(Off) Center Mass

Gun Homicide Rate Down 49% Since 1993 Peak; Public Unaware

Thu, 09 May 2013 13:52:00 -0400

Gun Homicide Rate Down 49% Since 1993 Peak; Public Unaware:

Despite national attention to the issue of firearm violence, most Americans are unaware that gun crime is lower today than it was two decades ago. According to a new Pew Research Center survey, today 56% of Americans believe gun crime is higher than 20 years ago and only 12% think it is lower.

In the wake of Sandy Hook, we were asked “If not now, when?” as relates to Gun Control.

Take a look at these stats and try to rephrase that question. Is this push about public safety, or is it about taking a pre-existing political agenda and trying to get it pushed through while the public isn’t thinking rationally on the subject?

I’ve been away from this site for a while. I’ve had...

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 10:33:39 -0400

I’ve been away from this site for a while. I’ve had a lot to say, but have been keeping quiet, primarily because the loud voices on both sides of the aisle in the immediate aftermath of tragedy really piss me off… but, I think I’ll be writing a bit more here. I’ll start with this video link. Since I started shooting, I think five people I know have also started shooting. Four of them are women.

Poor victim selection

Fri, 10 Aug 2012 08:40:33 -0400

Poor victim selection:

Note that the store owner needed a 30-round magazine to defend his property from this attack. Here in MA, he would have needed to reload twice.

Post-Aurora Thoughts

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 09:33:56 -0400

I was going to polish this into a nice essay, but this is tumblr and we’re supposed to be writing short snippets, right? So, here, my thoughts on Aurora in snippet form.

It’s terrible and heart-breaking, beyond understanding.
For all the work we do on health care, people like this slip through our societal safety net, and it’s frustrating as hell.
The exact same guns used in the shooting are used every day by law-abiding citizens – recreational shooters, target shooters, shooting sports competitors, and hunters. They are “baseline” guns: cheap, reliable, and easily available. There is nothing special about them. If you know people who shoot, you probably know people who have these exact guns.
The one-hundred round magazine used is a novelty item; there’s a reason our soldiers don’t use them. They are designed so that you can spend less time reloading at the range, at the cost of reliability.
The count of ammunition purchased is not relevant. It is not unusual for a competitive shooter or an avid target shooter to go through a thousand rounds in a month. Many shooters have over a thousand rounds safely stored in their homes right now. Buying 6,000 rounds of ammunition at once is not something that should set off alarms, or we’ll be buried in red tape sorting it all out.
The shooter didn’t need six thousand rounds of ammunition; if there were a magic number he had to stay below, he would have, and nothing would have been different.
Most crimes involving firearms involve fewer than 4 rounds shot, often just one or two. Magazine size and ammunition regulation will have no impact on most criminal uses of firearms, but will bury us in administrative and legal battles around law-abiding citizens.
Rifles are involved in a surprisingly small number of crimes each year; twice as many people are beat to death in the US than are murdered with rifles.
Spree shootings like this create a heavy emotional impact but are not statistically significant. If spree shootings were all we had left to deal with, we’d be in great shape societally.
Someone like the Aurora shooter will find ways to do what they are doing, as much as we’d like to have a law which would prevent it.

I understand the desire to review our existing laws in context of a tragedy like this. But it’s an emotional desire, not a logical one, and we should take care when letting emotions drive the conversation.

The 1911 is her gun, revisited

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 08:32:28 -0500

Last time I posted about my wife, she had guest-starred at a bowling pins night and cleared away a ton of wood with various 1911 platform pistols.

Recently, she (along with some other family members in the same predicament) took the one-day Basic Pistol class required by Massachusetts to become a licensed to carry and own firearms. The main driving force here isn’t a desire to shoot, but a desire to not have to worry about the guns in the house and car. She wants to know that anything I can do, she can do (better) … er, I mean, that anything I can do, she isn’t going to get legally in trouble for doing.

It helps that in MA the laws are such that if I accidentally leave a shell casing in the car if she’s later driving that car and gets pulled over, she could be charged with a crime for possessing ammunition components without a license to carry firearms. Never mind things like “Oh, I’m going to my Dad’s house, you want me to bring him those shells you bought?”

Anyway, she took the class, and did great. She was fine with the .22 and the .357 revolver, and once again hated the Glock 9mm, but it wasn’t until the 1911 that she really opened up. She brought home her targets with the centers completely shot out. Say what you will about the century-old design, they picked it for a reason.

