Gun Free Zone

I generally give the Miami Herald tons of crap for their politically laden left wing reporting, but kudos deserved and given to Deborah Acosta for this map detailing the locations of Drive-By shootings in Miami Dade.

After the IDPA match Saturday, some of the shooters decided to adjourn to the nearest Flanigan’s for food, beverages (adult & otherwise) and just conversation. The post meal conversation was centered on scoring issue and if a shooter having to slice the pie, shoots targets out of order and if he is to receive one or two procedural penalties for it.

After a while I looked at a table nearby and saw two males and a female eating, very quietly and throwing nervous glances at our table. It was then I realized that our conversation might had something to do with it since we were saying stuff like “No, if you shoot this guy (IDPA Cardboard target) first and then this other guy, you are getting two Ps.”  or “Remember that everybody gets shot once before getting seconds.” For a Saturday afternoon in a grill bar filled with TVs showing football games & other sports, our section was pretty quiet.

Shortly after that, we left our table and went home. Later on the club’s forum I made the comment about the family and several of the other shooters commented that it was not that table alone but everybody in our section was pretty much quiet and with their faces buried in their plates.

Lessons learned: We are going deaf, we are too loud sometimes and talking about shooting in a restaurant right smack in the middle of ultra Democratic Broward county may scare some folks. Our job is not done yet.

At least nobody called the cops!

PS: I had the Texas Burger. Fully recommended!

TEXAS BURGER
Our whopping 10 ounce, fresh, never frozen, charbroiled beef burger, topped with crumbled
bleu cheese, two strips of bacon, a stack of tumbleweed onions, and drizzled with our
homemade wing sauce… Texas Bold and Texas Big!

Newbie Shooter gives a good after action report on having fun shooting his first IDPA match.

Like Massad Ayoob said:

” If you worry about shooting a match and “Oh My God! I’ll never get over it if I come in dead last,” consider you are pretty close to the one in a million people who is willing to test their skills at this. If you ever do come dead last, you still came out ahead of a few hundred thousands of people who thought they were cool but didn’t have the guts to get out there and test themselves like you just did.”

There used to be a TV Game Show called Press You Luck. I don’t recall much of it, but the basic theme was you will get burned if overdoit. Four crooks did press their luck and robbed the same house they visit previously, only this time the owner was ready.

The result: Two to the morgue and two to the hospital. Homeowner safe.

Yesterday TSSA finally got around shooting the IDPA Postal Match. We had great weather, cooling breeze and fifty shooters. Some even came dressed for the occasion!

The match also was the first time three Prospective Safety Officers were to run squads. Basically this was their final examination and in the tradition of our club, we made their lives miserable.

Some of us became the worst possible shooters. We were “unsafe,” argumentative, cheating scum-suckers that had one thing in our minds: Expose the new SOs to the worst they will face in the future in one single match. You will see that in the next videos. That is not the regular “us” but just acting like Richard Craniums to add stress to the poor New SOs.

On this particular stage, the shooter was “reading a magazine” and at the tone, he is supposed to drop it, move to the right, engage the targets and then move left to clear the other targets. The Shooter apparently “did not understand” the stage and shoot it the way he saw fit. Plus he behave like a jerk and took forever to get ready to shoot.

On this one, the shooter is the Safety Officer Instructor who gave the class and is shooting the stage for real points. However the New SO makes a mistake giving a command and gets promptly raked for it.

At the end of the video you hear another SO ask: “Look at the ground. What do you see?”
Answer: Dropped magazines with ammo; a no-no in IDPA. Even SOIs make mistakes.

On this one, the shooter is simulating an Air Marshall during a flight and suddenly 4 terrorists armed with knives start their misdeeds. The shooter is supposed to stand up, completely turn around, draw and shoot the four targets from where he is standing and once again the shooter is being less than helpful. I was “DQed” earlier in this stage as I partially drew the gun before completely turning around, a good call by the New SO but he was expecting something similar to happen again… it did not go quite as he thought.

On this stage, you started on your knees, hands in the surrender position and your gun inside the IDPA box. I also got “DQed” by having a shot impacting less than 2 yards from the firing line which would be the closest side of the IDPA box to the shooter.
I think this was one of the hardest shots I’ve ever taken in a match. It violated all it was ingrained in me about safety and IDPA rules to take a shot so close. I knew nobody was near (I made sure of that) and I also knew that the round was going to go deep in the ground (reclaimed Everglades ground, mostly dried up swamp) but it required a conscious effort to fuck up big time. Also the little red devil on my left shoulder kept whispering “go ahead and shoot the box for dramatic effect!” but I managed to resist temptation. Once again the New SO did his job right and stopped me immediately even though he was caught by surprise. I did gave him hell because he shouted “WOW! STOP!” instead of “STOP” which is the approved IDPA command. The lesson learned was that even though I am an experienced shooter so I am not supposed to do this kind of things, shit still happens and you better be ready.

Other “items” covered by example were muzzle sweeps, finger inside the trigger guard, phantom reloads, range “lawyering”, excessive number of rounds, extra magazines and pretty much anything we have seen happening in both regular and sanctioned matches (Oh yes Virginia, you will find cheating assholes in Sanctioned Matches.)

The New SOs passed with flying colors and they were properly congratulated for it. They were stressed out, tired, probably deaf from the combination of shots and our screaming but happy. Of course we needed to deflate their balloon a bit so they were told to expect a similar treatment at the next match. <evil laugh>

We might, we might not. Who knows?

I hate Range Nazis and that is double if they are misogynistic bastards that see a female shooter under the “Here little Lady, why don’t you shoot a .22 so you don’t get hurt” light.

With more and more women joining the ranks of self-defense training, it behooves us that we are true ambassadors of the Gun Culture and offer our support and our utmost politeness to every single female that steps in a range. Behavior like the one suffered by Warrior Knitter as told in her blog must not be tolerated ever. That “instructor” should be drummed out and sent to be a receptionist at the Brady Center.

In my humble opinion, he should have shot the bastard in the boys with a bean bag.