This literally just in from IDPA HQ prior to Nationals:
The Rulebook Clarifications for Q3, 2014, have not been finalized for publication. We would like to publish this completed update for those of our competitors who will be attending IDPA Nationals. Since the CZ Custom Shop is not an OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer), the CZ SP-01 Accu-Shadow will not be deemed SSP legal, based on the following rules in the current rulebook: 8.2.1.4.1.
Competitors planning to shoot this firearm at the IDPA Nationals will need to make other arrangements. Please see Robert Ray for more information on borrowing a firearm if needed. Comp-Tac has generously offered to lend holsters for borrowed firearms and HQ has an assortment of SSP legal firearms to lend for the match. Any competitor who arrives with an Accu-Shadow and chooses not to shoot the match will have their entry fee refunded. We understand that this is a major inconvenience due to the late nature of this decision. We apologize and are striving to fix our process so that this will not happen in the future. We thank you for your understanding.
Sincerely,
Joyce Wilson
Executive Director, IDPA
We are publishing this so that anyone attending IDPA Nats and planning on using an Accu-Shadow in SSP has access to this information and hopefully has time to make alternate plans on what gun to bring with them to the match. For reference, the rule cited states:
8.2.1.4.1. Externally visible modifications other than those listed in the Permitted Modifications
section.
Essentially, the Accu-bushing is what knocks it out of SSP. Again, this information is being published so that shooters planning on using an Accu-Shadow will have an opportunity to get a different gun.
Check any internet gun forum, and one of the most common threads will be complaints about the customer service in gun stores. “I went into Fred’s blast town and had to listen to some 19 year talk about being a Delta Navy Ranger Seal and how the Taurus is the best handgun for special operations.” Or the classic “I went into a gun store to buy a 1911 and they tried to sell me a 38 snubbie because the 1911 might be too much gun to handle.”
Can you imagine if other business tried this approach? You go to a hotel and check in: “hi, I’d like a room with a king sized bed please.”
“Well, you’re not very tall, so a king sized bed might be more bed than you can handle. We have rooms with a twin bed, that might be more your size.”
The jokes write themselves, and I’m sure you guys can come up with plenty other examples. The problem of course is that gun shops tend to hire gun enthusiasts and not people with good customer service backgrounds. That leads people working in shops to forget that fundamentally they’re not different from an Abercrombie employee in the mall or a hotel front desk clerk. It turns out that it’s generally pretty easy to teach people product knowledge, whether that product is used cars or insurance policies. It’s a lot harder to teach them people skills. But there’s a solution for that to, and it’s called “scripting.”
Newer readers to the blog may not know that before I was slinging pixels and lead, I was in the hotel business. I was manager in customer facing roles, and learned a lot about the topic of customer service. Some people in service roles have great people skills and require very little instruction. Other people don’t, and for those people the service industry invented scripting. Scripting is exactly what it sounds like: you train your people to have standard responses for the majority of interactions. All the way down to simple things like saying “my pleasure” instead of “you’re welcome” at the end of conversations, you can develop a script for most customer encounters. The level of detail in a script is dependent on how competent the employee is at dealing with people. Newbies and bridge trolls stay 100% to the script, experienced employees and people-people get leeway.
Honestly, more gun stores should hire this way. Don’t hire gun enthusiasts. Hire people with customer service backgrounds. Hire people who’ve worked in the service industry. If they like guns, great. If they’re ambivalent, fine. Product knowledge is easy.
I’ve never had this happen before, so I wanted to share it with my shooter buddies and see if anyone had any insight. Shooting my GP100 Match Champion, if I close one eye bullseye style and shoot with a hard front sight focus, the gun’s point of impact is ~4 inches to the right at 25 yards, with the front sight centered. No problem, I could just drift the front sight over. However, here’s the weird thing. If I open both eyes and don’t use as hard a front sight focus, but just kind of center the fiber in the rear notch, the point of impact shifts back to dead center, with about 0.50-1.00 inch increase in group size.
I’ve never had this happen before, and I’m kind of wondering what caused it. My current theory is that because I’m not as hard focused on the front sight, there’s a slight amount of blur on the fiber that’s “filling” in the gaps. So a centered green blob puts hits on paper but opens up my groups a bit.
