Sadly, The Coalition to Stop Gun Rights Violence did not disappoint with their exploitation of MLK day.

One Dr. King quote you won’t see there:

“Violence exercised merely in self-defense, all societies, from the most primitive to the most cultured and civilized, accept as moral and legal. The principle of self-defense, even involving weapons and bloodshed, has never been condemned, even by Gandhi … . When the Negro uses force in self-defense, he does not forfeit support; he may even win it, by the courage and self-respect it reflects.”

Neither you will find anything about Deacons for The Defense and Justice who provided MLK with armed security. Or that MLK applied for a weapons permit after his house was firebombed, but the inherently corrupt “May Issue” permit scheme (the one that CSGV and Brady love so much because lets your local Sheriff decide if you are a citizen of good standing and determine if you really “need” you Second Amendment Right) denied Dr. King of the tools to keep him and his family safe.

They’ll be back to normal business tomorrow.

A great many people think of me as Moses parting the Red Sea but if the 20th Century ever had a real Moses who led his people to the promised land that man, of course, would be Dr. King.
Charlton Heston

Cannot be said better.

My excuse today is that it was too cold and my fingers were numb….or as numb as they can get on a windy Miami Winter.

Lessons Learned:

1) Stage One, Do not assume: I was getting the laptop ready for scoring so I did not attended the walk-thru and that came to haunt me on Stage One. I barely heard “El Presidente” and my brain locked down on the traditional exercise designed by Colonel Cooper. It wasn’t. Our Evil Stage Designer decided to add one more reload and shoot and I was dumb enough not to ask for a CoF description or even watch another shooter before I shot it. The beep went off, I turned & draw, shot my targets once, reloaded, shot my targets again and stopped, unloaded & holstered (Yes, stupid to unload and holster.) after 5 seconds people started to laugh and the Safety Officer asked me (with a hint of pity in his voice) if I was sure I was done. Not being my first hoedown with these jerks, I asked how did I f***ed up and I was told to reload and shoot again twice at each target. I did so with much embarrassment and to the outright merriment of all those present. My time was par for making a bag of microwavable popcorn.

2) Stage 2: Seriously, Can you pay attention? Really simple stage that consisted on 2 paper targets and a gong (steel target) to be engaged in a specific sequence in an specific amount of cycles. Gong was on the right, one paper target on the center and the other one on the left. Facing the Gong, at the beep, draw and engage the middle target with a headshot, then hit the gong and then place a shot in the body of the left target and go back to hit the gong. Every one was supposed to get shot 6 times for the IDPA total 18 shots. Now, I am competing today in SSP, one round on the chamber and magazines loaded to the division capacity of 10 rounds. I drew fast and shot fast which obviously rewarded me by hitting the first paper and missing the frigging gong.I slow down and things go smooth then (thanks Mr. Earp!) I get so in the groove that all of the sudden I realize that I loaded my third magazine… wait one goshdarn minute, that means I put 20 rounds already on target and I only needed 18. I stopped and was asked if “I was finally done” (more laughter from the peanut gallery) so as chagrined as I didn’t wanna be, I had to say yes. Time: Glaciers do much faster than I did.

3) Stage 3: It sucks to be me. Stage 3 was supposed to be my last stage to shoot.  In between stages, I would go back to the scoring table to take care of things. That leads to sometimes lose track of what’s going on and the stage was torn down before I could shoot it. This is a good lesson for anybody who may want to work at a match: you may not enjoy the chance to shoot it, be ready for disappointment.

4) Stage 4: It sucks to be me (Brian farts are not my exclusive domain): Stage 4…. oh my dear stage 4! Simple and sweet plus good practice: You are at a restaurant enjoying a fine meal when 4 ugly and armed bastards come in guns a-blazing; they have a hostage! String One was to draw and shoot all Bad Guys with 2 shots in the head, strong hand only. String 2 was the same idea, but draw, transition to weak hand and engage the BGs with 3 body shots.
I did not shoot fast, but damn I was accurate! Only one missed head shot (and by a hair) plus 3 points down in total. As I was about to sign the scoresheet, I noticed something was amiss on the paper: the Score Keeper forgot to write down the times!

Several $@&%^$! later I was given the chance to re-shoot. There is a principle in IDPA: In re-Shoots you will shoot like crap. I am happy to inform you that I maintained the long held principle and went from one mike (miss) to three and more points down than the Dow Jones lost after the credit rating downgrade.

So, shooting wise I am not happy, but I did leave the range happy and relaxed. I did my ballistic therapy, enjoyed the time with the folks, enjoyed the weather (sometime after 10:30 when it finally warmed up) and had a royal fun & gun time.

A bad day at the range beats a good day at the office!

PS: I am also happy to inform that the Score Keeper is recovering from the gator bites received after he accidentally fell into the canal running by the range.

SHOT Show is almost upon us! And it is another year that I could not make it and probably won’t till they bring it back to Orlando.

So what is the buzz this year? A New version of the Taurus Judge? Ruger’s Cooper Scout Carbine? Some newfagled piston AR in 300 Blackout? Coonan’s 1911 in .357 magnum? Nope. Actually is one person: Paul Helinski of GunsAmerica.

Mr. Helinski disapproves that Gun Bloggers should attend the Shooting Hunting and Outdoor trade show. Apparently Gun Blooggers are icky, smell bad and are not “official” media according to him as he posted in the SHOT Show Blog:

Now the question is when you are going to start qualifying internet media?   We have to crawl over nobodies who can install wordpress and have nobody reading anything they write,It isn’t so hard to qualify internet media using Alexa.com and Compete.com.  Why do you waste the manufacturers’ time and make the real internet media have to deal with wish I were internet journalists who are just using your stamp of approve to solicit review guns and accessories?  You’ve created this giant gorilla in the room and we all have to deal with it, and you may think the industry takes your numbers seriously, but everyone sees things for what they are.  If you are serious about bringing value to your exhibitors, you need to vet the press list.

Mr. Helinski obviously has not grasped the importance of blogging or Social Media for that matter. It is the old Word Of Mouth at War Speed and on steroids. To ignore it is simply stupid, to badmouth it is seppuku with a plastic knife. Much to his disgrace, several well known gun bloggers caught the post, responded as expected and the word is now out there hurting his business.

Not happy with shooting himself on the foot, he took careful aim at the other and pulled the trigger once again.

Even the print mags have been marginalized by the “bloggers,”

Will it be because most gun mags have become nothing more than Gun Porn depending on the advertising of manufacturers ?  Very few will even dare to print a negative review of anything in fear they will lose revenue.

I am thinking that by tomorrow in the afternoon Mr. Helinski will be rethinking the virtue behind the phrase “Closed Mouth Gathers No Foot.” I did leave a comment in the post which I know share with you:

I seem to recall that one of those bloggers you seem to dislike took down Dan Rather and gave a nasty black eye to 60 Minutes.

A couple of unocouth bloggers (like those you don’t think should breathe the same air as you) uncovered certain government practice of illegally walking guns into Mexico and now there is a major scandal in the making threatening to topple the Department of Justice which, incidentally is trying to put you out of business.

It might behoove you to treat this dirty masses with a tad of more respect.

Oy!

Missing about four zeroes there, aren’t you Jason? But you guys were always twisting figures anyway.

Small correction: I describe the faux Brady Vigils as Candlelight Dance over Corpses same as I do it for all your faux “efforts” against “gun violence.”

We only see you appear and circle around when killings happen. Sort of like vultures and other carrion eaters. We are on the side of avoiding carrion eaters from appear around our bodies by being able to stop predators on demand.

I wonder why you are so shocked, I have been holding that opinion for a long time.