Archive for the 'Guns' Category

Breaking as of 8:32pm: Good Samaritan with gun credited for stopping active shooter inside Greenwood Park Mall south of Indianapolis. Police confirm 4 people dead including the shooter and two people injured. They’re being treated at Eskenazi hospital in Indy. @wrtv pic.twitter.com/wf3i0EIJfl

— Rafael Sánchez (@RafaelOnTV) July 18, 2022

Dan Reedy at Ammoland.

Recently while I was at Petco, a man walked in, and he was quite a sight to see. This man was in his late 50’s to early 60’s, in decent shape. He wore green Condor BDU pants bloused on his black 511 Tactical boots, a black 2A moto tee was tucked into his BDU pants. On his hip was an openly carried Springfield XDS, with extended magazine, jammed into a Serpa holster. He was buying some dog food.

Immediately after paying, his head dives into his smartphone like his neck is a wet noodle. I watch him as he exits, and he remains like this all the way until he gets into his new Chevy Colorado. The man is almost is (sic) struck by two vehicles on his way through the parking lot, with him completely oblivious to the world around him. Bad gun, bad holster, bad outfit, bad mindset. Classic. I’ve seen guys like him dozens of times and it’s always something painfully similar to this.

… open carry is often a sign of incompetence, and I almost exclusively advise people against the practice. I’ve never seen anyone publicly open carry with good equipment, nor with any serious amount of awareness or training.

[ … ]

Open carry doesn’t deter people from attacking cops, and they actually have some level of training to defend against that on top of holsters designed to defeat a gun grab. In addition to training and quality retention holsters, police can call for backup in a jam. I doubt many of you, if any, can say the same thing.

[ … ]

Open carry also presents issues outside of the gunfight. Now you’re alerting everyone to the presence of your firearm, threat or not. This means it is automatically in play in any defensive encounter, not something you can choose to reveal or continue hiding based on the situation at hand. With the gun openly displayed, you are now someone who can be dealt with quickly, instead of you waiting for your moment to counterattack.

[ … ]

Go get good training, read quality resources, and buy good equipment. If you don’t take my word for it, trust people like Greg Ellifritz, who has an awesome piece compiling over 60 recent examples of open carriers losing their guns or being killed due to carrying openly. He then goes on to link dozens of other articles where various experts like Massad Ayoob, Jeff Gonzales, and others give their opinions on the subject.

Dan has made about every mistake you can make in this article.  It’s difficult to know where to begin.

First of all, he displays a very off-putting and bigoted objection to the man’s chosen weapon, a Springfield Armory pistol.  I do not have a SA pistol, but I once did.  I traded it because I wanted a non-striker fired gun.  I only shoot hammer fired pistols.  But while I had it, it was reliable, accurate, trustworthy, and virtually indestructible.  You could have beaten it with a sledgehammer and it wouldn’t have changed a thing about its performance.  It would still be accurate and reliable.  I never had a failure in thousands of rounds.  His bigotry doesn’t do his argument any favors.  I hate it when others lampoon the possessions of others, whether weapons or something else.  I hate it.  He literally lost me with that statement.

Next, “open carry is often a sign of incompetence.”  He doesn’t really know that.  He just made it up.  This isn’t analysis, journalism, or anything else of value.

Next, he makes a hero out of cops who have had all of this “training.”  My wife and I were eating a dinner recently when we saw a cop directing traffic in the adjacent road.  She had to ask me, “How did he pass the test to qualify as a cop, and how does he even move, much less run?”  Of course, he doesn’t.  He probably weighed 350 pounds.  I’ve had a police captain from a major city in the U.S. tell me that most carriers – concealed or open – can shoot better than cops.  Cops normally qualify once a year and never get range time in between.  I’ve had another police sergeant tell me that they shoot striker fired guns because he would never trust his people to de-cock a hammer.

Give me a break with all the super-cop talk.

Next, he cites “examples” of open carriers who have had their weapons taken from them.  Well, then get a retention holster and do better at situational awareness.  There are also downsides to concealed carry, from being slower to presentation, to sweating your weapon (there are many more not listed here).  It’s all just a choice.

Besides, as many instances of both open and concealed carry that happen in America every day, I doubt that this number of situations where a person has had their weapon taken from them even moves the needle in terms of a statistical analysis.  Put another way, this small number of instances would constitute a statistically insignificant metric and I’m not the least impressed by it.

Next, I object to the notion that as a Christian man, I have some sort of duty to be the last one shot at because I want to plan my attack while I see women and children gunned down.  That’s obscene.

