During a serious discussion with my wife about guns (she’s not anti, but she’s not one of us), she made the comment that she thought it was funny that the Black Lives Matter folks tend to also be the ones currently screaming for us to ban guns. After all, they don’t trust the police, because they’re racist, but the only folks that should have guns are the cops.
I swear I did not prompt her on this point in any way.
Was right after reading this. Sebastian is absolutely right when he says “American gun owners are sick to death of having this shit pinned on us, and we’re not going to take it anymore.”
Good job, media.
*I show off one of my latest knife purchase*
“Damn, Oddball. How many knives do you need?”
“How many magazine do you need?”
“… good answer.”
While my mind is currently focused on heading to Louisville for NRAAM, I figured I’d throw up this quick post.
A little while ago, a buddy of mine asked me what my top 3 gun wish list was at current date. I couldn’t really answer him at the time, but it’s been peculating in the back of my head. So… here’s my attempt to answer that.
So… what do you think? Honestly, #3 was difficult to choose. I still need to get into black powder at some point, and a replica navy revolver kit would be damn nifty. As would one of those “build your own Kentucky rifle” kits. I think I’ve got the pocket gun bug out of my system… for a while… all those NAA Guardians make me giggle… There are other guns that I would happily take if handed to me (a Barrett .50cal, for example), but I tried to limit this to ones I could actually see buying. Anyways, this is just the top 3. Doesn’t mean that there aren’t more. 🙂
So, what’s on your list?
Last weekend, I packed up my gear and headed to Oak Ridge for the first East Tennessee Bloggershoot hosted by Dennis at Dragon Leatherworks. For those that have never been, it’s a beautify part of the country, and I highly recommend visiting. Especially if you can manage to get a tour of the national labs that were involved in the Manhattan Project and are currently home to the second most powerful supercomputer in the world.
I started the weekend arriving at Dragon Leatherworks store, where I picked up a new purchase for me (a Sig p290rs, watch for a review in the near future). It’s a nice shop with a pretty good selection of firearms and some absolutely beautiful holsters. Of course, if they don’t have it in stock, Dennis is happy to order it for you. The Jack was already there, and we chatted while Dennis manned the shop for the last couple hours of the business day.
After that, we headed to Dennis’ place for burgers and met up with John Richardson and his wife. Erin Palette was supposed to join us for dinner, but due to some serious traffic issues, didn’t roll in until close to midnight. Oleg, being the crazy man that he is, decided to get up at the crack of dawn, and make the drive in Saturday morning. He also had a young shooter and his family in tow.
Saturday morning came, and we loaded up and headed to the range. Unfortunately, it rained during a good portion of the day. That said, one of the pistol ranges and the rifle range had cover over the shooting line, so we just shot from under those. The rifle range had steel targets set a various distances out to, I think, 175yards. For a guy that is normally relegated to punching paper, it was great fun to hear the ring of steel and see the target swing on every hit.
I mentioned rain, right?
Unfortunately, due to the rain, this was pretty much the only good picture I got of the shooty goodness. We had a pretty good representation of old battle rifles, Erin brought her “Sleep of Reason” Mosin Nagant, which is now sporting an Archangel stock and new muzzle brake, and Oleg brought some interesting stuff including a triple barrelled shotgun. Oh, and Oleg brought a scoped Howa .308 (I can’t remember the model) that made hitting the steal torso at 175yards almost boring… almost.
One thing I always find interesting at these things is what people gravitate to. You have the oddities, like The Jack’s Boberg, that folks are interested in because they’re just weird, or Erin’s pimped out Mosin that shows that you can take one of those old war relics and turn it into a pretty accurate rifle. John brought out an IBM make M1 Carbine in good condition that sparked a couple history conversations. Everyone seemed to enjoy hitting the 75yard steel torso with my Marlin .357mag.
After all was said and done at the range, it was back to the ranch to clean up and get ready for dinner. For most of us, that meant at least a change of clothes due to the mud, and I think we managed to not track mud all over the house. The Jack was gracious enough to work the grill for us. If you ever have the chance to sample his cooking, do it.
This was the appetizer steak
Did I mention that there was tasty, tasty meat?
mmmmm…. pork….
I was also told that my apple and peach pie went over well. As a side note, apple pie (the drink) does go well with apple pie (the food).
We also took a tour of the workshop where Dennis actually makes all the holsters. He gave us a brief run down on how he makes them, and some things that he’s got in the works for the future. Beyond that, it was the usual chatting and card games that happen when you get a bunch of us together.
Sunday was breakfast, and back on the road back home.
I have to thank Dennis and his wife (who did a lot of the prep work to make this happen) for a great weekend. They’ve already stated that they want to do it again next year, and I hope to be there and see more folks there.
By the way, if you haven’t already checked out their website, Dragon Leatherworks makes some great holsters. I have one that I love, and I need to order a couple more. Great thing about them is that you can drop $300 on a BBQ holster for your BBQ gun, but the basic holsters start around $65. There’s a number of assembly line holsters that will cost you more than that. Instead, you can get a handmade holster that’s well made, built in the USA, and made by a small business. What’s not to like?
