shooting/shotguns/sports

Skeet skeet skeet

Posted on by Caleb

Kim Rhode, the most decorated American shooter, has picked up another medal to add to her already impressive collection.

Cainero, Rhode and Germany’s Christine Brinker were tied with 93 points each, an Olympic record, after the final round of the women’s skeet. The Italian won the shoot-off for gold in the rainy conditions, hitting both skeets while Rhode and Brinker hit 1-of-2.

Rhode then hit both targets in the second shoot-off to pick up silver and Brinker settled for third after connecting on just 1-of-2 skeets.

Congrats to Kim – it’s nice after the initial events to see US shooters picking up medals, first Glenn Eller won double trap, and now Kim picks up a silver in women’s skeet.

As a side note, I did not know that the word for the clays was actually “skeets” – I always just called them “clays” or “birds”.  The more you know, I suppose.

news

Only Ones prosecuting their own

Posted on by Caleb

In a sort of turn around from the last two stories I’ve run in this week-long series; I want to focus on an incident where the “good cops” did in fact do the right thing and prosecute “one of their own”.   In this particular case, a now ex-cop (he was a cop at the time of the crimes) was convicted of multiple counts of rape and sentenced to 440 years in prison.

Pelo has been jailed since his June 2006 arrest outside a woman’s home. Another Bloomington officer spotted Pelo outside the home late on June 11, 2006, after the woman reported a prowler.

The focus of my Only Ones series has so far been to focus on the good done by cops; that doesn’t change with this story.  Former Officer Pelo is a scumbag, and I personally hope he rots in jail for the rest of his miserable life – the officer who turned him in on the other hand deserves kudos for doing his job, and getting a rapist off the street.

I have said repeatedly through this series that I am the first person to decry police misconduct, and this case is no different – I have also maintained that assertions that good cops do not in fact cover up for the bad apples; and that would appear to be reinforced by this particular case.  The bad apple was investigated, arrested, prosecuted, and ultimately convicted by the system that the nay-sayers says “protects” him.

Congrats to the unnamed Bloomington cop – it’s a hell of a collar for you.

news

Shocking News: Desertion still a crime

Posted on by Caleb

Army deserter will be deported from Canada back to the US.

Jeremy Hinzman deserted the Army in 2004 after learning his unit was to be deployed to Iraq.

He refused to participate in what he calls an immoral and illegal war.

Hinzman fled to Canada along with his wife and son and sought refugee status.

I am fine with conscientious objectors, although I’d question why someone who is morally opposed to war joined the armed forces; desertion on the other hand I’m not okay with.

Contrary to what the stupid hippies are saying, this guy will probably not be sent to Iraq.  Instead, he’ll come back to the states, do a little jail time for desertion, and then get a dishonorable discharge, preventing him from voting or owning firearms.  I’m fine with that.

There are ways, even within a system like the military, to express your discontent with orders or policy – however, desertion is a crime, and is generally considered not one of the ways to go about it.  And like I said, I’m not even going to touch on the fact that I think it’s stupid to join any branch of the armed forces if you’re morally opposed to war.

shooting/sports

Action Airgun

Posted on by Caleb

After last night’s show, I wanted to circle back to the topic of Action Airgun and focus on some of the cooler things that came out of the interview and the show.

Obviously, I was impressed with the potential training value of Action Airgun, which is completely separate in my mind from its value as a shooting sport. As a shooting sport, it carries the value of being able to introduce new shooters to the sport, to break down the barriers that some people may have towards competitive shooting, and to provide a reasonable level of entry from and equipment standpoint into the shooting sports. Like Collins said, it’s a “gateway sport”.

But I also really, really like it’s value as a training tool. I’m a big believer in dry firing as a practice exercise, because it builds trigger discipline, which is in my opinion the most important part of shooting well. What it adds that you can get from just dry firing is the additional practice of having to re-acquire your sight picture after each shot. Sure, the airsoft pistol doesn’t have the recoil of a real 1911, even a 9mm one, but the fact that the slide still moves and forces you to pick up that sight picture again is extremely valuable as a training tool for action shooters; and for defensive shooting as well.

The other topic that I wished I had spent more time on was the support that NSSF is giving to Action Airgun. I really like to see that, since introducing new shooters to the shooting sports is sort of NSSF’s bread and butter, and I honestly haven’t seen a shooting sport come along that was quite this conducive to that in a while. Ultimately, that’s the biggest appeal of this to me – the ability to recruit new shooters and get them shooting real guns.

