Tampa Bay Pistol Club - You know you're a shooter when...

I've only been Blogging for one year.

But I've been 'Writing' for intenet folks for about 8 years.

Here are a couple of examples of the Threads From Heck which were introduced (usually) on The Unofficial IPSC List, and which were subsequently posted on the Internet by other subscribers:


Tampa Bay Pistol Club - You know you're a shooter when...

IPSC Haiku

My favorites are ... well, my own poems. But the creativity is astounding, and I'm hard-pressed to pick my own from the others. To be honest, many of the poems are 'in-jokes'. These were all composed in 2001, and thanx to Jeff Maass for preserving them.


Boomershoot

I went to one of Joe Huffman's early Boomershoots in 1999.
(I also went to the 2000 Boomershoot, and I bought the shirt, but that's another story.)






I went with Jim "Bumstead" Boemler, and delighted in getting him stuck in mud while we treked thru the marshlands.

The link cited above, however, deals with my expectations based on EXPERIENCE during other lie-down-on-the-grass-and-squirm-in-the-cold-mud moments.

BTW, if Kim Du Toit would like a genuine Boomershoot t-shirt, I would be willing to make him a gift of mine. It doesn't fit me any more. I think it shrunk.

And here's a picture of Bumstead at the match. Jim is at the telescope, I'm . . . behind the camera.

ABC News: Granny's Got a Gun ... and Uses It

ABC News: Granny's Got a Gun ... and Uses It


Arlington, Texas:

A Texas Grandmother exercised her Second Amendment right to defend herself, her family and her home by shooting a half-naked 'really buff' male intruder who had broken a window to enter the home shared by the grandmother (66 year old Susan Buxton), her daughter, and her grandchildren.

Susan Gaylord Buxton of Arlington, Texas, shot an intruder who broke into her home using the .38-caliber handgun she keeps by her bedside.

(The) 66-year-old grandmother is giving new meaning to the saying, "Don't Mess With Texas."

Susan Gaylord Buxton of Arlington, Texas, shot an intruder who broke into her home using the .38-caliber handgun she keeps by her bedside. The intruder, Christopher Lessner, 22, suffered a leg wound and is now in jail.

"I was scared, I was terrified and I was really, really angry that he was in my house," Buxton said. "He could have harmed me or my granddaughter."

Buxton, a cartoonist and an artist, had already gone to bed for the night. But at 12:45 a.m. on Wednesday, she got up to let one of her puppies outside. She took her gun with her in case a coyote tried to attack her dog in the yard.

On her way downstairs, Buxton noticed that her granddaughter, Mandy Davis, was awake because she had heard a noise like breaking glass. Buxton walked out on her back porch and let her dog out, who began sniffing two big muddy footprints on the porch — a red flag, since they hadn't any rain in about six weeks.

Then Buxton and Davis noticed other odd things: the door to a backroom was ajar allowing the family cats to escape and other items in the room were in disarray. They discussed calling the police, but instead decided to methodically check the house on their own — with a spotlight and her gun in hand.

After checking the entire house, they realized the only place they hadn't checked was the coat closet — and there was Lessner.

"This big, 6-foot-1, really big, buff man jumped out," Buxton said.

As Buxton dealt with the intruder, Davis called 911 to get help.

Lessner was on the run from police who were trying to ticket him for speeding in a stolen car earlier that night.

Buxton ordered Lessner to "get down" but he refused. She fired one warning shot into the air and then she shot him in the leg. But Lessner still managed to run out the front door.

Police apprehended him near Buxton's home.

"They found him bleeding and cowering on a neighbor's balcony," Buxton said.

Buxton has owned a handgun for 12 years, but this was her first time shooting anybody, she said. Buxton bought the gun 12 years ago after she says someone tried to kidnap one of her grandchildren while she was baby-sitting.

She has taken a shooting course where she was trained to aim for the torso, but she said she aimed for the leg instead.

"I didn't want to kill him," Buxton said.

