Gun Free Zone

Nancy R. at Excels at Nothing calls it like it is.

I don’t have much confidence in my ability to draw quickly, but if I wait until I’m flawless, I’ll never have my gun with me.
I may still be practicing on how sights work, but if I wait until I can consistently drill two rounds through the same hole, I’ll never have my gun with me.

Go read the whole thing.

Welcome to the Year of the Dragon Lady.

UPDATE: Why do I find Nancy’s post outstanding and consider it a slap in the face to Tommy Tacticals? Because we are being flooded by “instructors” with no experience in Real Life trying to tell everybody that if they do not take their Super Duper Ninja Class (at the special rate of $80/hour, S&H not included) and follow their dictum to the last comma they will surely die. And sorry but that is a gigantic load of bullshit.

Yes, I understand that before you donned the 5.11 Tactical polo with the embroidered logo of your company, you served in (fill the blank) with the (fill the blank) or you were in the (fill the blank) Police Department for 15 scores and you were the (fill the blank) for their SWAT team. But I have bad news for you: that is not applicable to your regular John or Jane so you are failing on your duty to teach your pupils.

The good instructor will teach what the student needs. If he is a cell phone salesman and she is a nurse, don’t tell them they have to be “Samurai” or “Knights of the Round Table” they are Civilians, not Warriors. They are more likely to meet with Milty the MeathHead at bad breath distance than a platoon of Cuban Blue Berets at a hasty ambush.

And yes, more practice & training will be needed. But with an economy like the one we have right now, for some it might come to either beans or bullets, feed the family and pay the bills or use that money to take another 2-day class on proper vehicular counter ambush techniques that will come as handy as hairdressing for unicorns and trolls.

Weer asked for one and he is right.

People did vote. Just not the way they wanted.

BTW, congratulations to Virginians for getting rid of such Washington-butt-kissing law.

Since we know who started PUFF, it makes all the sense in the world.

Bravo to both the artist of the original drawing and the Motivator.

Here we go again:
Now, you may want to take a couple of minutes and read the whole account at Ocala.com but the cliff notes goes like this: Dan Daley goes over Willie Chester’s house, does not enter the property and asks him if he could do something about a barking dog that apparently he owned. Apparently words were exchanged and Chester told Daley to leave which he did. Then Chester left his property, went in the street, chased Daley and began beating on him. Daley cries for help, nobody responds and he produces a gun and shoots Chester four times resulting in his death. That is the narrative (minus some details) given by eye witnesses and the fact that Daley was not placed under arrest gives credence that the shooting might be treated as self defense.

Now, since Daley had a Florida Concealed Weapons Permit, CSGV automatically developed an erection against him. I think they pretty much stopped reading the whole article after that revelation so they are, once again caught with their panties in a wad and halfway down their legs.

But to make matters even worse, I did a quick check with the FDLE’s Offender Data Base and came up with a Willie Chester, age 53, felon and lives in Ocala. Chester’s address given at the FDLE’s website is about a mile from where the event happened, but then again information has not been updated since 2005 and Chester apparently was not on probation or supervised release.

I am not saying just yet that the attacker and the felon are one and the same, but it would be a funny thing to see CSGV backtracking their righteous indignation.

Or the post may just disappear…

So I walk into a  bay and I find this Course of Fire.

Narrative: You are giving a speech at a local church about crime in the neighborhood when the local gang interrupts the meeting with guns drawn. Engage the targets from the sides of the podium in Tactical Sequence.

As you can see, the Bad Guys are not only at close proximity with the No Shoots but also have Hard Cover in different shapes and sizes.
I took a long time shooting this stage. It was easy to lose count of who you shot and who didn’t get a round. I found myself going into tunnel vision and came close to hit No-Shoot a couple of times.  It challenged your brain, your accuracy, it messed with your depth perception and it had you shooting at a downward angle. Having to go from side to side of the podium to acquire shots was as effective as if the targets themselves were moving.I saw good shooters missing targets because they never saw them or hitting a Non-Shoot because they got fixated on a rear target so bad, the No Shoot did not even register with them. To summarize, it was a fun & challenging stage without the need of whiz bang electronics or complicated moving targets.

When designing CoFs, we want to make them entertaining plus educational. I notice that there is a trend in IDPA to make stages “fun” and overly complicated with all sorts of gadgets and disappearing targets. IDPA is a defensive action shooting sport and not hunting prairie dogs with a handgun.

A good stage should also be easy to reset. Ideally it should not take much longer than the time that the Score Keeper takes tallying the points down, people pasting the holes plus a minute. If you need five minutes to reset a stage that only takes 20 seconds to shoot, you should either simplify the stage or have more personnel for that stage.

Also remember: Batteries will die, electronics will fail. springs will stretch but Gravity works 24/7.  If by the time you finish setting up a stage, the only musical theme you can here in your head is this, you may want to rethink the whole thing.