ParaUSA

Pride goeth…

Posted on by Caleb

Before the fall, as the Proverb goes – and to mix my metaphors, I may have bitten off more than I can chew.

You see, being a young headstrong man, I have entered into a friendly bet with Mr. Joe Huffman where at the conclusion of the Blackwater/ParaUSA shoot, we’ll shoot an El Presidente course to determine essentially who is the better shot.  The winner will receive a prize TBD, since we haven’t quite figured out the stakes yet.

Now, to know me, you have to understand something about me – I have had a tendency in my young life to occasionally run my mouth with abandon (my wife is shaking her head at that); however I have been fortunate in the majority of this situations to be able to back up my mouth with skill or plain old dumb luck.

The more I read Joe’s archives, the more I realize I’m going to need a lot of the latter to win our friendly wager.

I’d imagine that right now, my Dad is reading this post and laughing at me, because I should know better than to make bets with wiley shooters and let them choose the arena for the bet.

Oh well, at least I will get a lot of practice before Joe kicks my ass!

Uncategorized

Tonight on Gun Nuts:TNG

Posted on by Caleb

Squeaky and I will be talking concealed carry for the ladies with Breda from The Breda Fallacy.

The show is live at 11pm Eastern time, and you can listen live at www.blogtalkradio.com/gunnuts, you can also call in and speak with Squeaks, Breda, or myself by calling  (347) 539-5436.  If you’re a woman who carries, please feel free to give us a call and share your experience with us.

Again, the URL is http://www.blogtalkradio.com/gunnuts and the show goes live at 11pm eastern time.  If you can’t catch us live, you can visit that same URL the following morning and download or stream the most recent show, as well as any other show from our archives.

Tonight – Gun Nuts The Next Generation and Breda, live at 11pm Eastern!

Uncategorized

NSSF Voter registration

Posted on by Caleb

NSSF has put up a website which enables people to more easily get registered to vote.

Because of the Heller win, this has become the most important election in my lifetime for gun rights.  We have the momentum in our favor currently, and we need to at the very least keep from losing our forward drive.  The easiest way to lose that momentum would be to end up with President Obama and an anti-gun Congress.

news

BATFE on Heller

Posted on by Caleb

The statement of good ol’ Mike Sullivan on the DC vs Heller decision:

ATF is pleased with the Supreme Court’s ruling recognizing that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess firearms, including for private purposes unrelated to militia operations. The court’s ruling is in accordance with the text of the Second Amendment, historical practice, and the Attorney General’s 2001 guidance on the scope of the Second Amendment, and is consistent with the bureau’s understanding of the scope of the Second Amendment. The Bureau also is pleased that the court appropriately made clear that nothing in yesterday’s ruling casts doubt on the constitutionality of ‘longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.’ In addition, the court appropriately recognized that the ‘carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons,’ such as machineguns, is not protected by the amendment. The bureau is studying the decision, but expects that it will not affect its continued enforcement of all existing federal firearms laws.

If you don’t feel like reading the whole thing, let me translate it for you: “Oh thank god they didn’t do anything crazy like say those cousin-humping rednecks could have machineguns.  Also, it’s a good thing that they didn’t say anything about catching real criminals, otherwise we’d have to find something to do other than harass law-abiding FFLs.”

I am kidding, sort of.  I do think that the BATFE is interested in going after actual criminals, where I think their problem lies is that they don’t really differentiate between a guy who forgets to dot his “t’s” and cross his “i’s” and a guy who is smuggling AK47s in from Mexico.

shooting/sports

Practical Shooting in the news

Posted on by Caleb

First up is Kirkland, Washington (wooo PacNorthWest) native Travis Tomasie of the Army Marksmanship Unit with a neat article detailing his meteoric rise to the top of the USPSA shooting game.  They talk a little bit about guns and gear, but what interested me the most about the article is the picture of Travis during a USPSA match – specifically his footwear.  If you look closely, you’ll see that he’s wearing cleats, like you’d see a soccer or baseball player wear.  At first, I did a double take, but then I realized that if you’re shooting a run-‘n-gun match on dirt, cleats might not be such a bad idea.  You can get started moving faster, stop quicker, and generally provide that all important aspect of shooting – a stable firing platform.

The next article is a brief blurb in the Fresno Bee about the USPSA Area 1 championships where Brad Holt won the production division.  Now, I could be wrong, but for some reason I want to think that the USPSA Area One championships take place at the Hogue Action Pistol range, just south of Morro Bay, CA.  If they do, I need to punch my ticket to that event ASAP.