Seen on facebook, likely sourced from a Japanese airsoft page. But I’ll be honest, if this was a real thing? Kind of want. Because there’s no attempt to make this a “srsfightingpistol” it’s just a big ol goofy clownshow. Like a Pagani Zonda, it’s all about theatre.
I am going to cut right to the chase here: now that I’ve had the time to practice with it, use it, and really work it, I can say that the Garrett Industries Silent Thunder OWB is the best revolver holster I’ve ever owned.
The holster itself is an interesting idea: take a kydex holster and line it with leather. The name “Silent thunder” comes because your gun doesn’t make any of those tell-tale clicks and clunks that you get drawing from a kydex holster. So you get the draw and re-holstering feel of a leather rig with the durability of a kydex holster. Not a bad deal.
There’s nothing on the interior of the holster to snag your draw, and the gun comes out clean. There’s also nothing to impede your ability to holster, so it’s easy to put the away when you’re done. Retention is acceptable for action shooting activities, and can be tightened down if you’re going to use it for a carry holster. It is an OWB holster, and for a four inch revolver the only realistic carry method is going to be under a vest or jacket. But its footprint is still smaller than equivalent holsters from Safariland and Blade-Tech, which are enormous and basically impossible to conceal without massive printing.
The holster is priced right – 85.00-100ish dollars, depending on options selected. They also make IWB holsters, one of which we have in the office for a seldom carried Kahr PM9. It’s a great holster as well. My experience with the Silent Thunder OWB has made me curious about their AIWB offering, having just ordered a Wiley Clapp SP101 for T&E, I’d like to get a good rig to carry that in. The order process with Garrett is pretty simple: pick the holster you want, type in the gun type and info, pay them. You can even checkout with PayPal, which I love. And yes, if you’re wondering, I actually paid for this holster with money. It’s pretty great, and I’d recommend it to anyone looking for a range/competition holster.
Slow motion video is interesting. The .38 recoils in slow motion exactly how I imagined it would, which is to say not very much at all. The magnum on the other hand appears to be way more violent in slow-motion than it did when shooting it. In fact, in the slow mo video you can see my grip comes apart at the end of the magnum relay, which is something I didn’t really notice when shooting it live.
I really wanted to work a quote in here about witnessing the firepower of this fully armed and operational battle station…and I guess I did. To the point: We now have dates for our Basic Pistol classes and a location. Classes will be held at Beacon Hill Rifle and Pistol Club in Brookings, SD. The first class is Sunday, September 28th. Here’s a class description:
Fundamental Defensive Shooting
FDS is designed for shooters that are relatively new or moderately skilled and looking to increase their basic firearms proficiency. Topics covered will include the fundamentals of marksmanship such as sight alignment and trigger control, grip and stance, drawing from open holsters and concealment, multiple shots/targets, and reloads from open/concealment. No prior training is required. Cost is $150 per student, with an absolute maximum of 12 students.
Required Equipment:
• Reliable, functional handgun
• Rigid belt holster (non-collapsible)
• Rigid magazine pouch
• Study belt
• 400 rounds of ammunition (minimum)
• 3 magazines (minimum)
• Concealment clothing (if desired)
• Eye and ear protection
• Water and food
Sign up for our September 28th class at the button below:
In case you wanted it, here’s some back info on me.
Instructor Bio
Caleb Giddings has over a decade of competition shooting experience in multiple disciplines, starting in NRA bullseye and including IDPA and USPSA. He’s an IDPA 5-gun master, which means he just practiced their classifier a lot, and an A-class USPSA shooter. He’s finished in the top five at national level IDPA matches, but that was with a revolver so it doesn’t really count, right? His classes will focus on executing the fundamentals of marksmanship, because that’s all he’s qualified to teach. Also, he’s very short.
I also have a class on October 26th at Beacon Hill, which we will definitely have as well. I’ll post info on that later.
I’ve noted before that the typical good guy who takes care of his family, goes to work every day, and generally interacts with other human beings without any intention to cause damage or harm doesn’t really “get” bad guys. In other words, his/her brain doesn’t really work the same way that a hardened street criminal’s brain works. To illustrate the magnitude of the difference, consider this: I attended a lecture by William Aprill some years back on criminal actors and one of the things that stuck in my mind the most was reporting that someone gave jailed violent criminals a survey asking them about motivations for their crimes. A sizeable chunk of them reported a feeling of accomplishment.
