Cruel Hand Luke

To quote Vincent Lauria...."If everybody's doing it...that's a lot of guys doing it...." They don't have the space to house them all if 2 million people say they are not interested in conforming. In 1984 the Winter Olympics were held in Sarajevo , Yugoslavia....by 1992 the country was in the midst of a civil war......I'm not in ANY way saying that is a positive thing. But at some point people cease to follow rules when they do not see the powers that be as legitimate or when they feel things have gone too far . And like it or not this country was founded by people who ceased to follow the rules when they felt things had gone too far...and they ceased to see the powers that be as legitimate. We also had a 4 year "unpleasantness" in the 1860s because enough people didn't respect the direction an election took.... There are some very interesting parallels between the 2020 election and the 1860 election....

At some point enough people will simply get tired of this constant "we are gonna ban your stuff and take it away from you talk" and civil disobedience will be widespread. If enough people simply say "NO" then what exactly do you think will happen? Of course them actually calling their congressmen and saying they do not support any of that stuff the socialist communists are pushing before it goes anywhere would be a great start and probably head off any REAL unpleasantness but for some reason people tend to not act until after things get out of hand. "Is it ignorance or apathy?" " Well I don't know and I don't care"..... The problem with trying to enforce unpopular laws on 300 MILLION people (or even on 3 MILLION people) that refuse to comply is you do not have the manpower to implement it IF enough people organize and refuse to play along. If the full weight of the US govt and a coalition of foreign nations took years to put down an insurrection (and still did not succeed completely) in a country smaller than the size of Texas (Iraq) where the insurgents were only a tiny sliver of the actual population then how exactly are these would be socialist/communists politicians who we all fear being in charge going to put down the insurgency that will happen when enough people say NO to their plans for the US? Especially if they do not have the 100% support of the whole military and police forces who do not support that stuff? A LARGE portion of them lean more to the right than the left...and not ALL left leaning folks are for totalitarianism. The Sheriff here has already publicly said he has no interest in enforcing any new federal gun laws. The largest irregular guerrilla army in history is already armed......the largest corp of snipers in history practices every year during hunting season and during organized shooting matches. The will of the governed to continue to be governed is the only thing allowing a gun ban to even be a possibility. And unfortunately.....barring some unforeseen return to sanity by the left at some point that will of the silent majority to continue to accept this government as legitimate is going to wane.......we already see it to some degree on the "other side" .You see the problems caused by the statistically insignificant number of Antifa kooks out there. What happens when the silent majority actually gets out in the street and starts making noise? History is pretty interesting....unfortunately few people still read it.

What AJ is trying to say is...... Subject : Short Range Rifle and Long Range Pistol Date : Saturday Aug 17 Time: 9AM-3PM CENTRAL TIME Location: The usual place- Phillips/Edwards Farm 763 County Rd 332 Pisgah Alabama (about 35 minutes SW of Chattanooga) Price : $80 PAY BY CASH OR CHECK AT CLASS. (If you bring a new person with you I'll give you each a $20 discount)

REMINDER!! This one is coming up in just 2 weeks ! This is a great way to get some rifle (or PCC or Rifle Caliber pistol) and pistol work in and run some drills that you can't normally do at a shooting range. Hope to see you there.

Now the flip side of that is that people often will wait to see a PERFECT sight picture instead of taking what is GOOD ENOUGH and pressing the shot off. If we are talking a human torso at 5 yards we can argue that as long as you see the gun surrounded by target then you are good to go. In fact I will argue that once you have internalized a directional drawstroke and smooth trigger press you can deliver those shots with your eyes closed and still hit them SOMEWHERE in the torso because your body will drive the gun in the manner you have trained (or not) it to do so. From there it is simply a matter of not jerking the gun off target with your trigger press. We can argue that this crude form of aiming works adequately out to the distance that the slide is still slightly thinner than the target. The only fly in that ointment is that shots we are willing to take in public with the potential for misses hitting bystanders are probably going to be delivered a bit more conservatively than we are willing to take those same type shots on a paper or steel target a range with a dirt berm backstop. If you are taking an extra momentary (maybe .25 second) pause to guarantee a smooth trigger press you really have the time to see the sights. There are many ways to aim a gun that do not require sights being seen clearly. In fact I actually wrote and teach a class called Alternative Indexing Methods that some members here have taken. But most of those started as "workarounds" for low light or shooting while moving or close proximity to the target. All things being equal a stationary traditional sight picture is going to give the best quality hits over the widest range of circumstances. But just because you are using the sights does not mean you have to be slow.

