For the past eight years, I have been teaching a once-monthly class in "Introduction to USPSA" (United States Practical Shooting Association) at my local gun club.
This month, I resigned from the teaching staff at my club. I'm in my 70's, my eyesight is failing, the rules of competition have grown exponentially, and I no longer consider myself either physically nor experientialy qualified to teach the course.
USPSA has grown from six divisions to ... I'm not sure how many; but I can't teach a discipline which I have not experienced. And many of the new shooters are disinterested in the pistol course; they want to compete in "Pistol Caliber Carbines", just to mention one new division.
When I started teaching, the divisions were Limited, Limited 10, Open, Revolver, Production and Single Stack. All of them were restricted to pistols only.
(I've shot at least one match in all six of these divisions.)
Since then, USPSA has included the divisions of Pistol Caliber Carbine and ... well, I'm pretty sure that by the time this article is published there will be at least 1 more division. I'll still shoot that PCC match, although I need more practice before I'm comfortable with the ergonomics. But I'm now resigning myself to the fact that new divisions will soon be added and I can no longer speak authoritatively.
If this sounds as if I'm complaining ... I'm not.
One of the more exciting aspects of this sport is how it has grown exponentially over the past decades. I shot my first match in 1983, no "divisions", and they were thinking about adding a new division to separate folks who were shooting 1911 frames with 7-round magazines from 1911 frames with 11-round magazines! (Yes, 11 round single-stack magazines were rare and expensive, and unreliable; but when they ran "right" they were an advantage!)
Today, it's more expensive.
The equipment I used in my first match (gun, magazines, ammunition, web-belt, holster, magazine carriers .. all army surplus except for my self-reloaded ammunition) cost LESS than the ammunition, and magazines I used in the last match I shot.
Time flies, when you're having fun.
Showing posts with label The Way Things Were. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Way Things Were. Show all posts
Monday, July 23, 2018
Monday, April 18, 2016
Millionaires Support Clinton: Well, they can afford it, and it's THEIR money ..
22 People Combined To Give $43 Million to Pro-Clinton Super PACs:
Oh.
That seems reasonable to me.
After all, it's not as if a small group of ordinary people haven't combined to spend their lunch money to support the candidate of their choice.
That would be .. just .. wrong!
(Maybe it's just me, but I'm pretty sure I blogged about a similar situation a few years about. Like .. Four years ago. And Eight years ago. Nahhhh ... that's just silly-talk!)
BY: Joe Schoffstall April 15, 2016 5:35 pm Hillary Clinton’s candidacy is receiving a major boost from a small group of deep-pocketed donors who have combined to give $43 million to super PACs supporting her nomination, an analysis of campaign finance filings by InsideGov shows. The three major super PACs backing Clinton– Correct the Record, American Bridge 21st Century, and Priorities USA Action– have collected nearly $70 million to date with the help of wealthy liberal donors cutting checks in the seven-figure range. Of the $70 million these groups have raised, 62 percent has come in the form of contributions totaling $1 million or more.
Oh.
That seems reasonable to me.
After all, it's not as if a small group of ordinary people haven't combined to spend their lunch money to support the candidate of their choice.
That would be .. just .. wrong!
(Maybe it's just me, but I'm pretty sure I blogged about a similar situation a few years about. Like .. Four years ago. And Eight years ago. Nahhhh ... that's just silly-talk!)
Thursday, March 17, 2016
You Can't Fix "Evil"
In our nation's misguided (read: failed) attempt to "Fix" the problem of Violence in America, our leadership has invariably resorted to the only measure available to them: they impose more and increasingly draconian "laws" which only affect honest, law-abiding gun owners.
Why?
Because it's cheaper than doing "The Hard Thing", which is to address the societal ills which lead to acts of violence by the most resource-poor citizens in the country.
People who take an "assault weapon" into a shopping mall with the intent to kill strangers are ... a phenomenon which can be predicted. And they are a problem.
But we have other problems which are more important, and more wide-reaching in terms of the effect they have on our country.
Why?
Because it's cheaper than doing "The Hard Thing", which is to address the societal ills which lead to acts of violence by the most resource-poor citizens in the country.
People who take an "assault weapon" into a shopping mall with the intent to kill strangers are ... a phenomenon which can be predicted. And they are a problem.
But we have other problems which are more important, and more wide-reaching in terms of the effect they have on our country.
Sunday, October 04, 2015
What are your guns worth, if the government declares all guns illegal and offers to buy them back?
So the Oregon shooter’s guns were legal. Now what? (October 03, 2015) Hot Air:
What's the value of your grandfather's Winchester lever action .30-30?
Your STI Open Pistol, that you payed $3500 for?
Your 1911 .45acp built in 1918?
No, there's no way that a Gun Buy Back Scheme is going to work in America.
Australia managed a gun buy-back scheme. It didn't satisfy a lot of people.
But THEY made it work, because ... essentially, a bunch of expatriate Brits.
You know ... "obey the law because it is the law" kind of people?
Subjects.
From the liberal, gun grabbing side of the discussion there is one remedy which would – eventually – cut down on mass shootings. It involves eliminating all of the guns on the planet. Owing to the fact that the majority of Americans still value gun rights and view private gun ownership as a positive force in protecting themselves from evil, Democrats are loathe to say the words out loud, but that doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t like to see it happen. Unfortunately, the gun genie is out of the bottleWhat a fascinating question? And nobody wants to touch this one!
What's the value of your grandfather's Winchester lever action .30-30?
Your STI Open Pistol, that you payed $3500 for?
Your 1911 .45acp built in 1918?
No, there's no way that a Gun Buy Back Scheme is going to work in America.
Australia managed a gun buy-back scheme. It didn't satisfy a lot of people.
But THEY made it work, because ... essentially, a bunch of expatriate Brits.
You know ... "obey the law because it is the law" kind of people?
Subjects.
Wednesday, September 16, 2015
"I AM THE BOSS!"
September 11, 2015
Navy Secretary Ray Mabus on Friday criticized a Marine Corps study that showed that female Marines in a mixed unit did not perform as well as men in several key areas.The
Performance of the female participants in these trials was not only below that of their male counterparts, but were sub-par over all.
The study showed that females in the unit were injured twice as often as men, were less accurate in shooting and were not as good at removing wounded troops off the battlefield.The Secretary of the Navy was disinclined to accept the conclusions from this test period.
(Navy Secretary Ray Mabus) argued that other studies, including one by the Center for Naval Analysis, say there are ways to mitigate gaps in performance "so you have the same combat effectiveness, the same lethality, which is crucial."
Mabus said some of the report's conclusions were based on generalizations and not the women's performance.
"Part of the study said women tend not to be able to carry as heavy a load for as long, but there were women who went through the study who could," he said.
"They started out with a fairly largely component of the men thinking this is not a good idea, and women will not be able to do this," [Mabus] said in n interview with NPR.
"When you start out with that mindset, you're almost presupposing the outcome," he said.
The thing about "tests" is, you don't start out with a pre-determined conclusion. You start out with a hypothesis, and the test results are intended to prove or disprove the hypothesis. It's a simple little thing called The Scientific Method.
The Secretary of the Navy, however, has it all back-assward. He started out with a "truth", and then directed his subordinates to validate .. not prove, but validate .. the truth which he had pre-ordained.
You know when your boss says PROVE THAT X =Y and your job depends on 'your performance', not on 'the truth'??? That's the way it works in the military. And even if it doesn't "work" .... well, if you have ever served in the military, you know,
But here, the truth was tested and rejected. By "The Boss". Only because he is "The Boss".
Doesn't speak well of the military, does it?
Doesn't say much for The Boss, either.
Tuesday, May 12, 2015
Appeasing the M16 Gods
Lee Williams: Down With Poly AK Mags! | WeaponsMan:
Oh, and the much-vaunted 30-round magazine? We never saw them, either. We were just happy to get the 20-round magazines; we knew THEY worked (as long as you didn't expect them to hold 20 rounds.)
I will also note that even after spending a year in training I never received complete training on care and maintenance of the M16 A1 or A2 in the field. We just did the best we could, which was not much since we were never issued cleaning materials.
(See the video here for information which we were never given.)
We also don’t think loading only 28 rounds buys you anything. The difference in pressure is nominal. This goes back at least as far as Vietnam and was a ritual practiced by troops (although, there it was putting 18 rounds in a 20-round magazine) who were neither trained on the rifle nor given a supply of replacement magazines. It was something they did to appease the M16 GodsIn response to this off-hand statement (in reference to an entirely different magazine-reliability issue), I note that in September, 1969, when I was assigned as a brand new Platoon Sgt (as an E6 Staff Sgt ... a full grade below TO&E standards), Infantry troops were carefully drilled in loading only 18 rounds in a replacement magazine, because a fully loaded (20 rounds) magazine was too difficult to quickly and reliably seat into the M16 A1 or A2 during a combat situation. It usually wouldn't seat without the soldier being distracted from the primary mission at hand ... not getting shot!
Oh, and the much-vaunted 30-round magazine? We never saw them, either. We were just happy to get the 20-round magazines; we knew THEY worked (as long as you didn't expect them to hold 20 rounds.)
I will also note that even after spending a year in training I never received complete training on care and maintenance of the M16 A1 or A2 in the field. We just did the best we could, which was not much since we were never issued cleaning materials.
(See the video here for information which we were never given.)
Sunday, April 12, 2015
.... The Worst Gun I Ever Bought? NOT!
10 Lessons I Learned From The Worst Gun I Ever Bought:
*(this is a quote from the cited article ... this is NOT my opinion!)*
(H/T: The Firearms Blog)
Ouch!
I guess that, in many ways, buying a new gun is something of a crap-shoot, but my one and only experience with a Kimber pistol might have been titled:
It was 1997, I had been shooting IPSC on and off for over a dozen years, and decided it was time I got rid of that sad Smith and Wesson 659 (decidedly not the best gun I ever bought) and got myself a REAL gun!
*(this is a quote from the cited article ... this is NOT my opinion!)*
The day I turned 21 was one of the most memorable days of my life. Not only for the legal drinks at the local Applebee’s, but for the hour-long trek to a not-so-local gun store to make the most exciting, and ultimately worst, purchase of my life—a Kimber Stainless Ultra Carry chambered in .40SW.
(H/T: The Firearms Blog)
Ouch!
I guess that, in many ways, buying a new gun is something of a crap-shoot, but my one and only experience with a Kimber pistol might have been titled:
"The Best Gun I Ever Bought".
Saturday, March 07, 2015
When Pigs Fly: An 850 Round Burst From An M60 - The Firearm Blog
It's late at night in the jungle.
A column of patriots walk single-file down a jungle trail toward a known enemy position; this is war.
Usually led by a traitor who is familiar with the local jungle pathways, the follow each branch of the trail toward their objective: a South Vietnamese position which guards a strategic permanent encampment.
Their mission: to destroy the military position, the Soldiers who occupy that position, and also the wives and children who live there with the husbands and fathers. All must die, to make the point that there is NO safe place in Viet Nam. There is no mercy; given the time, they will rape the women and slaughter the leaders of the South Vietnamese inhabitants, because Terror is their most influential weapon in this, their war on civilization.
Suddenly, there are a series of explosions .. claymore mines pour 700 rounds each of .32 caliber pellets at their cadre at the head of the line, killing the commander and the traitor who leads them as well as their most politically devote members.
And then comes the most fearsome treat: the Rat-a-tat-tat of the fearsome M60 machine gun which lays down a fearsome volume of fire which is so devestating, so profound, that there is no defense except to return a second or two of AK-47 return fire by the few survivors of the Point element .. followed by a complete route of the entire company.
For if you are not killed or mortally wounded by the initial directed-mine blast, you will surely scourged by the unfailing, if short-lived, machine gun burst. The worst of it is that the ambushers will then pick up their machine guns and walk them through the kill zone, slaughtering all that linger there .. and then they will follow you into the night, for they are the devil incarnate and they have Hell at their fingertips.
A column of patriots walk single-file down a jungle trail toward a known enemy position; this is war.
Usually led by a traitor who is familiar with the local jungle pathways, the follow each branch of the trail toward their objective: a South Vietnamese position which guards a strategic permanent encampment.
