Thompson's Commitment To RKBA Questioned: Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson walked through rows of assault rifles, pistols and other firearms, signing autographs and greeting people at a gun show Saturday. Despite his pitch for support, some of the gun advocates were not convinced that the former Tennessee senator was completely on their side...A Gun Owners of America report said Thompson voted "anti-gun" 14 times on 33 votes the group tracked during his eight years in the Senate, ending in 2003. Tim Smith, a Winter Haven dealer, said the report raises questions about whether Thompson is entirely pro-gun. But among the Republican candidates in 2008, Smith said Thompson may offer the best choice. http://www.townhall.com/news/politics-elections/2007/09/15/thompson_courts_gun_advocates_in_florida --- Crime Boosts Gun Sales In Alabama's Capital: Local gun store and pawn shop owners say they are selling more guns than usual. The Montgomery Police Department and a private self-defense teacher have seen an increase in the number of people wanting to learn how to use guns...Montgomery Police Chief Arthur Baylor has said the public apprehension that crime is out of control in Montgomery is more perception than reality. Crime in general is down, he has said, but an unusually high homicide rate and the resulting media attention has created a false sense of insecurity. (As John Farnam points out, how often do people get murdered somewhere like Montgomery? Just once.) http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007709160317 --- Neighbors Support Store Owner Who Shot Burglar: Nearby customers of Anup Patel's convenience store in a gritty Pine Hills neighborhood love that he runs his business on trust. No heavy glass shields him and his family as they work in the Citgo station, even though it stays open late. Customers who are a few bucks short on their bill can - and do - settle up later. Two break-ins earlier this year tested that trust, prompting the 30-year-old Patel to sleep in his store Thursday night. Residents hope he can regain his faith after what happened next: Awakened by the sound of smashing glass early Friday, Patel fired 14 shots and killed the intruder. http://www.orlandosentinel.com/services/newspaper/printedition/saturday/localandstate/orl-gasstation15sep15%2C0%2C501101.story --- The Wild, Wild West?: "A solution of everyone carrying guns in a 21st-century society is a step back to the Wild West and the cowboy era,'' Jones said...Of course not. Presumably Jones is referring to the level of crime in the Wild West. But crime in the Wild West was lower than in most major American cities today. The notion that crime was high in the Wild West is the product of movie westerns, not reality. The truth is contained in a chapter of the new book 33 Questions About American History You're Not Supposed to Ask by Thomas Woods. http://wmugop.blogspot.com/2007/09/wild-wild-west.html --- Canadian Logic?: Ontario Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty said Wednesday that he does not want to see the provinces' schools resort to installing metal detectors and having uniformed security officers patrol the halls in the wake of Tuesday's fatal stabbing at a Toronto high school...Instead, he said, Ontario needs to distinguish itself from the United States by imposing an outright ban on hand guns. "Let's ban handguns in Ontario," he said. "Let's ban handguns across the country. Let's declare war against handguns." (I know about bayonet lugs on rifles but I've never seen one on a handgun.) http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070912.wstab0912/BNStory/National/?page=rss&id=RTGAM.20070912.wstab0912 --- From John Farnam: 10 Sept 07 I had the opportunity to thoroughly test my Aimpoint Micro that is now installed on our Remington 11-87, 20ga Shotgun. It is forward-mounted, with a full, twenty centimeters of eye-relief. Shooting Federal, three-inch, Premium, #2 Buckshot, it is a legitimate twenty-meter gun! The Aimpoint is fast and eminently useable! It's small bulk and weight makes the shotgun handy and agile. Target pick-up and analysis is effortless. I particularly like Aimpoint's "constant-on" feature. I never have to remember to turn it on or off! EOTech's automatic shut-off feature surely preserves battery life, but the unit sometime shuts itself off at inconvenient times! A shotgun set up like this make a formidable weapon that is easy to use effectively. The Aimpoint Micro is available from my friend, Mark LaRue Recommended! LaRue Tactical 850 CR 177 Leander, TX 78641 512 259 1585 512-259-1588 (fax) _www.LaRue_ (http://www.LaRue) Tactical.com _SALES@LARUETACTICAL.COM_ (mailto:SALES@LARUETACTICAL.COM) /John 11 Sept 07 LaserMax Rifle System Last weekend, I also had the opportunity to use and evaluate LaserMax's compact rifle-mounted system. Within minutes, it goes right on any rifle that has rails, and it can be at least coarsely adjusted by coordinating it