I really enjoy seeing practical shooting sports covered in the local paper – not to slight shotgunners and clay shooters, but I think that a lot of the future of the shooting sports lies in the run-‘n-gun events, the practical shooting.  The fast pace and hang-and-bang nature seems like it would appeal to the younger demographic.  That creates a double bonus, because 1) you attract young shooters, and 2) action pistol shooters are “high volume” shooters, buying gear, ammo (or components for reloading) at a huge level.

shooting

Glock 24 range review

Posted on by Caleb

I have been trying to explain to my revolver friends why exactly I bought a Glock 24 to compete with, and what was going through my head when I shot it.  Well, after shooting it at Friday Night Steel, I can’t tell you what was going through my head when I shot it, but I can tell what was going on afterwards.  It mostly consisted of the mental version of an endzone dance, as I kept thinking how awesome this gun was.

The Trijicon sights were probably the highlight for me, as they stood out crisp and clear and were bright enough to allow for extremely quick acquisition of my sight picture during rapid shooting.  The long slide and ported barrel made recoil with 165 grain .40 S&W loads pretty much a non issue, which of course helped me pick up those big Trijicon sights for fast follow up shots.

As far as the Glock-ness goes, the only Glock I’d ever spent significant time with before this was my Glock 29 in 10mm, and that was so long ago I don’t remember how it handled all that well.  Having not shot a Glock really since then, I had sort of forgotten had the grip angle (loved by some, loathed by some) helped me manage recoil.

Short version of the story: I loved this gun, and it shoots like a charm.  I will be taking it to the next pin shoot with 180 grain rounds as well, and I liked shooting it so much that I now want to get a Glock 22 and a Glock 35 to round out my fullsize .40 S&W Glock stable.  I have no idea how any of this happened, but I’m turning into a Glock guy, much to my eternal shame.

shooting/sports

Friday Night Steel recap

Posted on by Caleb

Went and shot some steel at Marion County Fish & Game this Friday.  As I suspected, shooting the match was an absolute blast, just as much fun as shooting pins but considerably faster in the way the game is run.

The way this match was set up, there were 5 stages, and 5 different shooting squads.  Each squad started on a different stage, then proceeded in numerical order from there.  For example, my squad started on stage 2, which meant that we shot stage 2, 3, 4, 5, 1 in that order.   Mad props are due to our squad’s Range Officer, who arranged it so that we finished the day on the fastest stage, which honestly felt pretty good.

My usual shooting buddy (and cameraman) wasn’t able to make it, due to his wife having a baby or some other lame excuse (I kid, congrats, Greg) so my ability to take lame video was somewhat hampered by need to reload magazines and such.  However, I did grab this video of one of the shooters in my squad taking on stage 3.

You had to engage the IPSC style target first – when hit properly in the center the RO could see a red flag indicating that you’d made the shot, then you could engage the pepper poppers in whatever order.  It was not as easy as he made it look.

The other stages were just as challenging, with stage four probably throwing the most people off, since you had to shoot the second string of fire strong hand only, and the third string weak hand only.

I shot the match with my Glock 24, which I’ll review in the post immediately above this – however the short version of my review would be one word: sweeeeeeet.

As soon as I find out the final results of Friday’s match, I’ll post them on the blog for you guys.  I had a really great time shooting this match, and will definitely be back for the next one.  I think next time I’ll bring a .22 with me as well so I can enter that in addition to the Glock.

blogs

Hey, cool

Posted on by Caleb

Sometime yesterday while I was out blasty-blastin’ with my new Glock 24, Gun Nuts: The Next Generation had our 1,000th combined download of our shows.  And that doesn’t count the people who have downloaded it via iTunes (which we can’t track).

On behalf of my gracious southern co-host and myself, I’d like to say “thank you” to everyone who listens live and who downloads our shows.  We really enjoy doing the show, and we look forward to producing new episodes each week.

Tune in this week for “One for Ladies” as Bonnie and I discuss female concealed carry with none other than The Breda herself.

shooting

Friday Night Steel

Posted on by Caleb

At Marion County Fish & Game tonight.  I’m pretty pumped up about it, as tonight will make a bunch of firsts for me in terms of my involvement in the shooting sports.

  • 1st time shooting an all steel match
  • 1st time shooting a Glock in any kind of match
  • 1st time entering in Open class in any match (side note: it’s sad that I’ll probably get stomped all over the place by production shooters even though my gun is all “rarararara I’m a racegun”)
  • 1st time shooting a .40 S&W on any platform
  • 1st time I’m shooting a gun in a match that I haven’t taken to the range prior to the match to get dialed in

I will be at Marion County Fish & Game around 5:30ish (depending on when I get out of the office), according to the website shooting starts at 6:15pm, and there is a shooter’s meeting at 6pm for new shooters on the rules and procedures.

Should be loads of fun!