Their mission: to destroy the military position, the Soldiers who occupy that position, and also the wives and children who live there with the husbands and fathers. All must die, to make the point that there is NO safe place in Viet Nam. There is no mercy; given the time, they will rape the women and slaughter the leaders of the South Vietnamese inhabitants, because Terror is their most influential weapon in this, their war on civilization.
Suddenly, there are a series of explosions .. claymore mines pour 700 rounds each of .32 caliber pellets at their cadre at the head of the line, killing the commander and the traitor who leads them as well as their most politically devote members.
And then comes the most fearsome treat: the Rat-a-tat-tat of the fearsome M60 machine gun which lays down a fearsome volume of fire which is so devestating, so profound, that there is no defense except to return a second or two of AK-47 return fire by the few survivors of the Point element .. followed by a complete route of the entire company.
For if you are not killed or mortally wounded by the initial directed-mine blast, you will surely scourged by the unfailing, if short-lived, machine gun burst. The worst of it is that the ambushers will then pick up their machine guns and walk them through the kill zone, slaughtering all that linger there .. and then they will follow you into the night, for they are the devil incarnate and they have Hell at their fingertips.
Friday, May 30, 2014
Shooting Wire ... [blink] ... Just Another Pop-up Ad?
Shooting Wire:
(May 28, 2014)
Now I no longer bother to read all the details, and often don't even read the Feature at the end of the daily blog.
Frankly, I don't care which firearms-related company is looking for another marketing manager, or (later) who has been hired.
I'm rarely interested in the whiz-bang gizmos that shooting-related dot com is promoting.
The sorry fact is, the email-based website has degenerated from a source of useful (or merely interesting) information to a shill for their advertisers.
Don't get me wrong: I like it that they continue promoting Juniors and Ladies who have joined the 'shooting community". Even though I'm not always in the things that their FEATURES section has to say about ... oh, tactical issues, for example ... I understand that there are other readers who consider this a valuable asset. I GET that my narrow range of interest can't always be the sole content of a website which seeks to provide information to a much wider audience.
And yes, they do need to advertise; it costs them money to present this forum (although viewer participation is not their primary concern), and I don't begrudge them their efforts to expand their readership, and provide articles of interest to a wide range of readers.
I also recognize that by publishing articles about the tasking and hiring of personell, they are providing a valuable service to the folks in the Industry who are supporting the website.
It's just that ... I don't care. Most of it bores me. I still maintain my (FREE!) subscription, and will probably will continue for as long as it is available.
Every week, there is less 'interesting' content.
In a dead-tree gun magazine, there is enough variety that if I flip over a few pages, it doesn't take away from the general interest. My vague discontent is based on the fact that I find myself flipping over 90% of the content, and often I file the issues entirely unread.
This is not the sign of a contented readership.
I accept that your website gets a helluva lot more readership than my poor attempts at blogging. On the other hand, I'm not getting payed for the quality of my content. I have no advertisers, and I'm not a professional writer. So ... should my opinion count for anything?
Well, I am a subscriber. So far. You tell me whether my opinion matters.
Sorry, Shooting Wire; I admit to being fickle and bored.
Is that my problem?
And then, you go and post Feature articles like this. Okay, I'll be hanging around for a while yet.
(click here to subscribe to The Shooting Wire)
(May 28, 2014)
(MANSFIELD, TEXAS) - Firefield Quad Rails have been known not only for their incredible affordability and solid, sturdy construction, but also their matte black finish for a seamless, streamlined look. Shooters now have the ability to customize their AR-15 with two new colors available in the Firefield Quad Rail line: Dark Earth and Olive Drab. These military-inspired shades offer more than just customization; they are also a strong proponent of concealment. With either the Dark Earth or Olive Drab color, shooters can hone in on their targets with the confidence they'll remain hidden.Was it only a year or two back, when The Shooting Wire was a valuable reference for information of The Shooting Sports?
Now I no longer bother to read all the details, and often don't even read the Feature at the end of the daily blog.
Frankly, I don't care which firearms-related company is looking for another marketing manager, or (later) who has been hired.
I'm rarely interested in the whiz-bang gizmos that shooting-related dot com is promoting.
The sorry fact is, the email-based website has degenerated from a source of useful (or merely interesting) information to a shill for their advertisers.
Don't get me wrong: I like it that they continue promoting Juniors and Ladies who have joined the 'shooting community". Even though I'm not always in the things that their FEATURES section has to say about ... oh, tactical issues, for example ... I understand that there are other readers who consider this a valuable asset. I GET that my narrow range of interest can't always be the sole content of a website which seeks to provide information to a much wider audience.
And yes, they do need to advertise; it costs them money to present this forum (although viewer participation is not their primary concern), and I don't begrudge them their efforts to expand their readership, and provide articles of interest to a wide range of readers.
I also recognize that by publishing articles about the tasking and hiring of personell, they are providing a valuable service to the folks in the Industry who are supporting the website.
It's just that ... I don't care. Most of it bores me. I still maintain my (FREE!) subscription, and will probably will continue for as long as it is available.
Every week, there is less 'interesting' content.
In a dead-tree gun magazine, there is enough variety that if I flip over a few pages, it doesn't take away from the general interest. My vague discontent is based on the fact that I find myself flipping over 90% of the content, and often I file the issues entirely unread.
This is not the sign of a contented readership.
I accept that your website gets a helluva lot more readership than my poor attempts at blogging. On the other hand, I'm not getting payed for the quality of my content. I have no advertisers, and I'm not a professional writer. So ... should my opinion count for anything?
Well, I am a subscriber. So far. You tell me whether my opinion matters.
Sorry, Shooting Wire; I admit to being fickle and bored.
Is that my problem?
And then, you go and post Feature articles like this. Okay, I'll be hanging around for a while yet.
(click here to subscribe to The Shooting Wire)
Friday, March 14, 2014
Finger THIS!
Ohio Fifth Grader Suspended For Pointing Finger Like a Gun - TIME:
(March 04, 2014)
Back around 2000 years ago (blogger years are greater than dog years) .. in 2006, to be exact, there was a prolific blogger named Kim de Tuit (he of South African descent) who wrote a very popular article titled "The Pussification of the American Male". (Which has since become an increasingly popular topic on the internet, commented on by a surprising melange of professional pundits who know far too much about the value of the aggressive nature of human males.)
I followed him religiously, especially in his series about ZERO TOLERANCE policies in schools. I agreed with him then, I agree with him now. I regretted the day he discontinued his blog. But I digress.
I would like to make the point here, before we go any farther, that I not only abhor the tendency of "Zero Tolerance" in American Schools in regards to firearms .. but I firmly believe that this is a deliberate policy of the "education establishment" (PTTTTAAAAAAHHHHH .. may their crotches be infested with the fleas of a thousand camels .. I would say "testicles" rather than "crotches", but they have none) whose not-so-carefully hidden goal is to diminish the boundaries between male aggressive tendencies, and female passivity.
Note: I use these two terms advisedly. In the 21st Century there is no reason why males cannot be passive, or females aggressive. We are no longer living in caves, and the advances in technology (read: ANYONE CAN PROTECT THEMSELVES WITH A GUN!) virtually eliminate the ability to defend one's home and hearth and family based on gender.
Unfortunately the American Educational System has, in recent decades, been making a concerted effort to ... not encourage women to be MORE aggressive, but to make men more passive! Whose tool is the NEA? We are not rearing a nation in which all citizens are prepared and equiped to defend our way of life. Rather, we are breeding and rearing a nation of citizens who have been brainwashed to believe and accept that any use of a weapon is anathema.
Even an imaginary weapon.
We are brainwashing our children against developing the mental and moral vigor which has protected our nation for over 200 years.
(March 04, 2014)
An Ohio principal suspended a fifth-grader for three days last week after he pointed his finger like a gun and pretended to shoot one of his classmates in the head.
The Columbus 10-year old’s pointed finger was called a “level 2 lookalike firearm” in his suspension letter, the Columbus Dispatch reports. Devonshire Alternative Elementary principal Patricia Price has issued numerous warnings about the school’s zero-tolerance policy when it comes to gun play, and sent three (sic) home three newsletters reminding parents that any kind of gun play was forbidden at school. “The kids were told, ‘If you don’t stop doing this type of stuff, there would be consequences,’” district spokesman Jeff Warner told the Dispatch. “It’s just been escalating.”
“I was just playing around,” said suspended fifth-grader Nathan Entingh. “People play around like this a lot at my school.”
Back around 2000 years ago (blogger years are greater than dog years) .. in 2006, to be exact, there was a prolific blogger named Kim de Tuit (he of South African descent) who wrote a very popular article titled "The Pussification of the American Male". (Which has since become an increasingly popular topic on the internet, commented on by a surprising melange of professional pundits who know far too much about the value of the aggressive nature of human males.)
I followed him religiously, especially in his series about ZERO TOLERANCE policies in schools. I agreed with him then, I agree with him now. I regretted the day he discontinued his blog. But I digress.
I would like to make the point here, before we go any farther, that I not only abhor the tendency of "Zero Tolerance" in American Schools in regards to firearms .. but I firmly believe that this is a deliberate policy of the "education establishment" (PTTTTAAAAAAHHHHH .. may their crotches be infested with the fleas of a thousand camels .. I would say "testicles" rather than "crotches", but they have none) whose not-so-carefully hidden goal is to diminish the boundaries between male aggressive tendencies, and female passivity.
Note: I use these two terms advisedly. In the 21st Century there is no reason why males cannot be passive, or females aggressive. We are no longer living in caves, and the advances in technology (read: ANYONE CAN PROTECT THEMSELVES WITH A GUN!) virtually eliminate the ability to defend one's home and hearth and family based on gender.
Unfortunately the American Educational System has, in recent decades, been making a concerted effort to ... not encourage women to be MORE aggressive, but to make men more passive! Whose tool is the NEA? We are not rearing a nation in which all citizens are prepared and equiped to defend our way of life. Rather, we are breeding and rearing a nation of citizens who have been brainwashed to believe and accept that any use of a weapon is anathema.
Even an imaginary weapon.
We are brainwashing our children against developing the mental and moral vigor which has protected our nation for over 200 years.
Saturday, February 08, 2014
Ala + CHL + IRL = DRT
Breaking News: Dallas County Man Killed after Store Shooting in Orrville | CBS 8 News | Top Stories: By Alabama News Network Story Created: Jan 16, 2014 at 3:58 PM CST Story Updated: Jan 16, 2014 at 3:59 PM CST
If ALA = Alabama,
and CHL - Concealed Handgun License,
and IRL = In Real Life,
then DRT = Dead Right There
In a 'normal world', this announcement would either be (ho hum, dog bites man) a normal news article which was covered widely but without much fanfare.
In an 'imperfect world', it would be covered by major news agencies through-out the land. Kudos to the hero, and the governor goes on nationwide television to express the thanks of a grateful state for the daring and courage of this man who put his life at risk for the benefit of his fellow citizens.
In this flawed world, the Media don't want to hear happy endings wherein the good guys take on the bad guys and win .. it's hardly reported at all. And almost ALL of that reportage is by bloggers on the internet. You can't blame the media; they would rather that nobody but the bad guys have guns. That way, it's easier to tell the bad guys from the good guys; the bad guys are the ones with the guns. That IS their mantra, and they are firm believers in the idea that most folks can't tell the players apart when things get complicated.
Unfortunately, it's a complicated world. Sometimes (but not as often as should be) the Good Guys have guns; that's why all those people in the Alabama Dollar General Store are still alive.
Well, except for the Bad Guy, of course. Which is how it should be.
Bearing Arms dot com has more thorough coverage. According to that source, the villain was one Kevin McLaughlin and the hero was Orrville resident Marlo Ellis.
Ellis was a customer in the store, and while McLaughlin was in the process of herding customers and employees into a store room (with the apparent intent to find "people to shoot"), Ellis pulled out his own (concealed) handgun and shot him dead, Dead, DEAD.
Sheeple are herd critters; heroes shoot the bad guys, and then finish their shopping.
NUANCE:
Sooner or later, some liberal dolt will ask: "Why didn't he just shoot him in the shoulder?"