The police took Buxton's gun as part of the investigation. In the meantime, she's carrying her other gun, a 9-millimeter semi-automatic. Buxton has a permit to carry a handgun and will not be charged with a crime because she was defending herself.

Lessner is facing charges of unauthorized use of a motor vehicle, evading arrest, criminal mischief and criminal trespass. Now that he's out of the hospital, he's sitting in jail.

"I'm glad he's in jail," Buxton said. "That's where he belongs."

Correction to the story:
According to the on-air interview on the Good Morning America television show, Buxton had hit Lessner in the leg with her FIRST shot, deliberately shooting to wound. The second shot was the warning shot, fired after Lessner had dragged himself out of the house and while police were on the way.

Details not available in the text version, or the ABC news video:

Here's the Money quote(s), from the 911 call as Buxton was heard in the background while her daughter made the emergency call for police help:

(Grandmother): Get . . . Get Down!

Son of a Bitch!
. . .
How dare you come into my house, you lousy son of a bitch!
...
Get the son of a bitch out of here or he's a dead man!

(911 operator): Did she just shoot him again? The police are on the way. Tell her she needs to stop shooting him!

I think I'm in love.
Not with the 911 operator, with Buxton!

Buxton reported that she had received defensive firearms training, and asserted that ". . . they tell you, when you get a handgun . . . you need to practice, practice, practice!"

The photo embedded with the ABC video shows Buxton during the interview with the Good Morning America reporter. It's significant in that it shows her demonstrating, unconsciously, a perfectly two-hand grip on a pistol. Her strong-hand thumb locks her weak-hand thumb down, for a better grip and better control. That's the same grip many competitors use in IPSC competition. That woman may have been "scared, terrified, and very very angry", but she was in complete control of her defensive handgun, the home-invasion situation, and her life.

Note: if your access to the ABC video doesn't work for you, here's one from Comcast. No telling if the pop-up video will work any better, or if you need a Comcast subscription to run it. When I viewed it, there were a couple of interuptions in the feed but it was a GREAT interview by ABC. There was a great deal of commentary that wasn't available on the later ABC news video.

Thank you, Veterans

Thank you!

Tomorrow, November 11, is Veteran's Day.
If you've never thought of Veterans as "Somebody Special", if you deplore the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, if you served, or know someone who served their country in acknowledged risk of life and limb, if you "Support The Troops", if you fervently believe that "War Is Dangerous To Children And Other Living Creatures", if you think that soldiers are sadly misguided whose hearts may be in the right place but they are wasting themselves in Somebody Else's War . . .

. . . if you're an American . . .

do something special on Veteran's day to show that you acknowledge the sacrifices and risks that one American is willing to assume in order that you may sleep safely at night.

Going grocery shopping? Stop and buy a Buddy Poppy from the old man in front of the Safeway store. Don't give him a buck; give him a twenty. It helps support the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

Make your day THEIR day, by showing your appreciation.

What am I going to do?

I'm going to celebrate Red Shirt Friday, and bring along some momento of military service to my work place.

At 11pm on 11/11, I'll go to the memorial at the local National Guard Armory and offer my Libation to Absent Friends. It may sound strange to you, but THEY know, and understand. If my name was on that pillar, or wall, I would appreciate the gesture.


Saturday, I'll go to an IPSC match.

I hope by then I'll have found a Safeway store, and a VFW guy, because I want to wear my Buddy Poppy.

PS: if the 3-minute movie linked to above doesn't break you up just a little bit, you won't understand any of this.

Never mind.
It's only important if it's important to you.

Never point an RPG at the Marines

Caution: This depicts scenes of graphic violence. May not be suitable for just about anybody.

869KB, 37 seconds.

H/T Big Dog

Stamps with Your Photo On Them

PhotoStamps: Home

The U.S. Postal Service has entered into an agreement with various commercial suppliers to allow personally designed stamps to be used on mail entered into the USPSA system.

You provide the photo, credit card and address information (you have to establish an account with the individual supplier - I chose Photo.Stamp.com arbitrarily) and the supplier will print your image on stamps which you can use to send snailmail.