She’ll be applying for her license soon. I don’t know if it’s going to become a hobby for her or not, but I think she’s got a natural talent for hitting what she’s aiming at. If she wants to have fun with it, it’ll be there for her….

Turkey safety revisited

Sat, 05 Nov 2011 09:24:42 -0400

Had one spare hour this morning between sunrise and errands, but decided to sleep in, instead of rushing out to try and find some birds on the last day of fall turkey season. Hadn’t seen any turkeys around here in the past 3 weeks anyway …

Wife calls while she’s heading off to errands, “There’s a huge flock of turkeys at the farm on such-and-such road." Yeah, thanks. "At least 15 of them." Thanks, honey, enjoy your visit to the hairdresser, I’ll watch Dora with our daughter ….

As the Sox fans say, there’s always next year….

Turkeys are safe from me

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 10:56:25 -0400

(and probably many other MA hunters)

I had planned to take a day, maybe even two days, off this week to attempt to rectify my inability to bag a turkey this spring.

A foot of snow, major tree damage, and a 5-day power outage kind of screwed with those plans a bit. The fall turkey season lasts only 6 days….

Looks like the turkeys are safe from me this year. Hopefully soon I’ll get out on some more pheasant hiking (I’d call it hunting but … ).

How many rounds do you need?

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 08:44:59 -0400

How many rounds do you need?:

Police are now hunting for the suspects, described as a group of eight men in their late teens or early 20s, said David Procopio, a State Police spokesman.

Of course this is Boston, so the PD’s advice doesn’t include “and if you must go to the Esplanade, be prepared to defend yourself."

Or, to steal an over-used quote, "when seconds count, the police are only minutes away.”

Took a half day today to explore

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 14:42:58 -0400

Working from home today, my calendar magically found itself free of meetings. With hunting season underway, I decided to take advantage of the time window and do some exploration, shotgun in hand. I have a couple weeks vacation left to burn, and what better way than in half-day increments in the woods?

I’ll quote here from author Jim Fergus:

…sometimes the act of hunting, successful or not, provides added dimension, direction, and focus to a walk in the woods, as well as special purpose and cement to a friendship.

As for “friendship,” I’ll quote Fergus again:

More than anything, the hunter seeks solitude, and like his prey, fears noise and crowds.

I guess I’ve been a hunter all my life and just thought I was antisocial.

Anyway.

Without a dog, it’s challenging to have a successful pheasant hunt. I knew a nearby Wildlife Management Area was stocked multiple times a week during the season, but not when and where. I decided to suit up and explore the WMA a bit, see if I could find some likely pheasant habitat. Worst-case scenario, I walk in the woods for a while, getting valuable scouting info for future hunts and enjoying some natural solitude. Best-case, I stumble upon some birds, whether I get a shot off or not. My expectations were low.

It was the same WMA I hunted turkey in before, but I entered it from a different parking area. The terrain was similar, hilly and wooded, with occasional openings. I walked purposefully through an opening with a lot of thick ground cover, and while I saw a snake and plenty of ticks, no pheasant appeared.

I took another trail and ended up in the same clearing I had tried to find turkey in – proving that I had covered more ground than I thought. The clearing looked promising but again, no birds. I walked back to the car, 90 minutes burned, my body a bit sore and very hungry (I had left at lunch time).

I had other WMAs I wanted to investigate, but lunch was calling me, and I had some work to complete which I didn’t want to put off until the next day.

So home I went. And I’m supposedly working … though google maps is open and I’m looking at the lay of the land of those other WMAs….

Hunting season around the corner

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 14:38:25 -0400

In actuality, hunting season is a huge interleaved set of seasons for various animals that nobody you know has ever hunted, but what most hunters refer to as hunting season is about to begin here in Massachusetts.

It kicks off with pheasant/grouse/quail season, this Saturday. With upland bird habitat growing more rare in the state, for most hunters this means going after stocked birds, placed in hunter-friendly areas by the state. You can read up on the program here. Massachusetts puts out about 40,000 birds for us to hunt each year. Some areas are stocked multiple times a week – the chorus of shotgun blasts you hear in the early hours, in some areas of the state, are likely groups of hunters with their dogs flushing out and harvesting the newly stocked birds.

With no hunting allowed on Sunday, the next hunting day (Monday the 17th) brings about a new hunting season – archery season for deer. For six weeks, the only people hunting deer in Massachusetts are doing so with bows. While you might think the best deer hunting in the state is out in the western wilds, the densest deer populations are actually on Nantucket Island. The biggest challenge facing our deer management in Massachusetts is probably hunting access – the places that have the most deer (and where it’s easiest to get permits to harvest additional deer) are the hardest to hunt.

