Are any of my Hoosier readers familiar with the Indiana state laws on the carrying of knives? All I can find in the state statutes is “No switchblades/throwing stars” and “Not on school property”.
Bringing a Knife to a Gunfight
Self Defense expert and trainer Michael Janich offers some excellent advice on how to employ a knife during a “gun grab” situation. For me, the best part of the advice is this:
Carry a fixed blade
His basis for that recommendation is that if you’re using your knife with your weak hand while attempting to stop a gun grab with your strong hand, your body is going to be hard-locked into “gross motor skills” mode, which means that drawing and deploying a tactical folder could be somewhat difficult. Another excellent option in this scenario would be to use an auto-knife, however those may or may not be legal in your jurisdiction, so check your local laws.
It’s definitely worth reading the whole piece – it’s making me seriously re-evaluate my everyday carry knife, which is a tactical folder and think about moving to a good three inch fixed blade.
Good Travel Safety tip
From Rob Pincus: Use the safety latch on your hotel door.
I can tell you from over 5 years of experience in the hotel business that whenever you’re in your hotel room, you should at the VERY MINIMUM have that little security latch engaged. Myself, when I’m in a hotel room, the deadbolt is always locked and the latch is engaged as well.
Off to Tennessee
I’m heading out to Tennessee today to go shoot the Tactical Pistol Match in Maryville this weekend. I’m worried about driving through Kentucky, as my understand is that they were on the receiving end of a lot of ice during this past winter weather funfest, so I am concerned about the condition of I75 South.
If any of my intreprid readers live in that corridor, any information on the road conditions would be greatly appreciated.
Mrs. Ahab and I will be taking a much needed vacation; with the combined bonus of me getting some more trigger time on my blaster. It will be nice to get away from work for a bit, especially since my “getting away from work” also puts me in the running for some sweet prizes off the prize table at the Tactical Pistol Match. Plus, it’s supposed to be 58 in TN on Sunday. That’s about 30 degrees warmer than it will be here.
Time for some thrilling heroics
Semper Paratus
San Francisco Gun Ban Over
The City of San Francisco has dropped their illegal ban on the possession of firearms in public housing. Read the full presser from NRA here:
Fairfax, Va. – An NRA-led coalition of self-defense civil rights groups including the Second Amendment Foundation and the California Rifle & Pistol Association (CRPA) has prevailed in a Second Amendment lawsuit challenging a ban on firearm possession in San Francisco public housing residences.
“This success is further vindication of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Heller ruling upholding the Second Amendment as protecting a fundamental, individual civil right for all law-abiding Americans,” said NRA-ILA Executive Director Chris W. Cox.
The San Francisco Housing Authority (SFHA) and the property management company that oversees San Francisco’s public housing projects have agreed to completely remove a lease provision banning guns in the residences.
And while that’s great news, the part of the press release that really gets me excited is this:
NRA is preparing additional legal challenges in San Francisco and Los Angeles regarding gun control ordinances that were not challenged in the current lawsuit. In fact, NRA’s lawyers have already placed San Francisco and Los Angeles on notice of pending litigation concerning several other gun banning ordinances. The NRA-led coalition will likely also pursue civil rights actions against California itself as well as several other municipalities to challenge ill-conceived and unconstitutional state and local gun bans in the near future.
It pleases me to no end to see California, my beloved home state being forced (kicking and screaming at times) on the path back to the concepts of individual liberty that it once was known for. While I don’t think NRA alone can restore California to it’s former glory, maybe the victories in San Francisco and the pending legal action will provide the necessary wake up call to citizens of California to “throw the bums out”, and get rid of the elected officials that are turning my former home state into a socialist dystopia.
So begins the XD build
I have the work order and everything ready to send the XD off to Springfield Armory’s Custom Shop – when I get back from Tennessee this weekend, I’ll box her up and send her out.
I’m going to have the factory sights knocked off and replaced with a set of non-adjustable target sights, so I can get that “black-on-black” sight picture that I crave. I’ve never liked three dot sights for competition, I feel like it creates too much clutter in the sight picture. I’m also going to have the slide/frame/barrel fit tightened up to improve the mechanical accuracy of the gun – I don’t think I’ll need to put a “match-grade” barrel in there to get the kind of accuracy I’m going to be shooting for.
The one thing I’m not going to mess with is the trigger pull – the factory trigger on this gun is fine, and beyond that it’s going to change as the round count piles up for this gun. There really isn’t a whole lot of sense in me modifying a trigger pull that hasn’t yet completely broken in; especially since all the reports I’ve seen on this gun indicate that the more BBs I shoot out of it, the better the trigger will be.
There are a lot of pretty radical modifications available from the Springfield Custom Shop as well – but I’m actually quite happy with the stock configuration of the gun, with the noted exception of the sights. I guess I just expect better than generic 3-dot post sights on a “Tactical” model.
Airgun DeathRay
When I was at SHOT SHOW 2009, I was wandering around the show flow and ended up in front of the Gamo booth. Gamo, if you didn’t know is a maker of high quality “adult” airguns – the “adult” meaning that these are not your son’s Daisy Red Ryder, these are powerful rifles capable of launching pellets in excess of 1600 feet per second.
At their booth, they had a video playing for one of their rifles, the Hunter Extreme. The Hunter Extreme (picture below) is pushing a .22 caliber pellet at 1300 feet per second (that is not a typo). Definitely not your daddy’s airgun.
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| From SHOT SHOW 2009 |
The video they had playing can be seen here – they take a smallish sized hog/javelina with an airgun, which is actually one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. You can purchase the Gamo Hunter Extreme directly from Gamo USA at this link. If you have a pest/varmint problem and are worried about using an actual .22, this thing will clean up your garden/backyard/whatever pretty handily. Retail price is around $500.
All you need to know about the “stimulus” bill
The House voted down a Republican amendment, which would have cut a significant portion of the bill’s spending and greatly expanded the amount of tax cuts in the bill.
Remember, the only thing really getting “stimulated” by this bill are the government employees. There are massive amounts of pork in this bill, and the one attempt to trim some of that pork out of it was predictably voted down by a partisan Congress.