Let us define terms a little better. There is a big difference between a picture perfect sight picture that you would use for slow fire bullseye at 25 yards and merely seeing sights super imposed over the target as you look "through" the sights at a torso sized target at 10 yards. There is a big difference in hard front sight focus with a blurry target versus a hard target focus with a blurry gun versus a hard focus on the target with the gun NOT in your visual cone. I talk about this in every class. I talk about "not using the hood ornament to steer the car". You simply park the car and you will see the hood ornament in your peripheral view and if you NEED to look at the ornament to guarantee the car is centered up in an especially tight parking spot then look at the ornament. For those not following, the car is the pistol and the hood ornament is the front sight. The more you practice drawing and driving the gun (straight up and straight out) to the target the more likely you are to deliver it to where it needs to be. After doing that about 5000 times looking at the sights you will have convinced your brain that you are doing it correctly and now you can largely omit the looking for the sights part on close (inside 7 yards) shots. Just focus on the target and drive the gun there and smoothly press the trigger. Not necessarily "slowly" but smoothly. But whether you choose to look for the sights or not they are still THERE. If your presentation (drawstroke) drives the gun to where your master eye is looking then if you NEED to take a quick peek at the sights to VERIFY correct alignment then shift your focus to them for a nanosecond. You can also pre load your visual focus to the spot where the sights will be and now as soon as you see that super imposed on the target and you get the gun to the appropriate level of extension you finish the trigger press. Obviously the closer the target the less verification is needed. And the farther the target the more verification is needed to guarantee it is pointed exactly where you need it. One issue is that we don't all speak the same language and "close" means one thing to one person and "far" means something different. Also the SIZE of the target is somewhat important in the equation. If we are shooting at a 3" circle at 7 yards that requires more of a sight focus than a 9x16" rectangle at 7 yards requires. Also what is the penalty for a miss? A bad score or a bystander being hit? Those considerations are going to drive your amount of verification you are willing to forego for speed. Now lets talk about speed...your eye can actually see AT LEAST 220 images per second. So it is in fact possible to see your sights at speed and detect whether they are aligned appropriately for the shot or not. Back in the day (1920s) when Fairbairn and Sykes were codifying their point shooting methods they did so because the pistols they issued (Colt 1911A1 and Colt 1908 .380) had nubby little sights that were hard to see at all at night and it wasn't much better during the day. Fast forward to now with fiber optic sights and even night sights that are a lot more visible it is now possible to shoot at speed AND still visually monitor the sights. When Dave Spaulding did a class in Dayton TN back in 2015 we were discussing point shooting vs getting a peek at the sights and how it is not really that much slower to see the sights vs not seeing them. To demo this he asked me to step up and from 7 yards draw (from concealment) and fire 1 shot . The shot was a "d" zone peripheral hit in .72 of a second. Then he asked me to do it again looking for the sights. That was a .82 of a second hit in the aorta (we shot an anatomical target with internal organs visible) . This is obviously a sampling of 1 but the point is that the difference was 1/10th of a second and the hit was substantially better. One was a wound in fatty tissue and the other punched a hole in the pump.... So what am I saying here? If you are accepting any hit any where on the full size human target as OK then sights are largely irrelevant inside 10 yards. If you are trying to keep them within a 6" circle in the high chest then you will probably need to see something to insure the muzzle is pointed where you need it to be pointed when you discharge the shot. The sights are ALWAYS on the gun...now it is just a matter of you LOOKING for them as you press the trigger. Can it be done at speed? Absolutely. I saw a sight picture on EVERY SINGLE SHOT I took at the Rogers Shooting School. Those disappearing 8" plates at 7-20 yards require enough verification that nobody has ever passed it point shooting. I scored Advanced with a 115 score. The baseline drill that you need to be able to do to determine whether you are ready for that class is to be able to hit an 8" plate at 7 yards from the ready in .50 of a second....and it gets harder from there....yet EVERY single shot I fired I saw a sight picture because I LOOKED for it. Not only do we need to be able to shoot fast we need to be able to SEE fast. And that requires practice. https://www.rogersshootingschool.com/index.php At Gabe White's Pistol Shooting Solutions in Waverly TN last October I had a sight picture (of some type) on EVERY single shot during the standards tests. The body shots did not require quite as fine a sight picture as the head shots did so I focused harder on the sights on the head shots and just "noticed" them on the body. On the Bill Drill I saw the sights on every single shot of the 6 shot string and delivered them in the 2.08 to 2.14 second range from concealment. On the Failure to stop (2 body 1 head) I shot 1.58 and 2.00 again from concealment . On the Immediate Incapacitation (2 to head) it was 1.77 and 1.78 and on the split Bill Drill (4 body 2 head) it was 2.29 and 2.51 . All of these were at 7 yards and all drawing from the concealment of a polo shirt. Could I have shot a little faster if I were not looking at the sights? Maybe but the small increase in speed I might gain would be detrimental to the accuracy required and the lower quality hits would have outweighed the speed gained. As it stands, using the sights and shooting as fast as I could while still monitoring them got me Turbo Pin #8. http://www.gabewhitetraining.com/performance-awards/ Now let us discuss accuracy required. At Rogers they are 8" plates. In the case of the Gabe White class that was an IPSC A zone in the body and a 4" circle in the head. Pretty much the same areas that have the greatest effect at making people stop what they are doing. If we essentially doubled up the body target and allowed A and/or C zone hits to count then I might have cut a few tenths off of each string and if we had accepted the whole head instead of just the 4" circle it could have been shot faster. But the faster you are delivering the "down zero" hits the faster you will be delivering ALL hits. And whether you SEE the sights or not is largely a matter of choice. They are there if you choose to look for them. Now do I have to have a "picture perfect" -equal amounts of light and hard focus on the top of the front sight post -sight picture for a body shot at 5 yards? No I just look "through" the sights (or through the gun) or over the top of the gun and shoot about as fast as I can draw and drive it to extension...which I'd say is still pretty quick. On the other hand if it is a head shot at 10 yards with bystanders in the background then that is going to require a better quality sight picture than the 5 yard body shot with a brick wall as a backstop would require. Can we get by with a less than perfect sight picture? ABSOLUTELY....within the proper distances and assuming the size of the target does not require as much verification. Can we see the sights and still shoot at speeds nearing the maximum of human performance? YES...if we actually PRACTICE that. And if we include rifles in the discussion we can get away with a less than ideal sight picture at much farther distances than we can with a pistol due to the multiple points of contact and the longer sight radius. But it is not 1925 anymore and if you are going to drive the gun to full extension (or even 3/4) then you might as well take advantage of that bumpy thing at the end of the slide and take a quick peek at it to guarantee your hits.