I tried this out. It cost me $32.97 for 'two sheets'. I don't know how many stamps are on a sheet, but the stamps I get from the post office have about a dozen per sheet. I very much doubt they are talking about 50-stamp sheets. The stamps will certainly cost a lot more than their $.37 face value, and until I receive my order I won't be able to say what the actual cost per stamp will be.

I chose a photo of my son, his wife and THEIR new son, J-Bob. (Jakob Robert) This photo was over a year old, taken in the hospital room on the day he was born. My son, Jon Ben, has a satisfied smirk on his face which makes it all worth the expense of memorializing.



Okay, it's a subjective thing. I love my son and his family, and while it may not be the photo THEY would choose, I can't think of a happier moment than the birth of a child.

It's worth it to me, and while they may not appreciate the stamps I'll be sending to hem, at least they have it to use or give to their son for whatever purpose he may have. (I don't expect to be using these stamps to pay my utility bills.)

This was just a test order. A single 'sheet' of stamps costs just under $17 from PhotStamps; I don't know what other suppliers charge, I haven't checked them out yet.

But if the stamps seem to be of good quality, I have plans to submit some other photos which are personally significant and buy even more stamps from them.

FYI, there are restrictions on the images you can submit for stamps. Using PhotoStamp as a typical supplier, no pornography, violence, copyright images (without permission), historical figures (?), suggestive, etc. photos will be accepted. If you send in an order and the image is rejected by the supplier, you will be charged a $10 'processing fee' by photostamp and you don't get your stamps.

I have NO idea whether they would consider this objectionable:

You have to submit your own images and orders to find out what they will accept. If you choose to try this, I would appreciate it if you would send me a copy of the image and the results of your order. I may, with your permission, publish the results and image if only to serve as a warning to others.

UPDATE 11/14:
There are 20 stamps per sheet. At $0.37 per stamp, the actual postage value is $7.40. Your price from this vendor is $14.99 per sheet, which means your paying double price for the stamps.

This is no bargain if all you want is postage. If you want something else, something personal and meaningful to you, it's dirt cheap. For me, it's a bargain and I'll be using their service again.

What are you smiling about?

Last Spring, my Geek Jeep still sported a "SPORTSMEN FOR BUSH" sticker in the rear window.

You may be aware that I work at a University in the Pacific Northwest, and I park on campus five days a week.

One Monday when I went to the parking lot to get my car, I noticed that someone had taken advantage of the thin layer of dust (I had attended an IPSC match the day before, and the dust from the dirt access roads hadn't yet been washed off . . . it wasn't time for my Semi-annual Wash The Car Day) to write "BUSH IS GAY" on the back hatch.

Now, you all know that the entire PNW is a Red State, and the Geek Jeep is red. Honestly, I was trying to get along as passively as I could.

Yet someone, presumably a University student, had decided that the only reasonable response to a Jeep with a "Sportsmen For Bush" sticker in the back window was to write "BUSH IS GAY" on the car. (I'm just grateful that they used their dirty finger, instead of a key, to write it!)

I wondered why this particular phrase was used to disparage the President of the United States. In a Liberal state, at a Liberal college, with a very active Gay Pride center within a mile of my parking place, does someone consider that the unfounded accusation of being Gay is an appropriate insult?

What does that do for the "Celebrate Diversity" movement on campus? How does it correlate to the professed inclusionary slant of the anti-Bush movement?

Is being Gay a Bad Thing? If so, how does the writer get along with his fellow liberals, who seem to take acceptance of homosexuality as a plank on their political platform?

Or was the writer merely commenting that President George W. Bush seemed especially jovial?

I find this a little difficult to accept, considering that Bush 43 has been experiencing one of the most difficult tenures in the history of the country. 911, war in Afghanistan, war in Iraq, Terrorism in general, the need to expend resources (which could be otherwise slotted for domestic social issues) on defensive measures such as TSA . . . what has Bush got to be happy about?

