TGO David

There's a difference between reasonable debate and discussion of what the government is doing wrong and chasing black helicopters like some of you have done in other threads.

I can't see where using an air duster would be a bad thing since it's a dry propellant. Using an air compressor, on the other hand, could theoretically deposit oils and moisture in your mag tubes. Body shops are particular about using water/oil separators inline with their air compressors to keep that stuff from reaching spray guns and in turn getting into paint. Anyway, yeah... I'd say that blowing your mags out in between cleanings would be a good idea.

Do you guys ever really stop and think about where you're getting the information that outrages you? The media! And why the hell do you trust what they are telling you? It doesn't matter if it's coming from the Left, the Right or even a supposedly disinterested third party like the BBC. You're still getting told the story the way that the media wants to paint it. I am not near as infuriated with the fact that AIG paid out contractual bonuses to their executives as much as I am with the fact that the Government didn't impose exact stipulations on how the money could be used by AIG in the first place. Clearly our elected officials allowed this to happen and weren't caught unaware. It is them who should be held accountable as AIG has shown poor management from the start, otherwise they wouldn't be in this mess to begin with. Giving money to these companies and expecting them to be self-policing with it is like giving an alcoholic a bottle of wiskey and telling them not to open it while you're not looking.

I know where you're coming from, Creeky. We had to make some concessions in other areas to be able to do this ourselves but I think it was money well spent. To me it really is an investment and I think that once you go through the class you will agree also. There are some things that you can do on your own and I'm sure Todd and Dustin wouldn't mind if I shared some thoughts about those things in the days and weeks ahead. As long as your self-study doesn't ingrain bad habits, it can be a very valuable tool. Instructor led training is excellent for weeding out those bad habits and learning new ways of doing things. There's no replacement for good training led by good instructors, which is why even the CIS guys seek out and attend other schools themselves. Hang in there and start saving your spare change so that you can attend a class sometime soon too. This economy has to rebound sooner or later.

