Today:
Miami International Airport
Lat: 25.78 Lon: -80.32 Elev: 35
Last Update on Jun 12, 5:53 am EDT
Scattered showers and thunderstorms, mainly after 2pm. Partly cloudy, with a high near 92. Heat index values as high as 103. North wind at 7 mph becoming east. Chance of precipitation is 30%

But still I will do some shooting. IDPA Match beckons and I have new shooters coming to the club.  If I am not blogging back by Monday, you’ll probably find me in the nearest ER draped in ice and plugged full of fluids.

Unless something mildly interesting pops in my feeble mind, I’ll probably won’t be blogging. IDPA Classifier tomorrow (No shooting, just doing scores) and getting the cobwebs out of the long guns on Sunday in some sort of weird three gun match that is not 3Gun. Don’t ask me what that means, that is what I was told and that I should bring some 250 rounds of assorted ammunition. Sounds like fun will be had.

And of course I will have this celebration of the Second Amendment to those in uniform who paid with their lives to keep that and all the rights. The first volley will be in your honor.

Soldier, rest! thy warfare o’er,
Dream of fighting fields no more:
Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking,
Morn of toll, nor night of waking.
Sir Walter Scott, The Lady of the Lake.

Not a bad day at the range yesterday. Took out the S&W 65-2 for a spin, tested some new reloads and I had a great time with my fellow club members.

About a couple of years ago, I found the S&W 65-2 online for a good darn price (Under $300). It was a LEO trade from the Texas Department of Corrections and the serial number starts with TDC which is cool. The gun shows some moderate wear and scratches which makes it not the prettiest girl in the collection but she is solid. I changed the springs to Wolff’s and the original grip to a Hogue Monogrip. The S&W 65-2 comes with fixed sights and I painted the front sight initially with Bright Sights Orange although now it is sporting Bon Bon’s Orange nail polish. Don’t ask, I might tell later.

My affair with the revolver has been strange. My first revolver was a loaner from my roommate who owned a S&W Model 13 who would leave it with me whenever he went out on a trip with the proviso that I would clean it after using it. Feeling the kick of a .357 Magnum was an eye opening experience for a guy who barely months before was anti-gun. After the Model 13, came the Ruger Blackhawk in .44 Magnum belonging to my brother in law. The usual stories of being such a powerful weapon that it would either kick me to the ground or park itself between the eyebrows were quickly eradicated and the only thing left was shooting that mule with pure pleasure and being more accurate that my brother in law who was a tad miffed about it.

Fast Forward 20 plus years, several semi-autos plus long guns and I bump online with the 65-2. It brought back memories of my first time (Specially since the 65 is the “evolution” of the Model 13) and with a wee bit of cash hidden somewhere available, I went ahead and bought it. It was the beginning of a rocky relationship which I will detail later. Anyway, I found that shooting revolver has improved my semi auto shooting a decent amount. It made me more aware of my trigger manipulation and more accurate as in “I don’t have 17 rounds to spray and pray.” And revolvers are a load of fun, specially when you arrive at a match and a fellow club member stars to give you grief about the ancient gun and after the scores are posted, you find out you beat the hay out of the disrespectful bastard.

And as a payback, next match will be shot with full power .357 rounds. I wanna share the love! But in all seriousness, get a revolver and shoot it. It is way too much fun.

(more to come)

And yesterday was bad. Possibly one of my worst IDPA matches ever where not a thing happened just right, somewhat right or passably right. Funny thing was that a lot of people were that way too. Surgical shooters were hitting No-Shoots like they were Collaborators, Failures to Neutralize were the norm and we didn’t have stages that were too hard. About the only things that were running right were the New Shooters (5 of them introduced to IDPA) and everybody was safe with their guns.

Is there a Spring Sickness I am supposed to know about? It was the first week out of an unseasonable cold weather for South Florida. There was a constant cool breeze but the sun shined enough that we got a bit of a reddish tan and some more than necessary… which reminds me we must implement our customary Heat Exhaustion/Sickness/Stroke protocols.