We direct their attention to the 1968 movie FIRECREEK, where the bad guy (Henry Fonda) says of the good guy (Jimmy Steward), whom Fonda's character had 'only' shot in the leg:
Today's version: the paperwork is about the same, only you only have to live through the experience to fill out the paperwork.
PS: the store had a sign up which prohibited the open carry of firearms. There were no restrictions on concealed carry. That may be something to think about, America. Best guess is that the man who put up the sign thought it through before he posted it.
A Dallas County man is killed after a shooting at a Dollar General store in Orrville. Investigators say the man entered the store with a gun and began waving it around as he walked around the store. They say the man pointed the gun at a customer and forced him to the back of the store. They say the customer then pulled out a gun of his own and shot the man. No arrest has been made and the incident remains under investigation by the Dallas County Sheriff's Office.
If ALA = Alabama,
and CHL - Concealed Handgun License,
and IRL = In Real Life,
then DRT = Dead Right There
In a 'normal world', this announcement would either be (ho hum, dog bites man) a normal news article which was covered widely but without much fanfare.
In an 'imperfect world', it would be covered by major news agencies through-out the land. Kudos to the hero, and the governor goes on nationwide television to express the thanks of a grateful state for the daring and courage of this man who put his life at risk for the benefit of his fellow citizens.
In this flawed world, the Media don't want to hear happy endings wherein the good guys take on the bad guys and win .. it's hardly reported at all. And almost ALL of that reportage is by bloggers on the internet. You can't blame the media; they would rather that nobody but the bad guys have guns. That way, it's easier to tell the bad guys from the good guys; the bad guys are the ones with the guns. That IS their mantra, and they are firm believers in the idea that most folks can't tell the players apart when things get complicated.
Unfortunately, it's a complicated world. Sometimes (but not as often as should be) the Good Guys have guns; that's why all those people in the Alabama Dollar General Store are still alive.
Well, except for the Bad Guy, of course. Which is how it should be.
Bearing Arms dot com has more thorough coverage. According to that source, the villain was one Kevin McLaughlin and the hero was Orrville resident Marlo Ellis.
Ellis was a customer in the store, and while McLaughlin was in the process of herding customers and employees into a store room (with the apparent intent to find "people to shoot"), Ellis pulled out his own (concealed) handgun and shot him dead, Dead, DEAD.
Sheeple are herd critters; heroes shoot the bad guys, and then finish their shopping.
NUANCE:
Sooner or later, some liberal dolt will ask: "Why didn't he just shoot him in the shoulder?"
We direct their attention to the 1968 movie FIRECREEK, where the bad guy (Henry Fonda) says of the good guy (Jimmy Steward), whom Fonda's character had 'only' shot in the leg:
"I knew better. Any man worth shootin', is worth killin'"
Today's version: the paperwork is about the same, only you only have to live through the experience to fill out the paperwork.
PS: the store had a sign up which prohibited the open carry of firearms. There were no restrictions on concealed carry. That may be something to think about, America. Best guess is that the man who put up the sign thought it through before he posted it.
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
RVN: Sergeant of The Guard
During my Vietnam tour I spent the majority of time in the First Infantry division. We were 'in the field' all the time, and during the short periods between actual patrols, we rested in Night Defensive Positions (NDP). Most of the time, we were 'assigned' to NDP November 2.
Now, this was a more complex facility (although 'temporary') than it might sound. These were outside of 'secure areas' (read: Saigon) but they were actually large bases. NDP November 2 might actually be considered a FSB (Fire Support Base) because they had a battery 155mm Self-Propelled Guns. These were 6" cannons, mounted on tracks, and they looked like tanks except that they had BIG guns and they could elevate the barrels to engage area targets several miles away from the NDP.
The difference between a NDP and a FSB is that the NDP was actually constructed to serve as a field base for Infantry troops. (We also had elements of the Third of the Fourth Calvery/Tanks working out of the same base.)
"NDP suggests the same kind of situation which was my typical operation; we would go walk through the jungle and every night we would circle wagons and hope nobody found us in the clutter. The actual term for this small-unit Infantry technique is "Night Ambush". Also ... "Hold Your Ass 'Til Daylight". That was the status of our night-time activities, 8 days out of every ten. We would get an occasional night in an NDP, to rest and clean weapons and re-equip and resupply. Once a month we would get a night in the Division Base Camp (at Dian), where we had Filipino Dance Bands to entertain us in the NCO club where beer was ten cents a glass and drinks were a quarter .. but that's another story.
Our infantry (1/16th) battalion would be based from this NDP location. Here we could get hot meals, resupply, clean weapons, and sleep in relatively security. The base was surrounded by large bunkers, and an entire squad would be assigned to each bunker for security .. although actually it was just a place for grunts to get out of the rain and sleep without having to maintain a guard.
Because we also supplied guard for the entire camp.
One night I was designated as Sergeant of the Guard for the entire base. This my first and only experience at this task during my entire period of servitude, and I was a little apprehensive about it.
I knew the drill, because I had been trained in Non-Commissioned Officer Candidate school at Fort Benning in the early months of that same year, 1969.
We knew that the guys manning the bunkers were probably pretty high on Jungle Juice and Juju Sticks by dusk, so we had a special detail of 'volunteers' to mount a formal guard. While the guys were partying and passing out in the bunkers, this guard detail remained alert and sober, usually sitting near or on top of those same bunkers.
My job was to make the rounds and make sure that the guards were doing their job. And to rotate the watch twice a night. We would make a sort of parade of the 'ready' guard, march around the inner perimeter, and relieve each guard. One of the 'ready' guard would replace each guard; the relieved guards joined the parade and when all guards had been relieved they would be taken back to the guard shack and given a 'hot cot' to sleep. The 'resting guard', who had been sleeping in those cots, would be wakened and put in the 'ready guard' ... awake, and alert, but not actually on a guard post.
That way, everybody got a few hours of sleep and everybody served a post. When they weren't sleeping or actually guarding, they were armed and geared up, prepared to serve as a 'ready reaction force'.
My job as supervisor was to insure that the on-duty guards were very alert, and the ready guards were also kept awake and aware of what was happening.
Consequently, when I wasn't changing the guards or making my rounds, I would sit and talk with the ready guards.
No Sleep for Sgt. Geek; but I did get the next day 'excused duty', as did all the guard detail.
While I wasn't checking the line, I was talking with the ready guards. And that was the most illuminating part of the whole exercise; both for me, and apparently for the privates and specialists who made up the guard.
You know how it is when guys get talking in the dark of night. It's even more intense than the late-night bull-sessions I enjoyed in college. But at the same time, different.
I had very much the same conversations on each shift. The guys talked among themselves, but all of them wanted to talk to someone who had a different point of view from theirs.
They asked me questions about army life, army structure, army chain of command. The one point which ALWAYS came up was:
"Hey, Sarge .. you seem okay. So, why are the other sergeants so mean to us?"
I guess it's a product of our society, but American youths even way back then were unaccustomed to being given orders and being expected to carry those orders out promptly, without question, no matter what.
Mostly, we talked about "Discipline".
Discipline is generally and unofficially defined by The Drill Sergeant's Creed: "You do what I say you do!" These guys in the Smokey The Bear Hats that we all met in Basic and Advanced Infantry Training made that their mantra. Trainees (and soldiers) don't get much opportunity to ask WHY they have to do .. whatever they're told to do. They resent it. They didn't grow up that way.
(But of course, many of them did; their mamas replied to "Why?" with "Because I told you to, that's why!" The thing is, these soldiers considered themselves no longer children .. they were all over 18 years old, and thought they should have some say in how they lived their day to day lives.)
So, we talked a LOT about why Sergeants made their life miserable by insisting to immediate, unquestioning obedience to orders.
Note that none of the troops in the night-guard were in my platoon. They were semi-regular posted to the NDP, and they had all pulled guard duty before. I didn't know their names, they forgot mine immediately after I introduced myself to them at the beginning of the night, and they seemed emboldened by their relative anonymity.
Most of them were not attached to units which regularly patrolled the country; they were stuck in limbo. They pulled guard duty night after night, with no explanation 'why' and no understanding of the importance of their mission. Every night, they under the command of a different NCO, and all they knew is that they never got a good night's sleep. So, their 'ready condition' phase turned into their own private bull session.
I was as bored as they were. And almost as confused. But I did have the luxury, if you could call it that, of having spent just barely enough time in the field, and in a command position, that I knew why I had to rely on my men. And I was still enough of a civilian that I understood their confusion.
We talked about what would happen if the base camp got hit by a VC or NVA assault .. surely of larger than company size, probably battalion-sized assault force, at least. It was a big camp. IT had big problems.
I described the scenario:
All of our first-level defenses, barbed wire and sensors and external patrols and sentries and bunkers, would probably already have been neutralized by sappers before we learned we were under attack. That means, all of their friends were dead, all of their support people were dead, and we were under fire from mortars. Things were exploding all over.
Vietnamese allies had been infiltrated by NVE and VC sympathizers, so they knew every inch of the grounds. The Tactical Operations Command (TOC) bunker had been taken out first. There was no command structure beyond the man standing next to you. There was no first, second, or third Line of Defense standing. The VC were inside the wire. They were attacking the bunkers from the back door. They were running freely through the base, trying to reach every level of command and definitely targeting The Guns. And any man standing was a target.
The Ready Reaction Force was the only armed, awake, alert reliable forces available to beat back the attackers. They were confused, in shock, and slow to react. They were not accustomed to combat, and they needed Leadership to coordinate the effort which would, hopefully, beat back the assault.
Push had come to Shove, and they were the only people who were immediately prepared to SHOVE back the infiltrators.
The officers were murdered in their cots. The only command they had was Sergeant, this stranger that they had known for no more than a few hours. Unless they were prepared .. they had the Discipline ... to react immediately and effectively to his commands, they would never see another dawn.
That is why Sergeants were so mean to them. They had gone through both Basic and Advanced Infantry training specifically to learn to obey orders without question. They didn't have enough information individually to react appropriately and effectively. They had the training, they had the courage, but without Leadership they were unable to coordinate their actions to meet the most dangerous threats first.
Yes, I would direct them to protect the officers, even though their buddies in the bunkers were being slaughtered. Their friends couldn't call for outside support; they didn't know how to call in artillery, or an air strike, or call for a Ready Reaction Force from outside the NDP.
Their job was to hold the line until relieved; without the communications provided by their officers, they could not hope to defend the position against overwhelming odds.
I asked them: Do you know where the radios are? Do you know what the call signs are? Do you know how to coordinate relief efforts from Army, Navy and Air Force?
They didn't, of course. I admitted, I didn't know that either. I didn't live there, I was just a guy who was stuck on guard duty, just like they were.
The difference was that I knew what I didn't know.
The difference was that I knew how to do MY job .. which was to hold off the enemy and give Our Side time to mount resistance to an assault.
It was a lot more complicated than that, of course. We spend hours talking about what we should be doing if an attempt was made to over-run the base. We discussed what we would do, individually and as a group, in the (unlikely) even of an attack.
Some of the men had some good ideas. They were unworkable, sometimes, but they began thinking for themselves. By the end of the shift (all three shifts) they had a general idea about the tasks that needed to be done to react to an assault.
And so did I; I admit, I never told them that I hadn't thought through the problem very well. As usual, I learned as much from them as they ever learned from me.
It was strange, that all three shifts on guard duty had much the same questions, much the same responses. Combat is pretty much intuitive, given a standard problem there are standard reactions. And all the men grasped the problem quickly, after the questions had been defined. Who goes where, when and why. What are the priorities? (Alert the base, protect the leadership, resist infiltration, roaming guards through the interior, quick reaction to nodes of infiltration .. etc.)
These men were not stupid; they were just uninformed.
They viewed their duty as a personal inconvenience. They didn't see it as an End Of The World exercise. They didn't know that their personal survival, and the survival of everyone they knew within a few hundred yards radius, depended on them.
The last question came up on every shift:
"Why didn't anyone ever tell us this shit?"
I didn't have an answer to this question.
Well, I did. It had never occurred to me that these men .. privates, PFC's, Specialists, Expendables ... had never been informed of the importance of their duties.