One could imagine that President Bush, in an introspective moment, would envy President Eisenhower. The worth thing Ike had to deal with was the uncomfortable 6-month period between the day when the USSR orbited Sputnik, and the day when the USA managed to get a satellite in orbit. (Joke of the day: "Why can't Ike ride horseback at night?" Answer: "Because he doesn't have a saddle light". Saddle-light, satellite. Get it? Okay, it's lame, but that was the fifties.)


The reason all of this boiled to the top of the melting pot is because I just read a Doctor Adams article entitled "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and dog-gone it, Stuart Smalley likes me!"

Here, Doctor Adams discusses Al Franken, whose distinction between "Unfair Mean" jokes and "Fair Mean" jokes is difficult to define, at best. The difference seems to be whether the speaker is a Liberal or a Conservative. If you take Franken's history into account, it's wrong for Conservatives to say anything 'mean' about homosexuals. However, it's okay for a Liberal to say anything 'mean' about homosexuals, if the homosexual in question is a Conservative.

In that vein, I spent the most grueling week in my recent history listening to "Air America" earlier this week. (The actual listening time was just under five minutes; I'm not able to listen to that show any longer for fear of hurling.) I do this from time to time, just to see if the Liberal Voice of America has begun to make sense. I'll save you the torture of listening for yourself: they haven't.

The woman who was talking (Randi Rhodes?) was talking about the big stink those nasty ol' Conservatives made about Clinton's affair with Lewinski, and then asked "What about the homosexual prostitute [note: Gannon/Guckert?], what was he doing in the White House?"

It's not clear whether she was concerned about the homosexuality or the prostitution of this guy, but she made it clear that the relationship between Clinton and Lewinski was a . . . quote . . . "Social Situation", while that between the man who seemed to be carving out a new career as a White House reporter and the President seemed somehow to be comparable.

There's no suggestion here, or elsewhere, that President Bush was carrying on a "Social Situation" with a male prostitute, but Rhodes seemed to relish the inuendo.

That's what it's all about with the Liberal press . . . inuendo. And it's infecting the young people of our country.

It's okay to use homosexuality as a weapon against Conservatives, if you're a Liberal. But if you're a Conservative, and you aren't publicallyl and viciferously in support of homosexuality, you're "Just Mean".

So what does it mean when you only allow a homosexual to attend your White House Press Conferences, and you're a Conservative? Are you inclusive, or are you perverted?

What are you smiling about?

November Blogmeat

Since my writing tonite seems to be related to the stuff that other bloggers have found, I'm going to switch to a BLOGMEAT format!


One in a Row has early returns from San Francisco's Proposition H.
What does it say? Well, as of this writing (21:20 on Election Night), they have 36,000 votes and less than 10,000 returned ballots. I'm not too concerned . . . so far . . . that the measure to prohibit posession of firearms within the San Francisco City Limits is winning 3 to 2.
It's a SCAM, folks!

UPDATE:
November 9, 2005
The passage of Proposition H in San Francisco caught me unaware. I knew those people were crazy, and I knew that they were stupid, but I had no idea of the extent of their mania.

I use to live there, in the early 1970's. I met some fine folks, and I loved the town. Hated the politics, hated the crime, and I missed 'real weather' so I finally moved.

The weather was just blah. Occasional rain, lots of cold winds, but I admit I was enchanted by the Fog Monster slithering down the main west-east thoroughfares on its way from the ocean to the Bay.

Crime was more than your typical bank robberies and muggings. I was living in Oakland during the Zebra Killings and the Patty Hearst/SLA business. I was there during the Black Panther shootout in Oakland. And I was there when my next door neighbor was mugged in the Safeway parking lot by two middle-school girls. My car was burglarized twice, once while it was sitting in the enclosed parking lot of the apartment house where I lived and which I managed; it was obviously one of my neighbors. Later, someone slit the convertible top 'just for the hell of it'.

The politics, even then, defied imagination. Obviously, the current generation has completely succumbed to the Nanny State mindset which we saw evolving during the period when I lived there.

