What Was That About Not Stopping the Signal?

The quote from the movie Serenity in 2005 has become better known than the movie itself - although the exact quote varies depending on who wants to use it.  Quotes showing it vary from "You can't stop the signal, Mal" to "They can't..." and sometimes just "can't stop..." which happens to be the way the quote is reproduced at IMDB, as close to official as it gets.

We have a good example of this emerging related to the ATF's recent frame/receiver ruling, with story linked by Tom Knighton at Bearing Arms.  Tom links to a story on Vice which seems frustrated with the fact the laws didn't instantly shut down the ability of hobbyists to make their own guns. 

But barely a few weeks into the new regulatory regime, the firearms industry has already adapted and scored an early legal victory. And gun enthusiasts have created and released open-source blueprints for a simple plastic tool that offers a relatively quick, easy—and apparently legal—workaround for anyone who still wants to build an untraceable weapon.

Hmm.  A simple plastic tool that can serve as the drilling jig for an unfinished pistol.  Distributed open source, maybe for the 3D Printer fans.  Made to finish the "Mock Glocks" from Polymer 80.  Like this one at DefCad?   

A prototype two-sided jig.  As with everything you run into in the open source printer file market, there's always a chance it's not going to fit with the one you want to make, so look into it more. 

Almost from the start of reviewing the rules my gripe as been the law says "readily converted" but the way the ATF goes after companies, what they really mean is "convenient."  They went after Polymer 80 for selling a “Buy Build Shoot Kit” kit that could be assembled into a firearm with work and skill on the builder's part, declaring it to already be a gun.  Then they went further into the land of insanity saying Polymer 80 couldn't sell just the plastic frame and then sell you the other half of the kit later; you have to work harder than ordering two items from the same seller. 

This turns the question into how inconvenient does ATF want the process to be?  Is it acceptable to order the frame from Polymer80 and the parts to complete it from Midway USA?  Do we need to order the internal parts as one part per vendor; buying from 10 or 20 vendors instead of just one?  How about if between every step we have to go run around the block?  What's that, ATF?  Between every step we need to crawl across Death Valley on our hands and knees? 

Predictably, the suits against the ATF started immediately and some of them have had rulings already. 

The ATF’s new rule has also faced legal challenges. On Sept. 2, a federal judge gave an early victory to a company called Tactical Machining, which manufactures frames for AR-style rifles and says they could be forced out of business because of the changes. The lawsuit, VanDerStok v. Garland, claims the ATF did not follow the proper rulemaking process. While implementation has been allowed to proceed nationally, Tactical Machining won a ruling that says they are likely to eventually prevail and that a “weapon parts kit is not a firearm.”

Tactical Machining has been impacted by the new ruling, but is working as best they can.  They have a letter from the ATF that says as long as they don't sell the jig to complete the receiver alongside the uncompleted receiver, they can continue to sell them.  

A gun of any kind is not a concept, it's a solid, very palpable thing.  Saying the same collection of components purchases together is a gun but bought spread out in time or from different vendors flies in the face of that.  It's illogical and stinks of them saying, "this is the definition because we say so."  Thankfully at least some federal judges seem to have a bit more sense about this.  Maybe these laws are going to be trashed.  It will be a long process, but this is encouraging so far.

A completed P80 pistol with the 3D printed jig.  Photo by the creator of the jig, Mr. Snow. Makes.

Falling for Misinformation

I don't think anyone will be surprised if I say we're surrounded by an incredible amount of misinformation.   It seems every aspect of life has become politicized and gets used to raise emotions on one side or the other.  

I learned earlier in the afternoon that I had been suckered by one of these.  I saw this Tweet posted as truth and just believed it without questioning.  

Unlike me, one of the rare, real reporters out there (this one from Reuters) fact checked it with The Atlantic.  A spokesperson said it was fake.

“I can verify that this is not a real article from The Atlantic, and is indeed fabricated,” said Anna Bross the Senior Vice President of Communications at The Atlantic.

It would be easy to ask why such a silly story would be so easy to believe, but the answer to that is so obvious it doesn't need to be asked.  The commercial media is so completely in the tank for Biden we expect this sort of nonsense.  

Besides, it's not like the anti-Biden side didn't milk an entire five days worth of news out of the story that he fell off a bike.  My reaction to the fake story was to think it was an absurdly low bar to praise Biden for and that anyone over the age of 10 has probably internalized the "pick yourself up, dust yourself off, start all over again" idea (to borrow a line from a song I grew up with).   Besides; I'm a roadie cyclist who rides with those pedals that lock your foot to them.  While learning how to ride those I fell so often that if falling and getting back up was "heroic," I should have gotten the Congressional Medal of Honor.

---

Speaking of this sort of reaction to a Tweet brings this one to mind.  

About a week ago, this caused a minor panic and I remember seeing that the Green Tip ammo had jumped in price right after the news broke.  

A couple of days later, GAT Daily did a story in a bit more depth.  It's a "Natzo fast, Guido" situation. 

The truth here is that Lake City, contractually under the control of Winchester, has been notified it will no longer sell M855/SS109 produced in excess of the military's needs to the public.  Get that?  They're being told that if they overproduce ammo made to that specification they can't sell it.  But they don't produce that - or, at least, not much of it.  The military has been phasing it out for over a decade.

The US Army started switching to the M855A1 version back in 2010.  In February 2011 it was reported M855A1 was being used more than legacy M855. The Marine Corps also started shooting it in 2010 with a purchase of 1.8 million rounds, adopting it officially in 2018, replacing its MK318.

The Military’s “need” for M855 is over.

The GAT Daily article speculates that the only M855 that Lake City may be producing is for export to allies.  

This policy is telling them they can't sell excess of something they're not even making.  It should have no impact at all.   

Now I have to admit I'm not as sure of this one being wrong as the Atlantic tweet, because this was written by one guy, the editor at GAT daily, and doesn't seem to be cross checked.  That said, it seems to be that overreaction to a news story is what's driving both of these stories.

The Only News I'm Seeing Out of SHOT Show

The only news I'm seeing out of this year's SHOT show that means much to me, is that Defense Distributed has updated their Ghost Gunner 3 in anticipation of ATF outlawing home made guns in the coming months.   The upgrade allows the GG3 to produce full lower receivers from aluminum bar stock that can be bought from any metal dealer, which they're calling Zero Percent Receivers and highlighting with this color web site tagged, "The age of zero has arrived."

The video on the right is a commercial visible here.

The Ghost Gunner concept, and GG3 is really the third version of this machine, is a small CNC milling machine that has been specifically designed to machine bigger and bigger portions of a firearm receiver.  In making a dedicated machine, their emphasis was to make the machine require as little machining experience from the operator as possible.  The user puts the piece that's going to be cut in the machine and backs off while the machine homes itself, finds its starting points and goes through the G-code step by step until a receiver is finished.  The current website says it will produce AR-15, AR-308, AR-9 and 45, an AR00 (a new one on me), Polymer80, and 1911 receivers.  It will also do engraving and other common jobs for light milling machines.  

Let me show you a graphic from their GG3 page and point out something. 