I had been "in-country" for months, working with men who were in the bush every day for weeks at a time. I thought that every infantryman understood the principles of Duty, Honor, Courage, and fighting for their brothers.
=============
Some months after .. I had been transferred to the 25th Infantry Division ("Tropical Lightening", rather than "The Big Red One") and I was stationed "Back in the Rear with the Gear". My company "Re-Up NCO" had the obligatory chat with me in the mess hall. He offered me an immediate promotion to E-7 (Sergeant First Class) if I would only re-enlist for another four year tour.
I performed the obligatory function: I laughed in his face. There was no way I was going to serve in this army for another four years, with no hope of a promotion for the next decade. I would have already had four 'advanced promotions'; from Private First Class to Corporal to go to Non-Commissioned Officer School, then awarded Staff Sergeant rank (E-6) skipping Sergeant (E-5) as an Honor Graduate. Then I would have been jumped to SFC (E-7) by merely re-enlisting for another four years?
And I had only been in the Army for less than two years? I didn't know squat, but they were willing to make me a Senior NCO?
As Groucho Marx once famously said: "I would never join a club which would have me as a member".
Still, even while I was refusing what I considered to be a somewhat dubious honor, I was thinking back:
"Why didn't anyone ever tell us this shit?"
How the Elephant every got into my pajamas, I never knew.
Now, this was a more complex facility (although 'temporary') than it might sound. These were outside of 'secure areas' (read: Saigon) but they were actually large bases. NDP November 2 might actually be considered a FSB (Fire Support Base) because they had a battery 155mm Self-Propelled Guns. These were 6" cannons, mounted on tracks, and they looked like tanks except that they had BIG guns and they could elevate the barrels to engage area targets several miles away from the NDP.
The difference between a NDP and a FSB is that the NDP was actually constructed to serve as a field base for Infantry troops. (We also had elements of the Third of the Fourth Calvery/Tanks working out of the same base.)
"NDP suggests the same kind of situation which was my typical operation; we would go walk through the jungle and every night we would circle wagons and hope nobody found us in the clutter. The actual term for this small-unit Infantry technique is "Night Ambush". Also ... "Hold Your Ass 'Til Daylight". That was the status of our night-time activities, 8 days out of every ten. We would get an occasional night in an NDP, to rest and clean weapons and re-equip and resupply. Once a month we would get a night in the Division Base Camp (at Dian), where we had Filipino Dance Bands to entertain us in the NCO club where beer was ten cents a glass and drinks were a quarter .. but that's another story.
Our infantry (1/16th) battalion would be based from this NDP location. Here we could get hot meals, resupply, clean weapons, and sleep in relatively security. The base was surrounded by large bunkers, and an entire squad would be assigned to each bunker for security .. although actually it was just a place for grunts to get out of the rain and sleep without having to maintain a guard.
Because we also supplied guard for the entire camp.
One night I was designated as Sergeant of the Guard for the entire base. This my first and only experience at this task during my entire period of servitude, and I was a little apprehensive about it.
I knew the drill, because I had been trained in Non-Commissioned Officer Candidate school at Fort Benning in the early months of that same year, 1969.
We knew that the guys manning the bunkers were probably pretty high on Jungle Juice and Juju Sticks by dusk, so we had a special detail of 'volunteers' to mount a formal guard. While the guys were partying and passing out in the bunkers, this guard detail remained alert and sober, usually sitting near or on top of those same bunkers.
My job was to make the rounds and make sure that the guards were doing their job. And to rotate the watch twice a night. We would make a sort of parade of the 'ready' guard, march around the inner perimeter, and relieve each guard. One of the 'ready' guard would replace each guard; the relieved guards joined the parade and when all guards had been relieved they would be taken back to the guard shack and given a 'hot cot' to sleep. The 'resting guard', who had been sleeping in those cots, would be wakened and put in the 'ready guard' ... awake, and alert, but not actually on a guard post.
That way, everybody got a few hours of sleep and everybody served a post. When they weren't sleeping or actually guarding, they were armed and geared up, prepared to serve as a 'ready reaction force'.
My job as supervisor was to insure that the on-duty guards were very alert, and the ready guards were also kept awake and aware of what was happening.
Consequently, when I wasn't changing the guards or making my rounds, I would sit and talk with the ready guards.
No Sleep for Sgt. Geek; but I did get the next day 'excused duty', as did all the guard detail.
While I wasn't checking the line, I was talking with the ready guards. And that was the most illuminating part of the whole exercise; both for me, and apparently for the privates and specialists who made up the guard.
You know how it is when guys get talking in the dark of night. It's even more intense than the late-night bull-sessions I enjoyed in college. But at the same time, different.
I had very much the same conversations on each shift. The guys talked among themselves, but all of them wanted to talk to someone who had a different point of view from theirs.
They asked me questions about army life, army structure, army chain of command. The one point which ALWAYS came up was:
"Hey, Sarge .. you seem okay. So, why are the other sergeants so mean to us?"
I guess it's a product of our society, but American youths even way back then were unaccustomed to being given orders and being expected to carry those orders out promptly, without question, no matter what.
Mostly, we talked about "Discipline".
Discipline is generally and unofficially defined by The Drill Sergeant's Creed: "You do what I say you do!" These guys in the Smokey The Bear Hats that we all met in Basic and Advanced Infantry Training made that their mantra. Trainees (and soldiers) don't get much opportunity to ask WHY they have to do .. whatever they're told to do. They resent it. They didn't grow up that way.
(But of course, many of them did; their mamas replied to "Why?" with "Because I told you to, that's why!" The thing is, these soldiers considered themselves no longer children .. they were all over 18 years old, and thought they should have some say in how they lived their day to day lives.)
So, we talked a LOT about why Sergeants made their life miserable by insisting to immediate, unquestioning obedience to orders.
Note that none of the troops in the night-guard were in my platoon. They were semi-regular posted to the NDP, and they had all pulled guard duty before. I didn't know their names, they forgot mine immediately after I introduced myself to them at the beginning of the night, and they seemed emboldened by their relative anonymity.
Most of them were not attached to units which regularly patrolled the country; they were stuck in limbo. They pulled guard duty night after night, with no explanation 'why' and no understanding of the importance of their mission. Every night, they under the command of a different NCO, and all they knew is that they never got a good night's sleep. So, their 'ready condition' phase turned into their own private bull session.
I was as bored as they were. And almost as confused. But I did have the luxury, if you could call it that, of having spent just barely enough time in the field, and in a command position, that I knew why I had to rely on my men. And I was still enough of a civilian that I understood their confusion.
We talked about what would happen if the base camp got hit by a VC or NVA assault .. surely of larger than company size, probably battalion-sized assault force, at least. It was a big camp. IT had big problems.
I described the scenario:
All of our first-level defenses, barbed wire and sensors and external patrols and sentries and bunkers, would probably already have been neutralized by sappers before we learned we were under attack. That means, all of their friends were dead, all of their support people were dead, and we were under fire from mortars. Things were exploding all over.
Vietnamese allies had been infiltrated by NVE and VC sympathizers, so they knew every inch of the grounds. The Tactical Operations Command (TOC) bunker had been taken out first. There was no command structure beyond the man standing next to you. There was no first, second, or third Line of Defense standing. The VC were inside the wire. They were attacking the bunkers from the back door. They were running freely through the base, trying to reach every level of command and definitely targeting The Guns. And any man standing was a target.
The Ready Reaction Force was the only armed, awake, alert reliable forces available to beat back the attackers. They were confused, in shock, and slow to react. They were not accustomed to combat, and they needed Leadership to coordinate the effort which would, hopefully, beat back the assault.
Push had come to Shove, and they were the only people who were immediately prepared to SHOVE back the infiltrators.
The officers were murdered in their cots. The only command they had was Sergeant, this stranger that they had known for no more than a few hours. Unless they were prepared .. they had the Discipline ... to react immediately and effectively to his commands, they would never see another dawn.
That is why Sergeants were so mean to them. They had gone through both Basic and Advanced Infantry training specifically to learn to obey orders without question. They didn't have enough information individually to react appropriately and effectively. They had the training, they had the courage, but without Leadership they were unable to coordinate their actions to meet the most dangerous threats first.
Yes, I would direct them to protect the officers, even though their buddies in the bunkers were being slaughtered. Their friends couldn't call for outside support; they didn't know how to call in artillery, or an air strike, or call for a Ready Reaction Force from outside the NDP.
Their job was to hold the line until relieved; without the communications provided by their officers, they could not hope to defend the position against overwhelming odds.
I asked them: Do you know where the radios are? Do you know what the call signs are? Do you know how to coordinate relief efforts from Army, Navy and Air Force?
They didn't, of course. I admitted, I didn't know that either. I didn't live there, I was just a guy who was stuck on guard duty, just like they were.
The difference was that I knew what I didn't know.
The difference was that I knew how to do MY job .. which was to hold off the enemy and give Our Side time to mount resistance to an assault.
It was a lot more complicated than that, of course. We spend hours talking about what we should be doing if an attempt was made to over-run the base. We discussed what we would do, individually and as a group, in the (unlikely) even of an attack.
Some of the men had some good ideas. They were unworkable, sometimes, but they began thinking for themselves. By the end of the shift (all three shifts) they had a general idea about the tasks that needed to be done to react to an assault.
And so did I; I admit, I never told them that I hadn't thought through the problem very well. As usual, I learned as much from them as they ever learned from me.
It was strange, that all three shifts on guard duty had much the same questions, much the same responses. Combat is pretty much intuitive, given a standard problem there are standard reactions. And all the men grasped the problem quickly, after the questions had been defined. Who goes where, when and why. What are the priorities? (Alert the base, protect the leadership, resist infiltration, roaming guards through the interior, quick reaction to nodes of infiltration .. etc.)
These men were not stupid; they were just uninformed.
They viewed their duty as a personal inconvenience. They didn't see it as an End Of The World exercise. They didn't know that their personal survival, and the survival of everyone they knew within a few hundred yards radius, depended on them.
The last question came up on every shift:
"Why didn't anyone ever tell us this shit?"
I didn't have an answer to this question.
Well, I did. It had never occurred to me that these men .. privates, PFC's, Specialists, Expendables ... had never been informed of the importance of their duties.
I had been "in-country" for months, working with men who were in the bush every day for weeks at a time. I thought that every infantryman understood the principles of Duty, Honor, Courage, and fighting for their brothers.
=============
Some months after .. I had been transferred to the 25th Infantry Division ("Tropical Lightening", rather than "The Big Red One") and I was stationed "Back in the Rear with the Gear". My company "Re-Up NCO" had the obligatory chat with me in the mess hall. He offered me an immediate promotion to E-7 (Sergeant First Class) if I would only re-enlist for another four year tour.
I performed the obligatory function: I laughed in his face. There was no way I was going to serve in this army for another four years, with no hope of a promotion for the next decade. I would have already had four 'advanced promotions'; from Private First Class to Corporal to go to Non-Commissioned Officer School, then awarded Staff Sergeant rank (E-6) skipping Sergeant (E-5) as an Honor Graduate. Then I would have been jumped to SFC (E-7) by merely re-enlisting for another four years?
And I had only been in the Army for less than two years? I didn't know squat, but they were willing to make me a Senior NCO?
As Groucho Marx once famously said: "I would never join a club which would have me as a member".
Still, even while I was refusing what I considered to be a somewhat dubious honor, I was thinking back:
"Why didn't anyone ever tell us this shit?"
How the Elephant every got into my pajamas, I never knew.
Saturday, June 15, 2013
Cleveland police 137 rounds COF score: "2 mikes, 2 mikes ..."
Cleveland police punish 12 officers in deadly chase that ended in 137 rounds of gunfire | Fox News:
Cleveland police fired a sergeant and meted out demotions and suspensions Tuesday for a car chase last year that involved five dozen cruisers, 137 rounds of ammunition fired by 13 officers, and the death of two people who, it turned out, were probably unarmed.Wow! That sounds .... well, actually it sounds terribly familiar.
A captain and lieutenant were demoted, and nine sergeants got suspensions ranging from one day to 30 days. They and the fired sergeant will appeal their punishment, according to Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 8, which represents police supervisors.