I got out just in time.



Publicola is incensed that many of his readers come from RKBA-repressed areas . . . DC, California, Illinois, NJ, etc. He asks why, if these read are interested in gun-blogs, they still live where they do?

I'm sure there are good reasons, but darned if I can intuit them.


Vile Bill (Firing For Effect) writes about a pig roast and a Jungle Run!

Hey, this idea is catching on everywhere, and from the many photos Bill provides, it looks like a tough stage..

I'm glad to see that Bill is posting more and more lately, not only because he is an IPSC shooter but also because he always has something interesting to say.

Incidently, he is willing to trade total ownership of his blog for an SVI. Good luck, Bill.

Oh, and before I forget, Bill has joined the Gun Blogs Ring, as I have (see the link array at the bottom of the page, just below the Day By Day cartoon.) His link hasn't yet appeared, but take heart Bill. It took three weeks before they got around to 'certifying' my link. I think this is a worthy effort, if only because it provides a good way to cycle through all your favorite gun-blogs quickly and easily.

My blog is worth $8,468.10.
How much is your blog worth?

And Bill is responsible for the reference to the "How Much Is Your Blog Worth" bot, included here.


Syd at Front Sight, Press offers his usual brilliant collection of RKBA-related links, including this article about Alito's decision that the ban against private ownership of full-auto firearms is unconstitutional! (Scroll down to "SUPREME COURT NOMINEE SAMUEL ALITO'S VIEWS COULD IMPERIL MOST FEDERAL GUN, AMMO, AND EXPLOSIVES LAWS")

Remarkably, this article was featured in SFGATE, those wonderful folks who support Proposition H (See above).

For John Roberts, it was a "hapless toad'' in the path of a California housing development that represented the limits of the federal government's power to regulate activities within a state. For Samuel Alito Jr., it was a machine gun.

In a lone dissenting opinion as a federal appeals court judge in 1996, Alito argued that the federal ban on possessing machine guns was unconstitutional -- a stand described by both admirers and detractors Tuesday as one of the most revealing cases in the lengthy judicial record of President Bush's nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Not so remarkably, the SFGATE article strongly features a quote from "The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence", formerly known as HCI.

. . . Dennis Henigan, legal director of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said the opinion is "perhaps the most powerful evidence that Judge Alito is very much a right-wing judicial activist'' willing to disregard congressional judgment. Another critic, Douglas Kendall, executive director of the Community Rights Counsel, said Alito's opinion is disturbing for reasons that have little to do with gun control.

The case "suggests that he will impose rather significant limits on federal authority'' over interstate commerce, the basis for a wide range of laws, said Kendall, whose Washington, D.C., organization supports regulation of the environment and public health. He said the issue of federal power is critical to two cases the Supreme Court plans to review this term testing the limits of the government's authority to prohibit pollution of wetlands under the Clean Water Act.

Emphasis mine, and obviously I think that the comment that Alito is "... willing to disregard congressional judgement ..." is the salient quote of the article. I can't think of a better reason to install Alito to the Supremes!

Alito began his dissenting opinion by suggesting that the majority was treating the Supreme Court's 1995 ruling as "a constitutional freak'' rather than a recognition that the Constitution "still imposes some meaningful limits on congressional power.''

Alito is looking better all the time. Go read the entire article, and decide for yourself whether he's a loose cannon.

The second quoted paragraph demonstrates HCI's The Brady Center's disenguity; how much credibility can we give to an organization which calls itself the '"Center To Prevent Gun Violence", and then tries to hide its anti-RKBA activism under the guise of an organization which "... supports regulation of the environment and public health." These folks have no shame, no shame at all.

In fact, they quoted RINO Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma to boister their nebulous criticism.

And I so appreciated the article that I wrote an email to the reporter who wrote it.