Showing a square bar of aluminum alloy and three more steps in the machining process down in the front, you'll note that none of those have the general shape of the finished receiver shown in the machine behind them and that you're familiar with.  While I haven't seen it talked about explicitly, my conclusion is the work envelope of the machine isn't big enough to cut all of the features on a piece as big as the AR lower in the machine.  Looking around the website, I see that they sell kits of parts to complete your receiver, including one that looks like this:

There are two parts there; the big one appears to be the "lower part of a lower receiver" after it has been made into two pieces so that it fits in the machine's work envelope.  The bottom of that piece, on the table top, is the bottom of what you're familiar with as the receiver.  To produce the receivers they can produce, they could either make the machine bigger and more expensive, or they could redesign the receiver so that it can be done in two pieces and assembled with hardware.  (The other, smaller part is the buffer tube mounting ring, which apparently screws onto the other half.)

There's nothing wrong with doing this.  It might all be in the direction of a good compromise, but the elephant in the room here is that this isn't like any other AR lower on the market.  That means that you won't be able to get parts from any other source for this receiver.  Hopefully, they'll have designed it so that standard drop-in triggers, bolt carrier groups, and all those others will work with this.

Defense Distributed, the company behind the Ghost Gunner machines and all of this is the company originally founded by Cody Wilson.  Cody is still associated with the company, and while I don't know what his official title is these days, he's clearly high on the food chain based on the interactions in this 15 minute video released to be in time with SHOT.  This whole jump into producing firearms from metal bar stock is based on the belief that the rule making proposals BATFE was pushing through last summer are about to become law and the whole personally made firearms support industry is going to collapse while everything is reclassified.  At the time, many joked if they outlaw 80% arms then there will be 75% receivers, and if that doesn't work there will be 70% receivers and so on.  I can see sales being effectively outlawed until parts are reconsidered.

Somewhere in there, it assumes there's some reasonableness in the agency, which isn't a safe bet.  After all, what the whole push seemed to be about was outlawing anything that's convenient.  If buying a Polymer80 "Buy Build Shoot kit" was a problem but buying the Polymer 80 body from one place and the Glock parts from somewhere else wasn't, they just wanted to make your life difficult.  Wilson is jumping over that hurdle by assuming there will be no such thing as completing an 80% lower again.  In which case, get a small milling machine and be prepared to make everything.  I'd like GG3 to be a bit bigger and more powerful, but there's that whole "picking a price point" argument that says the more expensive they are, the fewer people will get one.

An Old Graybeard Story

When I'm not blogging, machining, 3D printing, playing in the ham shack or doing things related to those hobbies, I've been reviewing the ATF's Notice of Proposed Rule Making 2021R-05.  That's the one changing definitions of frames and receivers along with trying to greatly curtail the ability to make "Privately Made Firearms" or PMFs.  My intent is to put together as coherent an argument as I can, so I tend to have the NPRM open and a document in Libre Office in which I'm collecting thoughts.  

This leads to an Old Graybeard story.

The whole thing is reminiscent of the effort to stop the FCC from permitting the use of a bad technology back in the early part of the '00s.  The technology was called Broadband over Power Lines, or BPL, and it was a boneheaded idea if ever there was one.  The concept was to take broadband Internet to the homes and instead of putting it over cable TV coaxial cable or Fiber Optics, they were going to use the power grid.  The amount of bandwidth a signal takes is related to the data rate; it's not 1:1 like a 10 Megabit per second line doesn't necessarily take 10 MHz, but in the "you don't get something for nothing" world of engineering, the 10 to 20 Mega Bits per Second signals they were talking about delivering, would take up essentially the entire HF spectrum.  

This was being sold to solve some imaginary problem of lack of broadband into rural areas.  Except the powerline technology isn't compatible with HF signals. Transformers are integral to the AC power grid, stepping voltages up and down over and over again.  These things work at 60 Hz; they won't pass the HF signals.  Every. Single. Transformer would need to have data jumpers around it, the system would need signal processing like amplifiers and filters all over. 

There are many things wrong with the concept besides the hardware problems.  The HF spectrum is allocated internationally and there are many services in there.  Marine radio, commercial aviation, military services, industrial uses, international broadcast and ham radio are just some of the things you hear in HF.  This threatened to wipe those services out near powerlines, which is virtually everywhere in the country.  As a country, we're signatories to several treaties that would obligate us not to interfere with anyone else in the world.

I spent a long time responding to the NPRM from the FCC as just myself; so did the company I retired from.  Since HF receiver design was one of my specialties, I was much more familiar with the reality of those signal levels in that chunk of spectrum, and it was instantly apparent they were going to seriously interfere with every single occupant of the shortwave spectrum.  Not just hams but aviation, broadcasters, military, everyone. Conversely, ham transmitters could render the BPL system useless, too.

"Word on the street" was that the head of the FCC (Colin Powell's son Michael) was in the pocket of industry so it wasn't surprising the FCC made it legal.  They exempted certain frequency bands, notably where their own monitoring stations were located, and a few other government frequency bands.  They allowed other users to sue to shut down the BPL providers and the providers decided fairly early on they'd be facing bankruptcy from lawsuits and quietly went elsewhere in the spectrum. (My interpretation).  Today, long distance/wide area BPL is gone and all that remains are some things that work over the powerlines in your house. 

So what does that have to do with the ATF NPRM?

The lesson that I got out of that experience was the FCC was going to do it regardless of what anybody else said.  The NPRM step was something they had to do because the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946 says so.  They collected the thousands of comments against the idea and threw them out. 

To be fair, I've seen honest NPRMs from the FCC in the years since.  The FCC has accepted expert testimony from the ARRL or from groups of amateurs and modified proposed rules.

In the case of the ATF, it's hard to believe they'll respond to comments and improve the rules.  I've never seen them be even as "sorta sometimes reasonable" as the FCC.  I don't see why I'm bothering to work at it, but I just can't not do it.  We can't just say, "whatever you say, Master" to them.  Maybe a massive ground swell of opposition might have an effect. 

 

 

What's the Deal With The Honey Badger AR Pistol?

Back in August, the story got out that the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (BATFE - motto, "Making It Up on the Fly Since, Well, Forever") had notified a company called Q, LLC that their AR Pistol, called Honey Badger, was a short-barreled rifle and therefore regulated under the National Firearms Act (NFA) subject to the $500 tax and absurd waiting period.  BATFE sent a "cease and desist" letter to Q that included warnings for their customers. 

To get into what all those terms mean would take a thousand words, but to many readers who drop by here, they're familiar words and concepts.  I'd take a bet that a lot of people are saying something like, "it looks like any other AR pistol.  WTF??"  To make things even less clear, the BATFE has put their "cease and desist" order on hold, allegedly to get some sort of backing from someone higher.