After my post about the instructor I will not trust proved to be popular, I figured I’d document a student that we should all attempt to imitate.
If you don’t know, I’ve been studying Tae Kwon Do (among other arts) for a number of years, and I’m now one of the instructors at my studio. A couple weeks back, we had a high school student decide to join our school.
After his first class, he was kicking and punching a heavy bag, and while his form was… lacking… he definitely looked had he had done this before. I asked him if he had a pre-existing background, and he told me that he had “self-studied” for about 3 years. This is where things usually take a turn for the worse. I’ve run into a *lot* of teenage/early 20’s guys that have “picked things up on their own” (or worse, went to an MMA gym where the instructors don’t know what they’re doing), and are convinced that they know everything.
This kid was the complete opposite. I gave him some pointers on actually twisting his hips and “punching with his feet” for his jab-reverse-hook combos, and he instantly recognized that his strikes were significantly more powerful. Equally, he was eager to take my advise on improving his kicks, and found similar results.
Sadly for me, he decided to take the Hapkido class instead of TKD. I’ve talked to our Hapkido instructor a few times about him, and he’s reported that the kid has been a great student in his class.
We need to remember to be like this new student whenever we’re training. Even if you normally do things a different way, try the instructor’s way, you might find out that they know what they’re talking about. If nothing else, when you’re training at home/on the range by yourself, you don’t really get the same kind of feedback that someone watching you can give you. Chances are, you’re doing things that you shouldn’t without realizing it.
A little while ago, I found out that a friend of a friend was a pistol instructor*, and he offered to give me the handbook he uses in class to see if I’d like to train with him some time. I read through it, and, well, I wasn’t impressed. Nothing in it professed anything I considered dangerous, but there were several things that either made me scratch my head (ex: only use ball ammo), or was severely out of date (ex: .45ACP has far superior “stopping power” than 9mm or .40S&W).
I politely passed, but did sign up for his newsletter, and there was more of the same. Some of the info was good, some of it was out dated, and some of it made me scratch my head.
Of course, then he posted some stuff that made me actually email him and tell him “no, this is wrong because x, y, and z.” (in this case it was the old “violent video games and movies cause violence” BS)
His response? “I don’t necessarily agree with what is in my handbook or newsletters.”
…
The handbook and newsletters that *he* wrote, and he’s the only one that controls. And no, there weren’t any comment along the lines of “I’m not sure I agree, but so-and-so says…”
I responded telling him that I have issue with him presenting things as fact and telling people to act on this information. Especially if he “doesn’t necessarily agree” with that information.
He then responded with a rather lengthy email stating that he believes that his students are smart enough to figure out what’s truth and what’s not, blah blah blah.
Here’s the thing. If you’re going to act in a position of authority (such as firearms instructor), you should do your best to spread good info. Are you going to always be right? No. We’re human, and sometimes *we’re* given bad information, but do your best.
This also means defending your statements/actions. Of course, I would prefered for him to say “oh, I hadn’t thought of that/done the research. You’re right, I’m wrong,” but I would have accepted “nope, I believe I’m right on this one, because…” I would still think he was wrong, but at least he would be defending his position. The “I don’t necessarily believe what I write” pretty much tells me that your training, everything you write, and everything you say is useless.
If you don’t consider yourself to be a trustworthy source of information, why should I?
*He’s a small time local guy. No reason to publish his name here. If you’re local to me, and are concerned that you may be looking at taking his class, contact me privately and I’ll tell you.
Just need to say that if you’re in the need for a well built and good looking custom holster, or need a gun shop in the Oak Ridge, TN area, I’d recommend Dennis at Dragon Leatherworks. Not only does he have good prices (his baseline custom holsters are about what you’d pay for baseline mass produced stuff), but he just worked with me on a problem with a purchase that was completely my fault.
(by the way, this means that there should be more actual content in the near future)
Last weekend, WizardPC and I went to the local state run rifle range. While I’ve been keeping up with my pistol shooting, I have to admit that I let my rifles collect dust.
He had recently inherited a Winchester 30-30 recently, and needed to try out his new .300blk AR with suppressor. I will have to say that the suppressed AR was all sorts of giggle worthy.
That said, I damn near hit the mag release on the AR while loading it like a n00b that doesn’t own 2 ARs and has put a good amount of rounds down range through them. Wizard, on the other hand, had sever issues getting the ammo shoved into the loading gate of the Winchester. I will say that we both did well with the bolt guns we brought…
Remember years ago when Wizard introduced me as a guy that’s more into old guns while he’s more up on the modern stuff? Yeah… apparently things haven’t changed too much.
I’m sure most of you know about the guy that got shot for waving a gun (which turned out to be a BB gun) around at the US Capitol last week. Turns out that the man was a “minister” from my neck of the woods, and our local paper ran a front page article on him this past Saturday.
The article details a life that would be unbelievable if it was fiction.
So, if anyone tries to prop him up as a “Responsible gun owner,” you can tell them that he had a BB gun, not a real firearm, and had a long history of mental instability, up to and including being declared innocent of “inappropriate correspondence with a minor” due to insanity and was institutionalized for a short time.