they’re supposed to be aware of in the first place.

Generally paying attention to your surroundings and environment is good and necessary advice, especially since the smart phone has begun to swallow much of human existence. The other day I saw a group of college students riding down the sidewalk on “hoverboards”  with headphones in their ears, looking down at their phones the entire time…oblivious to the world around them. Oblivious to what they were telling the rest of the world about them.

You were likely taught at some point in your life that you should never judge a book by its cover. It’s a pleasant sounding platitude that’s going to trigger almost pavlovian assent from most, but when misapplied (as it often is) that pleasant platitude is dangerous and stupid. I recall once hearing someone ask a group of people I was in what you could tell about someone who has facial tattoos. The “acceptable” answer was…nothing. Only that they have facial tattoos! I disagreed, insisting that someone who has gone through the trouble of carving a swastika into their face is communicating very important information about themselves to the rest of the world and we would be damned fools to ignore it.

Hopefully you don’t have a swastika carved into your face, but you are still constantly streaming important information about yourself to the broader world even without hostile ink all over your noggin. Think about what the kids on those “hoverboards” were communicating: Oblivious to their surroundings. In possession of valuable items. Likely unprepared to resort to significant violence to defend themselves.

Awareness is really making a deliberate effort to gather the useful bits of this information that’s being streamed into the world and managing the sort of information you are sending out about yourself. This is a crucial survival skill that your ancestors mastered (Otherwise you wouldn’t be here!) but modern folks don’t seem to grasp that there’s still a need for it.

Criminals do, though. As I mentioned in one of the articles about the excellent Unthinkable class presented by William Aprill and Greg Ellifritz, criminals can glean useful information about a potential victim from something as simple as gait. In this study researchers have even found that criminals who score highest on their scale for psychopathy proved to have the most accurate judgement about the vulnerability of potential victims with nothing more to go on than footage of their gait. In other words, the higher order criminals are exceptionally good at gathering the useful bits of information streamed into the environment and managing the amount of information they are giving away about themselves.

Take a look at this brief video:

 

Did you note the uneven gait of the young woman in the video? How she seemed to stumble stepping down from a small curb?

Unfortunately someone noticed the young woman’s vulnerability. Hannah Graham managed to attract the attention of a violent sexual predator who authorities believe is responsible for the murder of another college student years earlier.

Violent criminal actors every bit as bad as that violent sexual predator (if not worse) are out there breathing free air, taking in that constant stream of information and managing how much they’re telling everyone else about themselves.

Luckily it is possible to make this work in your favor. If you stream the right information about yourself to the outside world you can communicate something besides vulnerability…and that alone will be sufficient to make most criminals pick a more suitable victim.

The goal of self defense is to preserve your life and the quality of it against criminal assault. While I have absolutely no moral qualms about armed robbers and would-be rapists and murderers catching a bullet from their intended victims, having to actually use lethal force to stop someone from killing or seriously injuring you is quite unpleasant and inconvenient. It’s better for the good guy if the bad guy takes a look at him/her and decides that they aren’t an appealing victim. There are a certain number of creatures in nature who bear bright colors to advertise to opportunistic predators that a mouth full of them will be a severely unpleasant, perhaps even fatal, mistake. Predators blend in to the environment and hope not to be seen until it’s too late…but a poisonous tree frog wants the predator to see him from a long way out and pick another meal.

The ability to read the environment and people around you is a skillset, meaning it is something you can cultivate and develop. You already have to do a great deal of this to get through day to day life as a human being. If you have to make a speech, you don’t do it in a Cheez-Whiz stained wifebeater with spinach in your teeth. You don’t walk into a funeral with a boom box and try to get the mourners to twerk. You already have experience managing the information you present to others and taking in information from your surroundings to govern your behavior and conduct in the moment.

It’s not alien to you. All you need to do is make a deliberate effort to apply those skills to avoiding criminal assault and your chances of being victimized drop substantially.