Here's the short version. The NFA in 1934 created an arbitrary definition of a rifle and a pistol that depended on size and how you hold it. Suddenly, rifles with 12 or 14" barrels that used to cost $50 or less, required a $500 tax stamp. The difference was that a rifle was braced against the shoulder while a pistol was handheld.  A rifle (or shotgun) was required to have a barrel longer than 16".  A pistol wasn't.  When AR caliber pistols started to become available, they weren't allowed to have a foregrip, as you'll see on tons of ARs, but people found the recoil of the pistol uncomfortable to manage.  After the brace was invented, the BATFE essentially said if the brace is held against the shoulder, the pistol is magically transformed into a short barreled rifle.  Then they said, no, never mind. 

I'd highly recommend that if you have questions about how we got where we are, or you just want to hear some solid commentary from Alex Bosco at SB Tactical who actually invented the Pistol Stabilizing Brace ® and Michael Bane, listen to Michael Bane's podcast .  It's about an hour but worth it. 

Bane starts with the observation that this could be an attack on Donald Trump by insiders at the BATFE.  Holdovers put in place by Eric Holder.  It's no secret that there are anti-gun forces in the ranks of the BATFE.  This could be their attempt to drive a wedge between gun owners and Trump to help get Biden elected, so they can start to enact the destruction of the second amendment.  From what both of them say, the wedge appears to be working. 

According to Alex Bosco, the BATFE is telling him they're defining weapons according to the old line about pornography: "We'll know it when we see it." They're making the law as obscure and impossible to understand as can be.  They're implying that if you make any modification to a gun that crosses some imaginary line that they won't tell you about, they'll subject you to the $10,000 fine and years in prison.  Maybe you put a red dot on you AR pistol, or a scope; never mind that you can put those on any handgun, you've made your AR pistol into a rifle so you're going to federal prison.

Tyrants love that sort of power.  Having some familiarity with the 80% lower concept and happenings, it seems to me the BATFE has always tried to make every ruling as muddy and unclear as possible.  The better to entrap you with.

About the Remington Dissolution

I can't claim to be a Remington collector per se, but I have a couple of Remington rifles.  My Nylon 66, the “plastic fantastic” .22LR that was my family's gun when I was 14 and became mine a decade later.  And I have a Remington 700 in .30-06, that I bought during the life of this blog.  Remington bought DPMS after I bought my DPMS LR-308, and ended up buying Marlin after Mrs. Graybeard bought her Marlin 336.  I've written about all of these many times.

 

But that's not really why I'm here. 

 

Because I have few Rugers around here, our "his and hers" 10/22s and my Ruger Precision Rifle, I'm on the Ruger mailing list.  I got the email in which they described their portion of the Remington sale, buying the Marlin brand, physical inventory and intellectual property.  DPMS has been sold to JJE Capital, reported to be the parent of Palmetto State Armory.   

 

 But that's not really why I'm here, either.  

There has been a lot column space devoted to attacking Cerberus and that sort of private equity firm as well.  First I saw was J.Kb down at Gun Free Zone about the immorality and destructiveness of that sort of business.  Today, Peter Grant at Bayou Renaissance Man ran the same basic subject.  

I'm not here to defend them, because I also think the private equity firms that do the things they do are scumbags.  More politely, they're sharks let loose in a pod of bait fish.  However (you knew that was coming!) I'm not here to say private equity firms need to be shut down and never allowed to operate.  Remington management themselves are not without blame.  Remington management, and I mean their management back before 2007 when they were attacked, chummed up the shark by bleeding money in the water.  

I don't know the complete history that led to Cerberus buying Remington, but like sharks and most predators, private equity companies don't chase down the healthiest and most nimble prey.  They prey on the weak.  It's the first duty of a CEO to protect the company.  The balance is that the healthy and excellent companies will get merger and acquisition offers all the time.  It's up to the board of directors and the stockholders (if any) to accept or decline those offers.  Predators like Cerberus prey on companies that need money and don't have anywhere else to get it.  Companies need money urgently, like most of us, when something completely unexpected happens or when a bunch of things we thought we could get by with don't get by.   

If the alternative is to have big government decide which companies can merge, and thereby which companies can exist, that's a much worse scenario than private equity companies taking down the weak.  Managers should know the private equity companies are a threat to their existence and manage their companies to not be targets for them. 

But, hey, what do I know?  I'm just some dood with a blog.  And I observe the world around me.  I've seen companies start, companies fail, and companies last long times.  Just as not everyone can graduate on top of their class, not every manager is above average.  Companies run by better managers do better.  

About That Other Topic Sucking Up My Attention

In a comment to my post about concealed carry insurance, John Galt posted this link to a graphic created over at Sniper Country that compared most of the plans.  I used that graphic as the starting point for my own spreadsheet, which was not done in as pretty a format as Sniper Country's.  I checked as much data as I could on their graphic because it was dated December of '19 and I wanted to make sure it was still accurate.  Then I expanded their graphic.  That was because they only listed one option from the providers that had several tiers of coverage to choose from.  In all cases, it was the company's top of the line (most expensive but highest benefits) coverage.  It didn't take too long for me to realize that it would be a ton of work to list every option from every seller.  On top of that, not every provider lists their coverages in a straightforward way that makes it feasible to get the information I want.     

Without further setup, let me show you a screen capture of the full spreadsheet; click it to embiggen it:

This is a 1568x924 sized jpeg so hopefully legible to everyone interested. I've expanded the original four columns to eight, adding a second column for a lower level service at CCWSafe, a column for 2nd Call Defense and two columns for USCCA, expanding it from one to three. 

Interpreting legalese and advertising isn't the most straightforward thing in the world, but I tried. 

There were questions that I simply can't answer.  The very first question, by BladeRunner1066 was:

Is this "insurance" listed with your state insurance commissioner? Do you have a legally enforceable contract?

I believe the only company in this list that's an insurance company is 2nd Call Defense, although the USCCA might be insurance as well.  The others are agreements for law services.  They seem to work (extrapolating off the end my data, so beware!) much like cost sharing services that have sprung up for medical costs.  They pool the monies they get in fees for membership and whatever else, then use that to pay for the services.  The companies all have lists of excluded states they can't operate in.  That question is probably closer to the bottom of the ones I'll ask.

An anonymous comment asked:

- Would Zimmerman be covered?
- Would the two lawyers in St. Louis be covered?
- Would Rittenhouse be covered for going and looking for trouble and finding it?
- Would whatshisname the recent restaurant owner be covered?

All I can tell you is what I've read.  As I always I say, I'm not a lawyer, I'm some dood with a blog.  I saw nobody bragging about covering Zimmerman and I'd think the other cases are too new to be in their ads.  If I'm remembering properly, Zimmerman was acting as some sort of unofficial guard (that is, not a "real," licensed, bonded, private security company) in his community and that has got to change the odds of his having an armed encounter.  I can't imagine workers in a security company would have the same insurance and pay the same rates as armed civilians. 

My impression, because this is the way the companies seem to talk, is that their model is the one on one interaction where someone is on their property in some way (house, car, yard, you name it) and another person or persons tries armed robbery, armed home invasion, something like that.  Those are relatively straightforward classic self defense cases.  It seems to me that anything going on in these riots has to be pushing the boundaries of what any of our insurance plans pay for, from homeowner's to car insurance to anything. 