UPDATE: December 29, 2005
I fulfilled one of my New Years Resolutions ahead of time, by re-editing this article to change the Judge's name from Alioto (a former Mayor of San Francisco, and a well-known fish-house owner) to Alito, which is the name the judge was born with. I do so reluctantly because I was getting a LOT of hits from search-engines. It seems that I'm not the only one who can't spell Alito's name properly. That's why I've seeded this update liberally with references to "Alioto". If I didn't, I would miss those guys!

Gullyborg (Resistance is Futile!) tosses his hat in the ring to be known as the Jack of Spades.

This is in response to a blogger meme for Hallmark Cards for Bloggers (h/t Arron per Hugh Hewit).

Me? I'm bidding for the Four of Clubs. Four clubs in the Columbia Cascade Section of USPSA (ARPC, TCGC, Dundee and COSSA). How hard can it be to represent a minor sport in a minor state?

The Lost Action Hero?

Hat Tip to Cowboy Blog

You scored as Batman, the Dark Knight. As the Dark Knight of Gotham, Batman is a vigilante who deals out his own brand of justice to the criminals and corrupt of the city. He follows his own code and is often misunderstood. He has few friends or allies, but finds comfort in his cause. Batman, the Dark Knight 83% James Bond, Agent 007 71% The Terminator 67% The Amazing Spider-Man 54% Captain Jack Sparrow 54% Maximus 50% Neo, the "One" 50% Lara Croft 46% El Zorro 42% William Wallace 42% Indiana Jones 42% Which Action Hero Would You Be? v. 2.0 created with QuizFarm.com

Frappr

Hat Tip to Tyler at .45 Caliber Justice

Shooting the Texas Star

A few weeks ago, I commented on another blog that there was a good way to shoot the Texas Star target array.


My preference is (assuming the Star is not moving) to shoot the top plate, then to shoot the top descending plate. That plate is descending because that side has more plates. It's heavier. Shooting that plate shifts the balance, so the OTHER side is then heavier. Consequently, the rotation slows, stops, and changes direction. Continue to shoot the top descending plate, and it slows down the movement of the arms so you don't have a difficult fast-moving target for your next shot. Finally, if you do it right (shoot fast, don't miss!), you finish by shooting a stationary plate at the bottom of the array.

I demonstrated this in my Dundee match article, and when you hit your targets consistently it makes it look easy. Well, it is.

* * *

Somewhere, I got hold of a rather large MPG-format file that shows a series of shooters shooting the Star in a completely opposite manner. That is, they shoot the lowest plate first, and then kind of catch whatever they can. The file is 10mb, and I link to it here even though it's not reasonable to download it unless you have high-speed broadband internet access.

(Thank you, Comcast!)

These guys make it look so easy. I sure wish I knew where it was filmed, and who the shooters are. They're much better shooters than I am.

Here's another MPG-format video, 1.4mb, showing someone shooting the star during an actual match. Crank the volume WAY up here.

Finally, for something COMPLETELY different, here's a video I mentioned several months ago. No stars here, but a Las Vegas LEO (Clark County Sheriff's Deputy?) has a little trouble with trigger control while supporting another LEO in the act of cuffing a suspect.

There's a lot of sirens involved, you'll want to turn the volume DOWN a bit.

UPDATE:
Originally I advised shooting the top RISING plate, instead of the top DESCENDING plate. That was clearly wrong, so I corrected the error and also added some more descriptive commentary. Also, I added the link to the referenced Dundee match article, for convenience.

By the way, the 'large' video showing several people shooting the star looks to me as if it were filmed in Texas. I make this assumption because of the design on several of the shirts, because one of the shooters looks very much like Penny Riggs, and because they all shoot so well!

Interesting websites about guns and shooting

One of the things I've been doing lately is looking for interesting new websites. I focused on those shooting-related blogs hosted by Blogger.

The first one I found is one that I knew immediately I should have linked to long ago: Matt Burkett's "Shooting Thoughts". I've corrected my lapse and it now has been included on my sidebar under "Gun Bloggers Outside the PNW" (Pacific North Wet).

On top of the blog today is an extended article Matt wrote about the "JP Rocky Mountain 3 gun World Championship". After describing the match, Burkett goes on to give "tips from the match for multi-gun shooting".

