tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23190105240514269012024-03-07T16:20:56.517-07:00StraightForward in a Crooked WorldUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger138125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319010524051426901.post-76140116228849314712018-05-23T21:28:00.002-06:002018-05-23T21:36:27.703-06:00PAIN!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal;">Our conversation had started with me asking “</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14px; font-style: italic; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal;">So who shot you in the throat?</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal;">”, a basic conclusion on my part, b</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal;">ecause on one side of his throat he had a very small round scar, on the other side, a jagged dime sized scar, accompanied by a damaged voice. It had the hall marks of a twenty-two caliber wound and this had peaked my interest. </span><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal;">He was an ex-convict and career criminal, who had spent part of that career as a car jacker in the late 1980s and 1990s. He had a rather successful run (according to him) until he went from car-jacker to attempted to car-jacker. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14px;">As we sat and talked in his now paroled and work released based probation he explained the scenario that led to his down fall.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14px; font-style: italic;">"I'm 6'2", and I had a big old revolver that took .44s. You look down that barrel and you think, 'take what you want, please don't kill me with that thing. But not this one guy. I stuck the gun in his face yelling for him to get out of the car, and as he is sliding out I hear the little 'pop' sound. I kinda saw his hand coming up, but my mind was all focused on his face and my gun in his face, and I couldn’t really see much else. So I hear this 'pop' and, next thing I know I feel like I'm gonna throw up or something. I can't talk right and I spat blood all over the place. I didn't know what happened. I'm looking around, but I see blood all over me, and I can't breathe. I'm trying to get out the passenger side of the car, but it's not my car and it was like being in a nightmare. I couldn't find the door handle, and all I know is everything is going bad. I'm thinking 'I don't want to go to jail! I don't want to die!' I get the car door open and fall out on the ground and stumble all over. I'm spitting blood. I'm scared out of my mind. I can't see anything. Turns out, he shot me with this little .22 derringer. This told me two things: 1) That dude had that planned out what he would do. He had this little nothing gun and was ready to go if he had to. 2) I had this big gun and didn't think I had to do anything other than stick in someone's face. I was wrong about that.</span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14px; font-style: italic;">”</span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14px; font-style: italic;">.</span></span></div>
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<span style="position: relative;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14px; font-variant-ligatures: normal;">According to neuroscience, we don’t “feel” pain. At least not in the way we tend to think. From an elementary perspective we think of pain as being at the location of where the damage has occurred. In other words, you smack your thumb with a hammer, then the pain “happens” in your thumb. Yet, that is not what occurs. The injury</span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14px; font-variant-ligatures: normal;">’</span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14px; font-variant-ligatures: normal;">s location is obviously, for our example here, to the thumb that was struck by the hammer. The pain, however, happens in your head.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; letter-spacing: normal; position: relative; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal;">All pain is based on tissue damage. That damage report is sent off to your brain by specific nerves, known as nociceptors, that are tasked with detecting tissue damage. Once the nociceptors delivers the message to the brain, the brain now has to decide what it going to do about the pain.</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; letter-spacing: normal; position: relative; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal;">There is a caveat to this process.</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; letter-spacing: normal; position: relative; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal;">When contact between the hammer and thumb is made, the arm jerks the finger away from the immediate area. The body’s own stop gap as it were. Naturally we would suppose that this action occurs in the brain, yet it does not. Instead the reaction comes from a muscle arc in the spinal cord. This is why your hand jerks back from touching a hot surface. If you ever wondered why your brain can react quicker to an injury as opposed to being surprised visually or from an auditory perspective, the simple truth is in the immediacy of an injury the brain is simply not involved. There is no mental processing.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14px;">In the Defensive Firearm culture we have a variety of thoughts, opinions, and, experience levels. We also tend to struggle with what I tend to refer as O&D, or Obsessives and Dismissive’s. Take for instance the obsessions with bullet penetration, velocity, magazine capacity, etc. There is a large contingent of the shooting community that places an almost religious fervor on the alter of ballistic gel, with Youtube raising up an entire generation of charismatic ballistic bible thumpers or heretics, depending upon your personal beliefs. The hallmark, of course for all backyard ballistic preachers is the almighty number 12. Because, according to the F.B.I. "a handgun bullet must consistently penetrate a minimum of 12 inches of tissue in order to reliably penetrate vital organs within the human target regardless of the angle of impact or intervening obstacles such as arms, clothing, glass, etc." With 18 inches being seen as a somewhat often unattainable holy grail, as it were. At least for the auto pistol shooter.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14px;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal;">Then of course there are the Dismissives. Where velocity is party to the obsessives, momentum is to the Dismissives. Few, if any, of this modern age seem to place any value in the aspect of a heavy bullet having to suddenly come to a halt, and what this does to the intended target. Richard Mann, in his 2016 Shooting Illustrated article, Bullet Penetration and Expansion surmised it like this, "</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14px; font-style: italic; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal;">You cannot have deep penetration and wide expansion, because defensive-handgun cartridges must divide their energy between the two..." </span><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal;">Regardless of any personal thoughts, opinions, and beliefs, his quote is precise and accurate.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal;">My personal beliefs on the matter is the party of wide expansion over penetration (in case you wondered which way you should exercise your prejudices towards me).</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal;">Yet, in my opinion, one largely overlooked category amongst the Defensive Firearm culture is pain.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal;">Specifically pain that is inflicted on the Bad-Guy-in-Question when shot by the armed citizen in a defensive circumstance. We talk at length about "shooting to eliminate the threat," whether that means that the wounds themselves lead to a fatal injury, or if the realization that the assault initiated by the B-G-I-Q is now lost, seems to be ethereal in discussion. Or at least prohibited as a topic in polite company. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal;">Though I suspect that a large reason pain is ignored from the discussion of fight stoppage largely has to do with a lack of experience on part of the average defensive shooter. Paper and people of course not being equals, with paper being utilized as a measurement tool regarding accuracy potentials without providing any inclination towards perceived slights, let alone felt pain.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14px;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal;">We simply cannot dismiss pain nor the problems it creates for an attacker. Pain affects the mind’s ability to function in a clear and efficient manner. Pain causes fight, flight, or freeze to be re-assessed. Pain means a decision has to be either re-affirmed or abandoned. All of this, while there is the separate dilemma of what to do about the sudden difficulty in breathing, the increasing loss of motor function from one (or more) appendages, the sense of confusion, and the already present tunnel vision that is seemingly increasing. The deer, the elk, the bear, the man, they all feel pain. But the man </span><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14px; font-style: italic; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal;">understands</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal;"> the pain and the causation of it. There is also a severe effect on the human attacker's psychology of “I’ve been shot.” Compound this with the dilemma of the attacker now has to "flee" in order to avoid suffering any further damage.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal;">We should never underestimate an attacker. Ever. A fight for your life is that. A-fight-for-your-life. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal;">However, it should be that. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal;">A fight. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal;">Your attacker should have no misgivings once the dance has started. His life is in just as much jeopardy as yours and, if applied with enough intent from you, his being more so.</span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14px; font-variant-ligatures: normal;">Th</span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14px;">ere are no damage proof super-villains in the world. The PCP laden attacker that soaks up cylinder after cylinder of 357 Magnum is the stuff myths are made of.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal;">Unfortunately, statistics and theories have come to over-ride the discussions to the point of becoming gospel instead of what happens in the reality. Disregarding the physical and mental impact of how one or, if properly applied, multiple gunshot wounds affect the outcome of a gunfight is a mistake. There is only one guarantee in a gunfight and, that is violence of action will occur, but continual application of a proper mind set, training and practice will do much to win the day.</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319010524051426901.post-82120693976224182102018-05-11T19:35:00.002-06:002018-05-11T19:35:19.194-06:00Mexican Confessions<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />We were waiting for the kidnappers to call.
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They called everyday at 3pm, on the dot and it was day four into it for me. The old man was a vaquero, the real deal, who owned several rancheros down in Mexico. Most of them small plots of land, ten to fifty acres with one or two going up to a couple of hundred. For all intents and purposes, a middle class man leading a middle class life. I hated that we had met under such bad circumstances.
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His son had been kidnapped by Mexican gang bangers not exactly the cartel types but, no less violent, no less dangerous. They had kidnapped him while he was visiting family for the Christmas holiday but, instead of his son coming home from the trip he received a ransom note demanding of $200,000. He had paid them $5,000 here, ten thousand there but, it was nowhere what they had wanted. Finally, a cousin of the old man had reached out to me and there I sat waiting for the phone to ring. <br /><br />Negotiations had now started in earnest and, it was going better than I had hoped as they had started to move down in price. Me being at $25,000. The kidnappers, now being at $125,000. Which was far better than when we had started with them offering $10,000 for each ear lobe returned and me telling them to that I don't pay for parts or damaged goods, followed by hanging up the phone on them.
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It was cold outside. The five below kind of cold. So, we sat in the hotel room waiting.
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Growing up as a Midwest kid who loved all things western I relished in any tales of "old Mexico". Using the cousin as a translator I inquired about the old man's life. "Ask him if he ever carried a pistola?" ,without missing a beat the old Vaquero said "Si, pistola" and patted his leg. I grinned and imagined him either carrying an old Peacemaker or, a Colt 1911 in .38 Super. He continued with, now using the cousin and me being able to pick up with what Mexican I knew, that he had in fact carried a Colt Super 38, which is how it was originally termed. <br /><br />In the old days of Mexico, when the honest man could be armed, the 45 ACP was a "military" cartridge and forbidden from civilian ownership, so South of the border the .38 Super flourished. Then in broken English he said "everyone carried pistola" again patting his leg "Vaqueros carry pistolas into the mountains, to fiestas. Everyone carry pistola back then. No trouble. Now, no pistolas and much trouble.". <br /><br />If you could surmise gun control into a Spanish styled haiku, the old vaquero just had.
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Then he added "Federales say NO pistolas! and everyone..." and, he indicated through pantomime, that people stuck the guns in the waistbands and covered them with their shirts. "Now some pistolas. No holsters", again patting his leg. Hence the origin of the term "Mexican Carry".
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When it first came into our lexicon, the term Mexican Carry, was somewhat specified as being carried in front of the waistband, absent of any holster, in the now very trendy "appendix carry" position. As time went on, Mexican Carry became somewhat fluid with a pistol tucked in the waistband, regardless of where on the body. Most people I knew, when they Mexican Carried, did so by slipping the gun in the back of their pants or, on their strong side, on the hip.
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One might reason, with some level of justification, why someone here in the golden age of holsters would even consider it? Especially when so many an "expert" has labeled it as damn dangerous. To the point that you will be met with an almost certain expectation of the gun failing either out of the waistband, down your pant leg, and onto the floor. Others will tell you that, it is an almost assured pathway to a negligent discharge. In truth, after a quarter of a century of experience I can tell you that it's not dangerous nor, is the chance of a negligent discharge any more possible than with any holster.
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">Your pants have to fit right.</span></div>
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Your pants have to fit right because, simply enough they are the holster. Put your gun in a holster that fits wrong or loose and your gun is going to fall out. The waist band has to fit you somewhere between having a little bit of a gap and snug. From here a good belt acts as the tension device, allowing you to adjust as needed.
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">The small of your back is the worst place.</span></div>
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In the 1980s, this was where every rogue cop/action hero carried is 9mm Beretta. Standing up, they'd take the gun off the table and tuck into the back of the pants. All cool and roguish. The reality is, no worst position exists, than for the gun to be carried Mexican than when it's carried in the Five, Six , or Seven O'clock position. With even the Four and Eight O'clock positions being somewhat questionable, but largely based on body build. Here your mileage with simply vary, as the saying goes.
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The reason the small of the back doesn't work is that there is simply too much flex in the body here, too much give on a re-occurring basis with clothing. In other words, when you sit down pants tend to gape at the small of the back when sitting, thus causing the gun to slip down into the pants, swallowing the grip as well. Body size doesn't matter here, and the area should be avoided.
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">Strong Side is the Best</span></div>
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Whether you're right handed or left handed the handgun is going to move the absolute least here. Mainly because the gun rides parallel to the body, it shifts as the body shifts. This is because the hip dictates the movement. It'd be wrong to tell you that the gun doesn't move or shift slightly out of position when you Mexican Carry on the strong side. It just happens in the opposite of what you expect. When you sit down, the barrel pivots forward and the grip moves rearward. This happens when you carry any handgun in any In-the-Waistband holster. The difference between Mexican Carry and IWB Holster carry is that in Mexican Carry the gun doesn't always return to position and, you have to rotate the butt of the weapon. Understand, we are not talking about a large amount of movement, but rather fractions of an inch. Something you've most likely had to do even when wearing a holster. The reality is that, anything on the hip, whether it's a pistol, a phone, or anything worn on the belt moves at some point. Put it back where you want it and go on about it.
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">"IT'S NOT SECURE! YOUR GUN WILL FALL OUT OF YOUR PANTS!"</span></div>
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Some years back, I was out to dinner with some friends at a pizza place at the mall. My frequent carry piece was often an all steel Karh E9 (not a K9 but their early E9 model) in 9mm. After dinner was over we all headed out into the mall, in attendance that evening was a lovely red headed girl whom I had a rather severe crush on. Of course there was another guy there who also seemed to be interested in her. Suddenly for some inexplicable reason, he and I decided to race down the UP escalator. He had the advantage of being on the escalator first, hence making it impossible to pass him. Plan B game into my mind quickly enough and, felt that it was in my best interest to do what any Ninja....in a mall would do. I put my hands on the side when we were ten feet from the bottom and vaulted myself over the side of the escalator. <br /><br />Now UP escalators have a funny tenancy to actually go UP. Including their hand rails. So while my brain had made the calculation for a ten foot landing, I was now presented with a fifteen foot drop as my hands were also carried up. My Altama Desert boots landed hard on the mall floor, but since a body in motion tends to stay in motion I quickly rolled landing hard on the 9mm in question. I popped back up, only to roll again and, again land on the pistol. So it would go, three more times, until finally I managed to stay upright on my feet. The pistol still in place.
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When I returned to my loft later that night, I lowered my Levis to find a bruise on my hip in the same shape of the Kahr. <br /><br />It did all work out in the end. The pretty red head married me a few years later.
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">Not all guns are created equal</span></div>
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The idea most fail to realize is that the gun actually ends up with the trigger covered twice. Once by the pants, once by the belt. So the idea that you are going to somehow accidentally trip the trigger, is no more or less possible than if you were wearing a holster. It all depends on how you draw the gun. The pants, the shorts, the holster bear no significance in this. Where your finger is during the draw does.
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Not all guns are capable of being Mexican carried. In my experience it has more to do with frame size and barrel length than anything else. For instance, over the years I have owned very small framed handguns like the wonderfully built North American Arms Mini Mag revolver and a few Beretta Bobcat and Tomcats. They are great miniature handguns, however they are not well suited for holster less in the waist band carry, simply because they are too small.