Another Topic Sucking Up My Attention Span

While the temptation to wax eloquent over the Notorious RBG is at least as tempting as jumping headlong into a patch of poison ivy, growing in a fire ant mound, while nekkid, I have other things on my mind.  After watching or reading someone's take on the new environment we find ourselves in, I find myself trapped in the morass of looking into self defense/concealed carry insurance policies.  

You might expect there to be a spreadsheet involved, and there should be.  I just haven't progressed to that point because it's not even clear enough to me how to compare some of the plans.   

Let me give a short summary of what I've found, and if any of you have worthwhile input, please fire away in the comments!  Same goes for if you know of options I don't have here.  With any luck, this might prove to be helpful to others. 

To begin with, there seems to be a couple of approaches to the whole business.  One appears more like conventional insurance; they have a list of benefits and expense amounts that they'll cover up to like you might read in your medical insurance plan.  The example that I found first is Second Call Defense - as in the number you call after you call 911.  They plainly list out coverages, like this:

Immediate Cash for Bond up to $5,000*
Immediate Attorney Retainer up to $5,000
Aftermath Site Clean-up up to $1,000
...
Legal Protection - Criminal
Criminal Defense Protection up to $50,000
...
Legal Defense & Indemnity - Civil
Accidental Shooting Protection up to $50,000
Civil Suit Defense Protection up to $500,000
Civil Suit Damages Protection up to $50,000

That's a snippet, not everything they say.  There are different levels of protection for differing premiums.  I don't see anything about a deductible, but I see those limits as hard numbers.  Say you end up getting charged in a criminal case: they'll pay a retainer to an attorney of up to $5,000 and the most they'll pay for your defense is $50,000.  If your defense costs add up to $75,000, the other $25k is out of your pocket. 

The larger number of plans (at least, plans I've found so far) aren't insurance and don't list maximums they'll cover.  The big names are probably CCWSafe and the Armed Citizens' Legal Defense Network.  CCWSafe is endorsed by Andrew Branca of The Law of Self Defense and probably best known for his book by the same name.  CCWSafe's website includes this note in the description of their various plans:

Note that our company is a legal service subscription plan - not an insurance company - and we are therefore not bound to conflicts and issues related to insurance company products. CCW Safe is designed to indemnify the expenses arising from a covered incident, regardless of the final trial outcome.

 Their description of coverage says things like:

• Access to our 24-hour Emergency Hotline
• Critical Response Team onsite response
• Bail coverage to $500K
• Vetting of attorneys by National Trial Counsel
• Unlimited attorney fees covered upfront
• Unlimited investigation fees covered upfront
• Unlimited expert witness fees covered upfront

Again, just a snippet.  

Just as CCWSafe is associated with giant legal name, the Armed Citizens' Legal Defense Network (ACLDN) is associated with Marty Hayes.  They appear to be run by a board consisting of recognized leaders in self-defense training including Massad Ayoob, and John Farnam.   

Like CCWSafe, they say they're not an insurance company, but it's difficult to see exactly what you get for your annual membership.   Yes, they'll help with bail; yes, they'll set you up with a network attorney, and so on, but they're not relatively simple direct statements like CCWSafe's.

If you read here regularly, you've probably seen in the right column that I'm a long time member of Florida Carry, a group dedicated to lobbying and trying to influence the state legislature to do the right things.  Florida Carry recommends U.S. LawShield.  They appear to be a network of attorneys, and I find it difficult to find what their benefits are, too.  Their website simply says:

• 24/7/365 Attorney-Answered Emergency Hotline
• Unlimited civil & criminal defense litigation coverage
• Coverage for all legal weapons

They won't tell me more if I don't register on the website, and I object to that.

Finally, there is a program from the US Concealed Carry Association (USCCA), called SHIELD.  They have several levels of program for presumably increasing premiums/costs: Gold, Platinum, and Elite.  For example their lowest level lists these benefits:

• $100,000 in Self-Defense SHIELD protection for criminal defense, bail bond funding and attorney retainer
• $500,000 in Self-Defense SHIELD protection for civil defense and damages
• Retain your existing criminal defense attorney or choose one from the USCCA Attorney Network
• Protection following the self-defense use of all legal weapons of opportunity
• Up-front funding for criminal defense and bail bonds
• 24/7/365 access to the USCCA Critical Response Team hotline

While I'm not a member of USCCA and this is just a gut feel, I've always gotten the impression that this insurance is one of a couple of their reasons for being.  They regularly have gun giveaway contests to pad their mailing list and I unsubscribed to reduce the amount of SPAM I get every day.  

All of them emphasize education and training.  All of them have some training-related benefits in their coverages including books, videos, podcasts, seminars and more.    

What say?  There will be a spreadsheet, and I promise to post it.  

My summer, shorts-and-fishing shirt carry Sig P238.

Glass Half Full or Glass Half Empty - the Other Side

As counterpoint to yesterday's piece with an optimistic tone about the coming year and next decade, you really don't have to look very far.  Frankly, you have to look harder to find optimism than pessimism.

Let's start with the big one; the one on everybody's mind: Virginia. This is where people most think that our cold civil war is most likely to go hot.

• For the Slow Learners at Aesop's Raconteur Report
• The Virginia Flashpoint: a clear and present danger? at Bayou Renaissance Man
• How Virginia Democrats would destroy the USA  by Don Surber
• The 2020 Virginia Showdown by Matt Bracken on American Partisan

That's plenty of reading.  It's hard not to notice while reading the comments that, to quote Peter (Bayou Renaissance Man):

It worries me more than words can say that we've got people not merely casually tossing around the idea of civil war, but actively trying to foment it, on both sides of the political aisle. 

When both sides refuse to back down, that's the definition of conflict.  It's hard not to conclude the Republic is irreparably broken, and the next step is dissolution into open warfare.  It doesn't have to be but if both sides keep pushing for it, it will happen.

Back on my New Year's eve piece, I like to Borepatch's Thoughts on what's past, and what's ahead. Borepatch doesn't even mention Virginia until nearly the end, but brings up lots of the things on my mind.  Here, he's quoting from Free-Man's Perspective in a piece, “Government Against the People: It Gets Worse In the Late Stages.”

Let me be clear on this: Once ruling hierarchies get beyond a certain point, they cannot be reformed. And I am sure that the modern West is beyond that point.

• Do we really believe that central bankers will just lay down their monopolies?
• Can we seriously expect a hundred trillion dollars of debt to be liquidated without any consequences?
• Do we actually believe that politicians will walk away from their power and apologize for abusing us?
• Do we really think that the corporations who own Congress will just give up the game that is enriching them?
• Does anyone seriously believe that the NSA is going to say, “Gee, that Fourth Amendment really is kind of clear, and everything we do violates it… so, everyone here is fired and the last person out will please turn off the lights”?

All of this, and more, has been regular blog fodder around here.  Looking at the first two, I've been saying that I can see an economic collapse coming literally since the first post on this blog - almost 10 years ago.  I've advocated for a return to a gold standard - or at least one based on real commodities that can't be created in virtually infinite amounts on a whim.