Whatever it was, it did not bring the worst on people. Fifty Six shooters were exhausted, disappointed at ourselves but in a good mood. Nothing can beat that.  It is always good to shoot some and hang out with your buddies.

One thing did come out half right.

Not a bad one coming from me and only 34 photos taken. I usually get a decent one out of a hundred plus.

IDPA is fun if you have a twisted & deranged person designing Courses of Fire. Yesterday we had a match for Safety Officers Only to say thanks for all the hard labor they put in herding our club members safely all year long.

The last stage was interesting to say the least.

Yes that is a shooter and a safety officer on top of our props’ trailer being towed at 5 m.p.h over uneven terrain. There were four paper targets and seven steel targets for the engaging. Ammo count was basically everything as long as you stayed withing IDPA rules… and most of us shot it all.

We are used to shoot on the move at our command. We walk and somehow we integrate our movements we our shooting in a somewhat coherent process which (with a lot of practice) allow us to be accurate enough. Some how we ‘know” when a foot is up, when it makes contact with the ground again, coordinate with our hands, arms & upper body to create a stable platform, acquire sights, press trigger… and if we are good & lucky we make a great shot.

All of the above goes out the window when you are just there for the ride & shoot. You are not in control of anything other than the gun. The terrain here is a bit bumpy and gave the trailer a slight rocking motion back and forth plus side to side. Not a whole lot mind you, but enough to make you work a lot and miss a lot. The first time I ever did a convoy/style stage was years ago at a SFDCC match, with a rifle from a regular trailer, sitting on a secured chair and I missed every single target.

View you get from ground level.. Yours truly trying to shoot the stage. I do apologize for the less than polite word at the end, but there was a steel who refused to die and had to be shot several times and cussed accordingly.

This is the view you get from top of the trailer. Rob from tacticalyellowvisor.net gets in a good run.

I think people should try this or a similar stage. Not only it is fun but it opens your eyes and gives you a new respect for the technicalities of shooting. Basically a portion of humble pie is good for the soul now and then.

I am an advocate of Action Shooting Sports for the enormous benefits a shooter can derive. Static Range will only give you a measurement of Marksmanship & Gun Handling in a quiet, pressure-less environment but it is a myth that goes down the drain the second you are under the slightest influence of adrenalin.  I have seen shooters that felt pretty good about their craft in a static range become a bowl of ticked off pudding when they are under a timer and must move or face moving targets. Action Shooting Sports will give a shooter an initial measurement of what he ir she will do when the cow chips hit the wind power turbines.

The other thing(s) you get when competing against other shooters is an instantly available pool of knowledge yours for the observing and asking. You will see a technique that you did not know almost in every match and will try it. It may work or it might not but you have something you did not have before and that is golden. And if you are having troubles adapting that technique, have no doubt that somebody will me very willing to teach you the finer points till you get it right.

There is also a sense of camaraderie among individuals that are usually fiercely independent. It is a meeting of liked-minded folks that breathe the sport and will discuss, test, argue and advertise different schools of tactics, themes or trainings received. Backstabbing is almost non-existent you can let your hair down and make mistakes knowing that any catcalling will be done without malice: just friends laughing with you instead of at you. Information about just anything guns will be shared in between sips of Gatorade, mineral water and an occasional cloud of tobacco smoke. After Match meals to relax and comment anything and everything happen quite often if you wish to attend. And even if you do not attend, nobody feels offended because you did not partake on the meal: they understand because they are like you.

I am the least gregarious person you’ll ever meet. If you happen to visit me at home, I have no qualms on telling that I like you (you have my address so a certain level of liking is present, otherwise you don’t even get my zip code) but that it is time for you to leave the premises because I need my alone time. Even so I enjoy thoroughly my IDPA Matches with the shooting, bantering, jokes, arguments, discussion and even the occasional bartering that happens, specially if the wife never finds out.

So, join a Action Shooting Club to learn and have fun. It is the cheapest therapy in town. Although truth be told, we are a bit crazy sometimes.

