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I think this should answer that question.

I am going to try to start a new series about some of the tips and tricks I’ve picked up. Some might call it “fieldcraft” but since I am not a super secret squirrel who operates in operations, I am not nearly cool enough to call it that.

The first few I’m going to do are going to involve a laminator. I specifically bought one to use on some of the things I’ll be talking about. They’re not expensive, but you could probably just use packing tape for most of these things instead of a full-on laminator so just keep that in mind. The reason for lamination is so that you can use map markers and have a reusable but also semi-permanent writing surface.

First up is going to be the Glow in the Dark Dope (or DOPE) card.

DOPE stands for Data On Previous Engagements. The term actually goes back to when the only way you could really figure out what your bullet drop was at specific distances was to go out and shoot those distances and write down the data. You’d record distance, wind, temperature, elevation, and other environmental variables so that later, you’d use that data from your previous engagement to get a really good idea of what your bullet was going to do.

Nowadays we have doppler radar derived drag curves and ballistic computers that are so inexpensive and precise that you don’t need to spend the time and money collecting your own dope, you just punch in some numbers and the ballistic solver tells you what your drop is.

Which is great and all, but a lot of shooters (myself included) like the simplicity of a card with numbers written down. I mean I love my Kestrel but it’s way faster to look at a dope card than it is to scroll through targets or adjust your range.

So here is what I did (it’s super simple):
I took some card stock and covered it with 2″ glow in the dark tape. An index card would also have worked but I have a ton of card stock left over from a prior project.
Then I cut that down so that it would fit in that in the Rite in the Rain notebook cover that I’ve been using as a wallet for the last 2 years. I had a very wet shooting class in October of 2019 and shortly after that I started buying Rite in the Rain notebooks like Hunter Biden buys crack pipes.
Then I laminated it, obviously.
So now what I can do is I can use my Kestrel to get my dope for the ranges I’m going to be engaging and write it down on my little dope card.
Because the map markers take either an alcohol pen or an alcohol swap to erase, I don’t have to worry about rubbing off the data accidentally.
Then I can “charge” the glow in the dark tape by either just leaving it out all day or shining a light on it before I really need it.

This is what the card looks like after holding it up to a light bulb for about 20 seconds:

It’s advertised as working for 6 hours but I haven’t actually tested that. I does last a while, though.

There are tons of other glow in the dark paper products out there, too, so I may experiment with some other things in the future.

I finally changed the backend WordPress theme after something like 12 years.

Atahualpa was good to me, and to Walls of the City, but somewhere around 2 years ago I stopped getting WP visitor stats. That’s fixed now.

The new theme should also be a lot better on mobile devices now.

From the “People only ever die of COVID” department
Headline: Texas GOP rep Ron Wright, 67, becomes first member of Congress to die from COVID after two-week spell in hospital alongside his wife

Story: He died with COVID. He also had lung cancer, and was recently hospitalized for a week with pneumonia. Maybe COVID did actually kill him, but I’m unconvinced after a local mayor “died of COVID” and stage 4 brain cancer but you had to, like, already know the dude had brain cancer because none of the death stories would mention it.

From the woke department
Headline: Student organizations asking UT to terminate professor who used racially charged acronym in class

Story: A black female professor of “Africana Studies” wrote the title of a Tupac Shakur song on the board.

From the “What an amazing coincidence” department
Headline: Mayor Cooper proposes record-breaking $191 million for funding toward education

Reality: Cooper raised property taxes by 34% during a pandemic with record unemployment without ever even considering cutting back spending. Now that the covid numbers are down and he’s expecting a return to 2019 sales tax revenues, he puts forth the largest spending plan in Nashville’s history,

Heartwarming story from my neck of the woods:

Police in Tennessee are investigating after a man was shot and killed Friday night during a robbery ‘prank’ for a YouTube video.

Nashville police responded to the parking lot of an Urban Air indoor trampoline park at 9:25pm where David Starnes Jr., 23, admitted to shooting 20-year-old Timothy Wilks.

Witnesses told detectives that Wilks and a friend were participating in a ‘prank’ robbery.

The stunt was apparently all part of a YouTube video whereby Wilk  approached a group of people, including Starnes, with butcher knives. 

Starnes said he was unaware of the prank and shot Wilks to defend himself and the people he was with.

According to MNPD, no charges have been filed in Wilks’ death. The investigation is ongoing.

Yeah.

That was a bad idea in a state where roughly 20% of adults have a carry permit. This is should be a story that gets repeated a lot in the future, as a cautionary tale against doing stupid things that can get you killed but I’m not optimistic about that.

That’s all I’m going to say about the dead guy. I’d like to focus on the shooter, because he’s going to need some help.

It’s likely that he realizes two things right now:
1. He reacted exactly as he should have, given the information he had at the time.
2. The guy he shot wasn’t really going to hurt him.

I said this in another place, but he’s fortunate that Tennesseans still outnumber Californians in Nashville. The Nashville DA would absolutely love to put the fear of prosecution in to every carry permit holder in the state, but there’s no way he could get a conviction. I’d say I would be shocked if he’s charged, but Nashville is currently prosecuting a police officer for shooting back at a fleeing felon and another officer who killed a man walking towards him while firing an AK pistol at someone else before that officer was hired with the police department. But Starnes is probably fine.

That second one is going to be with him for the rest of his life, though.

In 2008, I had a similar experience with a much happier ending. I won’t go in to too much detail, but a group of teenagers decided to pull a prank on a motorist and that motorist was an armed me. It was at night and I don’t think they ever realized how close they came to tragedy, but luckily I was able to realize it was a hoax before it was too late. And yes, had they actually been doing what they were pretending to do, I would have been 100% justified in opening fire. It’s a very close parallel to what happened here.

I’ve often thought about what would have happened if things had gone differently. Would the group have banded together and say I opened fire “for no reason”? Would the Nashville DA have wanted to make an example of me? I would most certainly have been fired within a week. Would I have had to move across the country to get away from bad press? Would I have ever worked again, even if no charges were filed?

This young man, David Starnes, is going to be going through all of those things I was terrified of.

Stopped at Academy on the way home. I can tell you that the reports of there being no ammo on the shelf is over blown. They had plenty of… 38S&W.

I might stop by tomorrow and grab a couple boxes for my Enfield revolver.

If you’ve got a table at the local gun show, and you’re trying to sell a Cobra Denali 380, maybe you should charge less than $400 for it.

Seriously. I’ve seen this guy trying to sell that thing for $400 at the last few gun shows I’ve been to.

Here’s the kicker: the guy is also selling some older guns that I’d be interested in, but seeing an asking of 4 times the actual value of that gun has made me deeply suspect of the prices on the rest of the stuff.

About a year ago, some poor slob in Rio de Janiero decided that it would be a good idea to use a fake gun to rob a girl that was standing on the street corner waiting for an Uber to show up.

Unfortunately for him, that girl happened to be pro MMA fighter Polyana Viana. She responded with two punches and a kick, which, going by the pictures, broke his face. She then put him in a sleeper hold for good measure, and waited for the cops to arrive.

Sounds like a happy ending, right?

Apparently, not to a reporter at CNN.

According to the article, she’s received a good bit of criticism over it. Of course, he also calls her act of self-defense “her moment of vigilantism,” and that she “took the law into her own hands.”

It’s called self-defense, you simpering twit! Clearly, the author would much rather criminals take whatever the hell they want and never face the consequences of poor victim selection.