Dozens of cruisers became involved in the chase without permission from superiors and with little direction, according to a state report released earlier in the year. The episode damaged the department's relationship with residents and must be repaired, Chief Michael McGrath said at a news conference Tuesday.
But first, more info on THIS story:
... 13 officers who fired their weapons as the chase ended in a blocked-off school parking lot in East Cleveland face a county grand jury investigating possible criminal wrongdoing.
The chase began around 10:30 p.m. when an officer thought he heard a gunshot from a car speeding by the police and courts complex in downtown Cleveland. A parking lot attendant thought it might have been a car backfire, a theory endorsed by the driver's family.
The officer jumped into his patrol car, made a U-turn and radioed for help.
The chase went through crowded residential neighborhoods, then reversed course, headed east onto busy Interstate 90 and through parts of Cleveland, and eventually into East Cleveland.
Then the gunfire erupted, 137 rounds. Driver Timothy Russell, 43, was shot 23 times and passenger Malissa Williams, 30, was shot 24 times.
The union has said the shootings were justified because the driver tried to ram an officer. No weapon or shell casings were found in the fleeing car.
Of the 276 officers on duty that evening, 104 were involved in some way in the chase. Sixty police cars were involved.
Saturday, May 25, 2013
'Will you apologize to Muslims you've killed?': Obama's speech heckled - YouTube
'Will you apologize to Muslims you've killed?': Obama's speech heckled - YouTube:
I do have a couple of things to say about this.
(1) "... Obama's ironclad way of battling terrorists ..." ? Really? This is a Russian describing Obama's method of dealing with anything other than his own Obama-socialist programs as "Ironclad"? One wonders what he thought of Margaret Thatcher, or Ronald Reagan.
(2) The woman (audience member protester/heckler) asks if Obama is going to apologize for the Muslims he has killed. Consider the worldwide distribution of videos of Muslims dancing in the streets in hysteric joy on 9/11 ... when Muslims killed thousands of Americans. If this is what they consider an "apology", I for one am certainly willing to do the Wooley-Bully in the main street of my small town to show my own contrition.
(Not to say that there weren't sufficient American "Useful Idiots" fully willing to support that point of view)
Oh, and as for the question of "compensation"? I'm amazed that Obama didn't offer "Forty Acres And A Mule". This is one of those occasions when supreme irony would have been supremely satisfying.
PS: it's not as if we're without emotion on this issue:
.... lest we forget ...
Published on May 24, 2013 Obama's ironclad way of battling terrorists sparked heated debate during his speech in Washington. At one point the president was stopped in his tracks by an angry audience member. RT's Ivor Crotty outlined what made the woman break Obama's script.
I do have a couple of things to say about this.
(1) "... Obama's ironclad way of battling terrorists ..." ? Really? This is a Russian describing Obama's method of dealing with anything other than his own Obama-socialist programs as "Ironclad"? One wonders what he thought of Margaret Thatcher, or Ronald Reagan.
(2) The woman (audience member protester/heckler) asks if Obama is going to apologize for the Muslims he has killed. Consider the worldwide distribution of videos of Muslims dancing in the streets in hysteric joy on 9/11 ... when Muslims killed thousands of Americans. If this is what they consider an "apology", I for one am certainly willing to do the Wooley-Bully in the main street of my small town to show my own contrition.
(Not to say that there weren't sufficient American "Useful Idiots" fully willing to support that point of view)
Oh, and as for the question of "compensation"? I'm amazed that Obama didn't offer "Forty Acres And A Mule". This is one of those occasions when supreme irony would have been supremely satisfying.
PS: it's not as if we're without emotion on this issue:
.... lest we forget ...
Monday, March 04, 2013
The Gear You Need to Gut a Deer | Field & Stream
The Gear You Need to Gut a Deer | Field & Stream:
Sorry. They actually had me thinking, for the first few sentences of this article, that they knew what they were thinking of. (Especially in that this was gear which they planned to carry while hunting).
Sorry .. it just gets worse.
What you need (as commenters emphatically "suggested") is A Sharp Knife.
Everything else is gravy --- and excess weight.
Point About The Knife:
I have noticed that people like those bowie knives, with the sharp points. Not good for gutting, and sure not good for skinning in the field! If you're going to skin in the field (highly recommended if you can do it .. it helps cool the meat down QUICKLY), then you want a skinning knife, which is defined as a knife which isn't going to dig into the meat while you're trying to slit the skin at the breastbone.
A drop-point knife is best ... preferably small, light, short and very sharp on the edge! This is a drop-point knife: more handle than blade (and those of you who insist on correct knife-culture nomenclature ... STFU; I know what I'm talking about and I know the right words like 'hilt' and stuff, but I don't care.) The long handle (See above) gives you control and leverage, and the point prevents anything other than a smooth cut when you're skinning, while the sharp edge on good steel provides a consistent, reliable and straight cut.
One of the things the F&S stream article suggests is "... a hatchet, if you want to open the pelvis". I'm actually inclined to bring a hatchet with me while I'm hunting. Yes, a split pelvis makes it easier to eviscerate the body cavity, but it also makes it easier to remove the antlers from the skull, and then chop the cervical vertebrae. When you're dragging a carcass uphill from a deep canyon, being able to easily remove lower legs and skull makes a HUGE difference.
The same with having some rope handy. You can drag a carcass from the antlers, but it's awkward and that's one less hand available to grab the next pinion pine limb to help you up the shale slope. And .. gee .. I've just chopped the antlers out of the skull! (They fit neatly into the body cavity, along with the organ meat if you're the type who wants to save them to feed the relatives whom you don't like very much. Personally .. yuck!)
Did you notice that the article didn't include a whetstone, or a sharpening steel?
Another thing that the article suggested was water to wash the carcass. That's not only useful to get all the hare off the bare meat (if you can skin it in place, and don't intend to keep it) but it reduces the temperature of the meat immediately. The quicker you can cool the meat, the more likely it will still be tasty when you get it to the storage unit or the butcher.
Some game animals .. .especially Prong-horn Antelope ... are intrinsically "gamey". You must remove the lower legs (glands there!) and viscera quickly to keep them from being inedible when you get them home.
When I was hunting Antelope in Oregon and Wyoming, the terrain was flat or rolling-hills, not hard at all to get to the game with a vehicle. We carried not three-gallon, but five-gallon cans of water, and sluiced the meat copiously after the carcass had been skinned, eviscerated, and "lopped" (head, lower limbs, hide). And we also brought tarps, to keep the carcass clean. You also need to pick off the bits of hair from the skinned carcass; otherwise, when you butcher you spend more time scraping off hairs .. or you just cut off the contaminated skin.
An Antelope which yields 80 pounds of meat is a rarity; you don't want to slice off otherwise-edible meat just because it has hair glued on. It's quicker, easier and neater to keep the hair OFF the carcass, or remove it while the meat is still moist.
What do you REALLY need to "Gut A Deer"?
So, my personal list of "what you need to gut a deer" (or other thin-skinned game animal) includes:
There are knives which are combination knife and saw; here is one example:
If you're deep in the bush, this might be worth the money at about $70. Easier to buy, than to carry a hatchet!
City-Folk Stuff?
We could talk all night and half the morning about hunting equipment, but the point here is that many of the "items" suggested by the F&S article are just ... city-folk stuff. You don't need it.
Like ..
My Goodness, I do so love The Internet. It's amazing to learn how far I've become disenfranchised by The East Coast .. and now Field and Stream magazine is catering to namby-pamby boy-men hunters who can't abide the feeling of blood on their hands?
I think it's a really good thing that "Field and Stream" magazine wasn't publishing in 1776. There would never have been an American Revolution.
Store-bought field dressing kits often include a bunch of unnecessary items for a hunter who’s faced with gutting a deer and getting it home. This D.I.Y. kit fits into a gallon-size plastic zippered bag, which also serves as a handy place to put down a knife while you wrestle with a transcending colon. At the truck, stash 3 gallons of clean water for rinsing out the body cavity, and a hatchet if you want to open the pelvis. Latex Gloves: Lots of field dressing gloves go up to your armpit, to turn blood away from clothing and any open cuts. But wrist-high gloves are form-fitting for a better feel and grip and still prevent blood and nicked guts from infecting small cuts. Zip-Seal Bags: Have two gallon-size bags for the heart and the liver. Paper Towels: I like to keep 15 paper towels, folded up, to use as cavity and hand wipes. Bandages: Pack these for knife nicks. .....Oh, Deer!
Sorry. They actually had me thinking, for the first few sentences of this article, that they knew what they were thinking of. (Especially in that this was gear which they planned to carry while hunting).
Sorry .. it just gets worse.
What you need (as commenters emphatically "suggested") is A Sharp Knife.
Everything else is gravy --- and excess weight.
Point About The Knife:
I have noticed that people like those bowie knives, with the sharp points. Not good for gutting, and sure not good for skinning in the field! If you're going to skin in the field (highly recommended if you can do it .. it helps cool the meat down QUICKLY), then you want a skinning knife, which is defined as a knife which isn't going to dig into the meat while you're trying to slit the skin at the breastbone.
One of the things the F&S stream article suggests is "... a hatchet, if you want to open the pelvis". I'm actually inclined to bring a hatchet with me while I'm hunting. Yes, a split pelvis makes it easier to eviscerate the body cavity, but it also makes it easier to remove the antlers from the skull, and then chop the cervical vertebrae. When you're dragging a carcass uphill from a deep canyon, being able to easily remove lower legs and skull makes a HUGE difference.
The same with having some rope handy. You can drag a carcass from the antlers, but it's awkward and that's one less hand available to grab the next pinion pine limb to help you up the shale slope. And .. gee .. I've just chopped the antlers out of the skull! (They fit neatly into the body cavity, along with the organ meat if you're the type who wants to save them to feed the relatives whom you don't like very much. Personally .. yuck!)
Did you notice that the article didn't include a whetstone, or a sharpening steel?
Another thing that the article suggested was water to wash the carcass. That's not only useful to get all the hare off the bare meat (if you can skin it in place, and don't intend to keep it) but it reduces the temperature of the meat immediately. The quicker you can cool the meat, the more likely it will still be tasty when you get it to the storage unit or the butcher.
Some game animals .. .especially Prong-horn Antelope ... are intrinsically "gamey". You must remove the lower legs (glands there!) and viscera quickly to keep them from being inedible when you get them home.
When I was hunting Antelope in Oregon and Wyoming, the terrain was flat or rolling-hills, not hard at all to get to the game with a vehicle. We carried not three-gallon, but five-gallon cans of water, and sluiced the meat copiously after the carcass had been skinned, eviscerated, and "lopped" (head, lower limbs, hide). And we also brought tarps, to keep the carcass clean. You also need to pick off the bits of hair from the skinned carcass; otherwise, when you butcher you spend more time scraping off hairs .. or you just cut off the contaminated skin.
An Antelope which yields 80 pounds of meat is a rarity; you don't want to slice off otherwise-edible meat just because it has hair glued on. It's quicker, easier and neater to keep the hair OFF the carcass, or remove it while the meat is still moist.
What do you REALLY need to "Gut A Deer"?
So, my personal list of "what you need to gut a deer" (or other thin-skinned game animal) includes:
- Very sharp drop-point knife
- maybe a hatchet
- maybe a rope (depending on terrain)
- lots of water (at the car)
- a tarp or plastic sheet
There are knives which are combination knife and saw; here is one example:
City-Folk Stuff?
We could talk all night and half the morning about hunting equipment, but the point here is that many of the "items" suggested by the F&S article are just ... city-folk stuff. You don't need it.
Like ..
- Bandaids, in case you cut yourself while dressing a deer. Really? You think it's possible? Bummer!
- Ibuprophen, because you get a headache as soon as you get out of the car. (Maybe you should just, like, stay in your freaking car?)
- Latex gloves .. "to turn blood away from your clothing"? Turn your sleeves back, take off your shirt, or man up!
- Ziplock bags for heart and liver ... which fit neatly inside the body cavity, from whence they came
- Paper Towels and handie wipes ... "Eyew, I've got blood on my pinkies? Next year, I'll just stay home and not get all bloody!"
