Shooting is a perishable skill.

Don’t ask me where I heard this, but it is one of the greatest truths out there. We can be dumb enough to spend a bunch of money in a class and then turn around and figure we don’t need to do anything else. Hell, we have a cute diploma proudly displayed in our wall which indicates we are certified in whatever shooting skill we chose to pay and we don’t need anything else. I am A Bad Hombre now.  Rubbish!

If you are one of those, I ask you to go to the range, set up a target at 7 yards, set up your rig as a normally do for every day carry and draw and shoot the one perfect shot. The one perfect shot is defined as the one that will stop a Bad Guy for good. It is the shot that will save your husband/wife/kid from imminent death, it will save YOU. And you don’t have all the time in the world to do it! Now, if you make that shot, cold bore without a fuss, great you can either be frank and admit it was the luckiest shot in the world and know that you did not account for the crapload of adrenalin that should be running through your veins during a Lethal Force confrontation plus other goodies that will affect you. You will also admit that you have been lax in your practice and shame yourself in retaking those basic drills and even look for some extra instruction. Or you can delude yourself and go back to the couch to watch your favorite TV show or playing the latest version of HALO in your video magic box… which contrary to wishful thinking, it is not gun practice.

So practicing on your own is boring as hell. True but it usually means we do not have a well defined system to practice acquired skills. There are many guides out there in the net on practice drills, but I am particular fond of CCW Handgun Drills because it gives you a wide variety of shooting exercises to select. Some are very quick and simple others more involved and with a higher round count. I would recommend to download, save and print a copy to keep in your range bag so you don’t have to figure out with a thumb doing a self-proctological examination what will you do next time you go to your local shooting house.  Pass it along to your shooting friends, I am sure they will appreciate it.

Practice is not good if we do not improve the areas of our shooting that need improving. You can be good at accuracy, but you are having troubles drawing your weapon from your regular concealment location. Or maybe it is your reloading process that needs work. Give yourself an honest examination, determine your weaknesses and then work on improving them. Some will be just simply repetition of drills you already know and might not even include firing a gun but others will escape you lever of knowledge and may require the use of an instructor. You can look for a local Certified NRA Instructor on line or ask other shooters about instructors they know. Call, fax, email the instructor and tell him about your problem. I am sure he will be able to come up with a suite of training plus exercises to fix that problem you are having.

And yes! Dare to learn more. Many great instructors and schools are out there for you to take b asic and advance defensive shooting classes. Valhala, Thunder Ranch, Gunsite, Blackawter, U.S Shooting Academy…. the list goes on and on and their instruction is first class. They are not cheap, but then again you are not taking classes on advanced funnel cake cooking but life saving skills. A trip to one of these places will be worth your money plus it would be a great vacation project.

And if attending an advanced school seems a bit far right now, try your hand at shooting sports like IDPA, IPSC, etc. Yes, I keep beating this drum, but it is more fun than just standing there and it is a great way to improve on your basic skills plus learn a few more for an immodest amount of money.

Snowflakes in Hell calls attention to the new Federal Trade Commission’s Guides Concerning the Use of
Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.  This is creepy to an insane degree. Read it with calm and you will see that the vagueness in its language sometimes brings out specific and scary targeting such as:

Thus, a consumer who purchases a product with his or her own money and praises it on a
personal blog or on an electronic message board will not be deemed to be providing an
endorsement.21 In contrast, postings by a blogger who is paid to speak about an advertiser’s
product will be covered by the Guides, regardless of whether the blogger is paid directly by the
marketer itself or by a third party on behalf of the marketer…..For example, a blogger could receive merchandise from a marketer with a request to review it, but with no compensation paid other than the value of the product itself. In this situation, whether or not any positive statement the blogger posts would be deemed an “endorsement” within the meaning of the Guides would depend on, among other things, the value of that product, and on whether the blogger routinely receives such requests

Example. My buddy Dale is a dealer for EOTAC and I do buy from him regularly as I can. My next purchase will be a pair of Vickers Duty Gloves because I attend sometimes SFDCC Rifle Drills and my hands end up a mess after two hours or so of rifle manipulations. Now, if Dale ( a third party) decides to give me the gloves cfor free and I just write a review of them in this blog, whether I give the gloves a praising review or a truly destructive one, I would be in violation of this FTC directives.