with existing iron sights or optics. LaserMax employs a pulsating, rather than a constant-on, laser. Pulsations are designed to catch the user's attention, and it really works. I think it is significantly superior to a constant-on laser. Even in daylight, one can, without much difficulty, find the laser dot out to twenty meters, even when wearing sunglasses! However, when the target starts moving, it is difficult to keep the dot on him. Even the pulsating dot typically gets lost, except in low light. Indeed, in low light the whole laser concept comes into its own, but one must drill until he can move the rifle smoothly. The temptation is to constantly overcorrect. The great advantage of having this laser available is that you can keep track of target movement, keeping both eyes open, and using a chin-weld. With iron sights and optics, moving targets have an annoying habit of moving out of the shooter's field of view. The shooter than must depress the muzzle, open both eyes, relocate the target, remount the rifle, and reacquire the target, only to have to repeat the entire process more-or-less continuously so long at the target remains in motion. Aimpoints and EOTechs have the advantage of having a wide field of view, so the shooter can spend more time in his sights than is possible with iron sights, but even they have limits. Conversely, with the LaserMax System, the target really can't get away from you! There are disadvantages: A laser has a distinct and conspicuous launch signature, made all the more conspicuous by gunsmoke, dust, and fog. Thus, it can't be "on" continually. As with a flashlight, one must use it only intermittently, changing position when it is off. Lasers are most useful in low light. In bright sunlight, even pulsating lasers are only marginally useful. And, in total darkness, that dancing red dot downrange provides one with scant useful information. In total darkness, one must use the laser on concert with a flashlight. Accuracy is limited. My laser is mounted under and left of the muzzle. I have it set dead-on at forty meters. At less than forty meters, the dot will be slightly low and left of actual bullet impact. At greater than forty meters, impact will be high and right. Overall, LaserMax deserves credit for making this unit so rugged, convenient, and compact. On balance, advantages outweigh disadvantages. It has a place! /John (As John says, these gadgets have a place or role. The issue is the scope of that role. While iron sights can be bent or broken, the likelihood of that is generally less than the likelihood of battery failure or similar mishap with an electronic device. Some of these devices may be invaluable for those of us with aging eyesight. My concern is that if reflexes are built around such devices, one may not be prepared to shift gears when the devices fail. I now insist that handgun-mounted lasers be turned off when I train students in close-range technique because I have noticed students concentrating on looking for the red dot instead of the body index I am trying to teach. One list member reports finding military rifles that lack front-sight posts, an absence never noticed by the troops because they have become so dependent on all the electronic gadgets mounted on the rifles.) 13 Sept 07 Operant training is always "personal." All training is simulation. Particularly with regard to firearms, we can make training only so "real." In Western Civilization, a high level of training casualties will not be tolerated, as it is in other cultures. Any training that becomes excessively hazardous, to the point where trainees and others are seriously injured on anything more than a extremely rare basis, will be shut down immediately. None of us doubt that. Under these restraints, and in the short amount of time we have to work with our students, how do we train them to be routinely victorious in serious fights, when most of them have never participated in any kind of physical fight and are inclined to take little of what we say seriously? Short of actually shooting at them, how do we "wake them up" and ultimately inspire them to start thinking in terms of personal victory? It is my contention that, sometime during their training, students must attain a personal, emotional involvement/investment. That is, at some point they need to get mad! They need to get angry with themselves, with their equipment, with the challenge at hand, with me. They need to be exhausted, exasperated, and personally embarrassed by their own performance. Once they become annoyed to the point of anger, it all suddenly all becomes personal. And, once I set that emotional hook, real learning will finally start. I can touch their hearts, and my students will, at long-last, begin to benefit from what I am trying so desperately to share with them. We trainers are only too skillful at presenting information in the abstract. In fact, many of us are accomplished showmen, cleverly, garishly acquainting student