- ZIP TIES .. to "tie off the intestinal canal with one hand". I have no idea what that means; I always just cut out the asshole right at the beginning, after I nut the carcass. Is this a New Age Problem? Did I "misunderestimate" the message?
- Gut Hooks: I STILL have no idea; and even more what a "Butt Out 2" is. I must be insufficiently squeamish to hunt in The New America. How did your ancestors ever survive, hunting for meat without Zip Ties, Gut Hooks, and Butt Out 2's? Did they, like, just reach in there and pull that stuff OUT? Nawww .. that would be SO gross!
My Goodness, I do so love The Internet. It's amazing to learn how far I've become disenfranchised by The East Coast .. and now Field and Stream magazine is catering to namby-pamby boy-men hunters who can't abide the feeling of blood on their hands?
I think it's a really good thing that "Field and Stream" magazine wasn't publishing in 1776. There would never have been an American Revolution.
"OMG ... I shot a Brit and he's bleeding. Blood! Quick .. anybody got a Handi-Wipe!"
Thursday, February 07, 2013
Afghan Girl
Search for the Afghan Girl | Watch the Documentary Film Free Online | SnagFilms
The photo is unforgettable.
The story is exemplary.
The video is an hour long ... but worth the viewing.
This is the story, writ small, of the Afghani people .
The photo is unforgettable.
The story is exemplary.
The video is an hour long ... but worth the viewing.
This is the story, writ small, of the Afghani people .
Tuesday, October 09, 2012
DNF
IPSC History: DNF
"Oh no, not the Dreaded DNF?"
If you have been indoctrinated into The Cult of IPSC for less than ten years, then you are probably unfamiliar with which I choose to call "The Dark Ages of IPSC".
HISTORY OF IPSC:
Initially, the burgeoning sport was called "Combat Pistol", and yes .. it was an unofficial meeting of military and law-enforcement professionals, along with aficionados, hangers on and wanna be's; plus some individuals who just wanted to hone their self-defense handgun skills OR ... people who thought that there was nothing wrong with playing with guns, but there should be some kind of organization which could codify rules, establish a safe environment, and establish a competition environment where they could compare their expertise with others with the same (or similar) attitude toward excellence in pistolry.
The movement attracted a lot of people who .... like me .. had a pistol, but really weren't sure how good they were compared to other people. My introduction in 1983 soon convinced me that I wasn't as good as I thought I was. Not by a long shot!
The 'movement' was initiated by people who had excellent skill sets. They were safe, proficient, accurate, fast, experienced, bold shooters.
What they were NOT was .. they were not people who did a really good job of writing a rule book. (This is a "yuppie" skill ... and not important .. because they all know what they knew, and it was all dreadfully informal.)
Eventually, there were so many yuppies (such as myself) involved in the sport, someone had to take a hard look at the rules and ensure that they were clear, concise, complete, and ... gee .. reasonable? Even to people who didn't have the experience of real-life gunfights and the exigencies there-of?
Maybe, we aren't talking about training to shoot people. Maybe we're just learning to play a game!
There was a period when the hard-core gunzines (shooting-related magazines) ran such articles as:
"IPSC will teach you to get killed in a gunfight!"
*(I haven't researched this, but for a long time it was part of the evolving IPSC lore; today .. who cares? Since 1998 my mission was to teach this one simple lesson: "It's a GAME, Folks!". Since then, the Founding Father of IPSC ... Col. Jeff Cooper .. disavowed any association with IPSC because he was totally disgusted with what has become "a sport". To him, it was and would always remain a means to hone gun-handling skills, based on Speed Power and Accuracy, which would help "Brave Men Who Protect You While You Sleep" to accomplish their mission. For the rest of us ... "It's A GAME, Folks!")*
And maybe it will get you killed if you allow yourself to enter into a gun-fight using the skill-set you learned in your "Introduction to USPSA" class. Or .. maybe it will teach you the gun-handling skills you need to not shoot each other when you're at the range. Maybe it will provide you with incentive to use your handgun safely. Maybe it will save your life when the Bad Guys bust into your house and "When Seconds Count, The Police Are Always Just A Minute Away". I don't know, I don't care, but I do love to shoot in benign competition against people with the same skill sets, and see how I measure up. It's like playing a video game, except you're using real guns and shooting real bullets.
The problem is; you need Rules of Competition, and they need to be clear, consistent, mutually supportive, rational, reasonable, and justifiable.
The early rule books were NOT well written. The rules were vague, inconsistent, often contradictory, frequently arbitrary, and usually not supported by an identifiable rationale.
Well, hell. These guys weren't rule-writers; they were rule-enforcers. THEY knew what they meant, and they often used a sort of short-hand language which made complete sense to them, and why did they need to conform to the mind-set of a bunch of freaking Hippy-loser Yuppies?
Except, of course, that the sport had been taken over by hippies and yuppies like me, and we really wanted to rules to make sense.
On the other hand, IPSC had gone World-Wide, and nations whose governments didn't even want their citizens to HAVE handguns .... let alone practice with them ...were demanding that the Rule Books include provisions which accommodated the considerations which drove their national political strategies.
First Hippies and Yuppies, and now Political Correctness? Yuck!
----
Moving on from Politics to Reality ... IPSC and USPSA ... and then both entities separate but equal .. evolved the Rules of Competition to accommodate National Culture. And Hippies and Yuppies. And clove to "Combat Pistol" priorities, until Colonel Jeff Cooper threw up his hands in disgust, quit IPSC, and retired to his *(profitable!)* Raven Training. He washed his hands of us, and we profited.
One signifier of the evolution of Practical Pistol Competition was the DNF Rule.
1983
As originally codified (See Footnote 1), if you didn't complete the course of fire, that meant that you had met the bad guys in a dark alley and you had run away. That is, you were insufficiently combative. In competitive terms, they took the very worst score on that stage, magnified it, and you were the loser by 'that much' because you didn't complete the Course of Fire .. the "stage". That was the competitive thought as of 1983,
This (competitive) situation was designated as DNF ... "Did Not Finish". That is to say, because of lost of equipment or ammunition, or the malfunction of your firearm, you were unable to continue the militant confrontation consequently abandoned the Field of Combat.
_____
1992
Later, and still entirely in keeping with the concept of Combat Pistolry (and during a period when we should have entirely acceded to the demands of the Hippies and the Yuppies, like me ...), the authors of the rule books (See Footnote 2) decided that .. gee, if you ran out of ammunition, or your handgun was jammed or otherwise malfunctioned .. you didn't just lose the fight, you were DEAD! Your score was not just 'the worst' .. it was ZERO! You were not allowed to abandon the Field of Conflict ... you lost. Definitively!
That was the the competitive thought of 1992.
____
1995
Still later, in 1995 (See Footnote 3), if you were 'assigned' a DNF, you score was still zero. But the explanation was curiously less precise, less definitive, and less easy to intuitively understand the reasoning behind the penalty .... even though you (we) were already conditioned to accept that we had been engaged in a gunfight and were rendered a functional non-combatant in what we already understood to be a 'combat' situation.
My reading on this is that the rule book update was sloppily applied; the authors didn't know what they were doing, or why they were doing it, but they knew the rules and they were determined to proffer that because ...
... because we were all so eager to continue The Sport, we didn't much care what the rules were, we just wanted to be able to go shooting on the occasional Saturday, No .. we wanted to be ALLOWED to go shooting. We were not very critical .. until it was WE who were DNF'd, and eventually we realized that we didn't really understand the rationale behind the (entirely arbitrary) judgement.
Then ... we became active members, and we demanded a voice. We wanted to know WHY this competition was still being processed as COMBAT.
"It's a GAME, Folks!"
2000 ...
"The Toilet Paper Ruleboook", and The End of Combat Shooting
In a surprising and revelatory move, IPSC/USPSA decided suddenly in 2000 to abandon (at least partially) rules which pertained to Combat Shooting ... and finally recognize that this was COMPETITION and not COMBAT!
Penalties would hereafter pertain to competition. We're not shooting at "people". dammit! We're not even shooting at "targets shaped like people"! We're just shooting at cardboard targets, and steel targets, and we have CLEARLY defined that all the rules of competition are based on competitive concepts.
Did your pistol go south for the winter? Did you fail to bring enough ammunition to engage all targets? Okay. You didn't engage some targets? We have rules to cover that ... Failure to Engage. No problem.
The United States Practical Shooting Association (USPSA) encourage that dramatic change of concept in 2003 by issuing a 'provisional' Rule Book Version which was so under-the-covers that it didn't even have a "heavy-duty-cover-in-color" .. instead, the cover was of the same flimsy coarse-fiber paper as its contents. (See Footnote 4).
Immediately (and appropriately) designated "The Toilet Paper Rule Book", the USPSA membership responded with very few criticisms. What we saw would tentatively legitimize a number of "common sense" changes to the rules; the most significant changes were that all references, no matter how inconsequential, to "Combat Pistol", had been changed, or deleted.
Specifically, the DNF rule and any allusions to the "You stopped fighting; you died" .. were gone.
Instead, if a competitor was unable to complete the course of fire, he was merely penalized " ... all appropriate miss and failure to engage penalties...".
This changed the penalty structure from a dramatic "zero" on the stage .. or worse .. to a simple administrative ruling which gave credit to scoring which had already been achieved. Or, to put it in context ... you stopped competing, but you may have stopped because of reasons which WE (USPSA) won't attempt to interpret in terms of Combat. And you're not fighting ... you're just competing!
This 'temporary' (or "Provisional') rule book change was so well received .. which is to say, received with so little rancor from even the most aggressive members of USPSA .. that it was later (see Footnote 5) reitterated with only minor revisions in 2001 as USPSA R%ull Book, 14th Edition ("The Red Book").
From this point on, USPSA (and by extension, IPSC) became a 'competition', not 'Combat Pistolry'.
___________________________________________________
Earlier, in 1997, IPSC (via IPSC GREECE) applied to the International Olympics Committee (IOC) for establishment as a "Demonstration sport" to subsequent Olympics competition. The IOC rejected it with a great deal of judgmental prejudice, saying in part that they would not now, nor would they every accept as part of the Olympics a sport which "... is not a sport, but merely a hobby".
(It's a disappointment that this data is primarily available from an anti-gun website; should we as IPSC members not be more willing to archive our disappointments as well as our successes?)
The road to legitimacy has been long, arduous, and fraught with failures. We are no longer a COMBAT TRAINING activity, and that is good. Well, at least my my personal point of view. We are summarily rejected from legitimacy by no less than the IOC. I think the suggestion was presented too soon for the IOC to see that our character has changed, and no one is more bitter about the ill-timed presentation than am I.
We are castigated for our COMBAT roots, with no recognition that we have changed. We are percieved as aggressors, rather than mere competitors. There are other shooting sports in the Olympics; in fact, most of the sports epitomized in the Olympics are based upon combat (Javelin? Biathalon? Even running .. remember that Marathon was in celebration of a Military Victory!)
So, we are not allowed to celebrate our advancement before the world.
But still .. we no longer need to contend with the Dreaded DNF. And in our own small insulated world, that is a major triumph.
We don't lose; we don't die. We are just " penalized " ... all appropriate miss and failure to engage penalties...".
I can live with that.
For me, it's good enough.
__________________________________________________________
FOOTNOTES:
__________________________________________________________
Footnote 1:
Rule Book: "The International Shooting Confederation and The United States Region of IPSC"
1st Edition; May, 1983
"The Original Rule Book"
(Page 18)
__________________________________________
Footnote 2:
Practical Shooting Handbook
6th Edition April 1992 (USPSA)
"The Yellow Book"
Footnote 3:
Practical Shooting Handbook
7th Edition, 1995
"The Blue Book"
(Note 1: This was the rule-book currently available when I took my original Range Officer Certification course in 1997. At that time, "revisions" to previous rule-book versions were marked by the note REV in the margin; however, a new version had been approved at that date even though it had not yet been published. During the class, the NROI [National Range Officer Institute] instructor identified the changes and directed us to cross out deleted text, and write in new or amended text.Deleted text is identified like this; added/amended text is identified like this.)