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The Mexican Carry method, in order to work well, relies on the gun's ability to be wedged in between the belt/pant and body. The grip had to be just long enough to hang over the belt. The barrel long enough to get below the belt line. Consequently, get the barrel too long on the handgun, and it will want to push out when seated. In my years of carrying this way, the two guns I have carried the most have been either a 1911 or a J Frame Smith & Wesson 38 Special. The world being what it is, and my job having taken me all over there have been lots of pistols tucked into a pair of Levis sans holsters that worked well. A Tokarev in one country, a SiG P225 in another. I had a brief dalliance with a Makarov that I honestly miss, but is lost elsewhere to time now. A Ruger SP101 in 357 Magnum was sold to a friend. All Mexican Carried. All done so without incident.
<br /><br />That said, the idea of carrying a Glock sans, holster would be well advised to be avoided, </div>
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">What matter’s most </span></div>
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If you missed the part where I said your pants have to fit right, let me reiterate that here and a belt matters most. The belt acts as the retention device that allows you to adjust tension as you so desire to pull the gun in snug. If the pants are to loose in the waist, sagging off your hips and you decide to forgo a belt then one of two things is going to happen. The pistol is going to fall out when you sit down, or it’s going to slide down your pant leg as your stand up. I can not stress this part enough. Ill fitted pants are no different than an ill fitting holster and, it going to fail. After that, were your finger is when you draw or, re-holster is paramount. There is one caveat to this. Tucking the gun back in your jeans is a two handed method. You want to use your weak hand to pull the waistband out so you can slip the pistol in. The dumbest thing you can do in the “re-holstering” process in Mexican Carry is wiggling the gun in, because at some point you have to put the muzzle against your hip to open up the waist band. There’s simply no room for error here.
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None.
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Finally, most of us who Mexican carry do so because there was a time when there wasn’t the vast array of ultra-concealable In-the-Waistband holsters available. Back in my corporate executive protection days most everyone I worked with did it this way. Bill, who had been in a few gun fights as a metropolitan cop routinely carried his Smith & Wesson Model 624, 44 Special in this manner. As for me the go-to holster for my 1911s is an old Desert Special from Dillon, the Progressive Reloader manufacturer, it’s a great IWB holster with God knows how many miles on it, as I have worn it more than any other. It also isn’t close to how concealable some holsters are now, and Mexican Carry is flat, fast, and very concealable. So the truth is, old habits die hard. The reality is there are fewer and fewer reasons to carry in this method as time goes on. While I think, personally, that we live in the Silver age of gun design, with all of the “meh” plastic guns being flashed around on social media, I do think we live in the Golden age of both holsters and ammunition and, you would be at a disadvantage to not embrace buying any number of quality holsters. That said, if you see an old timer who is Mexican Carrying a pistol you might want to forgo the lecture on his “careless” ways, because if it were in fact that, he wouldn’t have ever become an old timer.
<br /><br />As for the old vaquero's son who had been kidnapped? Well maybe one of these days I'll get around to writing that book.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319010524051426901.post-36309825269962943332017-07-28T13:44:00.003-06:002017-07-28T13:44:43.085-06:00Like the Last Time<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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If you have not heard of Sunday At Noon, now you no longer have to live in the dark.<br />
<br />
Make America Rock again<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319010524051426901.post-44467404612340577532017-07-04T14:27:00.003-06:002017-07-05T09:10:47.326-06:00The Barranti Life Changer<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWeHV-i0gwgeSag7wJ4mjzw4djgqCv36pTkvfP6MF25H4FPjj_m2EYex51pb5ur_yvhahQdxF4x5ksfl2QVAPFQ123goh2bJ0zgBRM_gzL9ubrLOTOAwuLiY1wKrwvySqKifij4f3fNSE/s1600/IMG_5340.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWeHV-i0gwgeSag7wJ4mjzw4djgqCv36pTkvfP6MF25H4FPjj_m2EYex51pb5ur_yvhahQdxF4x5ksfl2QVAPFQ123goh2bJ0zgBRM_gzL9ubrLOTOAwuLiY1wKrwvySqKifij4f3fNSE/s320/IMG_5340.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br />
<i>June 25th, 2017</i><br />
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Writing, I have learned, is a funny business. When in the full throes of it and, doing so consistently you don't want to stop. At the same time you have this nagging bit in you secretly fearing that someday you will run out of things to say.<br />
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For me at least for me, writing can be a bit of a task master, requiring me to do it constantly in order to feel like I am any good at it. Step away too long and, it can feel as though you have moved out of a country whose language you once spoke fluently.<br />
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One must understand that these words are in effect and apology of sorts to Mike Barranti of Barranti Leather, the famed holster maker. As I sit and, write this, it is a beautiful Sunday morning, the last one of this particular June and, we are tent camped at the foot of the Sawtooth Mountains, along the Wood River, just North of Ketchum, Idaho. The Wife, the Kid and I. My pen scrawling it's way across the notebook that sits on a well worn wooden table top. My Ruger convertible Flattop .forty-five shucked into one of Mike's IWB holsters made for single action revolvers.<br />
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A far cry from a week prior to this trip when work took me to one of those not-so-gun-friendly big Eastern cities. Last year I sent Mike a request. Could he make me a leather "coin purse". One that could carry around ten dollars in quarters and, be worn on my belt as part of my everyday carry.<br />
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About a week later, I was stuffing quarters into the little leather pouch.<br />
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After carrying it every day for months on end, I have found it remarkably handy. It has a long leather strip that can be gripped in the palm of your hand, while it also folds over and, snaps together with the bottom of the "coin purse" to securely fasten itself and, ride on your belt.<br />
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The whole deal, is a long tear drop shape, very (very) similar to those old school blackjacks a man might have carried in his back pocket in the last century. Oddly enough, when jammed full of quarters, or dollar coins it even has a similar weight as one of those old time skull smackers.<br />
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Mike designed his "Barranti Life Changer" to have a small flap at the top of the "coin purse", to which you insert your change. This is in contrast to similarly styled "coin purses" that have a zipper down the center that could potentially bust open if it were to befall a hard surface. Not like those old blackjacks that were used to smack an attacker in the head. Those are of course, two different scenarios. The last one certainly not to be under taken by an all leather, one handed "coin purse".<br />
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Of course, upon seeing that the little leather flap is unsecured might make one wonder about the possibility of change flying out and, all over the pavement. Say, if you were required, for some unknown reason, to use your non-gun hand to reach back on your non-gun side and quickly deploy the "Life Changer" in a swinging arc. Perhaps to settle a sidewalk dispute with a parking meter that is just mere moments from expiring.<br />
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In order to assuage such worry about any unexpected lost of coinage, I decided to test the "coin purse" out. Because while it might look similar to one of those old lead filled saps of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this after all is a "coin purse".<br />
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Raiding an old camp coffee mug where I keep quarters, I managed to stuff in twelve dollars worth into the Barranti Life Changer. I gave it a few overhead swings and, didn't lose a single quarter. After wearing it on my belt for a few days, it felt a little too bulky for my preferences. Taking out two dollars worth of change flattened the "Life Changer" out were it rode a bit nicer on my belt, next to a single stack 1911 mag holster.<br />
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Not having any parking meters available at home at which to swing at, I opted for the next nearest option. My 1986 vintage, 80 lb canvas Everlast punching bag, to test the overall durability of both the leather and, the stitching against any potential loss of of change, should the "coin purse" strike a hard surface and bust open. Delivering more than a dozen blows against the canvas punching bag there were no rips in the leather, not a single stitch popped loose. There was only the oddly satisfying "thud" of the little leather "coin purse" hitting the bag.<br />
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One might find such behavior a little odd. Why after all would someone want to repeatedly smack a leather "coin purse" against a punching bag? Yet, I could contend that this is no different than when the employees of Cold Steel, the knife manufacturer, lock a folding knife into a vice by the blade and repeatedly add twenty-five pound plates to a piece of wire hanging from the handle until the locking mechanism from the knife fails.<br />
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Torture testing a product doesn't have to make sense after all, even it is proves to be informative.<br />
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Seventeen years into the twenty-first century, a "coin purse", like the Barranti Life Changer, might seem outdated. Loose change in a plastic card world and, what not. What surprised me was just how useful it has been.<br />
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Despite the fact that parking meters are going more towards a credit card based system in major urban areas, most of the machines I have encountered still take coins. On one recent business trip, I encountered a turn pike toll booth that was not only unmanned but, only accepted loose change. Ninety cents worth of loose change to be precise. Not generally an issue were I in my own truck but, good luck finding loose change in the console of a rental vehicle.<br />
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Should you find yourself, not needing a small leather pouch full of change, you can simply substitute quarters for dollar coins, of which you can carry around fifteen dollars worth. Which gives it real purpose in buying anything from a cup of coffee to a sub-sandwich. It being up to you to refill the pouch with money when it drops below the desired amount/weight.<br />
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Lastly, the nice thing about carrying a pouch full of legal tender on your belt, is despite an ever increasing environment of security theater, whether it's at your local court house, or flying these unfriendly skies as of late, a "coin purse" is perfectly legal. Though the Barranti Life Changer certainly sounds a lot more masculine than "coin purse".<br />
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There is also something to be said for going through your life carrying something handmade, especially when it's handmade by Mike.<br />
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In a world that is obsessed with plastic 9mms this and, kydex holster that, there is a lot of old school gentleman and, everyday usefulness for things like the Barranti Life Changer. Whether it's feeding an urban parking meter, paying your way through a toll booth or, the laundry mat in Ketchum, Idaho.<br />
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The Barranti Life Changer goes for $55 and, you can reach out to Mike at his website <a href="http://www.barrantileather.com/Home_Page.php">barrantileather.com</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319010524051426901.post-16150852802538904682016-06-27T21:02:00.000-06:002017-07-04T10:33:59.066-06:00Due Process Transposed<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">The first time I ever dealt with law enforcement on a direct level was as a teenager. Unlike the conventional situations of many a wayward youth finding themselves talking with a cop mine came in the form of a grisly rape and, murder of a twelve year old girl.<br /><br />Just a few days before my sixteenth birthday the body of Che Sims had been found in a creek bed. Her attackers after gang raping her, strangled her to death and, then to keep the forward motion of evil going they mutilated her body before leaving her.<br /><br />It was one of those murders that gripped the Saint Louis area, one that was not, in 1990, exactly crime free. Her case, Che's, got the full court press from law enforcement, no stone was going to be left un-turned and in the next couple of weeks I'd be one of those stones. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">That came when the cops finally got solid leads and a sketch of one suspect was released to the paper. As the sixteen year old me read through the article my eyes at last fell upon the face outlined in graphite and, reprinted for the world to see. Che Sims, a young girl I never met, and I were now forever connected because I knew one of her killers and his face looked up at me from the newspaper. But it was a secondary detail from the article that solidified it for me. <br /><br />She had been found with post-mortem cuts on her arms, and whether it was clear misdirection or an actual theory the police were running with, the article stated that the cops believe the cuts were made in an attempt to revive her via pain, after being strangled. The reality that was eventually revealed at trial, was that her killers had cut her, they had carved into her young body in order to make a blood oath to one another to never tell the world what they had done.<br /><br />While I knew the face, I couldn't place the name exactly but I also knew that, the face went along with a troup of guys who carried the old style Buck 110 folders on their hips. It wasn't an uncommon thing for a teenage boy in the late 1980s or turn of the 90's but in this instance 2+2 = someone I had known.<br /><br />Over the next couple of days I poured over that sketch with an obsession. I made photocopy after photocopy in the school library adding my own details to the face trying to jar something in my memory until it finally clicked and I matched it against the only data-base I had at the time. A middle school year book.<br /><br />And there he was.<br /><br />A day later found me sitting in a small room near the principal's office talking with two detectives from the Saint Louis Major Case Squad. No doubt for them it was likely just another false lead, some teenage boy playing junior detective. They would sit and talk to me and get on down the road to the next "witness".<br /><br />Then, some weeks later Saint Louis County Police arrested four men, Jeffrey Grice, Matthew Funke, Chris Johnson, and Brian Faulkner. Funke would later be tied to killing another person just seventeen days after Che's murder.<br /><br />If me identifying one of the suspects ever meant anything or not to the cops I'll never know. No one from STLCPD ever called. There were no thank you cards, no ham at Christmas, no recognition whatsoever.<br /><br />In the coming years of my life where my work help put over a dozen criminals into prison no law enforcement official would ever thank me in any public fashion. Whether it was a federal agent, local cop, or in one case, an Assistant U.S. Attorney General.<br /><br />It is, as they say, what it is.<br /><br />While my career has always been, shall we say, unconventional it always came with the idea that it was about doing the right thing. This despite having never carried a badge, or never served in any official capacity of governmental service. No one ever gave me a license to kill, or for that matter the license to arrest anyone.<br /><br />In 1354 the 29th Clause of the Magna Carta was redefined and the world was introduced to the phrase "due process of law" and over the course of following centuries England and the Magna Carta would diverge from one another. It, the Magna Carta, however would become the base layer of American law when the Constitution became the Supreme Law of the Land in the 18th Century. <br /><br />So important was the idea of Due Process to be made law, it was included into the Fifth Amendment to the Bill of Rights.<br /><br />The wording being precisely this...<br /><br />"<span style="background-color: white; color: #252525; line-height: 22.4px;">No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."</span><br /><br />Yet like it always does, the Bill of Rights proves that if the men who seek to seize power and control over their fellow man are viruses, then the Bill of Rights is anti-viral and due process it's firewall.<br /><br />As stated by United States Senator Joe Manchin, whereupon he said when pushing for more gun control through terror watchlists.<br /><br /><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">"</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Really, the firewall we have right now is due process. It’s all due process. So we can all say we want the same thing, but how do we get there? If a person is on a terrorist watch list, like the gentleman, the shooter in Orlando? He was twice by the FBI — we were briefed yesterday about what happened — but that young man was brought in twice. They did everything they could. The FBI did everything they were supposed to do. But there was no way to keep him on the nix list or keep him off the gun-buy list, there was no way to do that.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">So can’t we say that if a person’s under suspicion there should be a five-year period of time that we have to see if good behavior, if this person continues the same traits? Maybe we can come to that type of an agreement, but due process is what’s killing us right now."<br /><br />So much for him protecting and defending the Constitution.<br /><br />The reality is that, it's not killing us. Domestic terrorism is still a very rare thing here in the United States and our gun crimes continue to drop. Ironically given the rise numbers of new gun owners and continual push to relax gun laws and gun carry laws throughout the America.