Category: Shooting

In New Jersey? Apparently. There are small but still vibrant shooting communities in most of the states which could be accurately described as “behind enemy lines.”  I’ve wanted to try more than a few matches over in New Jersey, because there are clubs that run some good ones, but that’s a legal risk.

The Washington Post runs a very positive story about how West Virginia brought its championship rifle team back from the brink.

Caleb is speaking about rule violations, and SayUncle notes that they aren’t as cut and dried as people would imagine:

And it’s not even for photos. If you’ve ever dry fired, you’ve broken a rule. If you holster your weapon in an IWB holster, you’ve broken a rule. If you draw from a shoulder holster, you’ve broken a rule. When you pull the trigger on your Glock before you disassemble it, you’ve broken a rule. Boresighted your rifle on your kitchen table, you’ve broken a rule. It goes on and on.

Exercise caution and use your head.

I don’t think anyone’s ever argued that the four rules are to be taken absolutely literally, but they are meant to create a culture of safety, so that you have to break two rather than one in order for someone to get shot accidentally. There are plenty of situations one can think of which represent legitimate gun use, such as drawing from the holster, dry firing, or disassembly where you’re going to technically violate a rule. But I would hope for the case of dry firing, disassembly, or holstering, they will take care to make sure the gun is at least pointed in a safe direction for the former two, and rule three is being meticulously followed for the latter.

I agree with Uncle that people need to use their heads. There are times when you’ll have to drop one of the rules in importance and be really really sure you’re raising another. Draw practice, dry fire, and cleaning are all good and necessary reasons to violate rule, because we know we’re violating it, and know to be meticulous with the others. We are still part of the culture of safety. The examples Caleb gives…

Recent controversies across the gunblog world have sparked this train of thought on how quick we are as a community to point and holler “they have their finger on the trigger” or “she’s muzzling people with that gun“.  In both of those linked instances, those people would be correct: the SniperBabes have several pictures that are in clear violation of Rule 3, and even Breda is clearly violating Rule 2 in that video.  So technically, the people that called them out for those violations of The 4 Rules are quite correct if you’re holding to the letter of the law.

… are not good reasons for violating the rules. The point of the rules is to make people think very seriously about their gun handling. Obviously poster babes on a calendar are not of that mindset. They are not part of the safety culture we’re trying to promote among responsible gun owners. That’s why I have a problem with it. I can sympathize with frustration at people who swear up and down you can always at all times take the four rules as literal gospel, but the point really is, if you are in a situation where you have to violate one, you should think, think, think! “I am dry firing, better do it into a solid backstop and not into the wall that goes to the next room where my kids are,” think about “I am holstering my gun, so I should make sure no one is directly behind me, and my finger is off the trigger.” (at least until you do that without thinking), and thinking about the direction your gun is pointed when you drop the hammer for disassembly. As long as all those things are being followed, the most you risk is some property damage and embarrassment, rather than quarts of blood and a lot of questions from the police.

The issue with the SniperBabes poor gun handling is not that they violated a technical rule, it’s that they violated it for no good reason, this indicating they have no regard for the safety culture we’re trying to promote. I would like to think that should bother everyone.

I feel like I won’t recognize the range when I finally go back on Monday night. During one of the last airgun competitions, my gun broke. Sebastian bought himself a new airgun, but the one I stole from him is still broken. But then I went out of town. And then I got sick. And then Sebastian got sick. And before you know it, it’s a holiday. I haven’t been to the range in more than a month, and illness has kept him away for almost a month.

How long does it take before you start feeling like a stranger on your regular shooting range?

Looks like Joe Huffman has been trying to refine the formula to Boomerite, which is how they convert ammunition into explosions out in Idaho every year, and has turned Joe into a bit of a rock star. Hey, explosions work for those guys too.

We haven’t heard much about the bill banning pigeon shoots, but I suspect now we will begin hearing about it once again. That Philadelphia Club is going to end up being the reason why we end up with a ban. I am not a fan of the sport, but I think a ban is improper, and I don’t trust HSUS not to try to get more. Pigeons are disease carrying vermin, and I don’t have much love for them either. For that matter, so is Wayne Pacelle :)

Not taking away from Caleb’s argument that we spend too much time arguing about stopping power. We do. Shot placement matters a whole lot more. But that aside, I do want to look at one thing Caleb mentions.