So where are we?  What are these things saying?  I sure don't know.  Will Virginia turn into the shooting match that appears to be coming?  Don't know.  Will the US exist in 2030?  All I know is that with 100% certainty is that if the country is gone in 2030 the cause will absolutely have nothing to do with climate change.  Given the absolute truth that nobody can predict the future with absolute accuracy, I think you could do worse than listen to (read) Raconteur Report's “The 2019 Quincy Adams Wagstaff Lecture”

Wherever you're reading this, you've had unmistakable evidence that things aren't going to go all rosy. Perhaps ever again. Perhaps just for a long dark winter of the soul, and/or of the entire civilization. There has been more than one Dark Age period in human history, and they will happen again. You may very well get to see this firsthand, and experience life amidst it. Howsoever long or briefly.

Aesop goes on to talk about the value of trying to prepare for the variety of things that are coming.  Switching over to John Wilder, he points out:

Aesop mentions mental readiness, and that’s key.  The last 37 months have been, to put it mildly, an indication that we are headed towards a very uncertain future as the culture around us continues to polarize, as the monetary debt we face (all over the world) continues to mount, as soccer is still taken seriously as an international sport rather than a game for attention challenged three-year-olds, and as the international stability that was so hard won with the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War dissolves.

 

Glass Half Full or Glass Half Empty

I don't have to explain that; everyone knows the half glass of water witticism.  As a teen I would always frustrate the questioner by saying “it's just half a glass; you don't know if it's being filled or emptied so you can't know which one you're halfway to.”

What I'm referring to is the coming decade (pedants note: I didn't say we've started a new decade, yet), of course.  Is 2020 going to kick off the coming spicy time (horrible name, BTW, spicy food is good so spicy times ought to be good), or is it going to be the continuation of the way the world has gotten continuously better?  The last decade has seen a dramatic continuation of things getting better and the next decade should continue to see it as well.

Writing for Britain's Spectator magazine, Matt Ridley explained that the 2010s have seen "the greatest improvement in human living standards in history. Extreme poverty has fallen below 10 per cent of the world’s population for the first time. It was 60 per cent when I was born. Global inequality has been plunging as Africa and Asia experience faster economic growth than Europe and North America; child mortality has fallen to record low levels; famine virtually went extinct; malaria, polio and heart disease are all in decline." [Bold added:  SiG]

Ridley is a good guy to write a piece like this, published in the Spectator and excerpted at PJ Media because of a book he wrote about decade ago, The Rational Optimist.  Released in 2011, that was while the world was still in the depths of the 2008 crash, although starting to recover.  Reviewers thought he was crazy to be optimistic but many of his central claims have come to be the case.

Perhaps one of the least fashionable predictions I made nine years ago was that ‘the ecological footprint of human activity is probably shrinking’ and ‘we are getting more sustainable, not less, in the way we use the planet’. That is to say: our population and economy would grow, but we’d learn how to reduce what we take from the planet. And so it has proved. An MIT scientist, Andrew McAfee, recently documented this in a book called More from Less, showing how some nations are beginning to use less stuff: less metal, less water, less land. Not just in proportion to productivity: less stuff overall.

Doesn't quite fit in with what little Snippi Longstocking, Extinction Rebellion, and the other disaster-pr0n promoters tell us; but it's true.  In Ridely's native UK, their consumption of resources peaked around the turn of the century, Y2K, and has been in decline since.

The quantity of all resources consumed per person in Britain (domestic extraction of biomass, metals, minerals and fossil fuels, plus imports minus exports) fell by a third between 2000 and 2017, from 12.5 tonnes to 8.5 tonnes. That’s a faster decline than the increase in the number of people, so it means fewer resources consumed overall.

The most important progress was in the cost of production and delivery of energy, the lifeblood of pretty much everything.

The shale oil revolution from horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, which started in 2006 but peaked in the past decade, nearly helped make the United States a net energy exporter for the first time since 1953.
...
Before the shale oil boom, the U.S. was expected to become a big importer of liquified natural gas, but America now exports LNG to 36 countries, double the 18 countries at the beginning of the Trump administration. Shipping the gas to Europe has reduced the continent's dependence on Russia.

Not that I think CO2 emission are important, but Ridley points out that U.S. carbon emissions have declined this past decade, defying predictions that they would continue to increase.  Remember the Hoopla around Trump pulling the US out of the Paris Climate Accords - and now we're virtually the only nation actually meeting those targets?  It's that natural gas production.  Natural gas emits half as much carbon as coal, and it generated 35 percent of U.S. power in 2018, the most of any source. Coal, meanwhile, dropped from 45 percent in 2010 to 25 percent in 2019 — and it is projected to drop still farther to 22 percent next year.

Turning back to the reduction in use of resources:

If this doesn’t seem to make sense, then think about your own home. Mobile phones have the computing power of room-sized computers of the 1970s. I use mine instead of a camera, radio, torch, compass, map, calendar, watch, CD player, newspaper and pack of cards. LED light bulbs consume about a quarter as much electricity as incandescent bulbs for the same light. Modern buildings generally contain less steel and more of it is recycled. Offices are not yet paperless, but they use much less paper.

I think a clue to the decline in use of resources is the collapse of the recycling movements.  First off, as I've said many times, it's not possible to create a market for something by fiat.  Someone can't just say those empty food cans in the garbage stream can be used to make something, and create a market for it.  A resource is worth exactly what a willing buyer will pay for it and the reality is that most cities, counties and other government levels are finding they get far less for recyclables than collecting and processing them costs.  More is being dumped in the landfills.  When resources are in short supply, companies will be mining in the landfills; as the richest mines for iron, copper and other metals.  That's recycling running at full speed - for certain materials.  The fact that no mining company wants to mine in old landfills says that there's plenty of resources available and recycled garbage is more expensive than mining and refining ores.

The article at the Spectator or the excerpting at PJ Media are worth reading.  The obvious thing I see no mention of is personal freedom and liberty, a topic he's strangely quiet about.  What I'm doing here - and I suspect some of you realize this - is setting a table.  Tonight's buffet is optimistic; tomorrow's will be more toward the pessimistic side.  I think that our brains are hardwired to consider coming problems, simply from a survival advantage standpoint.  Reacting to a saber tooth tiger is easier and more successful when you're preventing or avoiding an attack than when the tiger has jumped you.  When everything is good, we look for those things that are out of place; the things that might go bad tomorrow and tend to focus on them.  

Final words to Tyler O'Neill at PJ Media.

This remarkable progress has not come equally, even though it has benefitted nearly everyone in the world. Millennials enjoy pervasive entertainment, fresh food, and many new kinds of job opportunities, but we struggle to achieve homeownership. High immigration levels, radical liberal policies, and the push toward identity politics have increased political tensions, just as prosperity has deepened and widened.

The 2010s were an objectively great decade, but they may not have felt like it. Whatever their political persuasions, however, Americans should look back on the past decade and appreciate the progress. They should also reject radical proposals that would reverse these heartening trends.

The Rising Attacks on DIY Guns

According to an article yesterday in the Ammoland Shooting Sports News, in the wake of the Santa Clarita, California high school shooting, the anti-gun forces seem to be cranking up attacks on so-called “ghost guns.”