If we weren’t, why would be come out to shoot in a Saturday morning in Miami with 40 degree weather, winds at 15 m.p.h and a constant drizzle while standing in two inches deep of very cold mud? 🙂

I am a 100%, dyed-in-the-wool, no-holds-barred IDPA shooter. I have to check with HQ but I think I almost have a decade participating in the sport and I am know in a couple of forums of coming down hard on anybody who dismisses IDPA with the old “IDPA will get you killed” crap. I believe that IDPA is the best elementary school in Defensive Shooting anybody can get for the price you get to pay and that it has also introduced more people to advanced Defensive Shooting classes than anything else out there.

Wit that being said, I have this feeling we are seeing a trend in the sport that will render it useless as a starting point for more serious stuff.  Some call it IPSCfication (yes, there is still the Hatfields v. McCoys thing going on) but to me is just Dumbing Down what it was supposed to be a challenging discipline.  I have attended and worked several sanctioned matches and I have seen a distinct trend that shows lots of flash but short of bang.  Lots of cute and elaborate stages with amazing moving props, but short in shooting smarts and techniques. We are turning Hollywood as we become addicted to the special effects and set the script as barely secondary. We are losing what made us in the first place.

Nothing drove this point deeper than hearing a Match Director during a State Match I worked as Safety Officer, say that we were in the entrainment business and to make the match fun.  Silly me I thought that the first duty of a Safety Officer wast to look after the shooters and make sure they were safe. There were tons of props and amazingly designed stages that were for the most part, amazingly vanilla to shoot. Needless to say the match turned out to be an enjoyable carnival but lacked lots on challenging shooters. I am for a challenge and I would agree most of IDPA shooters are also in this category. You can make a match fun if you challenge shooters to push their abilities instead of just throwing lead downrange.

How do we turn this silly tide? Mainly by designing Courses of Fire that follow the true spirit of IDPA as it appears in the rule book:

The International Defensive Pistol Association (IDPA) is the governing body of a shooting sport that simulates self-defense scenarios and real life encounters

So let’s look for true incident out there and design our CoFs around them. Talk to Law Enforcement officers about cases that happened during their shifts, cruise the internet for surveillance video of actual crimes and even incidents that might have happened to fellow shooters or relatives.  If you are home right now, you have a fantastic opportunity to design killer CoFs: Run several What Ifs using your house as stage and imagine what would happen if a Bad Guy entered through a window or busted a door or you hear screams coming from your kids’ bedroom. Or you are at a red light and imagine you are about to be carjacked with no way to escape. Or even your local supermarket while you are with the significant other shopping can provide you with Courses of Fire. And let’s face it, if you are a conscientious armed citizen, you are living in Alert Color Orange and running “What if I am attacked right now?” scenarios every time you are out there.

Write the ideas down so you don’t forget them. You don’t need to sit right there and design a whole scenario right there and then. You can do that later and adapt them to IDPA rules. When you finally commit them to paper,  don’t soften them up just because it is easier to do or give you a nice round count or you don’t have the all the props you want.

About props. Yes, we would like to have a full tactical Blackwater or Thunder Ranch set up in our clubs, but the reality is our clubs may not have that kind of cash around or the space to do it. Think Smart and be minimalistic. Here is an example: We all like to have a car just dedicated to shoot vehicle related scenarios. Our range is public so we can’t just leave a car sitting at the range and our storage space is a small sea container. So, the solution to recreate carjacking scenarios was simple: A chair, a driver side door and a steering wheel.

If you want to work outside the car scenarion, well darn it, you didn’t get to the range walking or by using public transportation, right?

We did learn something, place some sort of protective cover like carpeting or even a towel on the corner. It will save the time and aggravation later of removing the burnt propellant. We use the props trailer with now instead of a vehicle and does the same job. Even a cut out of half a car propped on target stands will do the job.

Use your imagination, make it challenging, make your shooters think and not just shoot and that will be fun enough.