During June of 2008, I had the pleasure of attending the Critical Incident Strategies [link] Defensive Pistol class for my first time. It was an eye opening experience for me and introduced me to the necessity of taking quality, instructor-lead training that goes beyond the basics of a both a HCP class and any sort of self-training a gun owner might typically do. This past weekend, I had the equal pleasure of attending the class once again and this time did so along side my wife. After hearing my reports about how great it was last June and seeing it in person while visiting on my second day of the class, she had been looking forward to her chance to try it out. She will give her own review of the class soon but I will say that she loved it and has already started talking about other classes that she'd like to take. I've got an awesome wife, for sure, but I'm also excited as a man and as her husband to see her this enthusiastic about learning to defend herself (and me). I know I tend to get a little wordy sometimes, so here are my thoughts on this class in the most succinct way possible while trying to give it proper due: Instruction Firstly, Todd and Dustin did a great job as always. Their teaching style is authoritative but not overbearing. I cannot stress enough how much this impresses me and impressed my wife. If I had to sum up their style it would be that they are COACHES. I have seen videos of instructor led training where those teaching came across like drill instructors, bellowing commands, yelling at students and generally looking as if their first goal was to show the student how much of a bad-ass they were, and secondly to teach the meager worms something about the real world. Todd and Dustin do none of that. Their delivery is professional and patient and clearly engineered to help the student learn and to increase their abilities while also increasing their self-confidence. Yes, there are always going to be drills that challenge you to push your personal envelope and there will be moments of frustration and disappointment, but these guys will almost always halt the action and ask you "Ok... what went wrong just then?" so that the entire class can learn, or tell you "Slow down, work through the problem and get back into the fight" when they see you starting to make dumb mistakes out of frustration. To me, that's the sign of good instruction. Yes, we are taking these classes to help us in life or death situations. BUT, they want you to learn while you're on the range -- even if it means that unlike in the real world, they give you a do-over to fix a mistake -- rather than leave the class frustrated and lacking confidence in your ability to protect yourself. This remains the biggest reason why I recommend CIS and will continue to recommend CIS to anyone who will listen. It has nothing to do with their vendor status on TGO; it has everything to do with the two guys teaching the classes. Introspection For me, this second time through the class was an introspecetive Report Card on how well I had retained what I learned last year. I think I remembered a good amount of what I had been taught. But I think that I retained far less. I believe retention is born out in the mechanics of what you do. Just because you can recall being taught something, it doesn't mean that you have retained it in your subconcious. Proof of this? Todd and Dustin taught us last year to do "combat reloads" every time we insert a new magazine. I knew this. I remembered this! But a few times, I didn't do it. Why? Because I haven't been training this way on my own at the range. I've gotten lazy and gotten out of the habit. As Todd pointed out during this class, the skills that they teach are perishable skills. He's right. As I have allowed myself to drift away from doing my drills properly since June of last year, some of the skills that they taught died along the way. So I left the class range yesterday with a renewed commitment to keep as many of these skills alive by repeating the drills regularly. We have all heard the somewhat cliche statement that we must train how we fight. It may be trite, but it's true. I give myself a barely passing grade on this and acknowledge that I've got to do better. Preparation of Gear I have two thoughts in this area. Firstly, despite my best efforts to ensure that my hardware was squared away prior the class, I did not notice that my handgun's front sight was bent pretty badly nor did I think to clean my magazines before running them. Secondly, last night and this morning I realized how badly I had maintained another important part of my gear. I was sore as hell. I've allowed myself to become complacent and haven't been hitting the weights, doing squats, situps or walking as much as I need to. The first year of marriage has been good to me. Too good. From a firearms perspective, I should have noticed that my front sight was dinged up a long time ago. I believe the only reason I hadn't is because I haven't done very much shooting at distance with that particular firearm. I've tended to just mess around with it at close distances while punching paper; and this particular problem didn't manifest until I was trying to use it to make accurate shots at longer distances. This isn't an excuse for poor accuracy. It's actually a failing mark on my personal report card for not checking my gear thoroughly before comitting to carry it. Likewise I hadn't thought to disassemble and clean my magazines. As I reported in another thread, I had a magazine get just a little dirty on Day #1 of the class and the follower became stuck in the mag tube. Had I taken all of the mags apart prior to the class, I would have seen how oily they were from the factory and would have cleaned them and dried them. Had I done that, there wouldn't have been a problem. In fact, on Day #2 I made sure to really grind some dirt into a few of the mags on purpose just to see if I could induce a failure. I couldn't. The oil-free mags wouldn't jam up. Yet again another failing mark on my personal report card. How many times have I carried these mags for real? I can't count them. And granted, I've never dropped them in the dirt and crud prior to this but Murphy's Law is a SOB and will rear it's ugly head at the worst times. I'm glad that I found these weaknesses in my gear at a class instead of in a firefight. Closing Thoughts One of the quotes that Todd uses during the classroom portion of Defensive Pistol is that adversity introduces a man to himself. My second time through the class was a bit of a re-introduction for me. I did some things right. I did some things wrong. I had some silly, avoidable problems with my gear, but I also think that the Smith & Wesson M&P handgun itself performed excellently. I have improved confidence in the weapon to protect me and my family, and I have improved confidence in myself to do the job. But I also have a renewed, realistic assessment of where I am at personally. I need to do better. My wife and I made a financial investment to attend the class so it would be foolish of me to squander that by not re-investing throughout the year to retain the things that I was taught. I pledge to do better with that. The class itself was a lot of fun, but it was also very educational. I would recommend it to anyone and will continue encouraging everyone who is serious about advancing their skills beyond the basics of "HCP 101". Todd, Dustin... thank you both for doing this.

