More Flashlight Stuff
(1100 words)
Recently, I wrote about a weapon light I purchased, an Olight Odin mini. I purchased it because I wanted the tail switch, but it comes with a pressure tape switch and mount.
It has now been moved to my weapon and will live there. It was lacking in a couple of features I wanted.
My Olight Baton 1SR is small. It does not have a tail switch. It does the job I needed it to do, but was not as useful as I needed it to be for defensive firearm use.
I decided to pick up a different Olight. A Warrior 3s. This light works for me on almost all fronts.
You can purchase a weapon mount to put it on your rifle and a pressure switch to go with it. Nice. The pressure switch it uses has a high and a turbo mode. The beam is focused rather tightly.
So why is this a go-to light for me now? Because it works for more of my needs.
According to my research, there are three common offhand light methods used with a pistol. All of them are designed around a grip with your thumb on the tail switch and the head of the light at your pinky.
The Harries Technique
The first hold is to put your offhand under your strong hand wrist to support while pointing the light downrange. This works very well. You can turn the light on or off with your thumb. You have some support for your strong side. This works for me. I’ve used it with my Winchester ’94 as well. The rifle does “jump” but it does work and I can cycle the rifle.
The downside is that your light is directly in front of you. Bad guys shooting at the light are likely to hit you.
The Neck Index Technique
The second method I found was the “neck rest”. You hold your light in your offhand and place it at your neck. This illuminates both your target and your firearm sights.
The downside is that you’ve now told the bad guys where to shoot while adding now support for your shooting hand.
The FBI Technique
With this method, you hold the light up and to your offside. The downsides of this method significant. You have to support your offhand in an unnatural position. It is tiring. You add no support to your shooting hand. You now have to be more aware of your surroundings above and to the side, so you don’t clunk your hand/arm into something.
The huge advantage is that you are no longer telling the bad guy where to shoot to hit you.
They all have their advantages.
Why the Warrior?
It has enough modes. It has the moon mode, which is 1 (or 2?) lumens. This is the run for weeks mode and is the most common mode I use. With the focus, I can actually move through the woods with the light in this mode after a short adjustment time. In a no moon, no streetlight situation.
The next two modes work for most other uses. The low mode is a good setting for working on things, looking in dark, small, holes, and other such needs. The medium is more than bright enough to light up most of the front yard.
The next mode is the high mode. This is perfectly acceptable for illuminating targets at pistol ranges or short rifle ranges (trash panda ranges). In terms of distance, I can use this to illuminate a trash panda at 50 yards clearly enough to put my iron sights on it.
The moon, low, and medium modes are accessed by my pinky pressing the side switch. The high mode can also be accessed via the side switch. Hold and it will cycle through low, medium, and high.
You can also access the high mode with a partial depression of the tail switch. A short press will turn the light on in this mode. Press and hold, and the light will turn on and stay on until you release the tail switch.
Turbo mode is accessed in one of two ways. Double-clicking the side button or full press of the tail switch.
This means I can switch from low light to blinding light quickly, as needed. I think of it almost like using a search radar to locate my target and then switching to a targeting radar for putting my sights on the target.
Conclusion
Get trained on your weapon system. The entire system. This includes your firearm(s), your sights, your backup sights, any weapon mounted lights, your hand held lights, your holster(s) and sling(s), your magazine pouches. All of it.
Then train with your weapon system. Now go get some more training.
What works for me might not work for you. What works for you might not work for me.
Now that you’ve done all of that. You’ve made sure you are capable of using your entire weapon system, go train on getting your weapon system ready to use.
Go lie down in your bed, under the covers, dressed for sleeping. Now have the timer go off. You have to access your weapon system and move as your plan requires and be able to use the weapon system.
Do you sleep in the nude? Are the dangly bits between your legs going to put you off if you have to start moving through your AO? If so, do you have something you can step into quickly? If you have the boobs, are you going to be able to move through your AO without having them contained?
How fast can you get your feet into something to protect them while not sounding like a herd of elephants?
That weapon system you have been training with, is that what you have at hand?
For me, there is a load bearing gear right there which is a fast on. My EDC light is right there. My rifle is right there. That is one of my weapon systems. I do train with that weapon system. I do train on going from in bed under the covers to ready to engage.
Lastly, that is not my preferred weapon system. It is the weapon system I have in the bedroom because it is the weapon system my wife can use. She isn’t going to go for the load bearing gear, but that rifle is her go-to weapon system.