Actually, I never understood the difference between "3-gun" and "multi-gun" competition until I read an article in the current Front Sight Magazine this week. In his "From The Editor" column (Page 5, November-December 2005), Dave Thomas describes it:

The difference between "3-Gun" and "Multi-Gun" is that a 3-Gun match is comprised of specific stages for specific firearms while multi-gun blends at least some stages together. In 3-Gun an aggregate championship in each recognized division is awarded as well as individual firearm championships (handgun, shotgun, and rifle) for each division. A Multi-Gun match recognizes only the aggregate championships by division.

If I understand this correctly, 3-gun matches have rifle stages, shotgun stages, and pistol stages. You shoot only one kind of firearm on each stage. At the end you have rifle winners, shotgun winners, and handgun winners (plus division awards, etc.) In Multi-Gun competition there are no Rifle, Shotgun or Handgun winners because they are used in combination in each stage, making it impossible to determine which part of a stage score was earned using which firearm.

Personally, the "Multi-Gun" competition sounds a lot more interesting to me. But I'm just a Geek, so what do I know? However, I HAVE competed in "Practical Shotgun Only" matches, and they were a kick. Literally.

Another blog I reviewed was Nebraska Views, hosted by "CMZNEB". In the four months he has been online, he has posted only three articles but they're worth reading. I wish he would post more, he has some interesting things to say.
First he wrote "Why I don't belong to the NRA anymore . . .", and I half-agree with most of his reasons.
Then he wrote "Why do NE Police Chiefs oppose CCS?". Apparently, he actually attempted to contact a half-dozen police chiefs and/or sheriffs with the question. Most of them didn't reply, but those who DID reply had some interesting things to say.
Finally, last month, he wrote "Gun Shows . . . Worth A Visit? Here he had two eminently quotable quotes: "I have yet to find a great deal at a gun show..." and "One thing you can count on for sure is seeing an interesting crowd of people at gun shows."

Maybe if I send him the link to this article, he will be encouraged to continue writing.

Next up is McGinnis, who describes himself as a " gun toting liberal. There are more of us than you think, but election day is never easy." He has two blogs.
First is (not surprising) the Gun Toting Liberal blog. It's an interesting concept, and I wish he had explored it. He had one blog article, in which he said

The Gun Toting Liberals now have a blog. We are so hip.

Unfortunately, he never posted to that blog again. I'm sure the gun toting liberals of the world have a lot to say, but not here.
The other blog was a lot more productive. Here he describes his Journey to USPSA B-Class. It's a worthy goal, and if he has continued to put as much into practice as he details here, he has made it by now. In August and September, 2004, he developed a plan and then described what he did to follow the plan. He documented his draw-times in practice, and evaluated his progress (but not WHY he progressed.) After a few weeks, he was distracted by his thesis and by the realization that it requires sacrifice and priority to get live-fire range time. By June of 2005, he had allowed his USPSA membership to lapse but stated that he was "...one 60+ classifier away from B-class in production".

Nothing from him since then. Where-ever you are, McGinnis, I hope you made your goal. You showed a very personal side of yourself, and I'm grateful for your contribution. Maybe it IS easier to make B-class in Limited 10 than in Production, but unless you resume blogging we'll just never know.


Not-so-interesting IPSC-related blogsites:

Shooting with Woody.
First . . . and last . . . blog:

First time

Starting this seems pointless.

I guess it was. He hasn't posted again in the past year. This only goes to show that it ain't easy to run an IPSC blog, folks.


This is about the point when I realized that "continuing this seems pointless". There are tens of thousands of bloggers registered with Blogger, twelve of them list IPSC as an interest, and six of them (many duplicates) list USPSA as an interest. Most of them don't blog at all, some only a few times, and most of the blogs don't have much (or any) IPSC/USPSA related material.

Most important, and the point of this article, is that you have to keep shooting to maintain an interest in The Game. I haven't blogged for two weeks, nor have I shot a match for two weeks. I think there's a correlation there.