<br /><br />So what of it.<br /><br />Wouldn't it be wise to restrict the rights of someone under FBI investigation?<br /><br />We have to remember that being under "investigation" does not mean guilty. I myself conduct investigations all the time and the idea of investigative work is to gather information in order to draw conclusions based upon fact.<br /><br />Facts, John Adams said, are stubborn things.<br /><br />A little over a month ago I was loading up my truck to head out to do just that. Investigate. As I walked back to the house I saw two vehicles come roaring up in front of my home. Matching vehicle manufacturer, dark windows in the front and back, hard brake-to-a-stop.<br /><br />It was very classic law enforcement. I also realized that they had come to talk to me, atleast most likely. As to the why I had no idea. In all honesty it was a startling thing. The flipside of the coin is that there was some sense of relief when the car windows did not roll down with full automatic gun fire to follow. After all, I have some "fans" all over the world who are not fans. And they aren't friendly either.<br /><br />Not sure of anything I called my Business Partner, who was on a field trip with his kid that day, to see if he knew something I did not.<br /><br />The pounding on the door had begun.<br /><br />When he did not answer I called The Wife. Because frankly in case she came home and for some reason I had been taken into custody I wanted her to have some idea of what happened to me. Even if I was not sure what was happening to me.<br /><br />The pounding on the door had stopped and had moved to the picture window. I walked over to the glass and asked if I could help them. They asked if I was me. I confirmed that I was, indeed me. They then asked if we could speak outside.<br /><br />At that point I asked who they were and they identified themselves as Federal Law enforcement, specifically with what agency. I asked if they knew what I did for a living and they said that they did not. So I went ahead and told them. I also told them I was armed and was going to take my gun off and leave it on the table that was within their view.<br /><br />As I walked to the side door to meet them my mind ran through any number of reasons the "Man" would be wanting to talk to me. I came up with zero answers in the next fifteen feet.<br /><br />When I stepped out, I greeted both of them and they introduced themselves and I followed with "what did I do to get on your radar?"<br /><br />"Were you parked in front of the FBI building downtown a couple of weeks ago?"<br /><br />I laughed. I knew exactly what this was about. "Yep. I was working a surveillance watching the hotel across the street." And then I began giving a general overall of the the case. I mentioned how at different times both my Business Partner and myself joked about what a bad idea it was and wondered if they were listening in on our walkie talkie communication."<br /><br />This quickly became a non-issue by all appearances. <br /><br />I had been parked on a public street, next to parking meters as a matter of fact, given them the reason and explanation for being there, my contact information, the name of my company, my business partner, et cetera, et cetera and while being parked in front of the Bureau's building wasn't probably smart by all accounts, at the time it afforded us the best surveillance advantage point and potential to conduct a mobile surveillance in downtown rush hour traffic.<br /><br />Ah yes. I see you. Shaking your head in disapproval. Thinking "say nothing! Call the attorney!".<br /><br />You may do as you wish. I saw reasonable questions that held reasonable answers therefore held no qualms in talking with them. Are there times when one should "lawyer up"? Absolutely. I've written about that before. This situation was not one of them.<br /><br />As it would turn out, the situation also wasn't over.<br /><br />Two weeks later they returned.<br /><br />The questions were different only because I was told that "nothing" I had told them "had checked out." Not my phone number, not my company, and not my Business Partner's name. It turned out that they were both on an FBI task force.<br /><br />"I have my cell phone right here. Call it."<br /><br />The phone number had been transposed.<br /><br />A number I might add that is readily found with my name and a google search, along with what I do. Even this blog.<br /><br />They misspelled both the name of my Business Partner and business. Then stated they could not find any information on the later. <br /><br />This was getting cleared up today. I called my Business Partner and put him on speaker phone. We discussed back and forth between us whether or not for them to call our Client who had hired us for the job that now had me under the watchful eye of federal law enforcement. Both agents assured us that it wasn't necessary and they had things right now. I offered up copies of our state business filings and gave the address to our office.<br /><br />Perhaps the real caveat was my Business Partner mentioning that he was a former federal agent. <br /><br />So much for governmental databases.<br /><br />All, I was assured, was now a-okay. Things had been explained out. Answers given and now verified even further. It was never unfriendly nor unprofessional between them, or me.<br /><br />Mistakes happen, people have off days at work. I know I have had them.<br /><br />Man have I had them. So I don't begrudge either of them.<br /><br />But here in lies the rub. I have no idea if the file that was opened on me is closed. I have no idea if I'm on some list for anything because for all I know some tech clicked the wrong box someplace on some bureau inter-agency file form. No law was broken. I literally was parked on a public street and sat there for four and five hours over the course of a few days. Something I have done for thousands and thousands of hours in twenty years.<br /><br />The problem isn't two federal investigative agents just doing one more case in the middle of the day. The problem is that if people like Senator Manchin get their way my due process, my rights, are just gone because I parked in front of the wrong building. <br /><br />To paraphrase Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven "taking away a man's rights is a hell of a thing. It's all he's got. And all he's ever going to have."</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319010524051426901.post-17196346283853854982016-03-01T01:50:00.000-07:002016-03-01T18:45:13.056-07:00Book Review: Under Orion<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxZgshUr_MeaWRbT3FU9LK7e5Hp3iiWvLDMwJ8IjEmYJA6VW_hOpR1E2p2HuQoOu-_AISxEg8NGNUh-tAX_b9arfoRV11qGfSS2INDUsVcsK_4s_vi2WrbWG0ZOp7BQCkJoqfrlTzbLbk/s1600/IMG_1108.JPG" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxZgshUr_MeaWRbT3FU9LK7e5Hp3iiWvLDMwJ8IjEmYJA6VW_hOpR1E2p2HuQoOu-_AISxEg8NGNUh-tAX_b9arfoRV11qGfSS2INDUsVcsK_4s_vi2WrbWG0ZOp7BQCkJoqfrlTzbLbk/s400/IMG_1108.JPG" width="400" /></a><br /><br /><br />I didn't meet Jeff Quinn.<br />
<br />
When the NRAAM (the National Rifle Associations Annual Meeting) in 2014 was in Indianapolis I came walking out of the convention hall looking for a cup of coffee and a place to sit. I found the first and was stuck leaning against the wall as no chair was to be found. Left alone long enough to stand around and do nothing the old bodyguard in me comes out and I start people watching, and to be real honest the NRA convention makes for pretty good people watching.<br />
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At some point and time I saw Jeff and Boge Quinn step off an escalator and I pushed off the wall to go and introduce myself and chat for a moment. As I recall, Jeff was carrying a microphone and Boge a camera and they started setting up to record a piece. As soon as I saw this I decided against, as not to interrupt a couple of guys working, the problem was having pushed off the wall and I was now committed in my head that I was going to talk to the now occupied Quinn brothers. So there I was standing away from an otherwise decent wall to lean against with no one to talk to.<br />
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It just so happened that I looked up at the top of the escalators and saw Richard Mann leaning against a rail watching the world go by. Earlier in the day I had the opportunity to meet him in person, while having a ham sandwich and talking with Ed Friedman and Jay Grazio (I'm just going with the name dropping at this point. Stick with me it might get better). We had exchanged pleasantries and then Richard went on to talk with Ed about how he could wound animals with a .223 or something. <br />
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Now he was standing all alone minding his own business with a posture that said clearly "Leave me alone I've had enough of people today".<br />
<br />
"Perfect!" I thought "I'll go talk to him."<br />
<br />
Ordinarily I'd leave another man alone but I had always enjoyed his writings and he looked kind of old and tired standing up there and I thought "Well Jeff Cooper died before I could meet and talk with him. I'd better risk it".<br />
<br />
Fortunately for me Richard didn't throw me over the rail and we spoke for a few minutes and he gave me some advice here and there on writing and then we parted ways.<br />
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Last year he self-published a book called "Under Orion: Hunting Stories from Appalachia to Africa" and a couple of weeks back I ordered a copy for myself from Amazon.<br />
<br />
Unexpectedly, I finished it tonight. It had not been my plan, which was to do some reading from Morton Hunt's "The Story of Psychology". Richard's book happen to be on top and I could see I was getting near the end and I was trying to preserve it just a little longer but, then I opened it up to the dog eared cornered page that was titled "I don't believe in ghosts". Had it been only titled and been devoid of any photos I might have been able to resist. The problem was, there was a photo near the bottom and it was of Finn Aargaard.<br />
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As a gun obsessed teenager I loved anything Finn Aargaard wrote and, when he passed away in 2000 it struck a real cord with me at the time because his death made real to me that the last of the great gun writers were starting leave us. Gary Sitton would go in 2005 and Jeff Cooper in 2006. As much respect and admiration I had for the late Colonel Cooper and everything he did for modern hand-gunning, Finn Aargard's death, to me at the least, ended the golden age of gun writing.<br />
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He was my generation's combination of Townsend Whelen and Frederick Selous. So it didn't take much persuasion to disregard Hunt's book of psychology for Richard's brief moment shooting Finn's well known Model 70 in .375 H&H.<br />
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Then twenty pages later it was done. I had finished Under Orion.<br />
<br />
In this age where 90% of the gun writers are not really gunmen and not even really writers, Richard Mann is both. And he writes in the way the old timers did. His own.<br />
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What makes Under Orion so worth while is that, it's not a chronologically written autobiography of Richard's hunting life nor a book that is page after page of "So I got me another trophy animal after the last trophy animal and I wasn't even...."<br />
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Instead it's about the triumphs and sorrows and at times hilarious moments any man or woman who has ever loved to hunt and had the chance to do it enough experiences, with a little bit of the West Virginia Hillbilly waxing poetic about wool collars and cold breezes. Which you may roll your eyes and think that part unimportant but, for those of us who have in fact buried ourselves a little lower into a wool collared hunting jacket on a cold morning watching the sun break the woods orange and the squirrels make as much racket as a city street the poetry and motion of life in the woods matters.<br />
<br />
The title of course refers to the constellation known as Orion which is the best constellation because it belongs to the hunter. When I see him, Orion, up in the night sky I am taken back to my formative years deer hunting with my dad and my first real rifle, a Remington 788 in .243 Winchester. I'm huddled in an old wooded tree stand hours before sun up watching Orion through the pines. Crossing an early morning field with a buddy, or in the San Juan mountains north of Durango.<br />
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Perhaps most of all Under Orion is a book that gets it. And by it I mean how the small things in life matter so dearly much. The value of good friends, smart dogs, beautiful country, the smell of early mornings and good rifles.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319010524051426901.post-10416790454234323032016-01-07T22:21:00.002-07:002016-01-07T22:21:45.369-07:00Two Presidents, Two women and a .45<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br /><br /><br /><br />Tonight in a "town hall" meeting President Obama told a woman who survived a rape and was now pro-gun that she may not have been able to use a gun to thwart the assault on her and that it may not really make her any safer.<br /><br />The real war on women continues as the men of the Left continue to see women as helpless, weak and their role best left to being a victim, while not offering any answers, encouragement nor decisive statement where he could have said "I'm only sorry you didn't shoot the son of a bitch."<br /><br />Because that is what he should have said.<br /><br />Yet there was a time when Presidents were different, even before they became President.<br /><br />On a hot autumn night back in 1933 Melba King was walking to her home in Des Moines, Iowa after being at nursing school when she felt a gun pressed into her back and a man demanding all of her money and one wonders possibly what else.<br /><br />But it was never to be known, because out of the dark came a voice from above.<br /><br />"Leave her alone or I'll shoot you right between the shoulders!" <br /><br />And there, two stories above, leaning out of his apartment window with a .forty-five revolver was a young sports reporter named... Ronald Reagan. <br /><br />The robber didn't debate, he didn't threaten, he didn't shoot instead he fled back into the night from which he had came. Reagan told the young Ms. King to stay put long enough for him to put on his robe and slippers so he could escort her home...no doubt the .45 concealed in a pocket.<br /><br />Some fifty years would pass before Reagan would see Ms. King again. In 1984 at a Republican campaign event then Governor Terry Branstad had heard of the story, and invited her to the event where Ronnie was going to be in attendance. <br /><br />In true Reagan fashion when the story was told, remarked to the crowd "The gun was empty! I didn't have any cartridges! If he hadn't run when I told him to, I was going to have to throw it at him." laughing at himself. <br />However, when the reporters asked Ms. King for a comment about that night she responded with "And he said 'Leave her alone or I'll shoot you between the shoulders.".<br /><br />Martin Luther King junior once famously made a remark about not judging someone by the color of their skin but rather the content of their character.<br /><br />He was of course right.<br /><br /><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-family: Helmet, Freesans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319010524051426901.post-31897609464085047562015-12-06T00:23:00.002-07:002015-12-06T00:29:50.508-07:00Should you...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In his book "Never Give In!" Winston S. Churchill, the grandson to, well...Churchill related a story in the preface. Here he describes that his mother was just twenty years old and about six months pregnant with him in the early summer of 1940. The British had fallen back from Dunkirk, retreating across the English Channel, France was falling to German occupation and Hitler was preparing for Operation "Sealion", which was his codeword for the invasion of England.<br />
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One evening, before the air raid sirens would begin, sending the family to the basement they sat at dinner and Churchill's daughter related how he was brooding at the dinner table. Buried in thought. At some point he ended his silence and said:<br />
<br />
"If the Hun comes, I am counting on each one of you to take one with you before you go!", "But Papa" his daughter exclaimed, "I don't have a gun and, even if I did, I would not know how to use it." "But, my dear," Churchill said, his voice increasing in power and fist held high, "You can go tot the kitchen and grab a carving knife!"<br />
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This was Churchill at the core.<br />
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In the aftermath of the ISIS attack on San Bernandino there is much being said about a lot of things from the politicos...and most everyone else. Like everyone else I have my feelings on each bit of it.<br />
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Contrary to what you may think, if you have read me here for any matter of time, I am at my core a sincere man of peace. I believe in the right of the individual to live their life as they see fit and to believe as they choose as long as they bring no harm to another. It's my belief that violence is an answer best saved as an absolute last resort. If for no other reason, violence has the inherent issue of affecting the lives of people not directly involved.<br />
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Yet, as much as I believe in living peaceable I do not by contrast believe that anyone should live under willful naivety.<br />
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We, the world, are in a war with the Huns, just as Europe was with Germany. Only our enemy is far more opaque. There is no uniform, no central power, no "one man" as it was with Hitler. And while we live in a post 1945 world where we know that outcome, once upon a time, such was not the case.<br />
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Much like the politicos are weighing in, so are many in the defense community. And they do so with understandable reasons, my inbox is well flooded at this point with so many questions from enough people that it would be time consuming to respond to them all.<br />
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So here is my advice.<br />
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Should you meet with a person bent on a campaign of terror, intending to murder their fellow men and women, to leave behind a swath of widows, widowers and orphans, to grieve families and nations alike. Do the reasonable thing.<br />