The Hill is among news agencies reporting that California investigators determined that the pistol used by the 16-year-old shooter was “an unregistered ‘ghost gun’” that had no serial number, according to Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva.

“Ghost guns, also known as ‘kit guns,’ can be purchased online or at gun shows,” The Hill noted. “They do not have serial numbers, nor are they registered.”

Oooo!  A twofer!  They get ghost guns and gun show loophole by proxy.  Not surprisingly, all the reporting excerpted in the article show the same quality of information.

The Los Angeles Times is also repeating the terms in its reporting.

“The gun used in last week’s shooting at Saugus High School was assembled from parts, a so-called ghost gun without a registration number...
...
“The teenager who shot five classmates, killing two, at a Southern California high school used an unregistered ‘ghost gun,’” the Associated Press also reported.
...
the Seattle P-I.com is reporting that anti-gun Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson, who has sued the Trump administration 51 times over the past 3 ½ years, just obtained a summary judgement in federal court against a Texas company that had published data on the internet about how to construct a 3-D printed gun. The story said this: “A Texas anarchist and gun rights advocate, Cody Wilson, has made it a crusade to publish blueprints.”

They don't bother to mention that Cody hasn't been associated with Defense Distributed for more than 14 months, but that's just a start.  Those aren't registration numbers on a gun, they're serial numbers, and there's no absolute requirement that all guns have one.  There are millions of guns in the US that were made before the serial numbers became required.  As you know, facts don't matter to these wannabe tyrants.

It looks to writer Dave Workman at Ammoland that this is the start of an organized campaign to prohibit DIY guns, and the 80% lowers that are the common starting point (these guys seem to have made a wide selection of different platforms available, but I know nothing about them).  It seems to me that 3D printed guns scare them the most, and the anti-gun folks' main problem is that horse is already out of the barn.  In fact, that horse is so far out of the barn that it got out of the corral, and left the county.  

I don't remember where I posted this, but someone had a picture of an AR lower with a guy's face and his hand giving the reader the middle finger; it read "here's my serial number."  I countered that I've always said that I think it's better to make up a company name and a serial number for all guns you complete.  Don't call it a Colt or something they can check on, make up a company.  Nobody knows how many small shops make their own ARs from off the shelf parts, and nobody has a comprehensive list that's accurate for more than 15 or 20 seconds.  I figure making up a serial number takes less time than explaining to Officer Nahtso Friendly in a random traffic stop why you don't have or need a serial number. 

Here's mine: 

The serial number can be read as 10 001, meaning the first unit of the 2010, or maybe as week 10, unit 1, but I really intended it to be a negative number (-15) in two's complement as a geeky joke.  The company logo is also a joke.  My upper was from DPMS, and they use a fierce-looking panther for their logo.  So I turned the fierce looking panther into a goofy looking cartoon “puddy tat.”  I've told people at the range it was made by Moe Guns, whose company motto is “Who doesn't like owning Moe Guns?”  Nobody has challenged me.

Bottom line is that I don't think this could happen without a major political swing in the country, but I gotta believe that if one of those current Democrats running for the nomination got it and won the presidency, “hell, yeah, we're coming for your AR-15s” and this could happen.  If you've kinda liked the idea of finishing an AR from an 80% lower, but not today, it might not be too paranoid to buy an 80% lower or two.  Just to have on hand, just in case.  Right now, the prices are often lower than you'd pay for a finished lower when you count the FFL transfer cost on the finished one.  Pricing figures to go up if the market is shut down.

Does The Recent Roh Court Case Destroy Existing Laws on AR-15s?

Background: a few days ago, McThag posted a link to a CNN story about a case that I hadn't heard of against a guy from Southern Californina for manufacturing firearms by completing 80% lowers.  For the benefit of the few who are new and don't know the situation with 80% lowers, they are legally considered "not a gun."  Many writers call them a paperweight, but even that's too specific; they're just a hunk of metal.  BATFE rulings on the subject are that in the case of an AR-15, the lower receiver is the gun, and the act of machining one enough to complete the gun is manufacturing a firearm.  You can make some for yourself.  You can even sell ones you don't care about anymore, but if you do that a few times, they can and will charge you with manufacturing firearms without your FFL. 

Joseph Roh had a small shop and would, at first, finish 80% lowers for people who were willing to pay about $1000 for the service.  Presumably, people who'd pay $1000 for these lowers were people who couldn't pass the background checks to buy new guns from a shop.  Roh eventually automated the process so anyone could complete the the lower receiver's machining by pressing a "GO" button - after they paid $25 to join his gun club so that he could say he wasn't selling to the general public.

Roh's shop - CNN photo. The green button is on the box on the upper right, at the top of column of buttons next to the light colored area.

Seems like an open and shut case.  To the best of my knowledge, I can make a gun for myself, but if I do it for anyone else, that's manufacturing and I need a manufacturer's FFL.  That's where a big turn in the story takes place.

The judge in the case had issued a tentative order that, in the eyes of prosecutors, threatened to upend the decades-old Gun Control Act and "seriously undermine the ATF's ability to trace and regulate firearms nationwide."

A case once touted by prosecutors as a crackdown on an illicit firearms factory was suddenly seen as having the potential to pave the way to unfettered access to one of the most demonized guns in America.

Federal authorities preferred to let Roh go free rather than have the ruling become final and potentially create case law that could have a crippling effect on the enforcement of gun laws, several sources familiar with the matter told CNN.

The problem is that the BATFE's classification doesn't agree with Federal law on exactly what a receiver is, because the design of the AR splits those things between the upper and the lower receivers.

Under the US Code of Federal Regulations, a firearm frame or receiver is defined as: "That part of a firearm which provides housing for the hammer, bolt or breechblock, and firing mechanism, and which is usually threaded at its forward portion to receive the barrel."

The lower houses the hammer, and "firing mechanism" (the fire control group), but the bolt is located in the upper receiver.   The lower doesn't have a breechblock. 

US District Court Judge James V. Selna heard the case, after four years of wait, and deliberated on it for a year.  Last April, he issued his ruling stating that Roh was not manufacturing guns because completing the lower receiver doesn't turn it into a gun.

Selna added that the combination of the federal law and regulation governing the manufacturing of receivers is "unconstitutionally vague" as applied in the case against Roh.

"No reasonable person would understand that a part constitutes a receiver where it lacks the components specified in the regulation," Selna wrote.

Therefore, the judge determined, "Roh did not violate the law by manufacturing receivers."

The judge's tentative order also found that the ATF's in-house classification process failed to comply with federal rule-making procedures.

Cam Edwards at Bearing Arms adds that this is the second time Federal prosecutors have dropped charges against people over the definition of a receiver and the second time a Federal judge has essentially nullified the law.  In a word, the BATFE is terrified that they created a situation with no definition for which part of the AR-15 is the gun.

The first case was back in 2016, and involved a convicted felon named Alejandro Jimenez who bought a lower receiver in an ATF sting operation. After a judge ruled that the receiver wasn’t an actual firearm under federal law, the case against Jimenez was dropped.