(Note 2: At this time, early attempts to designate rules which were unique to USPSA, but not part of the IPSC rules, were designated as US **.** rule number. The IPSC rules were cited first in the rule book; then the US rule version was cited.
'(Note 1: This was the rule-book currently available when I took my original Range Officer Certification course in 1997. At _____________________________________
Footnote 4:
USPSA RULE Book
14th Edition, 2000
"The Toilet Paper Book"
(Page 22)
5.7.3
_____________________________________
Footnote 5:
USPSA Rule Book
14th Edition,2001
("The Red Book")
(Page 46)
5.7.3
"Oh no, not the Dreaded DNF?"
If you have been indoctrinated into The Cult of IPSC for less than ten years, then you are probably unfamiliar with which I choose to call "The Dark Ages of IPSC".
HISTORY OF IPSC:
Initially, the burgeoning sport was called "Combat Pistol", and yes .. it was an unofficial meeting of military and law-enforcement professionals, along with aficionados, hangers on and wanna be's; plus some individuals who just wanted to hone their self-defense handgun skills OR ... people who thought that there was nothing wrong with playing with guns, but there should be some kind of organization which could codify rules, establish a safe environment, and establish a competition environment where they could compare their expertise with others with the same (or similar) attitude toward excellence in pistolry.
The movement attracted a lot of people who .... like me .. had a pistol, but really weren't sure how good they were compared to other people. My introduction in 1983 soon convinced me that I wasn't as good as I thought I was. Not by a long shot!
The 'movement' was initiated by people who had excellent skill sets. They were safe, proficient, accurate, fast, experienced, bold shooters.
What they were NOT was .. they were not people who did a really good job of writing a rule book. (This is a "yuppie" skill ... and not important .. because they all know what they knew, and it was all dreadfully informal.)
Eventually, there were so many yuppies (such as myself) involved in the sport, someone had to take a hard look at the rules and ensure that they were clear, concise, complete, and ... gee .. reasonable? Even to people who didn't have the experience of real-life gunfights and the exigencies there-of?
Maybe, we aren't talking about training to shoot people. Maybe we're just learning to play a game!
There was a period when the hard-core gunzines (shooting-related magazines) ran such articles as:
"IPSC will teach you to get killed in a gunfight!"
*(I haven't researched this, but for a long time it was part of the evolving IPSC lore; today .. who cares? Since 1998 my mission was to teach this one simple lesson: "It's a GAME, Folks!". Since then, the Founding Father of IPSC ... Col. Jeff Cooper .. disavowed any association with IPSC because he was totally disgusted with what has become "a sport". To him, it was and would always remain a means to hone gun-handling skills, based on Speed Power and Accuracy, which would help "Brave Men Who Protect You While You Sleep" to accomplish their mission. For the rest of us ... "It's A GAME, Folks!")*
And maybe it will get you killed if you allow yourself to enter into a gun-fight using the skill-set you learned in your "Introduction to USPSA" class. Or .. maybe it will teach you the gun-handling skills you need to not shoot each other when you're at the range. Maybe it will provide you with incentive to use your handgun safely. Maybe it will save your life when the Bad Guys bust into your house and "When Seconds Count, The Police Are Always Just A Minute Away". I don't know, I don't care, but I do love to shoot in benign competition against people with the same skill sets, and see how I measure up. It's like playing a video game, except you're using real guns and shooting real bullets.
The problem is; you need Rules of Competition, and they need to be clear, consistent, mutually supportive, rational, reasonable, and justifiable.
The early rule books were NOT well written. The rules were vague, inconsistent, often contradictory, frequently arbitrary, and usually not supported by an identifiable rationale.
Well, hell. These guys weren't rule-writers; they were rule-enforcers. THEY knew what they meant, and they often used a sort of short-hand language which made complete sense to them, and why did they need to conform to the mind-set of a bunch of freaking Hippy-loser Yuppies?
Except, of course, that the sport had been taken over by hippies and yuppies like me, and we really wanted to rules to make sense.
On the other hand, IPSC had gone World-Wide, and nations whose governments didn't even want their citizens to HAVE handguns .... let alone practice with them ...were demanding that the Rule Books include provisions which accommodated the considerations which drove their national political strategies.
First Hippies and Yuppies, and now Political Correctness? Yuck!
----
Moving on from Politics to Reality ... IPSC and USPSA ... and then both entities separate but equal .. evolved the Rules of Competition to accommodate National Culture. And Hippies and Yuppies. And clove to "Combat Pistol" priorities, until Colonel Jeff Cooper threw up his hands in disgust, quit IPSC, and retired to his *(profitable!)* Raven Training. He washed his hands of us, and we profited.
One signifier of the evolution of Practical Pistol Competition was the DNF Rule.
1983
As originally codified (See Footnote 1), if you didn't complete the course of fire, that meant that you had met the bad guys in a dark alley and you had run away. That is, you were insufficiently combative. In competitive terms, they took the very worst score on that stage, magnified it, and you were the loser by 'that much' because you didn't complete the Course of Fire .. the "stage". That was the competitive thought as of 1983,
This (competitive) situation was designated as DNF ... "Did Not Finish". That is to say, because of lost of equipment or ammunition, or the malfunction of your firearm, you were unable to continue the militant confrontation consequently abandoned the Field of Combat.
_____
1992
Later, and still entirely in keeping with the concept of Combat Pistolry (and during a period when we should have entirely acceded to the demands of the Hippies and the Yuppies, like me ...), the authors of the rule books (See Footnote 2) decided that .. gee, if you ran out of ammunition, or your handgun was jammed or otherwise malfunctioned .. you didn't just lose the fight, you were DEAD! Your score was not just 'the worst' .. it was ZERO! You were not allowed to abandon the Field of Conflict ... you lost. Definitively!
That was the the competitive thought of 1992.
____
1995
Still later, in 1995 (See Footnote 3), if you were 'assigned' a DNF, you score was still zero. But the explanation was curiously less precise, less definitive, and less easy to intuitively understand the reasoning behind the penalty .... even though you (we) were already conditioned to accept that we had been engaged in a gunfight and were rendered a functional non-combatant in what we already understood to be a 'combat' situation.
My reading on this is that the rule book update was sloppily applied; the authors didn't know what they were doing, or why they were doing it, but they knew the rules and they were determined to proffer that because ...
... because we were all so eager to continue The Sport, we didn't much care what the rules were, we just wanted to be able to go shooting on the occasional Saturday, No .. we wanted to be ALLOWED to go shooting. We were not very critical .. until it was WE who were DNF'd, and eventually we realized that we didn't really understand the rationale behind the (entirely arbitrary) judgement.
Then ... we became active members, and we demanded a voice. We wanted to know WHY this competition was still being processed as COMBAT.
"It's a GAME, Folks!"
2000 ...
"The Toilet Paper Ruleboook", and The End of Combat Shooting
In a surprising and revelatory move, IPSC/USPSA decided suddenly in 2000 to abandon (at least partially) rules which pertained to Combat Shooting ... and finally recognize that this was COMPETITION and not COMBAT!
Penalties would hereafter pertain to competition. We're not shooting at "people". dammit! We're not even shooting at "targets shaped like people"! We're just shooting at cardboard targets, and steel targets, and we have CLEARLY defined that all the rules of competition are based on competitive concepts.
Did your pistol go south for the winter? Did you fail to bring enough ammunition to engage all targets? Okay. You didn't engage some targets? We have rules to cover that ... Failure to Engage. No problem.
The United States Practical Shooting Association (USPSA) encourage that dramatic change of concept in 2003 by issuing a 'provisional' Rule Book Version which was so under-the-covers that it didn't even have a "heavy-duty-cover-in-color" .. instead, the cover was of the same flimsy coarse-fiber paper as its contents. (See Footnote 4).
Immediately (and appropriately) designated "The Toilet Paper Rule Book", the USPSA membership responded with very few criticisms. What we saw would tentatively legitimize a number of "common sense" changes to the rules; the most significant changes were that all references, no matter how inconsequential, to "Combat Pistol", had been changed, or deleted.
Specifically, the DNF rule and any allusions to the "You stopped fighting; you died" .. were gone.
Instead, if a competitor was unable to complete the course of fire, he was merely penalized " ... all appropriate miss and failure to engage penalties...".
This changed the penalty structure from a dramatic "zero" on the stage .. or worse .. to a simple administrative ruling which gave credit to scoring which had already been achieved. Or, to put it in context ... you stopped competing, but you may have stopped because of reasons which WE (USPSA) won't attempt to interpret in terms of Combat. And you're not fighting ... you're just competing!
This 'temporary' (or "Provisional') rule book change was so well received .. which is to say, received with so little rancor from even the most aggressive members of USPSA .. that it was later (see Footnote 5) reitterated with only minor revisions in 2001 as USPSA R%ull Book, 14th Edition ("The Red Book").
From this point on, USPSA (and by extension, IPSC) became a 'competition', not 'Combat Pistolry'.
___________________________________________________
Earlier, in 1997, IPSC (via IPSC GREECE) applied to the International Olympics Committee (IOC) for establishment as a "Demonstration sport" to subsequent Olympics competition. The IOC rejected it with a great deal of judgmental prejudice, saying in part that they would not now, nor would they every accept as part of the Olympics a sport which "... is not a sport, but merely a hobby".
(It's a disappointment that this data is primarily available from an anti-gun website; should we as IPSC members not be more willing to archive our disappointments as well as our successes?)
The road to legitimacy has been long, arduous, and fraught with failures. We are no longer a COMBAT TRAINING activity, and that is good. Well, at least my my personal point of view. We are summarily rejected from legitimacy by no less than the IOC. I think the suggestion was presented too soon for the IOC to see that our character has changed, and no one is more bitter about the ill-timed presentation than am I.
We are castigated for our COMBAT roots, with no recognition that we have changed. We are percieved as aggressors, rather than mere competitors. There are other shooting sports in the Olympics; in fact, most of the sports epitomized in the Olympics are based upon combat (Javelin? Biathalon? Even running .. remember that Marathon was in celebration of a Military Victory!)
So, we are not allowed to celebrate our advancement before the world.
But still .. we no longer need to contend with the Dreaded DNF. And in our own small insulated world, that is a major triumph.
We don't lose; we don't die. We are just " penalized " ... all appropriate miss and failure to engage penalties...".
I can live with that.
For me, it's good enough.
__________________________________________________________
FOOTNOTES:
__________________________________________________________
Footnote 1:
Rule Book: "The International Shooting Confederation and The United States Region of IPSC"
1st Edition; May, 1983
"The Original Rule Book"
(Page 18)
2.8 Malfunctions - in the event of a malfunction, the normal procedure will be for the shooter to rectify the situation, keeping the muzzle pointing down range, and carry on with the event. If he is unable to do so, he will stand fast, lower the weapon to waist height and lock onto the target. He will then reaise his free hand to signal the RO/CRO to stop the clock, and proceed to examine the weapon. In the event that a pistol cannot be unloaded due to a broken or failed mechanism, the contest directore must be informed and he will take such action as he thinks best and safest. In no case shall a contestant leave the firing line in the possession of a loaded pistol.(Emphasis in the original)
2.8.1 When, due to breakdown or loss of personal equipment or injury, a competitor is unable to complete or wishes to terminate a course of fire, he will raise his free hand and call "TIME".
The competitor's target score will stand as shot minus applicable penalties and he will be awarded an elapsed time equal to the slowest time recorded on that course plus five seconds.
The penalty may also be stated in the course of fire for not completing a stage or course.
__________________________________________
Footnote 2:
Practical Shooting Handbook
6th Edition April 1992 (USPSA)
"The Yellow Book"
This book contains:
The USPSA Member's Handbook'USPSA Pistol Regulations
The most current I.P.S.C Rules
Combined I.P.S.C Rifle & Shotgun Rules
Copyright 1992 by USPSA/IPSC, Inc.