Images are from How to use a tactical light with a firearm
Warning for Friday
Former Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal has called for protests to take place across the Muslim world on Friday in support of the Palestinians, and for the peoples of neighbouring countries to join the fight against Israel.
‘[We must] head to the squares and streets of the Arab and Islamic world on Friday,’ said Meshaal, who currently heads Hamas’s diaspora office.
Meshaal’s call for a Friday 13th uprising was reiterated by Hamas itself, according to the Israeli-run, Washington DC-based Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).
MEMRI said that Hamas urged its supporters in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel to rise up in what he called ‘the Al-Aqsa Flood’ – echoing what the the secretive Palestinian mastermind Mohammed Deif calls the attack he launched on Saturday against Israel.
‘We declare next Friday, ”The Friday of the Al-Aqsa Flood,” as a day of general mobilization in our Arab and Islamic world and among the free people of the world,’ Meshaal’s statement said.
‘It is a day to rally support, offer aid, and participate actively.
‘It is a day to expose the crimes of the occupation, isolate it, and foil all its aggressive schemes. It is a day to demonstrate our love for Palestine, Jerusalem, and Al-Aqsa.
‘It is a day for sacrifice, heroism, and dedication, and to earn the honor of defending the first Qibla of Muslims, the third holiest mosque, and the ascension of the trusted Messenger.’
The terrorist group said all should back their ‘just cause’.
We’ve seen pro-Hamas rallies around the world already, in support of the attack on Israel on Saturday.
Now those same people are calling for a global jihad.
At these pro-Hamas rallies, there has been the grotesque harassment of Jews. This seems like an incitement to violence.
Act accordingly and be prepared.
Thunder Ranch
On the last Thursday of September, I made a religious pilgrimage to one of the holiest sites in Shootingdom. The monastery of gunfighting, Thunder Ranch.
The course I took was Perfect Storm. It was three days, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, all focused on handgun shooting. This is considered the apex of Thunder Ranch pistol courses. It is taught primarily by bajillion time world champion pistol shooter Rob Leatham, and the Michealangelo of 1911 builders, Jason Burton of Heirloom Precision.
Saturday started in the classroom with Clint Smith going over the philosophy of Thunder Ranch and why he teaches, as well as range policies and procedures. His vision is very self-defense oriented. Rob and Jason spoke next. The reason they came in as instructors was more of the technical nature of shooting. This class wasn’t just defensive drills, a lot of it was shooting faster, shooting better, and shooting with precision.
After the classroom, we went to the range. It was cold and wet, and I very much under-packed for the weather. Rob started us out on the wall drill. Pointing towards the target, touch the trigger and pull until you feel “the wall” where the trigger is just about to break. The whole point is to learn your trigger. Then we drilled on controlled jerking of the trigger. It’s the idea of pulling the trigger then releasing so you don’t feel for the reset. The point is to get off the trigger and let it reset as fast as possible so you can get back on and to the wall when your sights come back to target so you can get the next shot off as fast as possible while still in control of the gun. As past as possible while still in control was the theme of the first two days. How fast can you shoot and still put rounds where you want them. A good portion of Saturday afternoon was establishing people’s skill levels so Rob and Jason could help you.
Sunday, we started at the range. It was still cold and overcast, but at least the rain stopped. This is when we really started to get into the shooting drills and pushing yourself out of your comfort zone for speed and accuracy. It was very intense. If you weren’t shooting, you were reloading.
Sunday lunch we went up to Clint’s house and ate there, where we met his wife Heidi and his sister Sue. Clint joined us for a little bit. He is a very nice and funny guy.
The videos on YouTube of his gruff and profane directness are his training persona. He reminds me of the General George Patton quote “When I want my men to remember something important, to really make it stick, I give it to them double dirty. It may not sound nice to some bunch of little old ladies at an afternoon tea party, but it helps my soldiers to remember. You can’t run an army without profanity; and it has to be eloquent profanity. An army without profanity couldn’t fight its way out of a piss-soaked paper bag. As for the types of comments I make, sometimes I just, By God, get carried away with my own eloquence.”
After lunch the sun came out and so did Clint to run us through the first series of defensive drills. Clint would run us through drills, calling out shots, e.g., “one pelvis, two chest, one head.” Clint is a big advocate of the pelvic shot. Going so far as to demonstrate by having us track parts of his body with our thumbs to see which moved the most or least, head, chest, and pelvis. We were expected to react as we would in a defensive shoot. Yelling at the target to not move, show your hands, etc.