Airsoft is wildly popular, which means this sport starts with a built in user base. Secondly, children have notoriously short attention spans, so the kid who thinks that plinking with a .22 is boring may be interested by the plastic equivalent of “clang-‘n-bang”, specifically because it’s fast paced and interesting. Finally, it encourages group activity – forming a “fireteam” and shooting with your friends is going to be a lot more fun than running through the course all by yourself.

Personally, I’m actually really excited about this sport – I’m definitely going to be in on the inaugural season, one way or another.

shooting/sports

Best stage design ever

Posted on by Caleb

I’m a big fan of innovative and creative stage design for action shooting, so when I was cruising the Down Range Blog this morning, you’ve got to understand the jaw-drop I had when I saw this CAS stage from the Washington State SASS championship.

The shooter starts shooting 2 pistols, then he have to turn the boat, pick up the rifle and shoot through the paddle wheel. He finishes the stage by getting off the boat, runs to a horse nearby, mounts it and finishes with the shotgun.

You have to click the link and watch the video to really grok the stage though – the shooter literally has to turn a boat, that’s not a figure of speech in this case.   Stages like this really make me want to get back into cowboy shooting – because I really need to be shooting another match every month.

news

They’re the Only Ones saving jumpers

Posted on by Caleb

Two Orange County Sheriff’s Deputies and one California Highway Patrolman risk their lives to save freeway jumper.

The woman slipped, lost her footing and dangled over the freeway while  (Deputy) Wehrli and (CHP) Rand clung to her clothes and fingers, Dwyer said. (Deputy) Gunsolley climbed the fence to help, and more deputies grabbed their colleagues to keep them from slipping.

Now that is some crazy Hollywood style police action there, a suicidal woman trying to jump off a 50 foot bridge into rush hour traffic below, and three cops are holding on to her by her fingertips.  Excellent work on the part of these three brave officers, they’re a credit to their respective departments.   I’m quite pleased to know that there are cops out there willing to risk their lives to help people…even if those people may not necessarily want help, like the jumper in question.

I’ll be the first person to admit that there are some bad apples out there – cops aren’t perfect, and they’re not saints.  But they’re also not devils.  That’s my problem with the original Only Ones meme – it reminded me of the tactics of the anti-gun groups.  Think about the parallel for a moment.  Every time a gun owner crosses the line and commits a crime, the Brady Campaign et al blast it all over their front page, and use it as an excuse to paint all gun owners with the same brush.  The same could be said for the Only Ones thing, except that instead of law-abiding gun owners getting smeared, it was cops.

Ultimately, cops aren’t any better or any worse than the rest of us, and I it is important to remember and remind people that a few bad apples do not spoil the whole batch.

shooting/sports

Gun Nuts: TNG – Action Airguns

Posted on by Caleb

Click the link to listen to yesterday’s show – we covered Action Airgun with an interview with Collins White, the president of the newest shooting sport to hit the ground, as well as some coverage and commentary on the Olympics.

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I really should add that if you’re not in the online chat session found at www.blogtalkradio.com/gunnuts you’re missing out – a lot of great show (and otherwise) related conversation is happing in there, in real time.  Bonnie and I take a lot of cues from those people, and it’s one of the easist ways to get in touch with us during the show.

Back to the topic of Action Airgun; the opportunity to talk to Collins about the development and future of the sport was a lot of fun for me – I personally think that this sport could really take off, all it needs is the right sponsor or big name to tie itself to, and off you go.  At the very least, I’ll be there for the innagural season come hell or highwater.

Again, you can check out show for the evening at the Gun Nuts: The Next Generation – Action Airguns link or by visiting the Gun Nuts blog and clicking the player in the upper right hand.

gun control/news

Stolen gun reporting passes in Baltimore

Posted on by Caleb

Story here – the Baltimore City Council unanimously passed a measure which requires gun owners to report stolen guns to the police within a 24 hour period, which would automatically make you a criminal if your house was burgled while you were on vacation and didn’t report the crime.

Stolen gun reporting requirements often seem pretty harmless on the surface – I mean, who wouldn’t want gun owners to report stolen firearms to the police?  It seems like such a “common sense” measure, right?  And that’s the thing, it is common sense…because we already do it.  You’re essentially passing a law which mandates people do something that they’ve already been doing, which is an unnecessary law to begin with, and will certainly do nothing to combat crime.  Do you really think Johnny Crackhead is going to roll into the police station and tell the cops that his Hi-Point was stolen?

Ultimately, that’s my problem with bills like this – they don’t do anything to reduce crime, they only provide another avenue by which the government can turn a law abiding gun owner into a de facto criminal, for nothing other than being on vacation.