Sedro Woolley, Wa 98284
11:09 DID NOT FINISH (DNF) - When a competitor is unable to complete a course of fire for whatever reason, other than range equipment failure, his score will be recorded as zero for that stage. (See 8.06, 8.08) (Page 54-55)
8.06 MALFUNCTIONS - In the event of a malfunction, the normal procedure will be for the competitor to rectify the situation, always keeping the muzzle pointing downrange, and carry on with the stage. If he is unable to do so, he will stand fast, lower the handgun safely pointed down range and signal by raising his free hand. The Range Officer will stop the clock and proceed to examine the handgun. See 11.09 (page 45)
_____________________________________
8.08 UNABLE TO FINISH COURSE - When, due to a breakdown or loss of personal equipment or injury, a competitor is unable to complete a course or wishes to terminate the course of fire, he will raise his free hand and call TIME. See 11.09 (page 45)
Footnote 3:
Practical Shooting Handbook
7th Edition, 1995
"The Blue Book"
Including:
USPSA Member's Handbook
7th Edition USPSA Rules
12the Edition IPSC Rules
11th Edition USPSA Rifle &
Shotgun Rules
Copyright 1995 by USPSA/IPSC, Inc.
Sedro Woolley WA 98284
(Note 1: This was the rule-book currently available when I took my original Range Officer Certification course in 1997. At that time, "revisions" to previous rule-book versions were marked by the note REV in the margin; however, a new version had been approved at that date even though it had not yet been published. During the class, the NROI [National Range Officer Institute] instructor identified the changes and directed us to cross out deleted text, and write in new or amended text.
(Note 2: At this time, early attempts to designate rules which were unique to USPSA, but not part of the IPSC rules, were designated as US **.** rule number. The IPSC rules were cited first in the rule book; then the US rule version was cited.
11.00 PROCEDURAL ERROR - A procedural error is defined as failure to comply with the stated procedure as specified in the stage and/or match information. The penalty will be assed as minus ten points (twice the value of a single maximum scoring hit) per occurrence.
REV: US 11.00 PROCEDURAL ERRORS - Procedural errors apply to violations of stated procedures which are not otherwise covered by other specific rules. Do not apply two different penalties for the same offense ......
[Inapplicable text omitted in this footnote]
Failure to engage (shoot at) a target specified in the stage description is a procedural error. Failure to engage will always result in one procedural penalty regardless of the number of required hits on the target. Failure to engage will not result in a DNF unless the failure is due to the competitors equipment failure, loss of ammo, etc. (See rules 8.08 and 11.09)Failure to successfully engage a stop target results in a DNF.(page 52)
REV 8.08 - UNABLE TO FINISH COURSE - When, due to a breakdown or loss of personal equipment or injury, a competitor is unable to complete a course and wishes to terminate the course of fire, he may raise his free hand. His score will be recorded as zero for that stage. (page 42)
'(Note 1: This was the rule-book currently available when I took my original Range Officer Certification course in 1997. At _____________________________________
Footnote 4:
USPSA RULE Book
14th Edition, 2000
"The Toilet Paper Book"
(Page 22)
5.7.3
In the event that a firearms malfunction cannot be corrected by the competitor, the competitor shall point the firearm safely downrange and advise the Range Officer. The Range Officer shall terminate the course of fire in the normal manner. The course of fire shall be scored normally including all appropriate miss and failure to engage penalties.
Copyright 2000 by USPSA/IPSC, Inc.
Sedro Woolley WA 98284
_____________________________________
Footnote 5:
USPSA Rule Book
14th Edition,2001
("The Red Book")
(Page 46)
5.7.3
In the event that a firearms malfunction cannot be corrected by the competitor, the competitor shall point the firearm safely downrange and advise the Range Officer. The Range Officer shall terminate the course of fire in the normal manner. The course of fire shall be scored normally including all appropriate miss and failure to shoot at penalties.
Copyright 2001 by USPSA/IPSC, Inc.
Sedro Woolley WA 98284
Tuesday, March 08, 2011
Young Mexican police chief seeks US asylum
Young Mexican police chief seeks US asylum :
Isn't this a big surprise?
A (very!) young Mexican woman volunteered to take over the office of Chief of Police in her home town, and got the job because every rational person in the country was too frightened by the likelihood of being slaughtered ... as her predecessor was.
That was six months ago.
Six DAYS ago, she took a "temporary leave of absence" and, unannounced, showed up in the United States of America, where " ... she has initiated a formal asylum petition" on the basis of reported death threats and, possibly an attempted kidnapping in the town which she had eagerly sworn to protect the citizens.
Apparently, she has since discovered that she can't even protect herself. Big surprise.
Didn't she have a PLAN?
Did she think she could take a job where her predecessor had been murdered, in a lawless place, without having a viable plan (one which she was equipped to implement it successfully, given her well-demonstrated attributes and strength and will)?
Or perhaps her plan wasn't for the betterment of her community, but for the betterment of herself?
I'm guessing that she will be granted asylum (U.S. immigration officials are notoriously prone to accept any petition where the would-be immigrant can make a case for persecution if asylum is not granted), and I'm wondering if this was not her goal -- her "plan" -- all the time.
Color me biased. Go ahead, I don't mind. Perhaps it takes a Bad Person to suspect the motivation of a woman ... no, a girl ... who deliberately puts herself in such an obviously untenable position.
Wow! What a gutsy move. Tens of thousands of Mexicans illegally cross the border every year, from Mexico to the United States, for the purpose of "seeking a higher standard of living" and/or "trying to improve the pitiful plight of their families".
(And a significant number of Mexicans ALSO apply for legal immigration ... and are often turned down because there are so many "illegal aliens" from Mexico are already flooding the "unskilled labor" pools of this country.)
So now this girl has found an entirely new scam, for the same purpose, and you just know that she is going to get away with it.
To tell the truth, I really don't blame her. In fact, in some ways I admire her inventiveness. It's kind of the way that I admire the characters played by Paul Newman and Robert Redford in "The Sting". Sure, they're all crooked as a dog's hind leg, but they're such charming rogues and so terribly inventive.
While on the one hand I would really like to see this charming, inventive, lovely young woman succeed ... on the other hand, I very much would like to see her application turned down.
The basis for the rejection would be something along the lines of "you made your bed, now you may sleep in it". Well, badly stated; that's true. And you know that this administration would NEVER be anything but compassionate.
That is to say: as long as she makes a sufficient case to be categorized as "The Underdog", she may reasonably expect that her application for asylum will be approved, and she will never want for anything for the rest of her natural life. Never mind that she brings no marketable skills, and will probably end up on the public dole. (Unless Hollywood, that hotbed of liberalism, chooses to make a film of her otherwise humdrum existence ... although it would make a MUCH better film if they started it out from the point where her application was denied, and followed her subsequent attempts to actually fulfill the expectations which she had engendered in her constituents when she applied for the job in the first place. Kind of like Walking Tall, without the stick.)
Ultimately, we can only say that we deplore the situation which is developing (or has fully developed, and can only get worse?) in Mexico.
We don't like drugs. We disapprove of corruption. and we absolutely cannot understand that third-world-country government mindset which allows drug-gangs to terrorize their innocent civilians, but which at the same time refuses to allow those same innocent civilians to arm themselves.
After all, it's not like they're getting any protection from their government ... which, in case I haven't mentioned it before, is notoriously CORRUPT! Both their police, and their army; and their president is well spoken, but flagrantly and demonstrably incompetent as is his administration.
Why is that, do you think? Is it because the national government thinks that if their citizens were armed, there would be more murders, and torture, and decapitations and raids and gunfights in the streets and 72 bodies found in a demolished building in the countryside?
Doe the Mexican government think that allowing their honest citizens to arm themselves would result in a massacre which would undermine the tourism industry?
I'm just a simple geek, I really don't understand any of this. I don't have answers; I only have a lot of questions.
Don't you?
Isn't this a big surprise?
A (very!) young Mexican woman volunteered to take over the office of Chief of Police in her home town, and got the job because every rational person in the country was too frightened by the likelihood of being slaughtered ... as her predecessor was.
That was six months ago.
Six DAYS ago, she took a "temporary leave of absence" and, unannounced, showed up in the United States of America, where " ... she has initiated a formal asylum petition" on the basis of reported death threats and, possibly an attempted kidnapping in the town which she had eagerly sworn to protect the citizens.
Apparently, she has since discovered that she can't even protect herself. Big surprise.
"EL PASO, Texas — A young woman who received death threats after recently becoming police chief of a violence-plagued Mexican town is in the U.S and seeking asylum, Mexican and U.S. officials said Tuesday.So what's with this? I mean, she volunteered for a LEO command position in a notoriously rough town. Didn't she have a ... a ... I'm trying to think of the word, what is it?
Marisol Valles Garcia, who was 20 when she was hired last October, made international headlines when she accepted the top law enforcement job in Praxedis G. Guerrero, a township near the Texas border overrun by drug violence. Her predecessor was shot to death in July 2009.
Garcia is now in the U.S. and will be allowed to present her case to an immigration judge, according to a statement from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The town is in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, where ombudsman Gustavo de la Rosa confirmed that Garcia was in the U.S. and said she has initiated a formal asylum petition."
Didn't she have a PLAN?
Did she think she could take a job where her predecessor had been murdered, in a lawless place, without having a viable plan (one which she was equipped to implement it successfully, given her well-demonstrated attributes and strength and will)?
Or perhaps her plan wasn't for the betterment of her community, but for the betterment of herself?
I'm guessing that she will be granted asylum (U.S. immigration officials are notoriously prone to accept any petition where the would-be immigrant can make a case for persecution if asylum is not granted), and I'm wondering if this was not her goal -- her "plan" -- all the time.
Color me biased. Go ahead, I don't mind. Perhaps it takes a Bad Person to suspect the motivation of a woman ... no, a girl ... who deliberately puts herself in such an obviously untenable position.
Wow! What a gutsy move. Tens of thousands of Mexicans illegally cross the border every year, from Mexico to the United States, for the purpose of "seeking a higher standard of living" and/or "trying to improve the pitiful plight of their families".
(And a significant number of Mexicans ALSO apply for legal immigration ... and are often turned down because there are so many "illegal aliens" from Mexico are already flooding the "unskilled labor" pools of this country.)
So now this girl has found an entirely new scam, for the same purpose, and you just know that she is going to get away with it.To tell the truth, I really don't blame her. In fact, in some ways I admire her inventiveness. It's kind of the way that I admire the characters played by Paul Newman and Robert Redford in "The Sting". Sure, they're all crooked as a dog's hind leg, but they're such charming rogues and so terribly inventive.
While on the one hand I would really like to see this charming, inventive, lovely young woman succeed ... on the other hand, I very much would like to see her application turned down.
The basis for the rejection would be something along the lines of "you made your bed, now you may sleep in it". Well, badly stated; that's true. And you know that this administration would NEVER be anything but compassionate.
That is to say: as long as she makes a sufficient case to be categorized as "The Underdog", she may reasonably expect that her application for asylum will be approved, and she will never want for anything for the rest of her natural life. Never mind that she brings no marketable skills, and will probably end up on the public dole. (Unless Hollywood, that hotbed of liberalism, chooses to make a film of her otherwise humdrum existence ... although it would make a MUCH better film if they started it out from the point where her application was denied, and followed her subsequent attempts to actually fulfill the expectations which she had engendered in her constituents when she applied for the job in the first place. Kind of like Walking Tall, without the stick.)
Ultimately, we can only say that we deplore the situation which is developing (or has fully developed, and can only get worse?) in Mexico.
We don't like drugs. We disapprove of corruption. and we absolutely cannot understand that third-world-country government mindset which allows drug-gangs to terrorize their innocent civilians, but which at the same time refuses to allow those same innocent civilians to arm themselves.
After all, it's not like they're getting any protection from their government ... which, in case I haven't mentioned it before, is notoriously CORRUPT! Both their police, and their army; and their president is well spoken, but flagrantly and demonstrably incompetent as is his administration.
(Makes you glad to be an American, doesn't it?
Oh, wait a minute.
Never mind.)
Why is that, do you think? Is it because the national government thinks that if their citizens were armed, there would be more murders, and torture, and decapitations and raids and gunfights in the streets and 72 bodies found in a demolished building in the countryside?
Doe the Mexican government think that allowing their honest citizens to arm themselves would result in a massacre which would undermine the tourism industry?
I'm just a simple geek, I really don't understand any of this. I don't have answers; I only have a lot of questions.
Don't you?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)