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Kill them.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319010524051426901.post-81314555204933578172015-10-06T08:25:00.001-06:002015-10-06T08:25:33.277-06:00Little bores for bigger rolesIt's not my standard Modus operandi to link other articles (okay except for the ones I write elsewhere for other people) but, I thought I would share this one.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.rugertalk.com/The-plinker-went-to-war-The-IDFs-Ruger-10-22-Ruger-Talk.html">The plinker went to war The IDFs Ruger 10 22</a><br /><br />Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I had penned <a href="http://straightforwardinacrookedworld.blogspot.com/2012/10/dark-arts-for-good-guys-22-lr-pistol.html">something along the same vein</a> . To be honest on any given day I can be accused of being a Caliberist, I am of the old school thought that I like a large bore pistol when I can have it, and fortunately I can have it on a daily basis.<br /><br />That said there is also a real need for diversity in the civilian defensive tool box and sometimes we all (self-included) can fall into the pit of latest and greatest buy-me-now craze. Fact is most of us are already pretty well geared up more than we know and the money desired to be spent on a new gun could be better served in buying spare mags and getting to the range.<br /><br />While we all in the gun culture or defense community have our pet peeves and prejudices, whether it's AK vs AR, Steel vs Tupperwear....I mean plastic, the .22 LR and specifically the .22 long gun very much has a place in your kit.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319010524051426901.post-5783738598054934152015-10-02T00:11:00.003-06:002015-10-02T00:11:41.889-06:00Perhaps...What we should stop doing in the wake of any attack from anyone is listening to the "talking" points of academics, politicians, or psychologists who have no real world experience in most anything let alone contending with dangerous armed men bent of committing evil. And instead listen to dangerous, armed men who are committed to preserving society.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319010524051426901.post-80220122992236751222015-09-07T00:37:00.002-06:002015-09-11T13:27:15.160-06:00Gear Review: CRKT Otanashi Noh Ken<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Life often involves more adapting to it than getting what you want out of it. Travel the world in any small capacity and you learn this somewhat rather quickly. Back when the Afghanistan and Iraq military campaigns were going on strong and Blackwater held a very significant presence there was a common misconception that if you were in the private contractor trade and could pay enough graff that you could travel large portions of the world armed. In some cases it was and is true but by large margin it was not.<br />
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When I first started in the executive protection game two decades ago it was surprising how often that work would not involve carrying a gun of any kind. Back then (and still now) in many parts the globe and the U.S. as well conceal carry laws were fewer and reciprocity was essentially unheard of. <br />
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The common and predominate thought becomes "How do you bodyguard without a gun?". You just do, liking it has no part in the equation if you are going to go about it. Professionals do it all over the world everyday. For me in these days of late not all work travel is protection. There have been critical extractions, K&Rs negotiations, and intelligence gathering operations for any number of reasons and clients.<br />
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On a somewhat now infamous job Central America I had to surrender a Beretta Bobcat for various reasons and was left with being armed with a knife and a collapsible baton. In the ensuing days and nights having a gun of any caliber would have been nice but as the man once said, "wish in one hand...."<br />
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Sometime after that I was preparing to go overseas into Pakistan, then India carrying a gun was almost possible right up until it was not. CRKT had just come out with the Hissatsu, this being the original fixed blade model. For me and at that time, it was exactly the knife I needed and wanted. It was slim, trim and a straight up fighting knife and not am over sized wilderness survival knife. The only caveat I had with the knife is that I've never been crazy about the sheath for it. Someday someone will have to explain to me how knife makers can come up with brilliant knife designs, be willing to charge a premium, then do such an incredibly bad job at sheath design when it comes to either practical carry or for that matter discreet carry. <br />
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Eventually I was able to work it out a couple of solid carry methods with for it. One being inverted under my shirt, carried under my arm pit via what essentially was a paracord shoulder cord rig. This worked well for riding in a vehicle for hours at a stretch. The other was an in-the-waistband cross draw, another hung inverted down the small of my back.<br />
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The knife did in fact prove invaluable on the job in thwarting an attack along a road side. A large bladed knife transcends any language barrier. But, on the thirty-five hour flight home after carrying the large fixed blade for a month I began working out what I liked and did not like about it.<br />
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What I did not like was the difficulty in concealing the knife on my person, and there is also the risk of it not being well received by customs or the local law enforcement should such a knife be discovered. You can expect much in the way of inquiry into your person. Having been there and done that with the questions from across the desk and not being in the land of the free and the home of the brave, I can assure you even when the conversation ends up "okay" you don't care to revisit it anywhere. The Buck Nighthawk that I carried into Central America was confiscated in England thanks to their draconian knife laws. In my experience most countries pay no attention to a fixed bladed knife in a checked bag but as the world gets smaller and tighter they will and knives weird the sheep out.<br />
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So upon return home the interest turned towards finding a tactical folder that followed the same lines at the Hissatsu fixed blade. I didn't have to look or wait long because about a month later the Hissatsu Folder came out. I ordered one immediately.<br />
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When I finally got it I actually hated it. Quite a bit. <br />
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This was partially due to the AUTOLAWKS system on the knife. It was counter-intuitive to anything I had been dealing with at that time of three decades of knife handling. To me it was half lawyer switch/ half boy scout safety knife system. I despised it. When I ordered it I thought it was an optional thing I could use, if desired. Instead it was the button safety on a lever gun. Ugly and I hated it.<br />
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Mind you, it had nothing to do with whether or not it worked. It wasn't optional and therefore hated.<br />
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Over the next few days the knife started to grow on me and I grew less interested in sending it back, but the AUTOLAWKS system had to go and it did. In somewhat of unglorious fashion with a hex headed driver of appropriate size I stood at the work bench and happily voided any warranty the knife had, but once back together and in fine working order I liked the knife far better.<br />
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It did not really see active duty in the everyday carry sense for any period of time. Instead it became relegated to what I referred to "gym" duty and wore it in my waist band as I worked out. Around that time I decided to begin hitting the lap pool at the gym again and two nights a week, there clipped to the waistband of my swim-trunks lap after lap was the Hissatsu folder.<br />
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I did have to be mindful about the edge getting rust on it but, not paranoid and it has continued to thrive in water environments onward.<br />
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I also liked that the knife also has this element of classic switchblade to it, while not being as delicate, and after a rocky start it found it's way into my everyday carry rotation.<br />
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But much like the first season of a television show, sometimes it takes a while to work out the kinks. The overall idea being sound but, the details could use improvement.Eventually James Williams and CRKT found their shui in my opinion with the Otanashi Noh Ken.Whatever first impressions the Hissatsu Folder gave me, the Noh Ken was a complete 180. I liked it from the start and have been carrying it everywhere ever since.<br />
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The short description I would give you is, through all of my years running a protection detail or working in unfriendly realms this was the knife I was waiting for. I promise you that is not solicited bullshit.<br />
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Mind you there are a lot of wonderful tactical folders out there. I've owned many of them, and I will own more. That's just knife life and there is no sense in apologizing for it. <br />
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So why the the Otanashi Nok Ken?<br />
<br />
As much as I hate working, consulting, problem solving or however you title the work I do; some of the cities, regions and environs that I traverse to are not gun friendly. Some you who read this corner of the web on occasion work in far far less friendly areas and do so in true black. Many of you also work everyday in gun unfriendly office spaces. But most of us can either carry or smuggle a knife in one way or another if need be. In this vein we are talking about it in a personal defensive role. When folded into it's handle it is both flat and thin. It's very rectangular shape allows for a certain level of camouflaging when placed in a gear bag, shaving kit, or IT equipment pack, if you are of that ilk.<br />
<br />
One of the problems in carrying the larger tactical folders is that they are not just big, but they can also be obnoxiously big, rough handled, thick handled and thick bladed. From a durability standpoint these things all sound good because they tend to be tough as hell. But much like the .22 in the hand is better than the .45 at home mantra the same can be true of the behemoth folders. If you don't have it with you it's not going to do you any good.<br />
<br />
They also tend to be hard on the liners of pockets and aren't necessarily good at doing sometimes simple tasks. Like slicing something other than an attacker.<br />
<br />
If you ever have picked up a filet knife and thought "this would make a good defensive knife if it was sturdier and had a thicker blade" that is kind of what you are getting with the Otanashi Noh Ken.<br />
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<br />
The blade comes in at 4 and a half inches which can be an issue for carrying some places. That said...the blade is four and a half inches which translates to being very effective against an attacker.<br />
<br />
When we talk about knife defense work we have to be very honest about it, because a knife does up close what the bullet does from distance. And sometimes it does more so.<br />
<br />
With it's longish blade the capability to deflate a lung, cause rapid blood loss from strikes to the the right and left carotid arteries the trachea, or getting very successful deep wound penetration on areas of the shoulder and biceps is most certainly there.<br />
<br />
While that may make you cringe, or read it with some offense it's worth noting that, if you found yourself being shoved into a van, or on your back onto the pavement of some dark parking lot and are armed only with a knife....<br />
<br />
This is what you want to be doing, And you want to be doing it with a strong insistence towards repetition.<br />
<br />
Regarding the LAWKs system on the knife, either mine is broke or they finally got smart and made it optional where you can engage it or disengage it at will. While the knife experts like to drone on and on about steel, whether or not is AT593f'd or something. Here is my thought process towards it. It maintains an edge very well, along with a fierce point and is readily touched up or resharped as needed. Knives lose their edges and you have to re-sharpen them. That's life. Much like that green light you see tomorrow will eventually turn red. Deal with both and move on along.<br />
<br />
Opening is easy enough via the thumbstud mounted onto the blade. It's also very easy to open via good old fashion inertia. Something that should be encouraged in it's practice.<br />
<br />
Large bladed aside, it's size and length are also advantageous as to it's grip length, not only because it will fit a wide array of hands but in colder climates and months the knife is easy to manipulate with gloves, in all fashions.<br />
<br />
Lastly, upon the knife itself. They got the clip right on the Noh Ken where they got it wrong on the Hissatsu folder. While I get that the clip is part and parcel to the modern knife industry here is why I am pointing this out specifically.<br />
<br />
In cold weather I commonly wear a button up coat or a wool vest. In between buttons, riding vertically, I like to clip a folder to the inside of the garment. While fundamentally functional it is more often than not, not well concealed in this position. Largely this is based upon the fact that of the knives I carry the clip is mounted lower on the knife, which in turn means the knife rides higher....or in this case juts outward.<br />
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<br />
This is a very accessible angle and position when riding in a vehicle and on the street it allows for primary access to a secondary weapon when my pistol is concealed. The Otanashi Noh Ken's clip is so well placed on the knife that it rides very very deep and is ideal for this type of vertical chest carry. Something not often easily obtained in cold weather defensive carry for any weapon.<br />
<br />
Which brings me to my last criticism towards the knife. While the clip on the knife is dark and blends well against all but the lightest backgrounds and it has an Achilles heel with the lettering CRKT running down it. This and the silly Japanese writing and English translation "Otanashi Noh Ken" on one side of the blade and CRKT on the other rob the knife of the sterility that is envisioned behind it's purpose. It also reminds me of the cheap military inspired knives I use to buy on vacation when I was a twelve year old boy. So there maybe some paint remover in the knife's future, just to give it the nod of quiet it is supposed to represent.<br />
<br />
Those very minor criticisms aside...<br />
<br />
If I were sending a daughter off to college or into her young years of adult life and she was weapon friendly while her locales were not so much but a knife was doable, the Otanashi Noh Ken would be a very good choice as a companion for the subway station or the walks across a dark campus.<br />
<br />
Here on the internet everyone is a Tier 1 Delta SEAL Recon sniper agent. I get that. But there is also the reality of the world where there are in fact any number of men and women who work in the intelligence game around the world, with and without the benefit of the diplomatic passport. Some of them come off "the farm" some of them don't and while every regular joe thinks these folks are well trained and well equipped you'd be surprised by how little they operate with. In my experience, they tend not to think about anything that wasn't provided to them by the government (you think I am joking). If they are fortunate enough to carry a gun, it's because they checked it out from someone's armory however, most of them work their careers unarmed. That does not however mean that they don't put their lives on the line in the process.<br />
<br />
Faced with the prospect of not having any type of significant weapon at my disposal while working anywhere overseas for a couple of years or longer before coming home and wanted an edged insurance policy that was both readily capable of handling one of more attackers in a close up fight but required it to be discreetly carried, I would be hard pressed to not choose it.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319010524051426901.post-7686144936329044422015-08-02T15:42:00.002-06:002015-08-03T00:43:38.195-06:00Flight Risk<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
Prior to 9/11 a person could fly with a pocket knife. In most airport arenas this constituted a blade of 4 inches or less, and it was generally recognized that airport security went with their respective State's blade length law.<br />
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At that time I, like hundreds of thousands, if not millions of travelers carried a knife when they flew. In the early to mid 90s I carried a then standard Spyderco Endura as an everyday carry. That is until the day I went to depart from Atlanta airport. A private uniformed security guard informed me that I would not be able to fly with the knife and that he would have to confiscate it. When I inquired as to why, as the blade length was not prohibited he stated that it was deemed to have an "aggressive edge" (read: it was serrated). A knife is a knife there is no such thing as an "aggressive edge" no matter what century you live in but, the confiscation was going to happen regardless. He apologized for the rules but suddenly seemed irritated when I opened the blade, stuck it under the heel of my boot and snapped the blade off.<br />
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Upon returning home I decided to circumnavigate the "rules and regulations" of flying with a knife and purchased a Spyderco Native with a plain edge (along with another Endura). From 1996 to 2001 the Native became my "flying" knife. <br />
<br />
Then of course we all know what happened in September of 2001 and the course of domestic airline security made sweeping changes, but only in the bureaucratic sense.<br />
<br />
Going on fourteen years later and countless number of flights we are not safer. Our pre-flight security is not handled by professional armed counter-terrorist profilers greeting you on the walk through to your plane. Instead we have gross inefficiency that rivals what we had before 9/11 only under the federal banner.<br />
<br />
