by David Calderwood

When it comes to choosing guns, thirty years of hits and misses has taught me that a gun I don’t like to shoot won’t accompany me to the range. Comfort is thus a key consideration when choosing a firearm.

Especially with handguns, accuracy is required for effect. Every handgun cartridge has documented instances where a determined attacker absorbed hit after center-of-mass hit and kept right on being a threat. The reality is that even someone with holes in their heart can keep going long enough to kill. Only solid hits on the central nervous system are decisive and instant fight-stoppers.

People who buy someone else’s favorite hand cannon (sorry for the offensive T-shirt in the link), shoot it a couple times and put it in a drawer to gather dust may not be helping themselves. It’s not much better if the shooter develops a flinch from anticipating recoil, muzzle blast or being hit by ejected cases from their gun.

For many, the answer lies in choosing guns that are not so powerful as to discourage practice. Among handguns a great example is the 9mm Luger. When loaded with 124 grain or 147 grain jacketed hollow points this cartridge typically performs well in gelatin testing.

There are many great gun designs (here, here, here, here, here, etc.) that chamber the 9mm. My favorites are theGlock and (cover your ears, Mr. Browning) and model 1911-A1.

The Glock pistol chambered for 9mm is simplicity itself, reliable, relatively easy to master, has magazines of capacities varying from 10 rounds to the 33-round version essential for battling zombie hordes (legality depending on where you live), and is surprisingly customizable.

1911-style pistols often have among the best triggers of all repeating firearms. Most 1911 pistols are chambered for the original 45 ACP cartridge, a wonderful round designed around military specifications set in the last days of the horse cavalry. It was intended to equal the 45 Colt revolver cartridge, useful for among other things shooting horses weighing half a ton from under their riders.

While there’s nothing wrong with a 45 ACP that shoots a 230 grain bullet at about 900 feet/second, the same gun chambered for the 9mm Luger, shooting a 147 grain bullet about 980 feet/second makes for a much more enjoyable experience. That often translates to more range time.

Until recently the 1911/9mm combination suffered from reliability problems; some would feed, fire, and eject without fail, many would choke periodically. One manufacturer, Springfield Armory, redesigned the magazine under the guidance of legendary competitive shooter Rob Leatham and now the1911 in 9mm is as reliable a combination as can be found.

Finding one is the problem. They remain rare although more companies are making them now than ever before (hereor here, for example). Some makers offer downsized versions of the 1911 (here, here, here), reduced to fit the smaller cartridge from the ground up. They’re quite pricey, but get rave reviews.

Regarding shoulder-fired guns, a good defensive carbine (a rifle with a shorter barrel and less powerful cartridge) can be just as good a fight-stopper as a shotgun at short range but contains a whole lot more rounds in the magazine, not to mention the carbine’s usefulness at longer ranges should the unusual need arise.

A breakthrough in this area is currently in process.

The effectiveness of a rifle bullet apparently has much to do with fragmentation. The “old” military load for the M16 was a 55 grain bullet moving about 3240 feet/second when it exited a 20 inch barrel. Within about 125 yards the bullet was still moving fast enough that upon hitting a person the bullet would break into two or more pieces and each fragment would sow a separate path of destruction through tissue and potentially hit an important anatomical target.

Recent changes toward shorter-barreled weapons and a heavier, longer bullet led to concerns about performance. Fragmentation occurred less often and only at shorter ranges due to the slower velocity of the bullet.

A “fix” that started within the Army was to develop a new cartridge that addressed the shortcomings of the 5.56 NATO round and improved upon the 7.62×39 cartridge fired by the AK-47. The result was the 6.8mm Remington SPC cartridge.

This new cartridge has seen its share of controversy and growing pains and its widespread adoption by the military is unlikely, but it is gaining a committed following among civilian shooters and hunters. In properly set up rifles (usually variants of the AR15) it hurls a bullet twice as heavy as the 5.56 NATO at nearly the same velocity when both are shot from handy 16 inch barrels. Depending on the specific bullet used, it offers fragmentation out to 300 yards and retains the ability to penetrate common barriers like car windows and doors.