Two weeks later, on October 31, the 6-day Fall turkey season opens up. Any hunter who didn’t claim their limit on turkey in the Spring gets another shot – and can take one bird prior to winter. Fall turkey hunting is a totally different beast than Spring turkey hunting, and I’m hoping to get out once and enjoy it.

November continues the pheasant and deer bow seasons, with the pheasant season wrapping up on Thanksgiving weekend. The Monday after Thanksgiving shotgun hunters finally get a chance to go after the remaining deer. They get only two weeks to make their dent in the population before the “primitive arms” folks get their shot (and, really, they have to make that shot count – reloading your black powder gun isn’t trivial).

And like that, our hunting season is over. Sure, you can hunt coyote and rabbit if you like, but when most Massachusetts hunters talk about “the season” they’re talking about these two months – mid-October through mid-December.

Stay tuned for most posts here; I’ll write up every hunt I go on. Hopefully it won’t be just one!

Great writeup of reality vs. entertainment in hunting TV

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 08:43:04 -0400

Great writeup of reality vs. entertainment in hunting TV:

Unlike many blog posts, the greatest conversation comes in the comments. Well worth reading.

First modification project

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 17:13:50 -0400

I wrote some time back that one of the reasons I got into firearms was that the “tinkering” aspect appealed to me. A couple weeks back, my friend and shooting mentor decided to put that to the test. He sent me a link to some directions on how to modify our stock Ruger Mk2/Mk3 sights to be more effective.

After reviewing the linked materials and looking at pictures of the end results, we decided we’d splurge for the parts. We bought two of everything and waited patiently for them all to arrive. And, this past weekend, we disappeared into the basement at a friends-and-family gathering and did a bit of gunsmithing.

This was definitely an advanced project for my first attempt. We had to drill a countersink hole into the dovetail (not part of the instructions; perhaps the size of one of the parts has changed), and then re-blue the exposed metal. We had to file down the front sight post a bit to make it fit properly. All “minor” if you’ve done a lot of gun work before – all scary to a newbie like me.

It took us a couple hours but in the end we had two Rugers with brand new sights, and were doing gross adjustments on them using a bore laser. We’ll be hitting the range in a few days to properly sight them in.

Seems successful, so far. And now I’ve “hacked” my first gun.

Nice writeup of introducing people to hunting

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 07:56:50 -0400

Nice writeup of introducing people to hunting

First time shooting trap

Mon, 29 Aug 2011 15:12:05 -0400

One of the joys of being new to a hobby is the “new car smell” of the activities. During hunting season, my shotgun was fired probably about 20 times, at paper targets, to pattern it. Other than that, it’s been sitting safe and locked up, periodically taunting me with questions about when I was going to take it out again.

So, when my friend and shooting mentor told me he was taking his father-in-law trap shooting recently, I jumped at the chance to come along (bringing my own father-in-law). The two of us just had one shotgun between us, and not nearly enough ammo, but we still had a great time.

Trap is a rather simple shooting sport, designed to somewhat exercise the same skills as upland bird hunting. Your firearm at the ready, you shout for your bird to be released, and it comes sailing out from the house in an unknown direction. You must swing your shotgun into alignment with your target, pull the trigger, and hopefully destroy the flying clay before it goes out of range. You get one shot per clay, and you’re sharing the course with 4 others. Each of you will shoot at 25 birds in the course of a round.

It’s fast-paced; a total of 125 shells will be fired off by your squad in fairly short order. But, it’s also self-paced; you call for your bird when you are ready. You are not racing the clock or your fellow competitors.

This was my first time shooting at a moving target, with any kind of firearm, and it was exciting. I missed more than I hit, but the feeling of seeing that clay pigeon disintegrate with a dead-on hit is something I hadn’t experienced in all my shooting before. It’s one thing to knock over a bowling pin. It’s something entirely different to take something and turn it into powder….

We had a decent turnout at the club, with about 15 shooters there. The demographic was overwhelmingly “retired Caucasian male” but there were at least 3 of us under 40 and one female shooter as well. In other words, about the same demographics as any club event I’ve seen so far….