After Clint left, we began flashlight drills. How to hold and shoot with a flashlight in the support hand. The point was driven home, weapon lights are great, but in almost every low light defensive shooting (including with police), it starts with a handheld flashlight.
At the end of the day Sunday, we were walked through the famous, Terminator shoot house. We did a no-gun instruction on room clearing with one of Thunder Ranch’s former LEO instructors.
On Monday, the weather was beautiful. Each of us, in turn, got to go through a scenario in the shoot house. Each one was different. Mine was two guys had broken into my home in the middle of the night and the police response time is an hour. Even having done a walk through the previous day, it was a nerve-wracking experience. You can thing about clearing your house all you want, until you try it on two static targets, you have no idea how much more difficult it actually is. That was probably my biggest learning experience and worth the cost of the trip. While each person was doing that, the rest of the group was working on one handed drills.
Lunch on Monday was at the house again, and I gat to sat and listen to Clint talk. I did have the opportunity to give him a patch and tell him about the blog, but I didn’t get a chance to take a picture of him with it. He thought it was cool. Rob and Jason got patches too.
After lunch, Clint came out again and did a second round of defensive drills. These were tougher than the previous day. He stressed accuracy, with our target being a two-inch circle drawn on the center of our cardboard target. All hits were supposed to be inside of that.
After our second round of defensive drills, we had fun. We did some plate rack challenges, I won that among the students. Then we did a drill called “all you can get.” Everyone started with seven rounds in the mag and one in the pipe. On the beep, draw, fire, reload, and keep firing. Every hit on a steel silhouette at 10 yards was a point until your first miss or the second beep after 10 seconds. I tied for first at 25 points.
Rob jumped in a scored 21. Granted, he was shooting a single stack and my reload was 20 rounds, but I’m going to go with I beat Rob Leatham. The other guy I tied with and I did a head-to-head tie breaker, and tied again at 21. He missed the 22nd shot and I bumbled my reload by holding down the slide stop in a death grip and having to rack the slide instead of dropping it from slide lock.
The last challenge was a quickdraw elimination. On the beep, draw and fire on a steel silhouette. Anyone who missed or the last person to hit was eliminated. Out of 16 shooters, I was the third to the last to be eliminated. That said, the three of us shot half a dozen times where Rob couldn’t tell who was last.
Once that was over, we picked up brass. We picked up brass every day. Clint keeps a very clean range. Then we went to the classroom for graduation.
In three full days I shot about 1,500 rounds.
It was an amazing experience and I’m glad that I went.
How to lie?
(1700 words)
It is generally excepted that the standard methods of lying are:
- Contradicting the truth.
- Omitting parts of the truth.
- Telling the truth
The first is by far the easiest. Even a child (or judge) can do it. “Jill, did you eat the blueberries?” “No daddy!” she responds with her face covered in blueberry juices.
Omitting part of the truth happens in things like the Second Amendment is [not] a regulatory straightjacket
—New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. V. Bruen, 142 S.Ct. 2111 (U.S. 2022) This citation is used in almost all infringement cases, but read it in full, in context.
—id.
The fuller quote shows that this is a balanced statement. The state can try to get close, it is up to the court to determine if they are close enough. The courts are limited because this is not a “blank check”.
The third method is the hardest yet the most successful method. When you tell the absolute truth in such away that you are not believed or such that people jump to conclusions that are not the truth.
The other day, I was driving home with my wife. She started to open a protein bar. I asked her to put it away because it would spoil her lunch. She happily did so because we were approaching the city and some of her favorite restaurants are there. I asked her, “You like Five Guys, don’t you?” she replied in the positive. “Five Guys is much better than a protein bar.” “Yeah…”
We were pulling into one of her favorite restaurants before she realized that we were not going to Five Guys.
She accused me of lying to her. I made her replay the conversation, at which point she realized that I had never said we were going to Five Guys. I had asked her questions that let her easily assume that was where we were going.
A Master Class in Lying and Misleading, from NJ.com
It is no longer a question of “If” buy “when.”
They are among us, probably waiting for orders.
And let us not forget the millions of military-age males that came from the southern “secured” border so far during this administration and lots of them were not poor Hispanics looking for a Democrat to mow his/her lawn, but countries openly hostile to both Israel and the US.
PS: And I would not trust the latest influx of Hispanics either. I have the feeling Venezuela’s government pulled a Mariel on Biden and dumped its worse criminal element out of the country.
The question of bringing a knife to a gunfight is solved.
Photo by Oleg Volk.
A shotgun is quite a menacing weapon by itself. The addition of a bayonet takes it one notch (maybe 5) up.