No, I haven't had that problem with any of my M&Ps. It sounds like you either have some junk in your firing pin channel or you have a weak firing pin spring. Either way, I'd give serious thought to sending it back to Smith & Wesson and having them go through it for you. Chances are it will be a free repair as they have an outstanding warranty and customer service program. I have seen other makes of handguns come from the factory with a bit of machining slag stuck in the firing pin channel or right over the firing pin hole in the breech face, which would cause this to happen. The M&P should run fine no matter what grade of ammo (read: even nasty, dirty burning Com-Block ammo) so to me a failure to fire once in every 50 or so rounds is not acceptable. I've seen too many M&P's with *really* high ammo counts and very little cleaning to accept that the gun is just finicky. It really needs to be looked at and made right. Here's their contact info: How can I get my S&W handgun repaired? Please contact our Customer Support Center for instructions on how to return your handgun for repair: 1-800-331-0852 (Inside USA) 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (Monday - Friday).

Moving this to the Off Topic forum. Really doesn't belong in Events and Gatherings.

That was low. Not down in a ditch low, but low.

I ran the M&P again all day today. The only issue I had was caused by (I'm almost 99% certain now) my fleece jacket getting caught somewhat in the slide as I was returning it to battery on an empty chamber. The M&P ran flawlessly other than that, and my accuracy improved quite a bit after semi-straightening that front sight post. I'm going to order a replacement front post this week.

No hiccups. The mag problem was the only problem and it happened outside the gun while topping it off.

Sorry... somehow I saw "thong" in that post as well. Give me a shout on Monday. We'll get the sights taken care of.

If I had been able to find some Big Dots locally for the M&P on short notice tonight, I'd have had them on the gun. I want to borrow Todd's G19 with the Big Dots tomorrow and see if I really like them or if I'm just building it up in my mind. The Warren sights normally work great for me... but they normally aren't bent either. It's going to be too cold in the morning for me to wear cargo shorts, so if you can change that to cargo pants, we might be able to pull off this twins thing.

Fellow M&P owners take note: Today I ran my M&P 40 in a defensive pistol class taught by the guys at Critical Incident Strategies. Aside from being able to take the class this time with my wife, one of the reasons I was looking forward to this, my second time through the class, was to see if the M&P could hang with the Glocks in terms of durability. Somewhere at around 300rds through the firearm and more than a few haphazard tactical reloads with mags dropped freely into the soft dirt, one of my mags followers became lodged about halfway down the tube rendering it completely FUBAR. All it took to get the magazine back in action was pouring some bottled water down through it to wash out the dirt and crud, but I made a mental note to come home tonight and disassemble and clean all of my M&P mags. What I found was pretty unsatisfactory. I'm not sure if S&W manufactures the mags themselves or if they outsource it to someone like Mecgar or Promag, but whomever does build them also slathers them with a good bit of light weight oil. I can only assume that they do this for rust prevention in warehousing and transit, but the new S&W mags (like mine) are coated with a polyresin product similar to Lauer Weaponry Dura-Coat. In short, they don't need oil for rust resistance. In fact, oil inside your magazine tube is a bad thing. It attracts dirt and eventually turns into a thin, grimey mud that will bring your mag's follower to a stumbling halt. Just like it did to mine. Absolutely every one of the eight M&P mags that I took apart tonight had this same smear of oil inside them. A few had so much oil that the inside of the baseplate was wet to the touch with it. I ran a magazine tube brush through each, followed it with a dry paper towel and cleaned away the oil. With the mag tubes dry and clean, I reassembled the mags, numbered them with a paint marker, and put them back into my range bag. Hopefully tomorrow they will operate without incident. But I felt that this was something that definitely needed to be passed along to other M&P owners as it should be the one of the first things you do to new M&P mags, in my opinion. Mag tubes should be clean and dry, not wet and oily.

Slim now has a 7-Day Temporary Ban from TGO for ignoring the warning that I gave to him and persisting with his crusade to wreck a thread with off-topic remarks. Hopefully when he returns, he will try harder to respect other people's thoughts and threads.