The 6.8 shoots soft, carries up to 25 rounds in a magazine, is often exquisitely accurate, all in a design that is thoroughly proven and user serviceable. Its major drawbacks are ammunition availability and cost, with factory-loaded cartridges running around a dollar per shot (about the same as 308 Win and twice that of cheap 5.56 NATO FMJ practice ammo). Since I believe it’s folly to plan on fighting the Next American Revolution, I consider these issues negligible.

The 6.8 deserves serious consideration by anyone looking for a long gun. It is effective from zero to 300 yards, easy on the shooter’s shoulder whether being fired or carried, and customizable to most persons’ tastes and budgets, plus it meets one of the most important criteria of all: it is still fun to shoot after a couple of magazines’ worth of rounds are expended.

Examples of the 6.8 SPC AR15 are here, here, here, and here. These last three sell only the expensive part, which is the upper half of the rifle; the lower half of any AR15, regardless of manufacturer, simply snaps on and must be purchased through a licensed firearm dealer, for a total cost around $1,000 to $1,200.

One of the best aspects of the AR platform is how any home hobbyist can buy a quality strippedreceiver from a gun shop and mail order all the other parts to assemble one at home. When it comes to the 6.8 SPC, my strong preference would be to assemble the lower myself and buy a quality complete upper receiver from one of the firms with an overall rating of “A” on this chart.

Guns of other calibers have merit; I just wish I hadn’t spent so much money these past 30 years on guns I learned to dislike shooting. Give me a 9mm pistol or the newest 6.8 SPC any day.

by Gene Healy

It’s not hard to understand why President Barack Obama appalls supporters of traditional American liberties.

In the first six months of his presidency, he’s fought for radically expanded federal power, while asserting a quasi-royal prerogative to control the auto industry and pushing for a government takeover of the health care sector, as well as a cap-and-trade scheme that would regulate virtually every human activity that emits carbon dioxide.

But if you’re inclined to thank God for small favors, there’s this at least: Obama hasn’t yet proposed turning the U.S. military against American citizens. Last week, the New York Times revealed that the Bush administration seriously considered doing just that.

According to former administration officials, at a top-level meeting in 2002, Vice President Dick Cheney and his allies lobbied hard for sending U.S. troops onto the streets of a Buffalo, NY suburb to kick down doors and kill or capture a group of terrorist suspects, the so-called Lackawanna Six.

In that debate, Cheney relied on a legal memo by DOJ official John Yoo, who, because of his belief that the president could do no constitutional wrong, was sardonically dubbed “Dr. Yes” by Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Yoo’s memo insisted that neither the Fourth Amendment nor the Posse Comitatus Act, the longstanding federal statute that restricts the use of standing armies to keep the peace at home, could check the commander-in-chief’s power to use the military domestically.

To his credit, President Bush ultimately rejected Cheney’s scheme for a gratuitous show of force. The Lackawanna Six were arrested without incident by the FBI, and Americans were spared the kind of spectacle usually associated with militarized banana republics.

As Lackawanna’s police chief put it, “If we had tanks rolling down the streets of our city, we would have had pandemonium down here.”

There’s good reason to resist turning the machinery of war inward. From the violent suppression of strikers in the 19th century to the 1997 Marine Corps killing of an American high school student at the Mexican border, deviation from our tradition of civilian law enforcement has had grave consequences.

Even when it doesn’t lead to collateral damage, the use of standing armies at home can, as Jefferson put it, “overawe the public sentiment,” and acclimate Americans to a militarized home front inconsistent with democratic life.

The Times’ revelation is just the latest piece of evidence demonstrating the previous administration’s dangerous flirtation with domestic militarism. The Bush team repeatedly insisted that the Posse Comitatus Act was a dead letter when it came to using the Army for homeland security.

And in Katrina’s aftermath, Bush pushed through new exceptions to the act that, until they were repealed in 2008, gave him the power to fight a militarized federal war on hurricanes, declaring himself supreme military commander in any state where he thought emergency conditions warranted it.