To be frank. I should be allowed to fly with my knife. So should my 60-something Vietnam veteran Father-in-law who recently had his dull as butter, tip broken, small Trapper taken from him because he left it in his pants pocket. And so should anyone else.<br />
<br />
But if we wanted to have a set of rules for flying with a knife then we would have to look no farther than the wallet. Because if a person can produce a conceal carry permit or a Federal Firearms License then why shouldn't they be allowed to carry a knife. Because gun owners, unlike every other American, has been routinely subjected to background checks and fingerprinting that goes through state and federal records that deem them "okay."<br />
<br />
I shouldn't need to go through a TSA background check so I can get permission to keep my boots and belt on. I've already done my background work. As a matter of fact I've done it several times in a couple of states. In essence my ccw says "trustworthy".<br />
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Instead we are regulated to being continually treated like cattle, children, and criminal suspects all lumped into one line for the stupidity of political correctness. Instead of well paid, and well healed effectiveness.<br />
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Because while you can not, under any circumstance, legally fly with a pocket knife you can however hand them your credit card and proceed to get drunk, potentially belligerent, or mood alternated to the point you go for the emergency exit door handle at thirty-five thousand feet.<br />
<br />
But granddad's Case trapper knife is a problem.<br />
<br />
I want my knife back, my pants belted, my boots on and everyone's dignity in place when they travel. Why we have allowed ourselves to be victimized by this idiocracy continues to astound me.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319010524051426901.post-7621452612729224322015-05-14T00:03:00.002-06:002015-05-14T21:50:39.027-06:00The Scout Rifle Study<br />
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<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v87/caneyforkoutfitters/rgsr13.jpg" style="-webkit-user-select: none;" /><br />
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I like practical rifles and for years the scout concept has appealed to me. A decade or more ago I toyed with the idea of a custom build (those old Brockman sights just looked great for starters), and honestly that was really the way you obtained one if you didn't pony up for the Steyr Scout. Eventually the idea just lost traction for a number of reasons, cost being one, the other being that I owned two .30-06s what did I need with a .308 (talk about dumb reasons to not buy a new rifle).<br />
<br />
Yet in the last few years since Savage started running a line on Scouts then Ruger picked up the ball, maybe especially since Ruger, I've yearned to fulfill the void.<br />
<br />
The Scout Rifle, the Patrol Rifle and all of their kin in between as been a sound concept in my opinion, because despite the AR's popularity and overall general usability, the Scout rifle can travel anywhere you can take a rifle be it into the less free states here in the U.S. or hunting abroad. In my line of work, where I do travel with a work rifle on a semi-regular basis being able to stay within the legal parameters is paramount. And in the possible scenario of having to deploy a rifle for defensive work I'd be massively surprised if a complete reload would be required of any repeating rifle. Note I didn't say not to have reloads readily available, I said required.<br />
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I see you apocalypse-man with your finger in the air and your mouth opened.<br />
<br />
All things aside noted gun-writer Richard Mann is conducting what is probably the first in depth investigation and study into the Scout Rifle concept over at his blog <a href="http://empty-cases.com/blog/the-scout-rifle-study/">empty-cases</a>, since Jeff Cooper went on to Valhalla and preach the gospel of the modern technique. You know, the one all of these neat kids on the internets keep re-inventing all the time.<br />
<br />
What has always intrigued me about the Scout-general-purpose-utility-rifle concept is the idea of if you were limited to one rifle, whether for a limited period of time until you expanded your personal collection, or were somewhat bound by finacial constraints to own only one, why this concept works not only as a hunting arm, but a defensive and recreational one as well. Because proficiency comes from owning a gun you enjoy shooting and want others to shoot as well.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319010524051426901.post-87632823017669858062015-04-27T21:54:00.001-06:002015-04-27T21:54:34.968-06:00If I may offer some advice....<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpCQrcg-46hfvamXnrc_hB0iRL92LEvSGAyDJOP1hlLGKLraOe3cSFHHgI-TMEE2Y4_JiJiV5UVDdAEUBIayTasugPSDj9HgshP6WxLz5zZk-VGEXbxEKsMeYWSHNZJj2EJ8yQY_9yUjw/s1600/Be-Brave-1024x768.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpCQrcg-46hfvamXnrc_hB0iRL92LEvSGAyDJOP1hlLGKLraOe3cSFHHgI-TMEE2Y4_JiJiV5UVDdAEUBIayTasugPSDj9HgshP6WxLz5zZk-VGEXbxEKsMeYWSHNZJj2EJ8yQY_9yUjw/s1600/Be-Brave-1024x768.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />I get inundated with "security advice" questions all the time in life. Riot breaks out somewhere, the emails and phone calls come in. Spree shooter sets about murdering as many people as he possibly can, the emails and phone calls come in. A bad guy goes an...well you get the picture.<br /><br />There's always this string of questions. What caliber? What plan? What tactic? What bag should I EDC (every day carry) and what gear should I EDC in my EDC bag?<br /><br />Questions, questions, questions.<br /><br />Allow me to answer in brevity that is devoid of any sarcasm and is the most sincerest answer I know to give.<br /><br />When the wolf comes to kill don't worry about the sheep, don't worry what kind of dog you may be or may not be. Don't worry about getting killed, don't worry about the aftermath, don't worry...about anything.<br /><br />DO.<br /><br />Make a decision to stop the wolf and then go stop him.<br /><br />Stop him where he stands by whatever means necessary and don't do it with kindness, don't do it with anger, do it with sincere an solid intent that he will never stand again.<br /><br />We live in a very modern age but the bad men of the world are very old in their ways and desire. And for old problems new answers are rarely the solution.<br /><br />You stop a bad man by making a decision. That decision is all that will matter until the future of everything being over arrives. Give no yield, no quarter, no pause. Do nothing less than be victorious. There is no shortage of bad men in the world and there will never be a shortage of such men. But they, the creatures that go bump in the night, the wolves at the door, are thwarted by decision and decisive action.<br /><br />It's not caliber, capacity, polymer nor steel that overcomes the evil of this world but rather bravery.<br /><br />Be brave. Be Brave. Be Brave.<br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/06/11/oregon-school-shooting-teacher-todd-rispler/10318921/">Oregon school shooting stopped by teacher Todd Rispler</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319010524051426901.post-83558676905277390722014-10-20T15:02:00.001-06:002014-10-20T15:02:10.041-06:00Taking StockAs part of the general M.O. here I generally don't do the hyper-link-go-see-this-website but, I thought this was actually worth it. Your mileage may vary of course depending on your nutritional needs....needs...not wants.<br /><br />Remember something like this can work for the SHTF as much as it can being without work for a long time and needing to feed your family, or even yourself. I say that because my first year of self-employment (back in 2002), this would have been worth doing.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.goodshomedesign.com/how-to-create-a-food-storage-supply-for-5-per-week/">How to create a food storage supply for five dollars a week</a><br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319010524051426901.post-50081247216198435412014-10-13T00:51:00.002-06:002014-10-13T01:19:13.264-06:00Everything you need...<br />
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I've loved a lot of guns over the years. More than I've owned. And
there have been some regrets of guns not bought. A rack full of pre-64
Winchester Model 94s for $250 back at the start of the century (I was
flat broke at the time), an UZI Carbine that came in a suitcase with a
.45 ACP conversion, three 9mm mags and three .45 ACP mags.....for
$550.00 about year before the '94 Assault Weapons Ban that was going to
solve that pesky crime problem.<br />
<br />
I passed on a Ruger No.
1 Tropical in .375 H&H. I don't remember the price but, I remember
having enough cash in my pocket to buy it. The problem was, that despite
my lust and desire it never met my litmus test for a gun. What was I
going to do with a .375 H&H at twenty-five years old in the
mid-west. <br />
<br />
The Gun, atleast for me, have always had to fall within a certain level of
working class, so to speak, to me. They have to be able to serve me or
atleast be reasonable pressed into service. <br />
<br />
Yet
despite this, my small collection of firearms is surprisingly not very
"tactical", especially given my line of work one could surmise.<br />
<br />
For
a while my work rifle was a Ruger Mini 14. I liked it. I didn't love
it. My plan was always to ship it down to Clark's Custom guns and get a
new barrel on it and do a scout mount. It never happened and I
eventually sold it (and it's four 30 round steel mags). There is
something of a juxtaposition about that rifle. I don't regret selling
it. I regret never paying for the custom work I wanted done to it which
would have ended up with me keeping the gun I don't regret selling.<br />
<br />
Yet
the .223 and, the 5.56 have, much like the 9mm, left me very indifferent
towards them. I've owned them. Liked them alright but none of them
didn't do anything I essentially didn't have another gun capable or more
capable of doing just fine. Mind you, I'm not talking about what does or doesn't work for anyone else but me so don't go getting the vapors.<br />
<br />
Interestingly enough, when you live and work with your guns on a daily basis you don't put too much thought into them NOT being effective. <br />
<br />
After coming off the rifle range last weekend and forced to contend with boxes of spent brass it was time to get back on the loading bench. After a pot of coffee, and a few hours of silent pondering while de-capping round after round (I run a single stage press) I looked at the green and grey RCBS boxes and the gumball red Lee cylinders and realized that the most "modern" cartridge I load for, the .243 Winchester, was invented in 1955, the next most modern, the .357 coming about in the 1930s. Beyond that everything else is over a hundred years old. From the turn of the last century with the .38 Special and .45 ACP to the Indian wars with the .44 WCF, the .45 Colt and the .45-70. <br />
<br />
Yet if you read it in that context one would think that they are simply nostalgic "fun" cartridges that do not serve purpose.<br />
<br />
I would concede that the .44-40 is most likely the only round that would readily fall into the ranks of entertainment only if it weren't for the fact that I have in fact pressed both the revolver and rifle chambered for this round into service at different times. <br />
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<br />
When the Ferguson riots broke out in St. Louis over the summer the self-loading rifle I keep lay in pieces on my bench. There were no qualms here keeping a lever gun in the truck and in the house, along with a Remington 870. Dismiss the round that started it all if you want but, but I keep a couple of boxes of factory jacketed soft points solely for defense work.<br />
<br />
Light cowboy loads they are not. Out of the rifle they run over 1200 fps with a 200 grain bullet and there are fifteen of them in the magazine tube.<br />
<br />
The revolver chambered for the old .44 cartridge, itself was carried more than a few times during my corporate bodyguard career, albeit at Client barbeques and more "relaxed" scenarios but, to claim I was "unarmed" with six 200 grain .44 caliber bullets in a wheel gun at the ready is stupid. I know because a gentleman in similar employ at the time and also in attendance at one of these casual soirees openly mocked me about it.<br />
<br />
He himself was carrying a .32 Seacamp. <br />
<br />
Atleast one of us was well armed at the party.<br />
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<br />
My rifle of rifles remains the .30-06.<br />
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I've spent too much time on the range and the field in the almost two decades we've been together and have shot my plentiful share of Missouri Whitetails with it. <br />
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Since 1906 there have been a mind numbing number of .thirty caliber rifles to come along. Some of them long forgotten, others having marked their place in the queen of weapons ranks. If I were starting out today looking for a bolt gun to do a lot of work from defense to hunting the .308 could quite easily get the nod. I certainly have a liking for the Ruger Scout Rifle and there have been a couple of long barreled sniper rifles that have sung their sirens song to me. But when shove comes to push what does it do that I can't do already and frankly it does it very well. <br />
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When the rifle range beckons, or my head gets too fogged up with the world and I need to make calm it's not the lever gun, nor the pistol that I reach for in my quest for zen. It's the 30-06 in a bolt action.<br />
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A few, well several years back after being involved in some social situations where more than feelings got hurt I pondered for a few days that maybe I needed to go "talk to someone". Instead I spent fours hours on a rifle range gingerly working my way through a box of hand-loaded 180 grain Matchkings. There was no talking, no dialogue, no "how does that make you feel". My co-pay was primers, powder and thirty caliber copper. And they solved my issued more than a PhD ever could.<br />
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Of all center-fire cartridges I run the .243 Winchester holds more merit than I would have really ever thought. It was the rifle I cut my teeth on and in many ways encouraged me to dig into the world of the rifle and find out what makes a rifle tick and what makes it accurate and inaccurate. After a few years of pie plate patterns I still recall the sweet joy of seeing my first MOA group after I sanded the stock down on the Remington 788 so that it's barrel was free floated. A whole new world emerged.<br />
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With it's mild recoil and solid velocities it can do everything a .223 or .5.56 can do only better. Yet in the tactical/war fighter community it is laughable to even think of such a notion. After one of my best friend's son received a .243 single shot a few years ago the rifle round came back on my radar (and from it's tucked away corner in the gun safe).<br />
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Clearly it's never going to have place of significance in the tactical community, but if you are of the belief that it can not work because it's not on the list of "approved" tactical calibers then you are naive at best and a fool at worst. People with such notions, in my experience, lack any.<br />
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Interestingly enough, during the First and Second Ammo droughts of the twenty-first century when the shelves were bare I could always find .243 Winchester. I have no idea why but during those times I was in several states and there it was on the shelves. <br />
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If I lived in a gun restrictive area, or was wanting to put together a budget friendly political correct looking bolt action patrol rifle (or both), I'd give it a hard close look.The unforeseen advantage in the .243 is that you get a little thicker barrel because there is less of a hole in what would otherwise be a standard .308 barrel.<br />
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Something to think about.<br />
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Only a fool would dismiss the .45-70 as not having a solid purpose in this day and age. It has literally become a phoenix rising from the ashes. If you read gun and shooting articles from the 1960s and 70s it was all but written off as dead with some folks with Springfield Trapdoors and Marlin keeping it alive, eeking out sales for the purest of hearts.<br />
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That is until someone whacked the barrel off and called it a guide gun and Jeff Cooper declared it holy to the faithful. It's sales have been strong for the last two decades. If you were to have only a few rifles to your name the .45-70 lever gun would not be a mistake. It's a fight stopper against man or beast. On any continent. <br />
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And while most "tactically proficient" men of the twenty-first century fall into fits of rage when someone mentions a gun fight from two centuries earlier, a gun fight, dear reader is still a fight and unless I missed something the human has not changed much in any anatomical sense in the last millennium. In 1887 Commodore Perry Owens, the Sheriff of the 21,000 square mile Apache County, Arizona got crossways (literally) while serving a warrant. Perry, on his own with no backup, killed four armed attackers in short order with a .45-70 from what we call "pistol" distance. Perry had not so much as a scratch.<br />
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Unlike a vast majority of American shooters who grew up with guns I did not grow up with the .30-30 Winchester. At that time my dad kept a couple of shotguns, a Sears & Roebuck .22 lever action (hammerless....yep), a .22 High Standard revolver and a Smith Model 19 .357. The only two centerfire rifles were a Parker Hale .30-06 and the aforementioned .243.<br />
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But I yearned for a "thirty-thirty" for years. When I finally picked up a model 94 for a whopping $275 I didn't regret it. If you've read me very long here on this blog, you'll know that this is the rifle I rely on for work most often or a Marlin in .three fifty seven magnum. <br />
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The old .30 WCF (Winchester Center Fire) maybe one of the finest medium powered cartridges we have, especially in this day and age. For the reloader the potential is there to handle everything from squirrels and rabbits to deer more the efficiently and in some of the heavy factory loads, such as from Buffalo Bore, you can hunt North America.<br />
