Month: October 2012

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Understand Flash Sight Picture

October 16, 2012 by

In another of the National Shooting Sports Foundation short training videos, Bob Whaley of Gunsite Academy discusses flash sight picture and the importance of using your sights at all times (except shooting from retention).

The flash sight picture is part of the Modern Technique promulgated by Col. Jeff Cooper. It is simply a glance at the front sight which confirms your aim as set up by your grip and stance. Whaley emphasizes that in stressful situations people revert to their training. If you train to always use your sights – even just a flash sight picture – you will use them in stressful situations. The flash sight picture is the final confirmation that you are on target before you press the trigger.

As Whaley makes clear at the beginning of the video every bullet that leaves your gun will have a 100% hit ratio. It is up to you whether it hits the intended target or something you’d rather not hit.

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Fauxcahontas Isn’t Paying Her Fair Share

October 15, 2012 by 4 Comments

Elizabeth “Fauxcahontas” Warren, the Democratic nominee for the US Senate from Massachusetts, has a high six-figure income and a net worth in the neighborhood of $14 million or so. She is said to have created the “intellectual foundation” such as it is for the Occupy Wall Street movement. She also claims based upon family lore to be 1/32 Cherokee Indian.

Thus, when I read this morning in Professor William Jacobson’s Legal Insurrection blog that she had obtained fee waivers from at least 50 judicial districts for the use of the federal Pacer system, I was pissed.

But Warren, who berates factory owners, obtained fee waivers for access to the bankruptcy docket maintained by the federal PACER system, for which others have to pay.
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Warren took advantage of a policy at PACER which provides for fee waivers for academic research based on her standing as a law professor….
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It is easy to surmise that Warren saved thousands of dollars, maybe even more, over the course of her research, by not having to pay the PACER fees that all other users have to pay.
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The savings were a result of her representations that the research was being done for academic purposes. 

Why am I pissed? Because I have been using the Pacer system to download court records, filings, opinions, etc. since I started this blog. I have paid my fair share of fees to use this system and there have been quarters where the amount ran over $100. I like to think that my posts on the various Second Amendment cases serve to educate readers. However, unlike Warren I don’t make close to $900K a year or have assets of over $14 million. Moreover, I don’t get grant funding which pays the fees as well as the cost of law clerks to assist in the research. I do this because it is fun and because it helps to advance, in a small way, our rights.

As to Warren’s claim of being a Cherokee Indian, I have clients who are enrolled members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and her supposed 1/32nd wouldn’t cut it with them. The Eastern Band are those Cherokee who lived so deep in the mountains that they were able to avoid the forced removal. I find it insulting that someone who’s ancester is more likely to have helped in the removal of the Cherokee from the mountains around me and put them on The Trail of Tears dares to claim kinship with them.

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Gun Shows In Chicago?

October 15, 2012 by 7 Comments

A posting in today’s The Shooting Wire announcing the Chicagoland Gun Show caught my eye.

Outdoor Sports Group (OSG) is proud to announce the first ever Chicagoland Gun Show January 23-27, 2013 at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont Illinois.

The Chicagoland Gun Show will be co-located with the Chicago Outdoor Sports Show which continues a 30 + year tradition of sports shows gracing the shores of Lake Michigan and providing the Greater Chicagoland area a break from cabin fever.

While there are other shows in the vicinity of Chicago, for example shows in Wheaton and Lakemoor, I couldn’t find any that were actually being held in Cook County unlike this show. Rosemont is outside the city limits of Chicago near O’Hare Airport.

I like the fact that they are co-locating the gun show with the outdoor sports show as it should bring higher traffic to the gun show. Given the onerous restrictions on gun ownership and even gun stores in Chicago, I’m guessing there might be some pent-up demand to go someplace where you can actually “touch and feel” a firearm and, with the proper documentation, buy a firearm.

I know the promoters are calling this the “first ever Chicagoland Gun Show” but I wonder if this is hyperbole. If any readers in the Chicago area know of gun shows in Cook County, either current or in the distant past, I’d love to know about it. You can post the info in the comments section.

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A Weekend Tab Clearing

October 15, 2012 by 3 Comments

The attendance of Bitter and Sebastian at the NRA’s legal seminar in Philadelphia has attracted protesters from Heeding God’s Call. Or maybe it is just because the organization doesn’t like the Second Amendment. Whatever.  Sebastian has pictures of the massive number of gun prohibitionists protesting at the event.

DVDs, magazines, and internet gun forums are not a substitute for actual firearms training. Intuitively we know this but most of us procrastinate and/or make excuses. Trainer Rob Tackett in a post entitled “Less than 1/110 of a %” examines the excuses and issues this challenge:

Save.  Don’t work on instant gratification and move forward with training instead of buying.


Stop Using Excuses


Its time folks.  Its time for all the internet time to be turned into
training time.  Everyone is releasing their 2013 schedules this month
and next.  I challenge you to take the first step to better yourself.
 Take a class. Find out more about yourself and your true capability.


Stop living as a Tactical Teddy and become a shooter.

 Tam has her usual trenchant observations about the Glock factory sights and the process to replace them.

Linoge has now created a table of contents to the uber-post about TTAG. It makes it much easier to read the individual sections.

Thirdpower has a good post up about those who claim that Obama really hasn’t moved against gun rights in his first term.

Ron Larimer at When the Balloon Goes Up opens his store tomorrow which will carry EDC gear, preparedness items, and range gear. The store is meant to complement the stuff he has been writing about on his blog.

Speaking of stores, Average Joe has posted his suggestions for newbies (and not so newbies) with regard to gun shop and range etiquette. It puts on paper what he discussed with Doc Wesson on a recent Gun Nation Podcast.