with facts. But all too often, while the circus proceeds, both we, and they, remain too emotionally removed, too content to sit back and be entertained, too accustomed to being in the bleachers rather than in the arena, too used to aspiring only to the minimum necessary to meet some arbitrary, and ridiculously low, "standard." Accordingly, getting students out of their "comfort zone" and in the arena has to be a primary goal of anything that legitimately claims the title of "training." Students should never be led to expect a relaxing, comfortable, "fun" training session. Scant will ever accomplished thus. Until training becomes "personal," we're mostly running in place. /John (This is an age-old dilemma. When I taught with Defensive Combat Academy, back in California, we would coach students into a fairly high level of performance during the bulk of an eleven-hour training day, only to see them miss fairly easy shots in the end-of-day scenario exercise, presumably due to performance anxiety in front of their peers. My own belief is that technique needs to be confluent with what we know of human physiology under stress, that training should start slowly and allow the student to pick up speed as skill is acquired and that techniques should build on each other. I am no longer as liberal as I was when I taught with DCA and, while I will allow a student who insists on shooting from a contorted Weaver position to do so, I will at least encourage him to try shooting from positions that meet the above standards. Unfortunately, I lack the facilities to conduct scenario-based training so I concentrate on exercises that I feel will build the most stress-resistant skills I can teach.) 14 Sept 07 Flat-Stock Technique: When carrying rifles and shotguns while moving in tactical environments, I've advocated keeping the muzzle down and the stock indexed into the shoulder. In fact, "muzzle-down; head-up" is the by-word with all longarm handling. However, my colleague, Henk Iverson, showed me a better way of positioning the rifle while in the depressed-ready position. He calls it the "Flat-Stock" technique, and I've gradually come to see its inherent superiority. When the rifle is at eye level, we emphasize the importance of a consistent cheek-weld that reliably positions the eye in line with the weapon's sights. However, we can only "stay-in-the-sights" for short periods, because our view is limited. Except when shooting, and particularly when moving, we must arc the rifle downward, open both eyes, and move our head, so neither threats nor other important details escape our notice. Heretofore, we've arched the rifle straight up and straight down. Now, when arching the rifle downward, we rotate the stock ninety degrees counter-clockwise (right-handed shooter), so that the stock lays flat on our shoulder. That will, of course, necessitate a half-turn when the rifle is remounted, and therein is the great benefit if the "Flat-Stock" technique. That half-turn during remounting arrests the rifle's motion as the sights lock on target. This is particularly apparent when the shooter is pivoting and mounting simultaneously in an attempt to engage a threat to the side. The flat-stock technique, by and large, eliminates characteristic over-shooting of the threat and subsequently over-correcting when trying to get back on target, that is commonly associated with the conventional, straight-stock technique. I now teach the flat-stock technique and find most students pick it up right readily. Speed and accuracy are substantially increased (as is weapon retention) and over-shooting/over-correcting is essentially eliminated. Recommended! /John (This may be one of those issues that varies with body shape but I am still more comfortable with the "straight-stock" technique, which also gets the muzzle onto a relatively wide "safety circle." I go to "flat-stock" when I need to reduce the diameter of the safety circle and I note that doing so pulls the toe of the stock out of my shoulder pocket. In contrast, with the straight-stock technique, the toe of the stock remains in my shoulder pocket and serves as the pivot point for depressing the muzzle to at least 60 degrees off horizontal. I find that this gives me a rapid return to the sights and a shooting position I prefer to placing the entire flat surface of the butt against the shoulder. In fact, in Patrol Rifle Instructor Development School, I noted that when using the flat-stock technique at fairly close range, I unconsciously returned to the GSG-9 position, where the butt is placed on the sternum and one merely looks over the top of the long gun. While the German GSG-9 border police developed this technique for use with 9mm MP5 submachine guns, it is not uncomfortable for use with .223-caliber weapons. As I said, this may be a matter of differing body shapes. Feedback is welcome.) -- Stephen P. Wenger Firearm safety - It's a matter for education, not legislation. http://www.spw-duf.info .