Judge Selna did, however, find Roh guilty of selling firearms without a license, which carries a prison sentence.  The prosecutors and defense worked out a bargain; Roh would not go to prison "as long as he keeps his mouth shut" about the BATFE's receiver rules being wrong.  No, I made that part up.   

Sources familiar with the agreement said prosecutors wanted to strike a deal in order to prevent Selna’s order from becoming permanent, drawing publicity, and creating case law that could hamper ATF enforcement efforts.

Roh accepted the deal to avoid a permanent conviction — and possible prison time — for dealing firearms without a license.

So where does that leave the 80% lower world?   For that matter, where does that leave the law?  Hell if I know. 

What the rulings seem to be saying is that the AR platform with its regulated lower and unregulated upper is inconsistent with Federal law.  Since it's impossible to redesign the platform with millions of them already in peoples' hands, the solution is for congress to come up with a definition for the lower receiver that's workable.  That's going to be a giant ball of fail; congress never writes laws that require technical details because none of them are qualified.  On the other hand, if someone was to do things that the BATFE frowned on with some lower receivers, we have two cases that say they're going to quit before they get ruled against for all the marbles.  In the words of Dirty Harry, "do you feel lucky?"

80% lowers and 0% forgings posed in my shop. 

Today's Fun Fact

What's the life of a rifle barrel?  About five seconds.  I probably thought the same things you're thinking, so keep reading.

This comes from an article posted to Midsouth Shooters Supply's daily emails from author Glen Zediker.  Glenn is credited as follows:

The preceding is a specially-adapted excerpt from Glen’s book Top-Grade Ammo. Available HERE at Midsouth Shooters Supply. Visit ZedikerPublishing.com for more information on the book itself, and also free article downloads.

The five seconds comes from the total time the barrel is exposed to the hottest gases from the cartridge being fired and the life shouldn't be stated as 5.00 seconds; it's more like 4-6 seconds.  In principle, you could multiply the number of rounds you shot times the amount of time they're damaging the barrel (if you could know that!) and derive the barrel's life.  According to Zediker, barrel wear largely comes from throat erosion from being torched by the cartridge.

Wear in a barrel is virtually all due to throat erosion. The throat is the area in a barrel that extends from the case neck area in the chamber to maybe 4 inches farther forward. Erosion is the result of flame-cutting, which is hot gas from propellant consumption eating into the surface of the barrel steel. Same as a torch. There is very little wear caused from passage of the bullet through the bore, from the “sides” of the bullet, from friction or abrasion. The eroding flame cutting is at or near the base of the bullet.

There's a lot of mythology in shooting, and some of it centers on wearing out barrels.  On one hand, it makes sense.  If some guy hears from a buddy that cleaning his rifle with a combination of raccoon menstrual fluid and Dexron automatic transmission fluid will help his barrel live longer, it's hard for him to evaluate that.  To do a real test, he'd have to test few barrels with different cleaning solutions but keeping everything else as close to identical as possible.  Take the handful of barrels to the range every trip, put the same number of rounds of the same load ammunition through the bunch, and so on.  People generally find something that works for them and stick with it.  If a trusted friend tells you some magic mix worked for them, it's reasonable to just use it.  There are so many variables that affect a long range shot that you simply don't have the time to experiment with all of them.

As a result we get things like “Is it true that using 110 gr. vs. a 150 gr. .308 bullet will extend barrel life because of its reduced bore contact?” and while the explanation is completely wrong, the lighter bullet will give better barrel life.  Not because of reduced bore contact, but because the lighter bullet accelerates faster and that reduces the time the flame cuts into the barrel.

The area a bullet contacts on the barrel has an effect, but because it relates to acceleration — greater area, more drag, slower to move.  Barrel twist also has an effect, but for the same reason — it takes longer for the bullet to spin up and get out of there if the twist is too high.  Yes, those black, "moly coated" lubricated bullets had lower friction and got out of the barrel faster, leading to less burning.

There are bullet design factors that influence erosion. A steady diet of flat-base bullets will extend barrel life. There’s been a belief for years and years that boat-tail bullets increase the rate of erosion because of the way the angled area deflects-directs the flame. And that is true! However, it’s not a reason not to use boat-tails, just a statement. We use boat-tails because they fly better on down the pike, and, ultimately that’s a welcome trade for a few less rounds. An odd and uncommon, but available, design, the “rebated boat-tail” sort of splits the difference and will, indeed, shoot better longer (they also tend to shoot better after a barrel throat is near the end of its life).

What about the common discussion about stainless vs. chromoly steel barrels in an AR?   Zediker's opinion is:

Stainless steel barrels will, yes, shoot their best for more rounds, but, chromemoly [sic] will shoot better for an overall longer time. Lemmeesplain: the difference is in the nature of the flame cutting effect on these two steels. Stainless tends to form cracks, looking like a dried up lakebed, while chromemoly tends to just get rough, like sandpaper. The cracks provide a little smoother surface for the bullet to run on (until they turn into something tantamount to a cheese grater). The thing is that when stainless stops shooting well it stops just like that. So, stainless will go another 10 to 15 percent more x-ring rounds, but chromemoly is liable to stay in the 10-ring at least that much longer than stainless steel.

 

It's an interesting article.  Competition and especially NRA High Power competition shooters have probably heard some of this, but I'm betting it was scattered around in several places.  Likewise Precision Rifle competitors.  I obviously haven't covered everything, so if it sounds interesting to you, go read! 

A Repost - Making an AR-15 Lower From Aluminum Cans

I originally posted this article back in September of '17.  It attracted a little attention, but in the stats I can access from Google, it's not particularly popular.  Nowhere near as popular as my AR from an 80% lower series.  Recently, I went to look up the post and found the video was gone.  It didn't take long for me to find that it had been replaced by a newer, better (and slightly longer) version.  I'm redoing this post to point that out and get him more views.  The difference: YouTube Demonetized him.

There are few 20+ minute videos that I've watched that haven't had me reaching to see if I could skip over some fluff. This one had my complete attention for all 23 minutes. Guncraft101 takes five pounds of saved aluminum cans and recycles them by melting and casting an AR-15 lower.


I've got to say his PPE (personal protection equipment) made me cringe a little, but that's the only thing I can be critical of.  Upper arm-length, heavy, leather gloves combined with shorts and bare legs while pouring molten metal is enough to make me cringe.  The rest of it is great stuff to know.

That said, I have to wonder if the metal would be useful for most things.  When you see things saying they're made from "Aircraft Aluminum" or an alloy like 6061-T6 or 7075, that's a specific recipe for alloying elements in specific proportions, and T6 is a specific heat treatment.  If I took a pound of 6061-T6 cutoffs and melted those down, instead of soda cans, I wouldn't end up with 6061-T6.  All metals are like this, really.  Steel, brass, aluminum, titanium or whatever, the properties you see depend on the ingredients (alloy) and how they're treated.  Anyone who has taken the mechanical engineering classes on materials has seen something like this iron/carbon phase diagram.  The different colors code for different microstructures in the steel, the temperatures and concentrations of carbon that lead to their formations.  There are similar curves for aluminum and its main alloying additions - silicon and magnesium in 6061 or zinc and magnesium in 7075, for example.