Finally, keep Mike Vanderboegh in your prayers. David Codrea has an update here and Mike reported he entered the hospital on Friday due to minor strokes in his cerebellum as well as brain stem. At the link David provides an address where you can send Mike a get well card.

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R Doesn’t Stand For Republican In NRA

October 15, 2012 by 1 Comment

Anti-gun opponents of the NRA will insist that the “R” really stands for Republican. While the majority of the candidates supported by the NRA-PVF tend to be Republican it is because they also support gun rights. That said, the NRA often does support Democrats who are pro-gun such as the retiring Rep. Heath Shuler (D-NC-11)

The Grand Forks Herald ran a story yesterday morning illustrating the NRA does indeed support Democrats. In the race for North Dakota’s sole Congressional seat, the NRA has rated State Rep. Pam Gulleson (D) an A and given her their endorsement based on her pro-gun record in the State House. She faces Republican Kevin Cramer who is rated AQ by the NRA-PVF. Cramer does have the endorsement of the Gun Owners of America which does tend to be more Republican oriented. The dueling endorsements is what grabbed the paper’s attention.

FARGO – The North Dakota U.S. House race has attracted dueling endorsements from the pro-gun lobby.


Pam Gulleson, the Democratic candidate, was recently endorsed by the National Rifle Association.


Meanwhile, Republican Kevin Cramer has picked up the backing of the Gun Owners of
America, a more hard-line group on Second Amendment issues.

Gulleson on her website said she was proud to receive the NRA’s endorsement and does list them at the head of her endorsements’ list.

Gulleson accepted the endorsement, saying, “I am strong supporter of the
2nd Amendment and will protect and strengthen the rights of law-abiding
Americans to own guns for both recreation and personal security. I’m
proud to have received the endorsement from the National Rifle
Association and look forward to working with the NRA as a member of
Congress to protect gun-owners.”

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Infographic For The Weekend

October 14, 2012 by 4 Comments

I like infographics. A good one can convey a lot of information in a short amount of time and space.

Here is one I stumbled across on Pinterest (yes, even guys have found out about Pinterest) and then went to the source of it – Sourmashed.com. That site, by the way, has a lot of good reviews on bourbon and other “potent potables”.



Profile of the Average American Bourbon Drinker by Sourmashed.com | Bourbon, Wine, and Liquor Reviews

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Misleading Headline Of The Day

October 12, 2012 by 3 Comments

Headlines can be misleading. You might think it means one thing and the author meant something entirely different. A prime example would be this headline which most definitely qualifies for the misleading headline of the day award.

MILF Rebels Want To Keep Guns
The average American guy steeped in popular culture is probably thinking this.
Unfortunately, the MILF rebels that the headline refers to are these guys.
WTF?! Those aren’t MILFs. Actually they are. They are from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front which is fighting in the southern Philippines.
From the article:

SULTAN KUDARAT, Philippines – After watching two of his brothers die
during four decades of fighting in the southern Philippines, Muslim
rebel Abdulhamid Ganalan feels a planned peace deal could be surrender.

Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) leaders are set to sign an
accord with the government on Monday that will aim to end the rebellion
by 2016, but the guerrilla said he and his subordinates did not want to
give up their arms.

“I will not agree. That is like full surrender,” Ganalan told AFP
from inside Camp Darapanan, the MILF’s administrative headquarters, when
asked whether he would lay down his weapons as part of a peace accord.

The moral of the story is that headlines can be misleading and that fantasies are just that – fantasies.

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Enough Was Enough

October 12, 2012 by 3 Comments

Linoge at Walls of the City has done yeoman’s work in compiling the record of plagiarism, theft, copyright violations, and outright lies perpetrated in the name of gun blogging by Robert Farago and his minions at Tthe Truth About Guns. This post was a long time in the making and probably overdue. As Linoge notes, he was assisted in his efforts by a number of other pro-rights bloggers and I’m happy to say I was one of them.

What brought this to a head and resulted in the Linoge’s “uber-post” were two events that happened at the Gun Rights Policy Conference. The first was the awarding of a SAF Defender of Liberty award (one of many) to Farago. When the Second Amendment Foundation made the award they were unaware of Farago’s duplicitous past of plagiarism, copyright violations, and lies. An uber-post like that of Linoge – and the linking of it by other reputable gun bloggers – will help prevent this sort of error in the future.

The second, and much more serious, event was the treatment of Washington Times senior editor Emily Miller by Farago. Not only did he ambush her in the hallway in a creepy manner but his subsequent posts were beyond the pale. From Emily’s comments on the encounter which she posted at Shall Not Be Questioned:

Thank you so much for this post. I felt ambushed by that guy. He was
very creepy and jumpy, which made me nervous. I should have trusted my
instincts, but instead stayed and answered all his questions politely. I
don’t know why he feels the need to repeatedly attack me for being a
girl and for not having extensive training in the six months I’ve owned a
gun. That’s all true, but I’ve also gotten the gun laws changed in D.C.
to make it easier to get a legal gun, so the haters don’t affect my
work!

If you do read Linoge’s post – and you should – you will see a report of an incident at the 2011 NRA Annual Meeting involving similar rude and condescending behavior by Farago towards attorney Alan Gura. I was there, I witnessed it, and I was furious. 

Alan Gura and Emily Miller have in their different ways done more for gun rights in the last five years than virtually anyone out there. We don’t need the National Enquirer of the gun blogosphere treating them like dirt. It is as simple as that. We can quibble about whether it matters if Farago is a plagiarist or not but rude, boorish, and condescending behavior towards good people doing great work should always be called out.