Obama seems less inclined than his predecessor to reach reflexively for the military option at home. But unless it’s actively resisted, “mission creep” can lead to domestic militarism all the same.

The 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team was the first to fight their way into Baghdad, and last fall they became the first unit assigned to the U.S. Army’s domestic Northern Command to serve as “an on call federal response force” for natural disasters or terrorist attacks.

Initial statements–later retracted by the Defense Department–suggested that they’d have a hands-on law enforcement role, Posse Comitatus notwithstanding.

And the Pentagon recently announced plans for military task forces to work with FEMA in the event of a Swine Flu outbreak. How much we should worry about that depends on what tasks the soldiers will be assigned, and few details are available thus far. But it’s worth remembering that during 2005′s Avian Flu scare, Bush officials explored the idea of military-enforced quarantines, a disturbing prospect.

Perhaps, instead of relentlessly extending federal power over the economy and the environment, Congress could exercise its legitimate oversight functions, investigate whether these domestic military missions are needed, and ensure that they remain firmly within the law. Or would that be too much to ask?

by Massad Ayoob, Backwoods Home

“I want you to do an article on how to shoot a handgun accurately,” Dave Duffy told me. “Make it 2,500 or 3,000 words.”

Long ago, I would have answered, “Sure, and while I’m at it, how about a history of the world in, oh, 10,000 words or so?”

Nancy Crenshaw uses strong stance and technique to make up for lack of size as she turns in an excellent one-handed high speed performance with SIG 9mm.

Today, with more than 45 years of handgunning behind me (yeah, I’m old, but I started early, too) I realize that you actually can cover this topic in a fairly short article. The reason is found in the classic statement of Ray Chapman, the first world champion of the combat pistol. “Shooting well is simple,” Ray said, “it just isn’t easy.”

I’ll buy that. It’s true that the handgun is the most difficult of firearms to shoot well. There’s less to hang on to. There’s a shorter radius between the front and rear sight than with a rifle, meaning a greater unnoticed human error factor in aiming. You don’t have that third locking point on the shoulder that you have with a long gun’s butt stock.

And few handguns have the inherent mechanical accuracy of a good rifle.

That said, though, you can get the most of your handgun’s intrinsic accuracy by simply performing marksmanship basics correctly. If the gun is aimed at the target, and the trigger is pressed and the shot released without moving the gun, then the bullet will strike the mark. That simple. We need a few building blocks to construct this perfect shot, however. Let’s build the structure brick by brick.

This student demonstrates a strong Weaver stance at an LFI class. Feet are in proper pyramidal base, upper body is forward, and he is firmly grasping his .40 caliber Walther P99.

I teach my students a five-point “pre-flight check list” to go through before they fire the shot. As with any structure, you start from the bottom up. Those points are: 1) Strong stance. 2) High hand grasp. 3) Hard grip. 4) Front sight. 5) Smooth rearward roll of the trigger.

The “power stance”

I’ve found that stance is the one thing I’m likely to have to correct first, even when teaching the experienced shooter. The edgeways stance of the duelist is necessary for skateboarding or surfing, but counter-productive to good shooting. If one heel is behind the other, the body does not have good lateral balance and will tend to sway sideways. (The miss will most commonly go toward the strong hand side.) If the feet are squared off parallel, in the old “police academy position” so often seen on TV, the body does not have good front to back balance, and the shots will tend to miss either high or low, most commonly the latter.

You want to be in a fighter’s stance, a boxer’s stance, what a karate practitioner would call a “front stance.” The lower body needs a pyramidal base, a triangle with depth. If you are right handed and firing with your strong hand only, the pelvis wants to be at about a 45 degree angle vis-à-vis the target, with your left leg to the rear. If you are shooting two-handed and are right hand dominant, the hips still want that 45-degree angle but the left leg should now be forward and the right leg back. Now you’re balanced forward and balanced back, balanced left and balanced right. It’ll be easier to hold the gun on target.