An advertiser’s lack of control over the specific statement made via these new forms of consumer-generated media would not automatically disqualify that statement from being deemed an “endorsement” within the meaning of the Guides.

Do note that there are no guidelines set so the FTC hound dogs can pretty much decide how much is too much the way that ATF does with its lab stuff. So it will be basically decided on a Case by Case issue and probably in every case the result will be a screwed Blogger.

It gies much more than just that. The Guide explains how Government shouldn’t care if this new reulations curtail Freedom of Speech for Blogs (cleverly disguised in the statement “interfere with the vibrancy of these new forms of communication”), or that if somebody gets hurt by the product because he or she is too stupid to breathe without the use of a diagram, the injured party might be able to sue not only the manufacturer but the advertiser, blogger and everybody who ever mentioned the product.

It gets MUCH worse: we gonna be siccing coppers on you dirty Blogger!

And although industry selfregulation certainly can play an important role in protecting consumers as these new forms of marketing continue to evolve and new ones are developed, self-regulation works best when it is backed up by a strong law enforcement presence.

But what really takes the cake and provided for the tittle of this blog is the following statement:

The Commission acknowledges that bloggers may be subject to different disclosure requirements than reviewers in traditional media. In general, under usual circumstances, the Commission does not consider reviews published in traditional media (i.e., where a newspaper, magazine, or television or radio station with independent editorial responsibility assigns an employee to review various products or services as part of his or her official duties, and then publishes those reviews) to be sponsored advertising messages. Accordingly, such reviews are not “endorsements” within the meaning of the Guides.

That means they are the Chosen Ones, The Professionals. The great minds that gave us the Exploding Pick Up Truck (with the help of carefully hidden rockets), the Great apple/dioxin scare (we are all gonna die because we eat them Granny Smith apples!) and let us not forget the Bush National Guard scandal brought to you by CBS, Dan Rather and the 1960’s fake National Guard documents made in Word for Windows. They are the reliable ones and should not be punished for sponsoring items, ideas or anything else, even though they get more freebies than a quarterback after winning a championship game.

There is no doubt this document and intentions behind it. It is censorship b y economic hardship and threat of police busting down your door because you may have gotten a Sham-Wow for review. It is also the first payment on the Newspaper and Other Traditional Media Rescue Act (soon to be followed by your taxes) because that way they weed out the competition and rescue advertising dollars.

Is this the Hope and Change you voted for? I hope that you are happy now. Please leave any comments before I get shut down. I just got some Papa John’s Pizza coupon in the mail and, since I mentioned the company and product, the feds may bust my door in the near future for violating FTC BS.

Civilian Self-Defense Code of Conduct (3)

It is my responsibility to train & learn any techniques that will allow me a chance to survive.

And nobody better than the late Colonel Jeff Cooper to illustrate this point.

“Owning a handgun doesn’t make you armed any more than owning a guitar makes you a musician.”

It would seem quite obvious but it is quite amazing to see people owning a firearm that do not have a basic understanding of its use. Also, they do not go farther than the TV’s remote control to acquire training or learn basic defensive strategies and that is dangerous ’cause most 100% of the gun play we see on TV is tactically, morally and legally wrong. It is like the old Stephen Wright joke: “Put on your seat belt. I want to try something. I saw it once in a cartoon, but I think I can do it.”

What we need to do is to learn Defensive Shooting.

