On a completely unrelated note, the shooting world lost one of its best-known names last week. Former Los Angeles County Deputy Jack Weaver, 80, died Tuesday in Carson City. Weaver, for those of you not familiar with the name, is the man for whom the Weaver Shooting Stance is named.
Month: April 2009
A Very Special Reminder
For the next week or so, reminders will be popping up to make sure people mail in their NRA Board Election ballots. These reminders come from some of our favorite people. We do hope everyone will consider our endorsements for the NRA Board Election, and check out our interviews with the candidates that can be found at the link above. Your vote only counts if the ballot arrives by April 26th, so get them in the mail.
More Details on the Rescue
It looks like there really was some fantastic marksmanship at work in this incident with the Somali Pirates.  I have to share Dave Kopel’s sentiment that President Obama deserves kudos for ordering the Navy to do what they had to do, and get the captain back by whatever means were prudent, even if it meant dead pirates. When he does something right, I will praise him. Let’s look at the marksmanship though:
U.S. Navy snipers fatally shot three pirates holding an American cargo-ship captain hostage after seeing that one of the pirates “had an AK-47 leveled at the captain’s back,” a military official said Sunday.
The captain, who’d been held in a lifeboat in the Indian Ocean since Wednesday, was rescued uninjured, Navy Vice Adm. Bill Gortney told reporters.
[…]
U.S. forces moved to rescue Phillips after seeing him in imminent danger on the lifeboat, Gortney said. A fourth pirate was negotiating Phillips’ fate aboard the nearby USS Bainbridge.
“While working through the negotiations process tonight, the on-scene commander from the Bainbridge made the decision that the captain’s life was in immediate danger, and the three pirates were killed,” Gortney said. “The pirate who surrendered earlier today is being treated humanely; his counterparts who continued to fight paid with their lives.”
Now imagine the shot they had to take. You’re on the deck of a ship that’s pitching in the high seas, and shooting at targets who are also pitching in the same seas. You not only have to be able to aim to where the targets are right now, but where they will be by the time the bullet finds it way to the target. The distances involved are probably on the order of hundreds of yards, if not more. The pirates “was shot in the head.” according to a defense official.
We should thank God we have such skilled men and women defending our country. I’m going to bet future pirates are going to avoid American flagged vessels from this point forward.
UPDATE: Blackfive is reporting the distance was about 25 meters. I’m surprised the pirates allowed themselves to be reeled in that close. Either way, there’s no such thing as a fair gunfight.
And Now It’s 60 Minutes
I just watched 60 minutes short segment on the Great Obama Gun Rush. It’s pretty clear to me at this point that the media is doing everything it possibly can to bring gun control back into the public spotlight, and create a favorable environment for the Democratic Congress to pass it. Gun Geek Rants has a pretty good run down of the show.
It featured Philip Van Cleave, President of Virginia Citizens Defense Leauge. I thought he handled himself well, for it being a hostile interview. The only problems I saw with his performance was nit picky stuff like using “guns” in the context of “These politicians are good for guns” rather than “These politicians are good on Second Amendment Rights.” We should be careful to remind people that this issue isn’t about guns, it’s about freedom. It’s about the Bill of Rights. These are things that everyone generally agrees it’s important to preserve.
UPDATE: Michael Bane notes that Newsweek is in on the gun control game too.
Dead Pirates – A Great Easter Treat
Looks like the captain managed to jump overboard again, and the Navy shot the remaining pirates. Nice shooting. At least the Big-O had the stones to tell the Navy to do what they had to do. There will be more piracy though, that much can be certain. Blackfork thinks it never should have come to this point, and I agree with him.
I wondered, since it’s a bit harder to convince the international community to give up its irrational fear of civilians with guns, whether the Navy could buy a dozen or so old merchant vessels, fill them with Marines, and have them cruise the Gulf of Aden. Kill any pirates who try to attack. Eventually, the pirates won’t know which vessels are carrying cargo, and which are carrying marines who will kill them. Get enough countries to do this, I’m going to bet that a lot of these pirates decide life as a fisherman isn’t so bad after all.