 

 

Lone Wolf

The Lone Wolf Trio: Tactical 34

Posted on by Caleb

True story: My favorite size of Glock are the “Tactical” length pistols, the 34 and 35. I suppose also the 41 now, but I’ve got about as much trigger time on the 41 as Bernie Sanders has economic knowledge; that being said if it’s like the 34/35 it’s probably quite rad. So it makes perfect sense when I was ordering up my new blasters from Lone Wolf that I’d spec out a 34 sized gun. So meet my ESP/Steel Challenge/Bianchi Cup gun:

Timberwolf Tactical 34

The quick vitals are similar to the Compact gun, but obviously this one is on Lone Wolf’s full size Timberwolf frame, and comes with the G34 length slide. One thing you’ll notice is a purely cosmetic feature on the slide; but the recoil spring housing on the front has been angled and cut down to give the gun a racier appearance. Here’s where I’d normally spout some cabbage-head nonsense about lighter slide makes spring ratios blah blah blah but I just think it looks cool; and looking cool is quite important.

Now, meat and potatoes. This gun is set up for competition. The trigger is lighter than on the Compact, but I can’t tell you exactly how light because I can’t find my sierra foxtrot trigger pull gauge. However, it feels nice. A nice light rolling break, good reset, everything I like in a Glock trigger. Unlike the small gun, this one sports the stainless steel magazine funnel, because 1) it looks cooler and 2) racegun. Sights are again Sevigny performance, this time black front sight with black rear sight. I prefer an all black sight arrangement for pretty much everything except low-light shooting. Any low light matches will be accomplished with the Compact and its night sights. You’ll see this exact same sight set up on tomorrow’s gun as well. It works, it’s always worked for me, and unless my vision goes tits up overnight, it will continue to work for some time to come.

Timberwolf Tactical 9mm with Magpul Pmag

Let’s talk mags for a second. I really wanted to try out the Magpul Glock PMags, because they’re cheaper than factory Glock mags and they’re from Magpul. If I have to explain it any further, you’re on the wrong blog. But in all seriousness, I figured I might as well, so I picked up three PMags from Brownells (where else?) and they’re standing by for testing. So far they’ve passed all the dry fire tests – they drop free, they lock the slide open on an empty chamber, and they feed dummy rounds just fine. 3 for 3 is a good start.

The real thing to talk about with this gun is what exactly it’s for. The Timberwolf Tactical 9mm is about as close to a “do everything” gun I could make. It’s ready to go in ESP and Steel Challenge, and assuming it meets the accuracy standards, Bianchi Cup Metallic. I could even shoot it in USPSA Limited and just score minor, but I decided to take a hard pass on that and build a gun for USPSA instead. We’ll talk about that tomorrow. Back to this. Like the Compact, I have the arched backstrap and an extended slide stop on it, the extended slide stop is going away as soon as possible (UPS still hasn’t delivered my Tango Down slide stops).

Basically what you have here is a sexied up version of a G34. It’s ready out of the box to do all the stuff I want it to do, so all that’s left for me is to grab a couple of boxes of Hornady Critical Defense and accuracy test it! Hopefully I’ll be able to get that done this weekend.

Lone Wolf

The Lone Wolf trio: Compact

Posted on by Caleb

Lone Wolf Timberwolf Compact 9mm

At the tail end of yesterday’s post about IDPA I dropped in a photo of one of the three guns I’m going to be shooting exclusively for training and competition through 2016. I have three guns from my friends at Lone Wolf, all built on their Timberwolf frame. I’ve had a lot of experience with LW guns and slides, a casual look at my YouTube channel from a few years back shows a ton of videos of me running their guns hard. So when I was getting ready to come back, it made sense for me to select LW for my gun needs. We’re going to look at each of these guns, starting today with the Compact.

Timberwolf compact 9mm

The frame is Lone Wolf’s Timberwolf frame, which is designed to eliminate some of the issues shooters experience with Gen 3 Glock frames. It comes with interchangeable backstraps, of which I prefer the arched/curved backstrap. The finger grooves aren’t as deep as they are on Glocks, and on the T-Wolf they actually fit my hand. It also came with a Glock extended slide stop, which I’ll be replacing as soon as UPS figures out how to deliver my friggin’ Tango Down Glock slide stops. Those are awesome.