I’ll translate that into good-guy language for you: Think back to when you accomplished something worthwhile in your life like graduating from college, getting a big contract/project done at work, or winning an award for some difficult achievement. Remember how that felt? Great. That’s how bad guys feel when they cave somebody’s skull in with a shovel.
Labeling criminal actors as “predators” is not just rhetorical flourish…it’s a useful description of criminal motivation and behavior.
I think one of the most misunderstood aspects of the criminal mindset is the concept of opportunism. I find it’s difficult to get people who aren’t hardened criminals to really process what criminal opportunism actually is. It’s probably most easily understood by looking at the behavior of a predator like a grizzly bear. Grizzlies are omnivores, meaning they will eat just about anything. They spend the majority of their time roaming around their territory looking for the next meal. They have an excellent sense of smell that detects possibilities for a meal from improbable distances. They are perpetually on the hunt for something…anything…and when they see an opportunity for a meal they go for it. It doesn’t matter if that opportunity is a run of salmon, a young moose, crabs hiding in the mud, or something currently being consumed by a smaller and weaker bear. The grizzly is an opportunist, but that doesn’t mean the bear sits there and waits for food to fall in his lap.
Like the grizzly, human predators have a sense for opportunity. In the case of human predators it’s more of a highly developed set of observational skills that drives success. The human predator sees things that you, the law abiding guy, do not. They have to, really, to have any shot at success in criminal enterprise. Most people in a Wal-Mart are there to buy groceries or sundries and get the heck out of there. Bad guys in Wal-Mart might well be there to buy something mundane but if they see an opportunity they can shift gears instantly and follow up on it. The most horrific example of this I can think of is the murder of Jennifer, Micheala, and Haley Petit. Two relatively low level criminals saw Jennifer and 11 year old Michaela Petit in a store and in no time flat worked up a plan to follow them home and assault them.
I say “low level” because prior to this horrific crime the two vile bastards responsible had records for what we’d consider relatively minor crimes:
The predatory mindset isn’t strictly limited to material gain. It’s possible the initial attraction to Mrs. Petit and her daughter was more of the “human vacuum cleaner” routine but once in control of their victims the opportunities for other sorts of criminal diversion were recognized and acted upon. Having beaten Mr. Petit half to death they found themselves in control of a woman and two girls…and they proceeded to tie them up and sexually assault them for the next several hours.
Apart from the indescribable moral revulsion this event inspired when I saw the news stories, (which still hasn’t subsided, frankly…it’s not wise to commit to print what I think should have been done to those bastards) the thing that stuck out most to me was the opportunism. These two vile bastards were in the store, saw Mrs. Petit and little Michaela, and upon seeing them bought a pellet gun, some rope, and other sundries at the same store (If I remember correctly) to carry out their plan. This wasn’t something they planned for months or even days. It’s something they came up with on the spot in a matter of seconds.
How does one go from a routine shopping trip to buying items that are intended to be used in robbery, kidnapping, aggravated assault, sexual assault, and finally capital murder? Because predators don’t have routine shopping trips. The predatory mindset is actively looking for a victim no matter the time, place, or circumstance. A bear may leave his den with the intention of mating or marking his territory, but if he spots the opportunity for a meal along the way he’ll take it. The criminal may be in Wal-Mart for a perfectly ordinary shopping trip, but when he sees the opportunity for robbery, rape, and murder he’ll take it.
When you understand the opportunism of criminals, you can begin working to make yourself look like a particularly bad prospect. The only animal a grizzly is really afraid of is a bigger grizzly. If you can do the human equivalent of being a bigger grizzly, or at least looking like you’ve got enough fangs and claws to make an assault very messy for a predator, odds are you’ll be left alone while he seeks out easier prey. The trick here is often speed: Bad guys make decisions fast and if you can make yourself look like a bad prospect quickly enough in the process the odds that you’ll be hurt shrink significantly. If your goal is self defense, you have to be as ready and willing to take sensible defensive actions as the bad guy is to assault you.
Bad guys are opportunists…ready to rock and roll at the drop of a hat. You need to be just as ready to meet them with appropriate force if you want to win.
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