In rapid fire, the shoulders want to be forward. This will get body weight in behind the gun and help control recoil. For very precise slow fire, some shooters like to cantilever the shoulders to the rear. This may make the gun seem to hang steadier with less effort, but it will cause the gun to jump up sharply upon recoil. This not only slows down your rate of sustained fire, but subconsciously, the more the muzzle jumped at the last shot, the more likely you are to jerk the trigger on the next one. Personally, I use the power stance with the shoulders at least slightly forward even in slow fire. Master shooters have a phrase that helps them remember this principle more easily: “Nose over toes.”

High hand grip, thumb curled down for strength, index finger at distal joint on trigger for maximum leverage. This is the grasp author used to win IDPA NH State Championship in 2003 with this stock service revolver, S&W’s .45 caliber Model 625.

High hand grasp

With a double action revolver, you want the web of your hand all the way up to the rear edge of the backstrap, as shown in the accompanying photos. With a single action frontier-style revolver with the plow-handle shape grip, you still want a high hand grasp. On a semiautomatic pistol, you want the web of the hand so high that a ripple of flesh is seen to bunch up behind the backstrap of the grip at the top edge, where the grip safety would be on a 1911 style pistol.

The higher the hand, the lower the bore axis. This means much better control of muzzle jump and less movement of the pistol upon recoil. Since most handguns, particularly semiautomatics, are designed to be shot this way, it means that you will find it easier to press the trigger straight back as you make each shot. If your hand is too low on the “handle,” a straight rearward pressure on the trigger will tend to pull the muzzle down, placing the shot low.

With a proper high hand grip on an auto pistol such as this Wilson Custom CQB .45, you’ll see this “ripple of flesh” behind the grip tang.

A semi-auto is designed to operate as the slide moves against the abutment of a firmly held frame. A low grasp allows the muzzle to whipsaw upward from recoil as the mechanism is automatically cycling, diverting momentum from the slide through the frame. Now the slide can run out of momentum before it has completed its work. This is why holding a pistol too low can cause it to jam.

All these problems are cured with the high hand grasp.

Hard grip

In the debate about shooting techniques in the saloon after all the guns have been locked away, this issue will take up about three rounds of drinks. In the old days, the “quail grip” was taught. “Imagine yourself holding a live quail. Hold it just firmly enough that it can’t fly away, but not firmly enough to hurt it.”

We aren’t talking about birdies. We’re talking about guns. Specifically, we are talking about powerful defensive handguns and hard-kicking Magnums and large calibers used for outdoor sports such as hunting. The harder we hold them, the less they kick and jump. The less they kick and jump, the more efficiently we can shoot them.

Traditional grasp of the .45 autoloader. Thumb rests on manual safety, pad of index finger is in contact with trigger. Author prefers this grasp: thumb curled down for more gripping strength, trigger finger inserted to distal joint for more leverage.

This writer strongly recommends the “crush grip.” How hard do you hold the handgun? As hard as you can. It was once advised to intensify your grip until tremors set in, and then back off until they stopped. In the real world, under stress, there’s going to be some tremor anyway. Get used to it now. Hold the gun as tightly as you can and let it tremor.

The key is this: keep the sights straight in line. If the sights are in line, and the hand is quivering, the sights will quiver in the center of the target. When the shot breaks, the bullet will strike the center of the target. Once it has been center-punched, the target will neither know nor care that the launcher was quivering before the projectile took flight.

Any marksmanship expert will tell you that consistency of grasp is a key to consistent accuracy. As stress levels change during shooting, which is really a multi-tasking exercise that gives you a lot to think about, the consistency of grasp can change too. If you think about it, there are only two ways to grasp the pistol with uniformity.

One is to hold it with virtually no pressure at all. This will give you poor control of recoil.

The other is to hold it as hard as you can, for each shot and every shot.

The hard hold has some other benefits. If you have accustomed yourself to always hold a pistol with maximum grip strength, you are much less likely to ever have it knocked or snatched from your hand. Moreover, you now have the ultimate cure for a handgunner’s malady known as “milking.”

“Milking,” taken from the hand’s movement when milking a cow’s udder, occurs when the index finger closes on the trigger and the other fingers sympathetically close with it, changing the grasp and pulling the sights off target. Most commonly, this will pull the shot low and to the side of what you were aiming at. It is a function called “interlimb response.” When one finger closes, the other fingers want to close with it.