2HOW... the same warning goes for you, but I'm not going to bother sending a PM. Cut it out and try to get along with your fellow members. I'm not a Mason but I don't have to be in order to think this thread-hijacking is pointless and rude.

SLIM... Check your private messages and then heed the warning or there will be consequences. This thread was not asking what people thought about the Masonic Lodge. It was asking who here is a member. There is absolutely no reason for you to ruin the thread with your off-topic and divisive remarks.

No, but a hammer and a steel punch got it straightened up enough to get me by for the next few days. I'm thinking about ordering a set of XS Big Dot sights for it now as a replacement just to see how I like them.

And I've either got mad skill or I've got the worst damn luck. I installed some Warren Tactical night sights on my M&P 40 a while back. I know for a fact that they were perfectly straight when I installed them, but somewhere along the line the gun took a lick and now the front sight post is canted to the left. I noticed that I was printing my shots today low and to the right even at close distances. When I got home, I started trying the different grip backstraps on it to see if I was gripping the gun weird. Then I noticed the sight. Handed it to my wife and asked her if the front sight seemed odd to her. Immediate reply "It's bent." Yayyyyyy.

Man, you'd really be in trouble if you had to use big words like that in a medical career or something. Oh... wait...

Post pics of your other ink. I've got one on my left upper arm but have occasionally thought about getting something on my right.

Agreed and exactly what I was thinking as I read the initial post as well. One of the first things I absorbed while starting USPSA was to ride the trigger reset rather than fully release the trigger between shots. My split times decreased dramatically and my accuracy improved as well. Now I find it almost impossible not to ride the trigger on follow-through and hate guns that don't have a solid, distinctive, tactile trigger reset. For those of you shooting M&P automatics, a somewhat lesser known fact is that you can get Glock-like trigger reset (firm, definitive snap) by swapping your trigger for the Massachusetts compliant 10# trigger. I have the trigger assembly and am waiting on a S&W Performance Center sear before I tear into my M&P 40 and improve it.

I am going to echo the recommendation of others and suggest that you visit the range at Owl Hollow. Being that you mentioned Uselton's shop/range, that tells me you are at least within driving distance of the Franklin area. Owl Hollow is just outside of Spring Hill off of Columbia Pike. Given the choice of shooting indoors or outdoors, I would take the latter any day. Even in the rain. So much less noise and smoke to deal with outside, plus you're ... outside! Enjoy that 21SF. I recently picked up one for myself and love it so far.

Perhaps the most important question to ask before buying and shooting a range's bulk reloads is simply "Who reloaded these?" If the answer is that they came from someone like Atlanta Arms or Georgia Arms, then you can have a reasonable amount of confidence that some quality control was in place and that you aren't likely to have squibs or overcharged rounds. If the answer is "Bubba Joe Jim Bob, our resident reloader" then I would politely decline the purchase and stick to running factory ammo or my own reloads. Granted, even the big factories can crank out some turds every once in a few hundred thousand rounds, but the odds are increasingly in your favor since they do enact quality control standards. And whatever you decide to shoot, pay attention to what your gun and your hands are telling you. If the rounds don't feel right for some reason, stop shooting them.

Actually, the oath also says ... "and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me"

This is why the Staff and I are committed to keeping misinformation, repetitious duplicated posts on the same topics, so-called "tinfoil hat" and secessionist posts off of TGO. None of those things help the credibility of any forum and there have been plenty of good forums ruined when they became the norm. John Harris over at the TFA said in a meeting once that he doesn't want TFA members picketing outside of government buildings wearing camo and other unusual garb, but rather wearing clothes that the rest of the world see as being normal. Jeans, a nice shirt, business casual even. The reason? Perception is reality to some folks. That's why we try our hardest to get rid of the extremist threads and keep our wheels between the yellow lines.