Now, to the magwell. Blah blah blah gamer, go ahead and get it out of your system, because the magwell actually serves a purpose on this gun beyond faster reloads. See, I have what is referred to as “truckasaurus hands.” When I do reloads with a Glock 19 I’ll frequently get the meaty bit of my hand pinched between the magazine and the gun itself. That’s unpleasant to say the least. The really great thing about the magwell is it keeps that from happening, and also forces my hand into the highest possible grip I can get on the rest of the gun.

The rest of the gun is pretty straightforward, aggressive forward cocking serrations, Sevigny Performance straight-8 night sights, steel guide rod, the usual stuff. Trigger pull is about 5 pounds with a nice rolling break. I’m going back and forth on whether or not I want to get a gadget for it, because while I’m currently carrying it at the AIWB position I’m likely going to switch back to traditional IWB shortly. Since I plan on using this gun for IDPA as well as carry (shoot your carry gun? Madness!) having the holster positioned on my strong side makes a lot of sense.

This gun will get the most shooting done with it initially, tomorrow we’ll take a look at my ESP gun, a sweet G34 sized gun with some personal touches. Then we’ll close it out on Friday with a look at my L10 gun.

IDPA

IDPA thoughts

Posted on by Caleb

caleb reload 2014 idpa nationals

IDPA had a pretty eventful summer from what I understand. In addition to combining the revolver divisions and adding BUG and Compact as divisions of their own; apparently at Nationals it was announced that the point down penalty would be changed from 0.5 seconds to an entire second. While that last bit hasn’t been finalized yet, it’s an interesting change for IDPA at this moment in time.

Right now, there is more unrest in the pistol shooting sports community than I can recall seeing in a long time. USPSA added a new division (and kept a stupid one) with weird rules that don’t quite make sense, at a time where their most popular division (Production) is being dominated by purpose designed race guns. IDPA adds two new divisions, completely ignores the trend in optic guns, and now might change their scoring system in a fairly dramatic fashion. Steel Challenge still exists (thankfully), and NRA recently parted ways with the man who saved Bianchi Cup. So things are pretty tumultuous right now in the pistol sports.

Which brings us back to IDPA. I want to talk about all of the stuff they’ve done, starting first with the combining of revolver into one division. It makes sense. Basically no one but Jerry was shooting ESR any more, and participation between both divisions combined was smaller than any other one division. Hopefully by adding them together, you’ll see some more meaningful competition at the revolver matches.

Now, on the topic of BUG and Compact. I can’t actually discuss them separately, because I believe that they way IDPA implemented these two divisions is downright silly. First off, let’s look at BUG. No calibers smaller than .380 and all guns must be six shooters or more. So no .32 ACPs and no J-frames. The “no .32s” I kind of get, mostly for calibration purposes on steel targets, but no j-frames? In a division named “back up gun?” Riiiiiiiiight. IDPA’s reasoning behind the 6 shot rule is that running a five shooter on the classifier would suck super hard and be difficult to score. Well too bad, suck it up buttercup. The j-frame is still the king of BUGs in the real world. Mandating six shot guns in BUG just means the entire division is going to be Glock 26s.

Which brings me around to Compact. The rules for Compact, or should I say the rules for the Glock 19 division are set up so that I can run a pretty legit gun (like a Glock 19 or an M&P Compact) with some pretty neat mods like a magwell and still be legal. Think of Compact like Mini-ESP and you’re off to the races. Which, actually is what grinds my gears about it. BUG is what Compact should be. There was already a division for people who wanted to shoot Glock 19s, we called it SSP. “Oh but Caleb” you cry, “they’d always get beat by gamer ass gamers using Glock 34s!” To which I must reply, what exactly do you think is going to happen in a new division? People are going to build the most competitive gun they can, and the good shooters are still going to win.

Of course, my griping about CCP is also a little bit because I’m asshurt about IDPA not going with a carry optics division, but whatever. I’ll get over it. It’s just frustrating because I’ve always been a huge advocate of IDPA, and they had a chance to be the thought leader in the shooting sports about relevant gear, and instead decided to jack up BUG completely and tack on a Compacf ESP division.