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It's not a wonder kid nor a "tactically" fancy round. And door kickers, both real and wannabe, won't be clinging hard to the rifle nor the round ever but, it was in the man stopping business long before anyone ever heard of the .223 or the 7.62x39. I won't keep house without one and it's almost always the most recommended first rifle for anyone who wants an uncomplicated long gun to serve a variety of roles from game getter to home defender, when I am asked.<br />
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There has been so much historical content written on the .45 ACP and the 1911 that I refuse to address it. If you don't know and you can't figure out how to find out, you're SOL as the old Man use to say.<br />
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No other cartridge has been so near and dear to me in my life nor seen me safely home. It's been in my hand under the gravest of circumstances, been on most every trip where a gun was permissible, or doable. It has ridden in a shoulder rig in the Atlantic, on my hip on the Continental Divide, and delivered the coup de grace on the side of the highway to a back broken doe, when a stranger in a $40,000 truck with thousands of dollars worth of hunting gear wouldn't "waist" the dollar on a bullet and decided to cut her throat until she nailed him with her hooves and he got fish belly white.<br />
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Reloading the old war horse, I don't do fancy. I like standard pressures for the rounds in question. I get better accuracy and less wear and tear on my firearms in the process. You can have the hot rodding and the +P. I like one thing and one thing only in the .45 ACP. 230 grains. <br />
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Save the preaching. It works just fine for me.<br />
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The .45 Colt, came to me late, as in this year. A dual celebration of seeing my first paid article published (it was nice to get a check from the NRA instead of sending one) and my fortieth year on God's favorite blue marble; I purchased a used Ruger flattop in Uncle Sam's old Indian fighter round.<br />
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Again, I don't chase the magic bullet. The old timers who came before worked out much of it and there are plenty of others who can push the limits for me to learn on. I'm always amazed at alarmist and neo-shots who have come to the conclusion that six rounds in a single action leave a man essentially unarmed because of the dreaded reload. <br />
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Lots of bullets in bad circumstances are a handy thing to have, no doubt, and the citizenry should have all the access desired to thirty round magazines and self-loading whisper quiet rifles. I firmly believe that. But I also believe in a gun fight, regardless of the century, solid center mass hits from a big bore revolver, stop fights. Your junk science and your worst case scenarios be damned. Hits matter.<br />
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Yes I know, I know. The caliber debate is over thanks to new and modern ammunition. Except there is one not-so-slight issue with the "Caliber debate". It's not. It is a cartridge debate. It's always the 9mm vs the .45ACP, or the .40 S&W, or any other auto pistol round. It's never the 9mm vs the .45 Colt, or the .44 Magnum. You know why? Because those are two big sons of bitches and the 9mm is not. And a hit from either is far FAR more significant in stopping a fight, not to mention two or three. <br />
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If I can not put a B-i-Q (badguy-in-question) down with three .45 Colt rounds to the chest, I'll be shooting him in the hip thank you very much, because he can rage all over the damn ground. <br />
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Broke bone don't work.<br />
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I know. You're irate. I've angered the 9mm cult with my brazen big bore speech, damn me.<br />
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I'm not anti-9mm. Never have been, never will be. I think it's a fine self-defense round and have carried it and depended on it enough to have some semblance of opinion on it. So don't lose your head.<br />
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The problem of late is that the emerging shooters (not necessarily fighters) are ageists toward not only men who came before them but cartridges and guns as well. If a rifle doesn't self load or hold more than thirty rounds at the push of a release mag, it is outdated and it's owner a mentally distant. <br />
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Part of the reason I have had an on again off again relationship with
the 9mm Luger is owed in large part to the .38 Special and .357 Magnums I
own. Make no mistake, my favorite platforms for launching the old European bean
are the SiG P226 and the Browning Hi-Power. I've routinely told folks
who are looking for their first pistol or who are going to be one gun
households to look no further than the Glock 19 or the 9mm in general. It's widely available, and easy to shoot.<br />
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If you are looking to buy your first gun, or perhaps your only handgun and deeply desire an auto-pistol so the entire family can learn on it and shoot it confidently. The 9mm would be wise and well received.<br />
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Yet, here in lies the rub, most post-9/11 shooters, who came to the gun world around the time the Assault Weapons Ban finally died in it's 2004 sunset on a national level fail to realize that the AWB brought a critical eye to the 9mm, which had thrived through the 80s and early 90s in the wondernine era. Suddenly there was this sincere question put forth of bore diameter and that bigger has it's place for reasons. If you were left with ten .35 caliber bullets or eight .45 caliber ones which would you really rather have?<br />
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Again that is not to inflame the cartridge debate, that is simply pointing out what happened. <br />
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Which bring us to the last of it. <br />
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If you were to count the spent brass in boxes on my bench you would see that the lead goes to the .38 Special, followed by the .357 Magnum in close second. There are reasons for this. They are solid and backed up by decades of man fighting, game getting and trophy winning history, for the both of them. <br />
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In my small opinion, there is no gun as versatile as one chambered for the .357 Magnum. A bold statement to be sure, and certainly it has a 1960s gun rag ring to it. The moment the chamber is reamed to accept the old 1/10 of an inch longer, 1935 creation the shooter is in possession of a dual caliber gun, if that shooter happens to be a re-loader, then multiplicity occurs. This is because a lightly handloaded .38 Special will do anything a .22 LR or .22 Magnum can do, only better, and since it can do this the shooter/reloader gets, for his trouble, a superior ".22", a .38 Special and a .357 Magnum.<br />
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No handgun cartridge has been more reloaded than the .38 Special and the .357 Magnum remains the king of fight stoppers. I understand. For you the modern shooter I sound as if I am lecturing from a rocking chair. Grandad muttering in the corner to himself. Yet this is large part because of an obsession with guns that weigh ounces and not pounds. I've run the cylinders of .357 Magnums in 12 ounce guns and narrow sights. I'll keep my all stainless steel 2 1/2 inch, Smith model 66, weighing in at a couple of pounds and it's big glorious adjustable sights. The ones that the neo-shot will assure you, rips the clothes from your body as you draw only to snag, getting you killed. <br />
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The 158 grain bullet in both rounds works tremendously well for most things from targets, to men, to attacking four legged mammalia. Ah yes. The Grizzly Bear dilemma. You see I don't live in Grizzly country. I won't encounter one this deer season nor while taking out the trash this week. <br />
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Being in possession of both revolvers and rifle that will shoot these cartridges covers anything I might need to resolve. Want to teach a new shooter how to hit? How to focus on a front sight? How to have a remarkably easy day on the range. Try the lever action rifle in .357 Magnum loaded with .38s or .357s. <br />
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If the politics of this country ever went south to the point we were forced to live with a limited number of guns for me the .357 chambered gun would be at the #1 must have spot. <br />
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Don't fall trap to this all being a bit of nostalgia or that these are "the only" cartridges I own. They are not. They simply are the ones that I reload for, but and this is the important part that I want to express.<br />
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If.....they were the only ones I had. If circumstances changed tomorrow and I had to dwindle the room in the safe down for one reason or another these eight cartridges and the guns chambered for them would remain above all others.<br />
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They will do anything that needs done in a shooting environment from self-defense, to hunting game of all sizes, to target and even competitive shooting, or defending a home and family in a city that has suddenly appeared on the international scene for it's rioting as of late.<br />
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Our culture, the gun culture, here in the century, has become somewhat obsessed with fashion that is passed off as must-have-tactical-needs. So much so that it has driven an entire market to panic buy and horde more than a couple of times. I can only wonder how many ARs were bought in November of 2008 and never fired. <br />
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So in our quest to survive the apocalypse with "the right gun" I pass along a piece of advice the late Bill Jordan (and not the damn camo maker) gave and Jim Wilson graciously passed on to us.<br />
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Mr. Jordan, upon being asked what kind of rifle he would "stash" away in case of the feces-hitting-the-empeller replied that he would keep a Model 19 Smith & Wesson in .357 Magnum and a box of ammunition. The man who asked him became a bit perplexed, since he asked specifically "what rifle". To which Jordan expounded further:<br />
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<i>"If serious trouble starts and you can shoot at all, you can get whatever
kind of little machine gun you’d want to carry. You could even get a
little Jeep to drive and maybe even a nice looking uniform to wear… if
you can shoot!” </i>(go read the whole thing <a href="http://sheriffjimwilson.com/2012/07/25/if-you-can-shoot/">here</a>).<br />
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As for me. One look at my reloading bench tells me I have everything I need and nothing I don't.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319010524051426901.post-76965602858591754552014-09-13T00:57:00.003-06:002014-09-13T11:19:11.078-06:00The Barranti Hip Pocket Holster<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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You always hate those situations where you know that if it goes bad, it will go bad in a big way, all the while knowing that you have to appear incapable of being able to deal with anything bad, while being completely capable, in a moment's notice, of dealing decisively with the now bad situation. <br />
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A couple of winters back like a bad novel I was carrying my .45 in the pocket of my heavy wool pea-coat, a Hissatsu folder in my waistband, a bitty little light in my jeans pocket and that was pretty much it. <br />
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Once inside of where I needed to be my jacket had to come off and I was essentially carrying off body. The coat went wherever I went so it was never helpless situation and, the problem really wouldn't exist if it was going to, until I went outside. At which point the coat would be back on. I dutifully left my gloves in the truck so there would be a reason to have my hands in my pocket once out in the 15 degree night air. <br />
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The issue was the big Colt flopped and turned around in the coat pocket and while plenty deep as not to fall out, once back on and hand in the pocket, the pistol had rotated and now rode upside down. <br />
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Hammer down in condition two or not, it was not ideal. I fumbled around in my pocket saying something about losing the cigarettes I didn't have and don't smoke, until finally the gun was properly aligned in the pocket and hand. A few words were spoken back and forth as I walked outside and the entire ordeal was over having gone smoothly. <br />
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On the drive back, with Colt's Commander riding in my waistband I cussed at myself for not being better well suited for big auto pocket carry.<br />
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Oddly enough I couldn't help but thinking of Tommy Lee Jones in the movie "<span class="null">The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada". Through most of the movie Jones rides horse back with a 1911 shoved into the back pocket of his Wranglers. Over and over I thought</span> that <span class="null"> a real basic pinch fit leather holster that could slip into the back pocket, that didn't have any loops or clips attached to it, and carried the gun juuust tight enough as to not come out freely would be a handy thing to have.<br /><br />The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. Winter became Spring and, finally Summer then late one July night I finally knew what to do. Or rather</span> who to go to. <br />
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Enter Mike Barranti of Barranti holsters.<br />
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I emailed him outlining my needs, wants, and desires for such a thing and Mike knew exactly...and I mean exactly what I was talking about. It was an old timers carry, like turn of the last century old timers, and apparently Mike had tooled around with the same thought himself. About eight hours and one sunset and sunrise later he emailed me a photo of the very image in my brain.<br />
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Without hesitation I said "I'll take it".<br />
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A few days later it arrived by mail.<br />
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That was July of 2013. A year and a couple of months later I still love this holster, which is good because it sees daily use. <br />
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In our house we have a mental "gun code" as it were. A pistol in a holster is chambered. A pistol not in a holster is not chambered/loaded. It's the rule. <br />
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And I never break it.<br />
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Ever.<br />
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That is not to imply guns lay around the house. They do not. They are all secured after a fashion one way or another, against un-welcomed visitors and toddlers alike. <br />
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At the end of the day when the I take off the old Colt, de-cock it, open the box and it is slipped into it's next place of residence. The <span class="_5yl5" data-reactid=".5v.$mid=11394418292722=2f6d6dec5fd51749855.2:0.0.0.0.0"><span class="null">Hip Pocket Holster</span></span>.<br />
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Lest you are under the impression that this is all the use the holster sees it is not. Some of my time in the field requires prolonged surveillance. Hours and hours...and hours of sitting. Something the introvert in me never minds. That sitting can also mean, laying, sprawled out and waiting at all sorts of angles and positions beyond the driver's seat of my old 4Runner so it's nice to be able to take it off but still have it in a ready position.<br />
<br />
With the absence of things like a re-enforced mouth, or clips, or loops the overall width is very minimal and allows the pistol to be wedged perfectly in someplaces. Yet the wet molded, pinch fit is loose enough to allow a draw where the holster does not come with it, while having very reasonable retention in a gun slip like this one.<br />
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Mind you. This is not some flimsy suede piece. While the mouth is not re-enforced with a double band of leather or other means of staying open, the molded to perfection gun skin stays open after the pistol has been drawn.<br />
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"How well?" you might wonder.<br />
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Most nights before turning in, the dog and I walk the acre and a half we live on and more often than not my pistol is slipped into the back pocket of my jeans. If drawn it can be re-holstered without looking, quickly and easily. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNVWO0pd2VFxhcFMPECmnSHW0h1ov-Obkf0d4naeHU7CHFd3BNjl2aNccg1gHn_dk1-r-O4jXyu0GcwZpb6zPEUStUROoT24mohkkxEuRK4QuEffDn-CATi4HWk70QprPgaBVdwechah4/s1600/IMG_3572.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNVWO0pd2VFxhcFMPECmnSHW0h1ov-Obkf0d4naeHU7CHFd3BNjl2aNccg1gHn_dk1-r-O4jXyu0GcwZpb6zPEUStUROoT24mohkkxEuRK4QuEffDn-CATi4HWk70QprPgaBVdwechah4/s1600/IMG_3572.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a><br />
<br />
Coming around full circle, I like this holster for one more reason. Winter time. Remember where we started. A pea coat pocket full of .forty-five?<br />
<br />
One significant disadvantage in conceal carry comes in winter time. Not in the way so much of carrying, but rather getting the gun into action quickly with a heavy buttoned up coat. <br />
<br />
Say for example, I'm out at dinner. It's below freezing and the old 4Runner is parked a few blocks away. The evening ends, everyone is putting on coats, saying goodbyes and what not. I take that opportunity to go to the restroom and put my coat on. I'll take my Colt's Commander from it's In-the-Waist-Band holster and slip it into the Hip Pocket Shuck ready and waiting in my coat pocket. I can keep my hand on the gun my entire walk if I so choose and never have to worry about undesired finger-trigger slippage. Yet I can also rest assured that with my hands not in my pocket the big gun isn't sliding all over the place. <br />