Cost-wise, you go through a full box of shells in your one round, and that box (at retail) goes for about 8 bucks. You can get them cheaper (say, 6 bucks) by buying in bulk or reloading. The round itself (covers the cost of the clays and helps keep the trap range funded and operational) costs $3.50 (or $3 if you buy ten rounds in advance), so your round of trap (25 shots fired) costs under twelve bucks, maybe even under ten if you do it right.

Not bad bang for the buck, though I imagine if you made it a weekly event it would add up. When I got home I told my wife it was fun but repetitive and I wasn’t sure I would want to go back right away.

The next morning I woke up, and my dreams were of disintegrating clays, and I began researching choke tube selection. So, yeah, I might be back sooner than I think.

Semi-related: nice video of great female trap shooter Nora Ross.

Weer'd says it better than I would

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 07:57:57 -0400

Weer'd says it better than I would:

We should all remember that the PD has no obligation to keep you safe, though I do not doubt at all that they want to. In situations where the PD are clearly ineffective at stopping crime, and where the local citizens elect representatives that enact anti-self-defense laws, your options are limited.

Stereotypical gun owners

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 10:53:38 -0400

People who aren’t involved in the gun culture often talk about stereotypical firearm owners (or carriers). There are all kinds of negative connotations thrown around out there, and there’s plenty of anecdotal proof for any one of them.

So here’s my anecdote.

Last night I went to my club’s bowling pin shoot. We had eight people there.

There were two families there – one father and adult son, one father and adult son and daughter. The daughter wore a rainbow flag t-shirt with several rainbow bracelets. The other family had the son teaching the dad to shoot, in a nice reversal of the usual scenario.

There was a younger Asian man, new to the hobby. There were two dads with three-year-olds at home.

Nobody drove a pickup truck.

We all got along fine, and had a ton of fun cooperating and competing.

So, yeah, one anecdote to fight another….

Some timely reminders

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 15:14:51 -0400

Last night, I watched this scary video (it’s not graphic in any way, please go ahead and watch it).

Background - this is a Smith and Wesson 500, shooting the .500 S&W Magnum cartridge, loaded with more powder than you’d normally use. The recoil, coupled with a imperfect grip, caused a second trigger pull after the cylinder had rotated somewhat, and/or the exploding gases from one round ignited a second round which was still in the cylinder. Either way, a second unintentional discharge immediately followed the first, near the peak of the muzzle climb from the first shot.

Imagine where the missing shot went. Imagine where else it could have gone. We, as firearms owners, are responsible for every shot we fire. Think of what could have happened. Think of how that Father’s Day shooting trip might have ended.

Now.

Beyond the comment included in the video, urging caution with this particular loadout, what can we learn from this lesson?

It’s perfectly acceptable to be safety-obsessed in the world of firearms. Accidents happen when you take shortcuts, and firearms accidents don’t have happy endings. The entire purpose for our many rules of conduct when it comes to firearms is to make it so when something goes wrong, either mechanically or procedurally, you are still covered.

So, when you watch this video, what do you learn?

When you fire a new caliber for the first time, or a new load, or a new firearm, do so under the strictest of safety constraints (one cartridge at a time!). The idea that insane recoil coupled with a novice shooter can lead to multiple discharges is not new – a quick youtube search will find many such examples. So plan accordingly.

What else do you learn? When someone hands you a gun, don’t take anything for granted. It’s sad but true that some people think handing someone a gun they can’t handle is like handing them a hot pepper they aren’t expecting – let’s laugh at the guy who isn’t ready for the big bang. But as we saw, the fallout from losing control of your firearm can be much more deadly than the fallout from eating an unexpected Scotch Bonnet. No matter if the guy handing you the gun is the asshole in the equation, you own the shot you are about to fire. If you aren’t comfortable, or aren’t sure about any aspect of it, don’t pull the trigger.

What else? How about this? We love to share the fun of our hobby, but be smart about it. Don’t assume the guy you’re handing that gun to is as safety-conscious as you are, or as experienced as you are. Keep an eye on him. Is the gun going to kick like a mule? Make sure he’s holding it right. How’s his trigger discipline? Is he going to shoot someone by mistake with YOUR GUN? Then don’t give it to him.

You can have fun, you can make big bangs, you can share your hobby, and you can make friends. But remember at the end of the day we’re “playing” with “toys” that can ruin lives in a flash, and we owe it to everyone around us to take them that seriously.

(And, since I promise to talk about Massachusetts Gun politics here, I’ll point out that this firearm is legal to purchase in MA, whereas I cannot walk into a gun store and buy a new Glock, a firearm safe enough to be used by thousands of law enforcement agencies in the US and around the world, carried day in and day out. If you think the “consumer protection” laws in MA are about protecting your safety, guess again.)