The govt shutdown put an extra month on there....and all the people that were trying to get their trusts approved before whatever deadline there was.... and the sheer volume of forms being filed now is exponentially more than 20 years ago. I used to get stuff approved in under 90 days. But when the internet came along and more people realized that they COULD own this stuff and when the Gun Trusts became a thing it really supercharged the number of suppressors and SBR and SBS that are being registered or transferred. Back in the day NOBODY was registering SBRs. It was not much more $$$ to just buy a machine gun and put any barrel length on it . During the ban from 94-2004 a Preban AR might run you $1500 and a non colt M16 might be $1800-2000. But when machine gun prices got to where it was prohibitively expensive and a mere $200 was all that stood in the way of a MK18 Mod 1 setup which was now easy to source those parts then everyone and their brother filed a form 1 to make an SBR. And back in the day people at the range looked at you like you were some kind of "assassin" if you owned a suppressor...now it is almost "common" to see them at the range. All those extra forms gotta get processed and the govt has never been in the efficiency business.

I feel your pain. I just received on July 25th two paper Form 1s that were sent off in early December 2018. I am STILL waiting on another Form 1 that was sent the 1st week of September 2018. I called and asked about it since I got the ones that I sent in 3 months later and as of right now it still has not been assigned to an examiner...they cashed my check and entered my finger prints on Sept 11 but it has essentially sat there for the last 10 months with no action taken...... They told me to give it a couple of weeks and call back....

Even a HOT day of shooting beats a moderate day of most everything else....

The August meeting of the TN/GA/AL Suarez Int training group will be held on Saturday Aug 17th! We will be covering pistol skills AND Rifle skills primarily in the "urban distance envelope" which typically means 50 yards and closer which is short range for rifles and long range for pistols..... Instructor: Randy Harris Subject : Short Range Rifle and Long Range Pistol Date : Saturday Aug 17 Time: 9AM-3PM CENTRAL TIME Location: The usual place- Phillips/Edwards Farm 763 County Rd 332 Pisgah Alabama (about 35 minutes SW of Chattanooga) Price : $80 PAY BY CASH OR CHECK AT CLASS. (If you bring a new person with you I'll give you each a $20 discount) What you need to bring: Pistol (revolvers are welcome too), at least 2 spare pistol magazines (or speedloaders if you plan to party like it is 1899) and at least 150 rounds of pistol ammo..... Rifle, at least 1 spare rifle mag and at least 100 rounds. Pistol caliber carbines are welcome too ! So all you guys with arm braced Glocks and Scorpions and 9mm ARs this would be perfect for that. Hope to see you on the 17th!