One reason author recommends a very firm grasp. Imagine yourself holding a pistol, and grasp it thus with fingers relaxed… … and notice that when you “press the trigger,” the other fingers close reflexively. This is called “milking,” and is conducive to bad shots. The cure… … is to grasp firmly with everything but the trigger finger. Now, when trigger finger is flexed… … the other fingers can’t sympathetically close, because they’re already closed as tight as they can get.

Do this simple exercise. Relax your hand, and pretend to be holding a handgun. Now, move the index finger as if rapidly firing a handgun with a heavy trigger pull. You will see the other fingers reflexively contracting along with it. You have just seen and experienced milking in action.

Now do the same, but this time with all but the index finger closed as tightly as you can hold them. As you run the index finger, you’ll feel the tendons trying to tighten the grasp of the other fingers, but you’ll see that they actually can’t. That’s because the tight grip has already hyperflexed the fingers, and they can’t tighten any more. The milking action has now been eliminated.

Thumb position is negotiable. Generations of shooters with the GI 1911 .45 learned to shoot with the thumb high, resting on the manual safety. Many competitive target shooters prefer to point the thumb straight at the target. This straight thumb position seems to align the skeleto-muscular structure of the hand in a way that allows the index finger its straightest rearward movement. With powerful guns, curling the thumb down to add grasping strength and enhance control is a valid technique. A lot of it depends on how the gun fits your hand. The controls may also be a factor. With a conventional double action auto that has a safety catch mounted on the slide (Beretta, S&W, and Ruger to name just a few), I like my thumb to be where it can not only push the lever into the “fire” position, but verify that the lever is in fact in the position it should be in.

Trigger finger contact? The old time marksmen liked the very tip of the finger, on the theory that it offered more sensitivity. With a handgun that has a very light trigger pull, there may be some validity to that. Still others use the pad of the finger, which is basically the point at which you find the whorl of the fingerprint.

Personally, I’ve learned that contacting the trigger at the crease of the distal joint, the spot old time revolver masters called “the power crease,” gives me much more leverage and therefore more control. This is particularly true on guns whose trigger pulls may be long and/or heavy: the double action handgun, the Glock, etc. A lot of this will depend on hand size and shape in relation to gun size and shape. There are many variables in the interface between human and machine.

Front sight

The conventional sight picture with conventional handgun sights is the one you see in the marksmanship manuals. The front sight is centered in the notch of the rear sight. The top of the front sight is level with the top of the rear sight, and there is an equal amount of light on either side.

Human vision being what it is, you can’t focus on the sights and the target at the same time. Actually, you can’t focus on both the front and the rear sight at the same time, either. Once the target has been identified as something you need to shoot, you no longer need your primary visual focus on it. Primary focus now goes to the aiming indicator, the front sight. Think of it as a fighter pilot would: “enemy craft sighted, lock missiles on target.” The way we lock the handgun’s missiles onto the target is by focusing on its front sight.

With a slide mounted safety as on S&W Model 457 compact .45, shown, author prefers this grasp, with thumb at upward angle to guarantee release of safety catch.

Failing to properly focus on the front sight is a widespread problem among shooters. Every good shooter with iron sights (as opposed to red-dot optics or telescopic sights) whom you know can probably remember when he or she experienced “the epiphany of the front sight.” The realization, “So that’s what the coach meant when she said to watch the front sight!”

Watch the front sight hard. Apply your primary visual focus there. Look at it until you can see every little scratch in the machining on its surface. If it has a dot on it, focus on it until the dot looks like a soccer ball. Then you, too, will experience the epiphany of the front sight, and will see your shot groups tighten as if by magic.

Smoothly roll the trigger

Remember the prime directive: once the gun is aimed at the target, the trigger must be pulled in a way that does not pull the muzzle off target before the shot is fired. This means that the trigger must come straight back.