(Finally, a thank you to the poster of the video, and his father, for sharing their story. It’s important people need to learn from mistakes like this.)

She's a natural with the 1911

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 14:51:21 -0400

My rod & gun club held a bowling pin shoot on a recent weekend, and my wife and I happened to have a babysitter for the afternoon. She had expressed some interest, though she has no shooting background. I discussed it with the person running the event, who was supportive – so we came to the event together.

The night before, I gave her a 15-minute safety speech, and then some hands-on time with my unloaded 22. She’s fired a handgun once before in her life, but it was so long ago that it may as well not have happened.

The shoot was a great time – and everyone there was very understanding of her needs as a novice shooter. Another licensed handgun owner was with her at all times, directly supervising her every move.

We started out doing head-to-head competitions with .22LR semi-automatics. She did better than expected here, as far as accuracy, but didn’t have the speed to realy compete with the practiced shooters.

We moved on to other firearm types – centerfire revolvers and centerfire pistols. She performed fine with the .357 revolvers, but really struggled with the 9mm pistols (Glock and Walther).

Then, the words that every novice shooter wants to hear. “Here, try mine.”

The speaker in question was the club’s former pistol chair, an experienced competitive shooter. The firearm in question was a decked-out competition-grade 1911 that he’d invested over $5,000 in. It had a nice red-dot sight among its many modifications.

At this point, we had moved to a more complex firing stage. We had pins at short range, medium range, and long range. With limited ammunition for each stage, we were no longer going for speed but rather for accuracy. You could only miss a couple times if you wanted to complete the course.

She went head-to-head with several experienced shooters, and defeated them. She had no problem with the recoil of the .45ACP cartridge. No problem with the size of the firearm. She carried it confidently and controlled every shot. Pin after pin fell.

Eventually she was matched against the owner of the 1911 – and he took his gun back. So she borrowed someone else’s 1911, far less modified, with just iron sights. And she did as well as she did before, hitting even the most distant targets.

I was blown away.

And now I know what centerfire pistol I’m buying (eventually).

I don't like it either

Fri, 20 May 2011 09:52:29 -0400

I don't like it either:

MSR is a kluge (in sense # 5), a marketing term directly designed to replace another marketing term. But the public opinion has been so polluted on the subject by the AWB when it comes to these firearms, that I don’t know what I prefer any more.

Early morning hunting

Thu, 12 May 2011 09:48:10 -0400

Today was my third trip out in search of turkeys, and my first time out alone. Once again I enjoyed some beautiful weather and scenery, and the peace that comes with listening to the woods wake up around me, but no turkeys.

I went to a Wildlife Management Area where I had done some geocaching a year and a half ago. I remembered there being two fields in that area, both walking distance from the parking area (and confirmed their rough locations by Google maps). I arrived before 5:30 AM, and began my walk through the woods to the first, larger clearing. Along the way I startled a deer, which was a pleasant surprise. I arrived in the clearing about ten minutes after I parked, and walked around the field to settle in for a bit.

I didn’t hear any turkeys here, but I started with some calls, hoping to draw some attention. I stayed in this first spot for a good chunk of time, calling nonexistent turkeys. I moved to two other spots surrounding this field, and saw evidence of other hunters (spent shell casings, wad cups) as well as a single turkey feather. No turkeys, though.

Not far from where I sat was some water, connected to the river that ran through the WMA. I walked over there for a change of scenery, and scared a duck airborne.

After about an hour, without hearing a bird, I pretty much gave up on finding any birds before I had to begin my work day. But I wanted to see the other field, so I trekked back through the woods to the other clearing. Along the way I startled an owl, who silently took wing and propelled himself deeper into the woods. I was glad to have seen him; I couldn’t believe something so big could fly so quietly.

The other clearing was smaller than I remembered, and on the side of a hill, difficult to find a position where I could monitor the area.

After making a few calls and realizing I didn’t have time to really settle in and wait, I did a bit more exploring and took a couple more pictures.

I also took a picture of my Remington 870 in its natural environment. I think I need to buy a sling for it if I’m going to keep carrying it around the woods….

I trekked back to the car, packed up, and took the long way home, driving through the next town over and along a road that bordered the WMA. I passed a lot of properties with a lot of fields bordering the WMA, and didn’t see a single turkey.

I’m not sure if I’ll get out again this Spring … we may be revisiting this in the Fall :).