Happy Easter, Everyone!
Here’s your creepy Easter Bunny video of the day.
The Endowment Member Gift
NRA finally got my endowment member gift to me a few weeks ago. We’re cleaning up today and putting everything in its place. The problem is, where to put the endowment member gift. You can see my dilemma below:
It’s a lovely knife. It would be nice to put it on display. But it’s also a weapon, and I don’t particularly relish the idea of performing a Tueller Drill half asleep at three O’Clock in the morning because a home invader has decided to arm himself with my commemorative NRA Endowment knife. I don’t like to leave functional weapons laying around the house.
I figure I have two choices. Epoxy the knife to the display rack, so that it can’t be easily removed, or mount it on the wall in the bedroom. I don’t know if I honestly want a knife mounted in my bedroom. I liked the civil war bullet set I got for the Life membership. Unless a burglar brings along an 1861 Sprinfield, there’s not much that can be done with that.
Not that I don’t like the knife, but can you imagine the headline? So I would suggest to NRA gifts that are a bit more, shall we say, inert. How about an NRA commemorative deactivated 5 inch naval shell? I could put that right by the fireplace!
You Know You’re a Gun Nut …
As you can see there is lots of empty space in this underground garage. And with the aid of my trusty laser range finder I found places where it was 345 yards from wall to wall. It’s not really practice for Boomershoot (minimum range is 375 yards) but it’s close. And it’s would be better than anything else within 20 miles or so.
I was discussing this with some Microsoft friends at lunch the other day and they had a concern about the ceiling height. As the range gets longer the midrange height of the bullet gets larger too. Would people start hitting the ceiling beams? In particular Jim was concerned about using a 45-70 which has a trajectory resembling artillery.
It’s a valid concern. With a 340 yard zero a typical .45-70 cartridge is going to have a midrange height of over 50 inches. My AR-15 shooting it’s favorite ammo is going to have only a 7.1 inch midrange height. And my .300 Win Mag would have only have a midrange height of 6.3 inches.
Go over and see Joe’s dream indoor range. It certainly looks the part. We have significant unoccupied space in our building too, and I’ve thought it would make a great air gun range, or even a smallbore range if you could get the right backstop. We have a good 45 yards inside in the unoccupied part. Joe is more of a long range shooter than I am, and his preferred targets a bit more, shall we say, reactive. Thus his dreams are bigger too :)
ABC 20/20 Hatchet Job
Sensibly Progressive has a great run down of the 20/20 special, which basically informs us that we’re all way too stupid to defend ourselves with a firearm.
UPDATE: More from VSSA:
We’re only ten minutes in to this and it is very clear that the theme of the program is that ordinary citizens are not prepared to use a firearm in self defense. They give several hours of training to three students at a small college then put them in a scenario to see how they react. Predictably, they fail.
And put them in a scenario as a trained shooter, namely a police instructor. They should have put them up against another untrained person. This is an excellent timeline from Found: One Troll:
Active shooter breaks in and Jimmy is unable to draw his sidearm from under his concealing sweatshirt. Looks like he needed more practice. Jimmy is shot and “killed†before he can draw. Jimmy did not seek concealment behind his desk. Sawyer trots out the canard that Jimmy could have been disarmed by the active shooter, his own gun used against the other students after he falls. The active shooter is a police officer and firearms instructor, trained and experienced in shooting while moving and recognizing threats. Not a realistic simulation, it seems to me.
Definitely not realistic. If a highly trained individual goes ape shit, the body count is going to be high, and even trained police officers are going to have difficulty taking him down. Also, the person playing the role of crazed shooter expected resistance. A real shooter will not be. But it does bring up an important point: you have to be better than the person you’re going up against, and what I’ve long suggested to get better is training and competition, particularly practical shooting.
Even in New Jersey …
… gun sales are up 30%. Now if the folks who are buying all these new guns would get involved and get engaged, we might be able to make some progress over there.