Defensive shooting is not regular marksmanship shooting.  You can go to the range, get you gun out of the box, shoot two hundred rounds through a one-inch hole and impress the heck out of everybody in the nearby booths and still get killed by a one legged drunkard with a knife in the parking lot. Defensive shooting is a combination of Marksmanship, Gun Handling and Mindset which is also known as the Combat Triad. I can expand into a long explanation on each of the parts of the Combat Triad, but it will be an exercise in futility since I am not the best writer out there. Instead I will recommend you search for a nearby school or instructor and please make sure you are realistic about your level of proficiency. In doubt, start with the basics and that would be NRA’s Basic Pistol Class. After that you can start searching for a local instructor in Defensive Shooting or again try the NRA’s Personal Protection Inside the Home and Outside the Home. A good source for information might be an Internet firearms forum where you can ask other shooters where to find somebody and what kind of instructor he/she is.Also and a great help would be to take up some competitive form of action shooting like IDPA, IPSC, USPSA, ICORE, etc. Any of these sports will teach you to shoot on the move and from different positions plus will add a slight shot of adrenalin to your range time. It beats being bored to death at a static range limited to one shot per second.

You can start giving yourself an idea on Mindset by reading and perhaps the best book would be Jeff Cooper’s Principles of Personal Defense. It is a short book but filled with so much no-nonsense information that it will scare you. You may want to follow it with Massad Ayoob’s In the Gravest Extreme: The Role of the Firearm in Personal Protection to give you an idea of what you may face in a lethal force confrontation.

You have a gun to defend yourself and it is your responsibility to know how, when and the consequences that come with using it.

Courtesy of Chris Muir, our two favorite Cartoon Internet Ladies Sam and Jan from Day by Day bare it in name of Breast Cancer Research. Go to the Boobie-Thon Ebay page and place you bid for a very darn good cause.

The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy rigged Diebold voting machines and with the help of the complicit Supreme Court, they stole the 2016 Olympics from the people of Chicago and gave it to that cradle of racist cauldron called Rio de Janeiro.

Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid will soon make an announcement demanding Congressional hearings to investigate the outcome of this selection process. Hillary Clinton just announced that the Members of the International Olympic Committee are barred from entering the United States until the United Nations launches a Peacekeeping force and takes over the Olympic Committee headquarters. President Obama has ordered the CIA to investigate and look for aspirin factories in Rio de Janeiro so he can order a Tomahawk Cruise Missile attack.  The Southern Poverty Law Center has just released a 21 page memo in which explains with detail the dangers of Brazilian domestic white supremacist terrorist ties to the KKK and announces that Timothy McVeigh was actually from Rio. First Lady Michelle Obama just went shopping for a Lana Marks handbag to prepare for an upcoming Feed The Homeless Brazilian Food night at the Hay-Adams Hotel but as long as she doesn’t have to touch them. And of course, it is all George Bush’s fault.

Update: The wife told me that there are actually people blaming Fox News and Conservatives for Chicago losing the bid. I am not surprised.

So I am on this new place after I and about a hundred plus other got sacked. The new place is very close to my house so I’ll be saving oodles in gas plus wear and tear on the vehicle (10 miles daily versus 50 at the old place) and I can use the saved traveling time for personal use. I am working 11 pm to 7 am in a HUGE empty place with less than stellar fellow Security Officers that fit the Hollywood profile of the Security Guard from a cheap movie. To be fair, almost everybody in all shifts look the part and it is kinda scary.

Bad news, this place has a great cash flow which is about to increase soon, it is located at the border of one of the worst Miami neighborhoods and it is a Gun Free Zone. So what else is new? During the interview I made a point in letting them know I was a firearms instructor and a competitive shooter so it wouldn’t be a surprise later. The interviewer was quick to point out that no guns were allowed on property for everybody’s safety to which I made the appropriate agreement noises and assured him I would follow the rules which I do. It was funny to see his face get tight at the announcement and then trying to be cool about it. You can always tell a Non-Gun person trying to appease you and sound professional when they are about to crap their pants at the thought of possibly having an armed redneck in front of them. The fact that I am a spic, I look like one and sound like one seems to disappear and I suddenly become whiter than Clorox and develop a heavy Southern twang after I mention guns.

Oh well. I am following Florida’s law to a tee. That is a consolation.