Sebastian – Page 543 – Shall Not Be Questioned

New Living Room Set, Among Other Things

So the auction for my company’s assets is just about over, as we speak, and it turns out I’m walking away with a couple of thousand dollar living room set for about 450 bucks. Two years ago our company spent a little bit of money to set up an employee lounge, so we’d have a place to relax and spend some quiet time during the day. Turns out it made a much better area for all hands meetings and various other company presentations. The sofa sets were barely used, were leather, and will look great in whatever I end up turning my den into eventually.

More importantly, my long month nightmare of preparing our entire technological infrastructure: sorting, cataloging and archiving data, shutting things down in an orderly manner, and finally making sure not a hard drive leaves the place that wasn’t either physically annihilated (total around 250 so far) or electronically shredded (total maybe 50), is almost at an end. I should soon have more time for blogging, and more importantly, thinking about what comes next. I appreciate everyone’s patience through what are and may continue to be difficult times for me. I am still on the payroll until the end of the month, but hopefully the rest of the ride down on the bomb has a certain inevitability to it, and won’t be as draining. In a few days I will celebrate my tenth year with this company. I am one of the few remaining of the early employees, having survived four different CEOs, just as many directors.

The Gunnie Award

Many thanks to all of those who voted for me in the Lucky Gunner “Gunnie” award voting without me even asking. It’s a really well done piece, done by TechnoFrames. I’m really jazzed about the case it came in too:

I’ll leave it to the readers to ponder whether it is ironic my award category was politics, yet I have difficulty with the kind of self-promotion that entices other people to expend their effort so that I can have something for myself.

Not a Peep From Our Opponents

The shooting that held me up in traffic for several hours on my way back to from the Lucky Gunner shoot has turned out to be quite a scandal, raising quite a number of questions about who knew what and when. If you’re looking for excellent coverage of the matter, go see Curses! Foiled Again!

One thing our opponents are always quick to counter with is that they are activists against gun violence. That is their issue. They aren’t about gun control for control’s sake anymore, just about common sense measures to cut down on gun violence. Well, it seems to me that someone shooting his ex-wife, and then a police officer after a high speed chase is a pretty notable act of gun violence, and worth a mention at least. But the response from our opponents would appear to be crickets. I guess it’s not a concern if a police officer does it? It’s only gun violence when it’s perpetrated by a civilian? Or is it that there are only common sense measures that restrict civilians? I eagerly await our opponents to talk about what common sense solutions could have prevented this tragedy, but so far I only hear gun bloggers talking about it. I’m not holding my breath.

Copywrong

Clayton Cramer has a post up on copyright law, and how Righthaven screwed him with it. I’ve never been of the opinion that our current copyright laws are well suited to how we use and consume information in the 21st century, but there are too many vested interests who’d like to keep everything the way is. One reason I’m considering establishing an LLC to run the blog.

Bob Mensch Appealing Conviction in I-78 Incident

So reports Capitol Ideas. Mensch was convicted of disorderly conduct for displaying a handgun to another motorist during a running confrontation down I-78. Mensch denies displaying the gun, claiming the driver mistook a cell phone for a gun. We have a photo of Senator Mensch’s cell phone, so you can see that it’s an easy mistake to make.

All kidding aside, we wish Senator Mensch good luck on his appeal.

Bringing Out the Crazy

Miguel notes that even the VPC has difficulty with their kooky supporters.

More Full Auto Fun Coming

I’ve barely had a chance to edit my videos. The major part of my liquidating work is nearly done, but it’ll be hellish until it is. I’m technically on payroll until the end of the month when I cash out with severance, but for June I probably won’t have as much to do, and given that we’re already pushing our landlord’s patience on our lease, which officially ended yesterday, that’s looking more certain.

In the mean time, Lucky Gunner is publishing the stats from this weekend, along with a bunch of pictures, including one of me on the M16 with some brass in the air. I guess if you’re going to host gun bloggers, the lesson is to bring enough ammo and BBQ.

Kids and Automatic Weapons

Kevin Baker has some video that will really make our opponents wet themselves, including a kid firing a German MP40. The MP40 is a highly tame submachine gun. Appropriate for letting the kids try.

Lucky Gunner Shoot – Day 2 – Range Master

On Sunday, the folks over at Lucky Gunner treated us to a shortened version, or demo version of you will, of a pistol course from Range Master. Based on what I experienced, I think they have a sound program, and I would recommend it. Their staff are experienced law enforcement officers, and law enforcement and civilian trainers. You can see some of the people we met here. Tom Givens told us that he’s had 53 of his students go on to get into gunfights, and all of them won them. He did unfortunately say he’s had two of his students murdered, but both had forgotten the first rule of gunfighting, which is to bring a gun.

The day started with some basic classroom instruction, focusing largely on the mindset of carrying a firearm, safe firearm handling, and most of the basic stuff you’d expect to have covered. Then we went to the range session, which started with some basic exercises. Despite what our opponents often think, in that training is this magical thing that turns one from a bumbling fool into a competent gun handler, it is not. The purpose of training is to provide the building blocks of competent gun handling that can be practiced, over and over again, until it becomes second nature. Range Master teaches with this is mind, working from the holster to firing the gun in multiple steps and are combined over the course to show the student how to, on his or her’s own, drill those good habits into their brain through repetition and practice.

After drilling on the basics of the draw and presentation of the firearm, we worked up to firing, first one shot, then two, three, along with magazine changes through all the firing drills. One thing I learned was that I carry spare magazines backwards. In truth, and I’ll probably get kicked out of the tacticool club for admitting this, but I almost never carry a reload (unless you count a New York reload). I also learned a pretty good tip for one handed shooting, which was to allow the gun to cant a bit to the side if it helped you get a firmer grip on the pistol. This did seem to improve my one handed shooting, particularly with my left hand.

After lunch we did drills on improving shooting cadence, going from one shot per second, to two shots per second, and up to four shots per second. There are tips for being able to shoot fast accurately, which we didn’t get into very much, but that could be because we were not taking a full Range Master course. After working on cadence, that’s when the target dummies came out. Follow this link to see the web site of DVC Targets, who makes them. These are excellent training tools. They were fully dressed, and set to drop if hit with a clean shot to the vital area by a 9mm (which is what most were shooting, including me). This is the first time I’d ever shot at something that looks like a live person. The drill was to fire two shots into the chest area down zero zone on an IDPA target, at about 5 yards, then engage the dummy at about 10 yards. Two hits down zero at five yards I wasn’t going to sweat, but I was a little apprehensive about how my eye would find center of mass on something human shaped wearing clothing, but I found center of mass just fine and dropped the dummy.

If you’d like to take a class with Range Master, they are in the Memphis area, but do instruction offsite as well. You can find their schedule here. I think they did a pretty good job with us, and were very patient under the time-compressed circumstances. All training helps, and is beneficial, no matter what you think you know and no matter how basic the course. You will learn something new, or pick up a new technique that could end up working for you. I was glad to spend Sunday with Range Master, and thank them for introducing us to them, and to Lucky Gunner for arranging it.

I don’t need no teenage queen …

… all I want is my M14:

Thanks to Les Jones for taking the video, and he has many more, including some of the women who are a lot cuter than I am. I’m not kidding when I say it’s brutal. Probably the most uncomfortable full auto I shot. Even the BAR was a walk in the park by comparison. You’ll notice my flinch when I drop the hammer on an empty chamber.