<br />
Lastly, There are times in my life, for one reason or another, that off body carry bears merit. In such cases the holster works well to keep the gun upright in a bag without any bulk added like a thicker conventional rig simply shoved in to a pack might have.<br />
<br />
Just like there is no magic "one gun" solution for all things, there is no "one holster" solutions either. This rig, while very simple fills a lot of roles in my life and it does them very very well. <br />
<br />
So what does it cost? The last time I asked Mike about this he said "$40 plus shipping". <br />
<br />
$40.00 for a holster that comes from one of America's best leather rig makers. Not much thought need go into that one. Eventually I'll order a couple more of these. Probably for my snub-nosed Smith and one for my Ruger Flattop as well.<br />
<br />
A good many shootists carry Mike's rigs and love them dearly. I now know why.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.barrantileather.com/" target="_blank">www.barrantileather.com</a><br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319010524051426901.post-45152462945444043042014-05-29T14:22:00.004-06:002014-05-29T14:23:34.766-06:00The Rifle over the Hashtag.<img alt="Photo: Local Borno village women's group repels Boko Haram attack on their communities - See more at: http://goo.gl/nqbk8n" class="scaledImageFitWidth img" height="336" src="https://scontent-a-ord.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpf1/t1.0-9/s552x414/10345759_536033626506331_781443019218712572_n.jpg" width="504" /><br />
<br />
How the women of Nigeria are beginning to respond to the Boko Haram. <br />
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A hashtag hold's no power. It is a sanctimonious chant that words can save people. Yet, as many people around the world, who have been left at the hands of bad men and terrorist know, that "help" is only a bureaucracy and months of paper work away. Therefore the rifle does indeed matter and may still turn the tide in the war against evil. <br />
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<br />
<span data-reactid=".v.1:3:1:$comment10203444765347371_10203444778787707:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:0"> </span><span style="font-size: large;"><i><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".v.1:3:1:$comment10203444765347371_10203444778787707:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".v.1:3:1:$comment10203444765347371_10203444778787707:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".v.1:3:1:$comment10203444765347371_10203444778787707:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$text0:0:$0:0">"the
rifle has no moral stature, since it has no will of it's own. Naturally
it may be used by evil men with evil purposes, but there are more good
men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of
righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men
with rifles." <br /> - </span></span></span></i><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".v.1:3:1:$comment10203444765347371_10203444778787707:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".v.1:3:1:$comment10203444765347371_10203444778787707:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".v.1:3:1:$comment10203444765347371_10203444778787707:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$text0:0:$0:0"></span><a class="profileLink" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/hovercard.php?id=108104522545081&extragetparams=%7B%22hc_location%22%3A%22ufi%22%7D" data-reactid=".v.1:3:1:$comment10203444765347371_10203444778787707:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$range0:0" dir="ltr" href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jeff-Cooper/108104522545081" target="_blank">Jeff Cooper</a><span data-reactid=".v.1:3:1:$comment10203444765347371_10203444778787707:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$0:0"> Art of the Rifle.</span></span></span> </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319010524051426901.post-24740733273047109582014-05-22T12:21:00.002-06:002014-05-22T12:21:33.261-06:00A return to the dark arts<img height="236" src="http://i1.wp.com/www.ampisound.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/roof-jump-parkour-ampisound-phil-doyle.jpg?resize=940%2C350" width="640" /><br />
<br />
<br />
The mind is a funny place, because rarely are we ever "done" with something like we may imagine.<br /><br />For all intents and purposes I was done with the Dark Arts for Good Guys series. There were a couple of articles that I had always intended to write, there were two more I wanted to write more than anything but... good judgement won out. Who knows maybe someday in an underground form I will but until then they lay dormant in my mind.<br /><br />As for the other two I have decided that I would very much like to see them written and for whatever reason where I once struggled to gain a foot hold on the thoughts, that become the words, that end up here have formulated.<br /><br />They will be in classic fashion I assure you. In all likely hood there will be a gear review first and then the Dark Arts for Good Guys: Just.....<br /><br />Well.<br /><br />You'll see.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319010524051426901.post-50631519240152572612014-05-20T18:50:00.002-06:002014-05-20T18:59:09.989-06:00Practactical 101: Short stroke kit<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIqbCUpQev5nSIAXThL-vSOXeBflzc5YrSbXGc7mdpsc5CUXFXhcGnMOBhwyLZjgZeY4cuhAR4zczSr2-qkaFbN2DAs8gROULXHxSCnKjpUA07ZCHDVpCXFf5tUgsJEl91QVOG84A6Evc/s1600/IMG_5372.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIqbCUpQev5nSIAXThL-vSOXeBflzc5YrSbXGc7mdpsc5CUXFXhcGnMOBhwyLZjgZeY4cuhAR4zczSr2-qkaFbN2DAs8gROULXHxSCnKjpUA07ZCHDVpCXFf5tUgsJEl91QVOG84A6Evc/s1600/IMG_5372.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
The worst notions in the modern age are those which are preconceived. Even if some are unspoken.<br />
<br />
Those such as, the immediate availability of dozens of rounds of ammunition in one's firearm will guarantee success in a fight. Or that someone is possession of that amount of rounds is destined for evil acts. <br />
<br />
Though most of us would agree that the later of the two statements is not unspoken but, rather one spoke with unyielding beratement amongst the hoplophobes. "Educated" or otherwise.<br />
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For the better part of twenty years (or more) the personal defense community has said the revolver is dead. One might conclude that it did not "die" but, rather proceeded to excel in the twenty-first century in smaller form.<br />
<br />
The small framed .38 Special and .357 Magnum lives well today in light weight frames, though having experienced the titanium-scandium-fun-to-carry-hell-to-shoot recoil of the .357 Magnum from a not quite so two inch barrel I'll keep mine in all steel. Thank-you-very-much.<br />
<br />
Of my three normal carry pieces, two of them are revolvers, the Colt's Commander in the large Automatic Colt Pistol cartridge being the first. The other two being both Smith & Wesson's in .38 Special and .357 Magnum. Whenever one (or two) of these are being used the others rest in the gun safe.<br />
<br />
However, I tend to keep my normal carry spare reloads all together. Where I keep all the other things that fill up my pants pockets for everyday usage. A few years back I made myself a small front pocket kydex...er..."system" that was designed to hold my flashlight and a 1911 mag. It turns out it does a semi-decent job of holding a speed strip, or five shot speed loader, in their proper place. <br />
<br />
All was essentially fine with this "system" until I bought my Smith Model 66 a few years ago. Due to over penetration concerns as a general rule I carry both my revolvers loaded with .38 Special standard loads (my 442 is not +P rated anyway) but, with the Model 66, when I do carry it, I like to have a set of full house .357 Magnum loads as the reload.<br />
<br />
Generally I use the speed strip to handle the reload because of the bulk of the cylindrical speed loader. Then one night I came home and took off my Model 442 (in .38 Special) and as I retrieved my reload/flashlight combo from front left pocket something looked off. <br />
<br />
And there it was.<br />
<br />
I had shoved .357 Magnum spare reloads into my pocket. Which no matter how hard you cram them into a .38 Special cylinder they just aren't going to fit.<br />
<br />
So in order to remedy this from happening again I dug out a pair of scissors and cut the "tail" off the speed strip that holds the .38 Special reloads. Now, if I have to, or just so happen to, for one reason or another grab my spare revolver reload from it's place where all of my other EDC gear sits, I can tell by instantaneous feel. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHKuWwvmSULzYEiw9Uyg6Qe4WH0zIaL38jhoOMZo8xSBJ6kqvbqDakU_taeEppnV9VZQj5ldigGHwgdMK3KOjV1SGwS3Di704WBjfeMRCMu786dbomMvJLsKNXGzdRQvnUlSFWL3N7a2k/s1600/IMG_5383.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHKuWwvmSULzYEiw9Uyg6Qe4WH0zIaL38jhoOMZo8xSBJ6kqvbqDakU_taeEppnV9VZQj5ldigGHwgdMK3KOjV1SGwS3Di704WBjfeMRCMu786dbomMvJLsKNXGzdRQvnUlSFWL3N7a2k/s1600/IMG_5383.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a><br />
<br />
<br />
Tail on the Speed Strip = .357 Magnum Loads<br />
<br />
No tail on the Speed Strip = .38 Special Loads.<br />
<br />
It is a simple and effective way to tell the difference. One could also apply such a tactic to tell the difference between standard and plus P loads if they were so inclined.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-sWAyyN6HyhES1bKOaVUdUU2KvlJWD43Vbnrxe1RLqzQrTX633eTzWGZ79ioUM_Ac2aMWTzMWSZJQXSswbb7vzbvv63hB4itV6Y5EsotXc6skxAzvoDZAl5ftRHHQCgRXM_N4IS58JD0/s1600/IMG_5382.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-sWAyyN6HyhES1bKOaVUdUU2KvlJWD43Vbnrxe1RLqzQrTX633eTzWGZ79ioUM_Ac2aMWTzMWSZJQXSswbb7vzbvv63hB4itV6Y5EsotXc6skxAzvoDZAl5ftRHHQCgRXM_N4IS58JD0/s1600/IMG_5382.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a><br />
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<br />Lastly, one who carries the venerable .three fifty seven revolver with a short barrel, and equally short ejector rod, might gain a small advantage in carrying the .38 Special cartridge in the cylinder. In the event that a reload should have to be performed with deftness and social negotiations otherwise having failed, shaving a tenth of an inch off the start of a reload might make a difference in the end.<br />
<br />
Firepower is a fine thing to have but, if all you brought to the gun fight is a gun you've already lost.<br />
<br />
Fight Smarter.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319010524051426901.post-62116538273344104142014-04-21T11:17:00.000-06:002014-04-21T12:08:31.882-06:00Carjack IntermezzoI've long held this fascination with how fast the human brain can process information, especially how fast it can process, threat assess, come to a conclusion and initiate the appropriate response. <br />
<br />
Having spent my entire adult life observing people with intent, whether running a surveillance or standing quietly on a protection assignment, you learn to read how the point of a toe can give you direction an aggressor is about to take. The opening of a mouth before taking a step can display personal doubt about a course of action.<br />
<br />
On the short journey home last night from my in-laws, The Wife and I were talking about the general stuff of life. The Mouse was asleep in the back and we were just cruising down the second to last stretch of road home. We topped a hill and began a descent towards a stop light a hundred or so yards ahead. Late on Easter night, traffic was almost non-existent and, placed us as first car at the light.<br />
<br />
In my time on this blue marble we call earth I have seen what I call one truly classical ambush. It was traveling through India, in Maharashtra I think, with some Clients. Driving down a long stretch of rural road we came to the first intersection that mattered when a Land Rover sped past us, angled in and blocked our driver. It was, despite the threat, beautifully executed. Of course I'm still here so...<br />
<br />
The second most truly classical ambush began as we headed for that light last night. <br />
<br />
You will have to understand that as you read this (and I write this) there are several long moments from start to finish. Yet as it occurred, it at the most was ten seconds long, with the large and heavy portions lasting about 1 second. <br />
<br />
As we approached the light, maybe ten yards out I noticed a young man off the passenger side door, on the corner and two lane widths from me. Back lighting him some sixty yards away perhaps, was a small convenience store that he appeared to be walking from. Yet as the car slowed to a stop his hands were empty.<br />
<br />
"No purchase. Interesting" my brain told me. <br />
<br />
He stands at the curb. The Car stops. <br />
<br />
"White pants, blue polo, black ball cap (flat brim), hipster styled web belt like my old canteen belt with the holes.....shirt partial tuck..noted."<br />
<br />
Then it got interesting. <br />
<br />
He took a step.<br />
<br />
"Left hand goes to belt as if to ensure support, left foot takes step of curb and angles toward passenger side door, followed by a quick step from the right foot, then left....one full fast step. Right hand now goes to center point of waist band where shirt is untucked...felony carry...... (old Jeff Cooper slang) = Gun."<br />
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My index finger straightens off the steering wheel to proceed to gun. "If it goes this way, get muzzle to glass". <br />
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Finger fully flexed. Memory reminds me that we just came from ****** ******* Illinois. <br />
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".357 is locked in rear of vehicle. Drive."<br />
<br />
I touch the accelerator and the Family SUV makes a smooth lurch forward. He stops in the intersection. I stop only to make sure I don't get hit going through the intersection. He's now confused and now not so sure of himself. <br />
<br />
Grin to self. <br />
<br />
Accelerator pressed for controlled departure. The Wife, with her hand on dash because of the stop-start-stop-now-go-while-amid-sentence looks at me confused. "That kid is going to try and car jack us" as we go on through the red light.<br />
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We crest a second hill. "There are his friends" I say as we pass a Mitsubishi two door pulled off on to the side of the road. Lights on. Engine running. Chase car.<br />
<br />
Wolves travel in packs. <br />
<br />
As we sat at the next light, with The Wife on the phone talking with police dispatch, I did what you really do after the fact.<br />
<br />
Think about how you damn near screwed up.<br />
<br />
Had I not lurched the vehicle in order to check the intersection, which caused a hitch in his giddy up, I would have gotten us into a low speed broadsided accident. That same side where my daughter's car seat is, and where she slept peacefully in it.<br />
<br />
The moral of it all.<br />
<br />
You can possess the latest in tactical gear, have the best polymer-striker fired-damn-the-1911-pistol on the market, with a bug out bag in the back. But, if you can not....and listen to me because this is the important part.<br />
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If you can not, assess and make a straight line decision about what you should, should not, and can not do in the blink of an eye....it's all for naught. <br />
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Tactical mag changes are a useful thing. The ability to react to a situation in it's very initial stage is paramount, and may keep you from ever having to execute a mag drop to begin with.<br />
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Stay savy my friends.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319010524051426901.post-27850752101469554092014-04-16T09:13:00.001-06:002014-04-16T09:17:06.321-06:00A quick thank youSo this happened...<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.shootingillustrated.com/index.php/30780/the-sound-of-one-hand-shooting/">The Sound of One Hand Shooting | Shooting Illustrated</a><br />
<br />
Thank you to you all who read my scribbling here on the internet, it encourages me to write more, and apparently now for other people as well.<br />
<br />
I've got a new post coming sometime this week for the Practactical 101 series, so stay tuned.<br />
<br />
On a side note..<br />
<br />
If you happen to be a boy who reads Straight Forward in a Crooked World and you sit everyday in school dreaming about guns, hunting trips, and wild adventures only to hear a teacher tell you to stop "wasting your time day dreaming". <br />
<br />
Pay them no mind. And one day prove them wrong.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319010524051426901.post-8927845057387416152014-03-08T16:16:00.001-07:002014-03-09T20:23:16.512-06:00Practactical 101: Off of body experience<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
The human is interesting in that amongst God's other creations he is not limited in his means of defense. One could of course argue that a naked human out on the Tundra is as at a clear disadvantage over, say the Polar bear. Of course you could contend that the Polar Bear would be at a far greater disadvantage in Miami. We can concluded with somewhat relative certainty that both situations are almost non-existent. <br />
<br />
The old adage of "the greatest weapon is your brain" is remarkably true, followed by your hands. <br />
<br />
True we can fight and defend with our feet but beyond heavy boots and hard kicks the feet bear no ability to be weaponized like the hands.<br />
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Yet for all of this ability we still must suffer at points in our existence, times of physical vulnerability to an attack. It can be something as simple as when a mother puts her child into a car seat, or having to go someplace while being sick and running a fever. Mentally, in such situations you can be fully aware of potential dangers but from a physical aspect you are weakened or left exposed.<br />
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I encounter this very situation three to five times a week when leaving the gym. That the very time I use to invest in the care of my body, to strengthen it in the long run, leaves me somewhat under powered and short of breath in the short term, is not lost on me. <br />
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Couple that with on no less than four times this winter did I walk out to the gym's parking lot to find it cloaked in a couple of acres of pitch black because someone on the cleaning crew hit some switch in the process of closing down for the night. <br />