That said, an AR-15 lower has got to be pretty non-critical.  It's not just that plastic lowers are a thing, and can be bought in any quantity from an handful of companies, there's that guy who made one at home from HDPE - the plastic used to make kitchen cutting boards (and stopped by to visit here and comment once).  If HDPE works, it's probably not a high-stress application.

I've never done casting, but I've been collecting aluminum scraps for a few years now, and have a couple of large buckets full of them (they're from 34 pound buckets of kitty litter), and I could start putting soda cans in the mix at any time.  This is climbing my list slowly. 

Stop Practicing Shooting

That's the title of a thought provoking piece on The Street Standards back on 12/12.  If you don't know the blog, as I didn't, the author is Ralph Mroz, and according to his "About This Blog" page, he writes from the standpoint of having been involved in training for over 20 years.

I’ve been training in the self-defense disciplines for some time, writing about them for the major firearms and law enforcement  magazines since 1994, and even teaching them a bit at international law enforcement conferences.  I am the principal presenter in many of the Armed Response DVDs, and many of the video programs of the Police Officers Safety Association (I have no association with nor financial interest in either today).  My Paladin Press books are still, I think, largely  relevant and now free downloads here.  A position as a writer afforded me the opportunity to meet, train with, and pick the brains of many of the top people in the field.

Hat tip for the link to this blog post is to Michael Bane's Down Range Radio podcast, which I've been listening to for a long time - maybe the first podcast I ever listened to.  I recall listening to it on my October 2010 trip to Salt Lake City and was a regular listener then.  I'm not sure which episode it was, but somewhere from 601 to 603 and I think it was 601.

Now an instructor telling you not to practice shooting is more than a little strange, and Mroz conditions that recommendation by saying he's assuming you can already shoot reasonably well, where "reasonably well" is not defined as being "being able to put a full magazine into a half-dollar at ten yards at .20 splits".   It's just that in his view, and that of others he calls up for backup, American shooters prefer to train in shooting because that's the easy and fun part of all the training someone carrying for self defense should prepare for.  He makes a couple of points I found to be very impressive.

In the last month or so we've had more than one story where the "Good guy with a gun" was killed by police responding to an incident.  Around Thanksgiving, Hoover, Alabama police shot and killed Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford Jr., who was in the mall and allegedly with a gun in his hand.  Mroz says part of his motivation for the thoughts that led to the post was the December 6th shooting of 73 year old Vietnam vet Richard Black.  Black very appropriately shot a bad guy who had broken into his home and was trying to drown his grandson.  When responding Aurora, Colorado officers ordered him to drop his gun and he didn't, officers killed him.

Mroz started discussing the Richard Black shooting with South African trainer Marcus Wynne

In discussing this story with Marcus Wynne* he said (among other things): Some of my previous students in South Africa observed that American tactical training is for the most part not taken seriously in South Africa because we [Americans] focus too much on one tiny piece of the total problem.  I should note here that they have real crime in SA: real, violent, regular crime. 

From here, Mroz goes into this paragraph, followed by a list of 25 things we need to know or at least thought of and prepared for if we should ever have to pull that gun.  I'm going to list a few to give you a flavor of it, but as always, RTWT.

So, instead of doing the easy thing and buying another gun, or doing the fun thing and blasting away to shave a tenth off your splits, lets see what falls out from considering the (chronological) elements involved in surviving a violent attack:

1. You have to be focused enough to avoid potentially bad places, events, etc.
2. You have to have a gun with you.
3. You have to be aware enough of your surroundings to notice that something isn’t right.
4. You have to assess what’s not right to determine if it’s a threat.
5. You have to – in real time – decide if it’s a deadly force threat.
6. You have to act on the threat.  Most people freeze or don’t believe what’s actually happening.  You have to employ appropriate tactics such as moving, sheltering a loved one, etc.  Of course you have to be aware of your environment to make the best  choice here (see 1. above).
...
13. If you have to shoot, you have to hit the BG, preferably COM.
...
15. You have to communicate effectively with the now-shocked/hysterical bystanders to keep them safe, let them know what just happened, and make it clear that you – the guy that just shot someone – is in fact a good guy.
16. You have to get yourself and loved ones to safety.
...
22. You have to call your lawyer. Do you know who’ll you’ll call? Bail will come later.
23. You have to call your spouse, partner, parents, whomever, if they aren’t with you to let them know you’re OK and won’t be home for dinner. Or maybe for a few days. And to let them know that the press will soon be pounding on their door. And how to handle that, if you haven’t already discussed it.

I think it's entirely appropriate to copy down this entire list of 25 things, print it out, and seriously contemplate them.  Engineering nerd talking:  maybe list in a spreadsheet so you can score how complete you think you are, list if there's something you need to do and figure out when you're going to do it.

And yet, almost all American training focuses only on element 13.  That is, one out of 25+ things you need to be competent at to truly survive a violent encounter.  This out-of-whackedness has only gotten worse over the last 20 years.  One of the pioneers of civilian deadly-force encounter training, Massad Ayoob, did (and still does) teach almost all of these elements in his flagship course.  But almost no one else does, certainly not the plethora of young “trainers” these days with no real-world experience at all.  They can shoot (in some cases), but they aren’t teaching you how to survive: they don’t know how to; they don’t even realize that they aren’t.
...
So why do we (Americans) focus almost exclusively on just shooting? I submit it’s because, unlike our South African friends, the high level of safety in most of our country allows us to get away with it.

It's an interesting read.  Perhaps the most interesting aspect is that Marcus Wynne commented on the post, adding more content to all 25 lines and telling some stories from his time in South Africa.  (If you follow the link to his blog, you'll find he's a writer now.)

I've copied the 25 items into a Word document and am going to do what I said above.  Print it out, keep it somewhere prominent, and give it some time.  Yeah, a spreadsheet will probably be involved.  I'm not saying to cancel your "Tactical handgun 12" class, or give that sort of practice up.  There's nothing wrong with training to shoot more accurately faster, and there's nothing wrong with working on the skills of a competition shooter, but these things Ralph Mroz outlines need to be addressed, too. 

Mrs. Graybeard's Sig P238 Equinox and my Springfield XD-s 3.3 in 45. 

Shameless Pluggery Ahead

Pardon me if you've read this before, but reloading and shooting supply store Widener's has announced a new contest:

We are giving away “Free Ammo For A Year” to one lucky Widener’s fan. To win all they have to do is subscribe to our blog newsletter by following the link below: https://www.wideners.com/blog/ammo-for-a-year/

They're doing this to bring attention to their new blog, which (of course) is put up to keep people coming by the website.   

I thought I'd pass this on.  I've already entered the contest and in the interest of full disclosure, they're going to send me some ammo and enter me in another drawing for a Widener's gift card.  If memory serves properly, I've placed a couple of orders with Widener's in the past, but I've never been a very steady customer.  The same goes for pretty much every company in the market.