Which finally brings me around to my last item: changing the points down penalty to one second as opposed to 0.5. Unlike other parts of the Internet, I can’t really find the energy to get riled up about this. It won’t affect the top of the game whatsoever, because the DMs and high level masters that win matches are still going to be faster and more accurate than everyone else. Where you will see some shuffling is the low master, high expert tier. Where guys who are a little bit faster and blaze a little bit quicker but also drop just a few (not a lot) more points will drop a few spots. Stuff happens. It won’t affect stage strategy at all, because with an IDPA match it’s always going to be “go here, shoot these dudes, go here, do same.” You’ll still need to be faster and more accurate than the other guy.

I know this post will only appeal to a small group of my readers, but at my heart I’m still deeply passionate about the shooting sports. And yes, for those that are wondering, I do plan on getting my master card in CCP and BUG. I figure I’ve got it in everything else, so I might as well. Check out my CCP gun:

Lone Wolf Timberwolf Compact

Gamers gonna game.

concealed carry/humor

5 signs you take CCW too seriously

Posted on by Caleb

Carrying a gun every day is no laughing matter. It is a tremendous responsibility, and one that far too many fail to take seriously. However, there is another segment of people who maybe are going a little bit overboard on the “CCW lifestyle.” In fact, that’s probably a sign right there: if you’ve ever used “CCW lifestyle” without a hint of irony, you need to calm down. But anyway here’s Wonderwall the list.

M&P 9mm with RMR and CRKT

1. You buy your clothes based on how easy it is to conceal all your EDC crap.
Look, I get it. We all should carry full size service pistols, a reload, two knives, a flashlight, 2 liters of water and a portable super-computer at all times. There’s also nothing crazy about buying your jeans a couple of inches bigger to accommodate an IWB holster. That’s just good sense. It’s when you start doing all kind of craziness such as only buying medium polos that hang a certain way, or never buying any clothes that actually fit nicely simply because “I can’t conceal in them.” That’s crazy because 1) yes you can, and 2) carrying a gun shouldn’t be such a thing that you have to let it run your clothing choices.

2. You won’t go out with your friends to certain bars/restaurants because they don’t allow concealed carry there
I’m…I’m actually guilty of this one in years past; I wouldn’t go to a bar with my friends if that bar did pat-down’s at the door. There’s some logic to that, but really it was just me being stubborn and prioritizing “being a sheepdog hur-dur” over “having a good time with people I like.” Hey, we should all carry our guns and be mindful of where we go, but there’s also a point where we should maybe chill out. For example, if you tell you friends you won’t go out with them because where they’re going doesn’t allow carry. Of course, if you have that kind of mindset, this probably isn’t a problem for you.

boxxy-trolling

Because you don’t have any friends.

3. You actually care which business are pro or anti-gun.
I don’t care that Buffalo Wild Wings hates my guns. I don’t care that uh…Chick Fil A is completely ambivalent to them. I just go the places I like to go, and try to not worry too much about the political leanings of major corporations. Now, if you’re talking mom and pop shops, that’s a different story, because to them, losing one or two customers or gaining a new customer can have a real significant financial impact. But Starbucks isn’t going to give two shits if they lose me forever because of blah blah blah open carry whatever.

4. You’ve ever participated in a lengthy forum discussion about “mandatory EDC items.”
You’re probably just a terrible person. But I actually get this one. We carry all this gear, so it’s natural to want to talk about it, and it’s natural to want to see who has better gear, or whatever. But it’s also really easy to get wrapped around an axle about all the shit we carry and forget that what you’re really carrying is a 2 pound insurance policy in case your day takes a really statistically unlikely turn for the awful. There really isn’t anything wrong with talking about our gear, it’s just that on forums, those sorts of conversations usually end up running down these crazy rabbit trails of “what if you’re attacked by 25 axe wielding ninjas at night in an alley? I bet you’d want more than 100 lumens then!” Which is true, I would. I’d want an M240b, an assistant gunner, and a sandbagged fighting position. Wait, crap, what was I talking about again? Oh yeah, EDC conversations.

5. You’ve ever written a smug blog post about how other people need to get over themselves about CCW

…waitaminnit…