Sunday I went to the range and did some practice. I had some new Winchester brass I wanted to load and shoot before I reloaded it for match use, so I burned some of it up working on draw-and-first-shot times. I found a lot of things I was doing wrong, including not getting the dot on the target when I mounted the gun, and rushing the first shot. There's not a whole lot of difference in time between a 1.48 second C-hit and a 1.55 second A-hit, but when you allow yourself to become speed-oriented you lose track of your own personal limitations. That explains why I had so much trouble getting first-shot hits on steel at my last match.

And that link explains why it's important to keep to a regular regimen of writing. You can build on your earlier work, and use it to demonstrate points which occur to you later.

I'm so bored. I can't wait until the ARPC match next Saturday. I may even clean the pistol.

It could happen.

End of the Blogging Hiatus

There may have been a few of you who noticed that I haven’t been writing lately. By “Lately”, I mean since October 23 . . . two full weeks!

The reason I haven’t been writing is that I didn’t feel like it. Not a good excuse, but I’ve been engaged in a few other projects which took up too much of my free time. Also, there haven’t been a lot of IPSC matches in the CCS section lately, and I didn’t ‘feel like’ talking about anything else.

Or maybe it was just writer’s block.

Here is a short list of the things I’ve been doing which have taken up so much of my time:

• trying to develop a website at jerrythegeek.arpc-ipsc.org


• trying to establish a GEEK Photo Gallery on that server or on that website


• adding HALOSCAN commenting system to avoid spammers


• searching for new and interesting websites that I can link to

The website isn’t working yet. I bought MS FrontPage, but I can’t use the full publishing capabilities because my server doesn’t support it. That means that all the macros which are embedded in the code don’t work, so the templates need to be re-written. For example, the table-formatted link buttons are just not there! I have a lot of work to do before I get all the bugs out, and what little I DO have that works is mostly just a skeletal structure. Even getting the links right is a learning experience for me. Some Geek, eh?

The photo gallery software I chose is powerful, and it’s free. I chose it because it allowed *.mpeg and *.wmv formatted video files to be posted. It also requires installation on the server, and apparently that isn’t going to happen. The alternatives are to either build my own webpages, or use an existing gallery (such as Kodak Gallery) to host the still photos and THEN build my own webpages for the videos. I’ll probably choose the latter.

I’m not sure if the HALOSCAN code is working yet, because I haven’t blogged since I installed it. We’ll see what happens when I have a few comment-worthy articles posted, but I strongly suspect I still have some code changes to make before it’s fully functional.

In an ironic note, the week after I installed HALOSCAN, BLOGGER came up with new functionality on their Comments processing which provided exactly the kind of controls I was looking for. That is, the comments would be routed to me FIRST, and I would choose which would be accepted. This imposed a delay between the time a reader posts a comment and the time when it actually displays, which is not my first choice.

I have found a couple of interesting websites which I haven’t linked to before, and those will be the subject of another post in the immediate future.

Finally, this article represents another new blogging technique. I’m writing this on my MS-WORD software, and publishing it directly to BLOGGER. It’s a lot easier to compose, and it has a HUGE advantage in the immediate spell-checking and grammar checking. (But I have a lot of words to add to my dictionary, such as ‘blogging’ ‘webpages’ and ‘wmv’. In fact, I just did that!)

So this is something of a test of that new technique, and as soon as I figure out the possibilities of using the word processor for creating a new article, I’ll start playing with the techniques for editing in pictures and links.

UPDATE:
Gee, this looks funny. IT adds comments and trackback BEFORE the post, as well as the full comments-options lines at the end. Unfortunately, while I'm reasonably certain that this is caused by the interface between MS-Word and Blogger, it may have to do with the incomplete installation of Haloscan coding.

I'll play with this for a while, just to see what it looks like when I use the old technique of writting directly via Blogger post-editing. I may end up deleting this post, eventually, because while it's fun to try new toys . . . it's kind of boring to read about it.