I'm posting this for Tom who as most of you now is a friend and mentor of mine. I've taken both of these as a student and highly recommend them. I included the links to Eventbrite to sign up next to the title of each class. INTENSIVE PISTOL SKILLS (https://www.eventbrite.com/e/intensive-pistol-skills-tennessee-tickets-50644483012) Intensive Pistol Skills is an extensive work-out of the essential skills involved in self-defense with a handgun. Topics covered include presentation from the concealed carry holster; accurate shooting at high speed; fast, reliable reloading techniques; one handed shooting; malfunction remedies; and much more. Students will fire approximately 1,000 rounds. This is not a beginner level class. Students should know how to safely operate their handgun and have appropriate concealment gear. You will need a belt holster, of leather or kydex construction, with a covered trigger guard. You will need at least three magazines, one in the gun and two spares. You will need a concealment garment, to conceal your gear as in every day carry in a big city. A detailed equipment list and directions will be sent to registered students. Please note this class is on Friday and Saturday. We have a one day Defensive Shotgun Course on Sunday, Sept 29. DEFENSIVE SHOTGUN ( https://www.eventbrite.com/e/rangemaster-defensive-shotgun-course-tickets-50567331249 ) The shotgun is one of the most effective and versatile weapons available to the average private citizen or police officer. It is also the least understood and most under-utilized weapon system. Learn how to properly select, modify, feed and operate the defensive shotgun for optimum effectiveness. This intensive course will teach you efficient techniques for handling and shooting the shotgun under stressful conditions. Topics covered include: Firearms safety, including considerations specific to shotguns Historical context and development of the defensive shotgun Selection of the fighting shotgun Modifications and Accessories Ammunition selection and capabilities Patterning for optimum performance Nomenclature and mechanical operation Shooting technique Loading/reloading techniques Safe storage and ready conditions, including cruiser ready Care and maintenance Students will need 150 rounds of birdshot, and 50 rounds of buckshot. We will have some properly set up loaner shotguns available. For questions, contact Tom Givens, rangemaster.tom@gmail.com

Yep....makes no sense but he was likely viewed as low hanging fruit and an easy conviction to pad statistics by the prosecutor. And no one in Hollywood is going to be an activist to get a middle aged white guy who is a useful member of society who just happens to have possession of some threaded metal pipes out of jail.

These same politicians will never be honest enough to tell anyone that in Europe it is much easier to get a silencer/suppressor than it is in the US. Even in the UK where it is somewhat difficult to purchase a firearm you can easily purchase a suppressor. So much so that a Murfreesboro man named Paul Gratton bought SIX of them while on a trip to the UK and brought them home. Of course he also got convicted and went to jail for possession of unregistered suppressors......but the point is that he was able to purchase 6 silencers at retail in Great Britain while on vacation. That douchebag Menendez (who is as crooked as a dog's hind leg and just missed going to jail for bribery last year when a mistrial was declared in his case ) will never admit that there are over a million NFA registered suppressors in the hands of law abiding folks and that NFA registered suppressors are used less in crimes than steak knives or rocks.....

At some point I fear the bear will get tired of getting poked.....

Nice!

JUST OVER 2 WEEKS TO GO ON THIS ONE !!!

REMINDER ! This one is coming up in a little over a week!

This one is coming up THIS WEEKEND !

Just about a month to go on this one!

What AJ is getting at is that people are often asking the WRONG questions. "CAN I shoot him?" is a question of ability and to some degree availability of a gun with which to shoot him. "Should I shoot him?" is a question of ethics or morals. "May I shoot him?" is a question of permission or legality. "Must I shoot him?" is the only question we need to have a clear answer for (and that answer is usually crystal clear if you know what to look for) So people should be asking themselves if they MUST shoot not if they can, or should or may. Your answers will probably be different in your home vs in public. Questions of Ability, Opportunity and Jeopardy seem to be easier to answer when they are being asked about someone in your own home instead of in a parking lot.

TWO WEEKS TO GO!!!!!

If the latest reports are true he had been getting increasingly violent and actually had recent physical "scuffles" with co workers and was going to be reprimanded for it. So those were the "warning signs" I guess but they were quick and not protracted. Wonder if there might be a medical reason for the recent violent outbursts?

The "tactical advantage" the guy in VA Beach had was that he was armed and the victims were not. The suppressor (if it really was a suppressor) was irrelevant. And he was killed by the responding officers so we have incontrovertible proof once again that ARMED good guys are what stops armed bad guys.

JUST THREE WEEKS TO GO !

THREE WEEKS TO GO !