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A dark parking will give pause in the realm of one's personal security. Especially when the muscles are shaky.<br />
<br />
This is not to say I am unarmed. Far from it in fact. <br />
<br />
Every trip to the gym includes the carrying of my smaller "go-bag". Filled with everything from my phone, moleskine, water bottle, pens and sharpies, to a forty-five automatic and a discretely-yet-at-the-ready Cold Steel Brave Heart fixed bladed knife. <br />
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Could I carry a mouse gun, like the Beretta Bobcat, on my person as I worked out?<br />
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Have done and don't care for the method at the gym, for a few reasons, to be honest. Threat assessing almost everything in life, I have worked out over time and evaluation that the larger concern at this particular place is a mass-shooting scenario, as opposed to a potential street crime scenario in the parking lot. <br />
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Don't conclude erroneously here. That possibility is not being dismissed and will bear merit here shortly. <br />
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Rather what I see as the larger concern in this environment is potentially larger and more violent in scale, and for that the "mouse" or back-up gun is not a wise choice based upon this perceived possibility.<br />
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The gym has multiple levels, and covers almost every demographic in America. Ergo, since spree shootings start with someone with a grudge to bear and there is, at this location, a large potential of people in this immediate area who unbeknownst to me could be under threat of such a grudge (or whatever reason a spree killer has). I do not desire a smaller, close range, short sight radius, poorly sighted defensive handgun. <br />
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So my choice is to carry a larger bore, longer barreled, bigger gripped pistol that is capable of delivering accurately placed shots-on-bad-guy-at-potentially-long-distances handgun.<br />
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Should things go bad and a bad guy has to be engaged when I am shaky, short breathed and just recently adrenaline dumped from the weight bench, treadmill or pull-up cage, I want a full size pistol I can grab deftly with both hands, look down the barrel and see nice big sights and squeeze-jerk a smooth and appropriate trigger. <br />
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In that fight I want a fighting handgun.<br />
<br />
Inside the building hallways can run twenty yards long. The main entrance around seventy-five. Add to the mix you have innocent people running around, fleeing and trying to get to cover, this is no place for T.V. Land fiction where a barrage of bullets from the good guy are fired. Instead you are looking to achieve one to five rounds, all on target and, all center mass.<br />
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The secondary reason for the big gun, is since it is in a bag, tactical though it maybe, I don't want to have to shove my weak hand (the bag rides on my weak side), in a weakened now amped up state, to dig around to locate some bitty little handgun. I want it in, found, and out. <br />
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And let's be honest. If you are carrying off body in a "gun bag" WHY would you carry a small gun?<br />
<br />
Thus we come to the crux of this article.<br />
<br />
Off body carry is my least favorite way of carrying a defensive weapon of any type. Yes one could argue that a messenger back slung over your body is in effect a closed holstered system on the body. Until placed next to the weight bench or at the feet at a restaurant and is off the body.<br />
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I avoid it whereas possible. The gym being the exception and not the rule.<br />
<i></i><br />
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If there is a reasonable amount of distance, time, or cover in which you can activate the deployment process known as "the draw" and, pull the handgun from it's bag, then great! <br />
<br />
I'm sure there is some off-body/go-bag carry expert out there who can deploy his handgun faster from the bag than the rest of us can from a conventional In-the-Waistband or hip holster. <br />
<br />
As for the rest of us....<br />
<br />
There is the problem of a bad-guy-in-question, for one reason or another, being able to close the gap, or worse perform a complete blindside attack, preventing a reasonable and effective draw of the handgun from the bag. Or worse, targets the bag itself for theft. Man-purse snatching as it were.<br />
<br />
In the mere blink of an eye you may find yourself in a struggle to maintain control of your precious "go-bag" in order to retain your weapon. The very argument some folks make against open-carry can just readily be applied to any off body carry system because clearly you have something of value in that bag that a bad man could want. Not to mention if you have a gun or tactical wear savvy badman. In which case he decided to target YOU because of the bag.<br />
<br />
Hence, fighting to regain control of that bag is just as paramount as any law-enforcement officer fighting on the side of the road to retain his weapon. In such dire circumstances the attention of the fight is centered around the bag and, thus you are going to have almost no possible way to deploy the handgun from the bag. So it is time to restructure your defensive decision making paradigm to a secondary weapon or Plan B.<br />
<br />
<br />
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<br />
There are reasons you carry a modernized single bladed "tactical" folder. And at the core of those reasoning is a scenario such as this. We mentally rely on the knife here in the 21st century to be deployed as a weapon only in a last ditch effort when we can not reasonably access a firearm in which to defend our life. But what about unreasonable means?<br />
<br />
No doubt there is some diabolical irony in having a handgun with you, while simultaneously being in the dire straits of having to rely upon a weapon from the first century to safe guard it AND you.<br />
<br />
But as they say, here you are.<br />
<br />
Your response has to be fluid in motion while delivering upon your assailant a barrage of counter attacks. Kicks, punches, and stabs. <br />
<br />
I see the wheels turning. <br />
<br />
"What if this is a simple snatch and grab?" <br />
<br />
It is not.<br />
<br />
For starters, in most cases criminals who commit robbery in the form of "purse snatching" with no intent to do physical harm to the victim are men and boys targeting women who pose little physical ability to stop them. Sorry ladies if that offends you. I didn't write the staging for the world's mechanics, I merely live in it. <br />
<br />
That said, almost every person I know that carries a firearm let alone a firearm in a modern tactical bag has a certain "death stare" or "I'm tactical" look to them. So if you are a guy and, you get a criminal intent on targeting you and/or your personal belongings rest assured he is not only physically capable of handling himself, he is most likely experienced in doing so. Possibly more so than you.<br />
<br />
No criminally minded male targets another male unless he feels assured of a victory and does so knowing a very thorough assault will likely have to be given. Hence, if a man attempts to pull that "go-bag" off your shoulder and, you make your play to stop him, understand that most likely the two of you are going to be within eight to eighteen inches of one another at the start, with a maximum distance of a yard.<br />
<br />
How so?<br />
<br />
First, he has to make contact with the bag in order to take it from you. This is well withing the eight inch distance. Second, you have the point where he has peeled the bag off you. This will become the length of the strap (provided we are talking about a bag and not a day planner or briefcase type carry). Our potential eighteen inches. <br />
<br />
Lastly, we have the movement where his arm is at almost full stretch to pull the bag from you and you at almost full stretch to keep the bag with you. This being the probable yard.<br />
<br />
The given in this situation is going to be movement away from you, in true human mind set of possession you will want to pull back to maintain. Instead you need to step with and into his direction. Slack in the line will throw him off balance, even for a split second, next you need to cover that ground and begin a counter strike.<br />
<br />
Conventional, law-abiding-hippy wisdom states that "nothing in your bag is worth your life". If your gun is in that bag, it is worth everyone's life and your responsibility, moral or otherwise, to maintain possession of it.<br />
<br />
You may find, while rapidly deploying that knife of yours, he may not be 110% committed to the fight & theft after a blade buries into flesh and bone a couple of times. <br />
<br />
Lest your desire to know more about the where's and how's of deploying a knife in gruesome and realistic fashion I'll point you back to <a href="http://straightforwardinacrookedworld.blogspot.com/2011/12/dark-arts-for-good-guys-right-to-knife.html" target="_blank"> here</a> and <a href="http://straightforwardinacrookedworld.blogspot.com/2012/01/dark-arts-for-good-guys-right-to-knife.html" target="_blank">here </a>to further your education on such matters.<br />
<br />
People who sell "things" whether it's a blender, a Smith & Wesson M&P or Ruger LCP want you to believe that they have the corner market on solving the problem that product is tasked with doing. <br />
<br />
In the real world, away from slick marketing, there are no "perfect" solutions to life. Simply solutions. Something either works or it does not. The width and breadth of solutions are of course dependent upon the problem in which they resolve.<br />
<br />
One who needs to build a fire in order to keep from freezing to death does not much care if that flame comes from road flare or match. The same maybe said about any instrument utilized to save your life or prevent the murder of others. <br />
<br />
We all have points and times in life where we are seemingly well armed but, not necessarily well aware or physically well placed to run with our beloved "Plan A" should things go awry. Therefore Plan B is of the same equaled and valued importance lest it be necessary to "go with it".<br />
<br />
In some cases that Plan B just maybe a knife.<br />
<br />
Train, fight and live accordingly.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319010524051426901.post-5125590384186990122014-03-07T11:48:00.002-07:002014-03-10T22:33:04.891-06:00Of Crime and Excuse As one who is absorbed into the constant study of and hunting of badmen I find some things of particular interest.<br />
<br />
The large majority of people who work with criminals do not actually understand how the criminal's mind works and that no matter what, when a crime is committed, society-at-large has been brainwashed into a very clever scheme that the criminal must have had a bad childhood. We give them a pre-disposed excuse.<br />
<br />
We should not.<br />
<br />
Somewhere in the 1890s "experts" began theorizing that criminal behavior was a result of environment and that ultimately a person turned to crime because they didn't have the same advantages as others. Yet with the national unemployment rate hovering around 7% we don't see that same 7% all become criminals. In fact hardly any of them turn to crime.<br />
<br />
We blame the parents, the economy, personal freedom, capitalism and the free market, access to guns as a clear road map to criminal activity. When the Great Depression hit we blamed the rise in crime on poverty. Yet in the 1980s when "Greed was king" we blamed wealth.<br />
<br />
For some reason or another we never blame the individual solely and completely themselves. The truth is this crimes are committed based upon choice.<br />
<br />
A man chooses to rob a bank, rape a woman, steal a car. A woman chooses to kill her children, embezzle funds, blackmail a former lover.<br />
<br />
There is no socio-economical scale for criminals. Everyone will say "yes there is!", yet there are just as many well-to-do Suburban teenagers pushing pills, coke and weed to their confederates as there are in the inner city "bad neighborhoods". And just as there is in rural America as well.<br />
<br />
One can point to the most fact proving "statistic" as it were about crime being a choice. And it is provided by the United States Department of Justice.<br />
<br />
Crime in the U.S. essential made a steady rise from the 1920s forward. Graphs will show that it "dropped" in the 1950s and 1960s but that is not necessarily true because those rates never fell back to the pre-1920s crime rate. They essentially leveled then began spiking again.<br />
<br />
Then something happened that caused crime rates to drop steadily and increasingly across the board.<br />
<br />
Individual states began allowing the rank and file citizen to carry a handgun upon their person. The more conceal carry laws spread across the country the lower the crime rate dropped.<br />
<br />
The crime rate didn't drop because criminals were being found shot dead in the gutter every morning.<br />
<br />
Crime rates dropped because the criminal faced a choice. The choice to try and attack someone who may or may not be able to kill them. When your chosen profession is that of the criminal you look for easy prey. The moment a criminal no longer knows who is and is not easy prey they begin to lose the return in their investment....crime as a job. Getting shot is bad for business since there is no worker-comp insurance.<br />
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So the next time you watch the news and see some horrific crime take place don't think "what kind of parents did they have?" .<br />
<br />
You choose to wake up everyday and go to work, or better your life. <br />
<br />
You choose this.<br />
<br />
Crime is a choice made by the criminal. Give them no inherent excuse for their behavior.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319010524051426901.post-28032246687361744742014-02-19T09:35:00.000-07:002014-02-20T16:28:28.491-07:00Stepped off a train<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
Not all days end well, or for some ever.<br />
<br />
Last night, stepping off a train and wrapping up one day's endeavor I was to end up intimately involved in another. Twenty minutes off that Amtrak a colleague and I were in a phone call with a little girl's parents and aunt as they sat some three hours away in a police station, looking for help. Looking for someone to bring their little girl home.<br />
<br />
In yesterday's late afternoon a little girl named Hailey Owen, just blocks from her home was snatched off the street and from life by her kidnapper and, ultimately killer. <br />
<br />
The Amber Alerts went out as did the BOLOs.<br />
<br />
Standing over a phone, talking with her parents I agreed to come down. And in doing so broke one of my rules. I don't break my rules, the real hardline internal ones. I don't break. Last night is a reason why.<br />
<br />
I have a lot of scars from doing this job after almost twenty years. Some external, some internal. They are wrapped up in good decisions and bad ones. Victories and losses. But, through it all I have maintained one very solid mandate. Never get involved in any case that leads to finding the body of a child.<br />
<br />
It's selfish and unapologetic but, there are somethings that I'd like to, when my time comes to finally lay down to my eternal rest, never see. Perhaps more now than ever as a father. Yet, hearing the family on the other end how do you say no? Because in their minds they are holding out for hope that she is still alive, I should think my colleague was as well.<br />
<br />
Yet as I watched the clock make it's final sweep to ten pm, I knew the score.<br />
<br />
Ask any doctor, cop, fire fighter...or a fixer like myself, that you have to get pragmatic early on in your career. I've often called it "the coldness". It's how every soldier can cry and kiss his family as he deploys and the moment they are out of sight the job takes over.<br />
<br />
"We need to go get on the road".<br />
<br />
"We need to wait till morning." I said.<br />
<br />
I know, I know what you are thinking. Twelve hours.<br />
<br />
Twelve to fifteen hours is the window.<br />
<br />
Of which by the time we would have arrived would have closed. Had we left at that moment, her parents would still be at the police station and, cops hate nothing more than guys like me walking into their wheel house. And I don't blame them one small bit.<br />
<br />
To be honest, while law enforcement has some public relations issues they need to get on and fix with how they interact with the citizenry there is still no worst enemy for the bad men of the world than the American Cop when the flag goes up.<br />
<br />
But I had said I would go.<br />
<br />
Keep my word.<br />
<br />
So once in the door, after a long ride home in the old 4Runner making a lot of pleas with God and wanting to call in any favors I might have had with Him to let her come home, I went operational. The moleskine was getting bullet pointed with "needs", the bedroll dug out, the Gobag brought down from the closet top.<br />
<br />
It didn't matter. I already knew it. I was angry. Just angry.<br />
<br />
The phone rang just after 5 this morning. My colleague called to say Hailey's killer, (suspect as everyone else will say) had been arrested but, no body yet recovered.<br />
<br />
"There is nothing for us to do. They'll find her within the next couple of hours" I said into the phone. Not alive I couldn't really bring myself to say, so I added "Give the family our condolences".<br />
<br />
"They haven't found her yet", "they will".<br />
<br />
They did. That text came in at 7:20 something.<br />
<br />
I grow weary of the bad men of the world killing children. Everyone's politics be damned, I grow tired of the rapist, the killer, the men who commit themselves to sanely devised evil.<br />
<br />
Because it is evil and there is evil in this world. It's not one man's perspective over another or another. Some men just want to do evil and they sleep every night free of guilt from it.<br />
<br />
And so it is and was with Craig Michael Wood. Child killer. Innocence thief. Destroyer of small worlds and families.<br />
<br />
Years back when I started SFIACW it was an outlet for the writer in me who grew weary of a world of bullshit and double talk. It eventually grew less personal and more....XYZ. <br />
<br />
So normally this is the part where I say "fight" give the bad men everything you have and leave them on the floor and not you. <br />
<br />
But instead I would rather say "do good." <br />
<br />
Do good. Because the world is so absent of it at times. You want to be counter cultural? Do good.<br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com