When you look at a 9mm, a .40, and a .45 ACP all right next to one another like that, the size difference is almost laughable

You have to look at it from a mathematical point of view, because your instincts when it comes to area and volume are deceptive. For the same reason, a 21″ monitor doesn’t look that much bigger than a 19″, but it is. Area for a circle is A=Ï€r². In that case, let’s take a look at 9mm vs. .40S&W vs. .45ACP. After all, it’s the area of the bullet that slices through the target, not the diameter.

Round	True Radius (D/2)	Surface Area (A=Ï€r2)
9mm Luger	4.51mm	63.9mm2
.40S&W	5.08mm	81.1mm2
.45ACP	5.74mm	103.51mm2

So you can see when it comes to diameter, the difference is minimal, but that doesn’t translate when you think about it in terms of surface area cutting through the target. In this view, .40S&W is 27% larger than 9mm, while .45ACP is 62% larger than 9mm and 28% larger than .40S&W. That’s not even considering expanding ammo, which is going to make the numbers even more dramatic.

That also holds when it comes to how much mass you can throw down range, and since stopping power is arguably derived from momentum, sending a 230gr bullet of a .45ACP downrange is going to matter a lot more than the 200gr .40S&W bullet or the 115gr 9mm. Never make the mistake of just thinking about bullets in terms of diameter (caliber). When you start thinking about area and mass, the numbers change more dramatically than instinct would have you believe.

The Firearms Blog has a post up about racking a Glock with just the inertia of the slide. I was skeptical, so I decided to do that math. I only have a Glock 19 at my disposal for measurement, but it can’t be that radically different than any other Glock. We can get a ballpark figure for how fast a Glock has to be moving for the slide to rack.

We can figure out how fast a Glock has to be traveling in order for the slide to rack when the Glock comes to a halt. We can do this through conservation of energy. The Glock 19 spring takes about 15 lb. or 67 Newtons to move the spring the 3.5cm it needs. Given that the energy of a spring is 1/2 Fx, that give us 0.5 * 67N * 0.035m or 1.17 Joules. To generate enough kinetic energy, the 350g Glock slide would have to move at 2.6 m/s. The human body is certainly capable of generating this kind of speed, but I’m a bit more skeptical one could stop the movement of the gun quickly enough. From a matter of force, it would take an acceleration (using F=ma) of 191 m/s^2, or about 19.5x the force of gravity. That sounds like a lot of acceleration, but it’s not beyond human capability.

What makes me skeptical is the fact that I can’t seem to reproduce this, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done.

In what could be bad news for the shooting sports, it looks like Olympic Pentathalon will be replacing their air pistols with specially engineered pistols that shoot a laser beam at the target. The reason it’s bad news is the reason they give for thr move:

UIPM President, Dr h.c. Klaus Schormann stated that “the decision to introduce non-air pistol shooting was the second big step for the sport following the decision in 2008 to change to the combined run/shoot format. This is a significant development in terms of lowering the environmental impact of the sport.”

So they claim environmental impact, even from air guns, which fire a tiny 7 grain lead pellet, and which are easily recovered and recycled.

We should not fear the technology, which is something the shooting community could make positive use of, but the reasoning of the committee is disturbing. I hope this doesn’t portend bad things to come with other Olympic shooting sports, who’s environmental footprint is arguably worse.

I am one of those NRA members that, every month, puts his American Rifleman and America’s First Freedom out on the coffee table, and almost never get around to cracking it open and reading it. It’s not that the publication quality is awful, just that it’s mostly stuff I’ve already seen covered in the blogosphere, or seen in NRA’s e-mail alerts. I might read an occasional article on Rifleman about a gun I’m interested in, but I follow all the political stuff online. Ed over at NRA Publications was kind of enough to comp me a copy of Shooting Illustrated, figuring it’d be another NRA magazine with stuff in it I don’t really want to read. It’s actually got some pretty good stuff in it. The cover story is a pretty good article comparing subcompact .380 pistols, which I found to be interesting, comparing the Walther P380, the NAA Guardian .380, the Mini Desert Eagle, Rohrbaugh R380, Kahr P380, Ruger LCP, Kel-Tec P-3AT, and SIG P238. Next up is a review of Hornady’s new Critical Defense ammunition, which shows that it does pretty well in short barreled pistols. Heading up the rear of the magazine is an article on the RPG-7, and its effectiveness in combat. Lots of articles with shooting tips that are going to be familiar to competitive shooters, but are good advice for people who are more casual shooters.

In short, it’s got a lot more to offer gun enthusiasts and casual shooters than the standard membership magazine, and I think would make a good supplement. And no, I’m not saying that because they sent a free copy. For the 10 dollar a year subscription cost, if I thought it sucked, I’d tell you.