You want a smooth, even, uninterrupted pull. You can say to yourself, “press the trigger.” You can say to yourself, “sque-e-eze the trigger.” I say to myself, “roll the trigger,” because that connotes the smooth, consistent, uniform pressure I’m trying to apply. You don’t want the shot to truly surprise you, of course, because that would be an unintentional discharge. Rather, you want the exact instant of the shot to surprise you, so you don’t anticipate it and convulsively jerk the shot off target.

Experts agree that the best way to get the trigger pull down, once you know what it’s supposed to be, is to practice it. Dry-fire, or “clicking” the empty gun, is the best practice. The position of the sights when the gun goes “click” will tell you whether the shot would have been on target or not. The more thousands of these repetitions you perform, the more the proper trigger pull will be hard-wired into your mind and body to the point where you can do it perfectly in an emergency without consciously thinking about the details.

Accuracy tends to degrade with speed. Author fired the chest shots in hyperspeed mode, the eight shots in one hole in the neck at a more deliberate pace. Pistol is SIG P220 .45.

The best way to learn it is with what I dubbed the “exemplar drill.” Find an accomplished pistol shooter to assist you. Take a strong stance and firm grasp, and hold the gun on target. Let your index finger barely touch the trigger, and let that finger go limp. Ask the seasoned shooter to place his gun hand over yours, and his trigger finger over yours, and let his finger press yours straight back against the trigger. After several repetitions, you’ll be feeling what he feels when he makes the perfect shot. This is the easiest way to learn what a good trigger pull feels like.

Now progress to the two of you pulling the trigger together at the same pace. After some of that, you’re ready for the third stage. Now it’s your finger pulling the trigger, his lightly touching yours to monitor its progress. Once you’ve got that down, let the coach sit back and watch as you “fly solo,” making corrections as necessary.

Some suggestions

Observe all rules of safe shooting and safe gun handling, of course. Start with paper or cardboard targets in close, at three to seven yards. If your shot is off the mark by three inches at 25 yards, it might have been just the natural limits of the gun’s accuracy. It might have been the ammo. It might even have been the wind. But if you’re off by three inches at four yards, you’ll know exactly what it is. The closer you are, the easier it is to correct whatever caused the bad hit on the target. Once you’re hitting in tight groups at close range, move back incrementally. As the distance increases, so does the challenge.

The world champion was right when he said it was simple, it just wasn’t easy. The “not easy” part is taken care of in repetition. Fortunately, repetition means shooting, and shooting is fun.

Good luck. Stay safe. And enjoy.

Infowars.com

It is yet another example of the federal government running roughshod over the states.

Last month, the state of Tennessee’s General Assembly passed House Bill 1796, the “Tennessee Firearms Freedom Act,” which states that any firearms or ammunition manufactured within the state and legally owned and kept within the state by citizens are “not subject to federal law or federal regulation, including registration” due to provisions in the Second, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.

But according to Assistant Director Carson W. Carroll of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, the U.S. Constitution is little more than a g.d. piece of paper, as George W. Bush so infamously deemed it during his reign as the decider-in-chief.

On July 16, Carroll dispatched his agency’s official response to the law passed in Tennessee — the BATFE asserts that “Federal law supersedes the Act, and all provisions of the Gun Control Act and the National Firearms Act, and their corresponding regulations, continue to apply.”

It will be interesting to see how Tennessee reacts to this official proclamation.

Click here for full-size image of letter sent by BATFE.

Edgar J. Steele will be my guest for the full two hours today from 12 noon to 2:00pm MST.  His popular radio show and website (conspiracypenpal.com) are ubiquitous to the freedom movement.

To understand the show’s (loose) subject matter today, where Mr. Steele and I will be discussing all things liberty, I suggest you read his Nickel Rant titled “Anarchy With Honor,” which we published here not too long ago.

His 2002 piece titled The Circle of Strife will also give you an idea of the never-ending karmic circle the elites have created to keep us running and not allow us to stop and consider what’s being done to us as we’re herded ever further into the tyranny pen.

That pen, of course, is just outside the slaughterhouse and don’t say I didn’t warn you when you find yourself in line to get the bolt to the head.

Hear you this noon hour.