Finally, he cites Massad Ayoob.  Yea, he also advises talking to cops without the presence of an attorney.  I do not read anything he has to say.

But I will remark that this guy gets my vote (if I was a citizen in Florida).

An Escambia County man running for a commissioner seat was arrested on July 4 after officers found him openly carrying a prohibited gun and waving at people on a street corner, according to officials with the Pensacola Police Department.

Officers said Stanley McDaniels, 39, was standing on the corner of Baylen Street and Main Street waving at people for just over five hours. When officers approached McDaniels, they saw that he had a black gun in the waistband of his pants. Officials told McDaniels open carry was not allowed in the state of Florida and asked if he had any identification. McDaniels then pulled out his Florida Conceal Carry Permit and showed officers.

Officers noticed that McDaniels was holding a pamphlet and, when asked what it was, McDaniels told officers it was the Constitution. One officer said while he was having a casual conversation with McDaniels, he talked about all the work he had done within the community. McDaniels also had a camera set up on a tripod filming and he allegedly said he was going to take it to the Supreme Court.

McDaniels is running as a Republican for the Escambia County Commissioner District 4 seat, according to the county’s website.

Officers ran McDaniels criminal history and it came up with no results. An officer then removed the gun from McDaniels waistband which turned out to be a Beretta M9 with nine rounds in the clip and one in the chamber. All of the gun-related items were turned into the property management as evidence.

I admire his courage to challenge the idiotic law against open carry in Florida.

As for whether you carry openly or conceal your firearms, I couldn’t care less.  Make your own choice.  Unlike the author at Ammoland, I wouldn’t presume to know your situation or try to tell you what to do.

The gun community has its controllers too, and I object to controllers.

I think this is useful because to be frank, oftentimes we aren’t carrying full size pistols, depending upon the circumstances (for instance, in non-permissive environments).  So I suspect there are more than a few readers who carry “pocket pistols” from time to time.

I prefer wheel guns over pistols for pocket carry for a whole bunch of reasons I won’t outline.  It looks to me like the 38 special performed significantly better than the 9mm.

First look at Recoil.

The larger model (the only one that would interest me) torches at 1000 lumens.  I’ve never used a laser before.

I can see the use in a laser, but a real need to zero it with the optic at the range, as well as the need to limit the use in a gun fight (for fear of flagging your position).

The price is a bit cheaper than the equivalent SureFire models (lumens, that is).

What do readers think?

I guess Tim has discovered the tactical lever action gun.  I think this is the first video he’s done on lever action rifles.

A little history and a good point; go to the range!

Even the first celebrations of the Declaration of Independence involved firearms. Five days after the Declaration’s signing, it was read aloud in New York City in front of General Washington and his troops.

The reaction was as stunning as it was fitting. Soldiers and citizens went to Bowling Green, a park in Manhattan, and promptly tore down a statue of King George III on horseback. To add insult to injury, they melted the statute for musket balls, 42,088 of them to be exact.

Guns, and often big guns, were used to mark America’s independence. July 4, 1777 saw ships’ cannons fired 13 times in honor of the colonies, along with fireworks. George Washington celebrated in 1778 with a double ration of rum for the troops and an artillery salute. In 1810, the War Department established the “national salute,” of firing one gun for each of the states, which was 17 at the time.

Do what you can while you can.

I love that Dan Wesson Pistol Pack.  As best as I can tell, they don’t manufacture this any more, or at least, I can’t find it.  If readers know better, weigh in with comments. CZ currently owns Dan Wesson.

This is another great presentation by Paul.

Pick one…

annnnd then, complain in the comments about not having it‍♀️

PC: @HKshooting pic.twitter.com/8rbs0tUre9

— Heckler & Koch (@HecklerAndKoch) June 27, 2022

H&K can go pound sand.  I don’t want any of their products.

Chris takes a wise approach to most things.  I’ll make a few comments regarding the things he said as it relates to me.

First, concerning listening to “experts” criticize you for what you carry, that’s silly beyond belief, and I concur with Chris.  I literally couldn’t care any less than I do at this moment what a trainer or “expert” says about me or anything I do or don’t do.

Second, like Chris, I have a very low tolerance level for anything on my body.  I don’t wear necklaces, rings, watches, or anything else like that.  If I’m sitting, my phone comes out of my pocket.

I do find that one unobtrusive way to carry is in an ankle holster (a revolver, of course).  Beyond that, I find that if I have to carry IWB, a commander size 1911 frame is narrow enough that it doesn’t cause too much hassle, at least, for a while.

Finally, this is one reason I would rather openly carry, regardless of what other people think about it.