Massad Ayoob's Blog, page 104

POST CHRISTMAS MUSINGS

Christmas Eve and Christmas Night saw full moons for the first time since 1977, I’m told. Just  too purty for the Evil Princess not to photograph.

The approaching New Year brings with it challenges for those who fight for gun owners’ civil rights.  The latest incarnation of the useless old “assault rifle ban.”  Democrat candidates for President fighting to see who can be the MOST anti-gun/anti-self-defense candidate.

Christmas has, however, had its bright spots.  While the prohibitionists were trying to tell Americans that gun owners are a radical minority, the Government’s own statistics for NICS checks for firearms sales showed an all-time record on Black Friday, the big Christmas shopping day that follows Thanksgiving.  The gun shop owners I stay in touch with tell me that sales have been extremely brisk, AND THAT MANY OF THEM ARE TO FIRST-TIME GUN BUYERS.

When those who would deprive you of your rights make a mockery of themselves, that’s something to celebrate, too.  It happened in New York State just before Christmas, when lawmakers floated a bill that would limit citizens to buying no more than two gun-loads of ammunition every ninety days. Doing the math, Washington Times said, “The provision would limit the amount of bullets a gun owner can buy to no more than twice the amount of the capacity of the weapon ever 90 days, which means someone who owns a six-shooter could only buy 12 bullets every three months, the Brooklyn Eagle reported.” See the whole story here.

Quite apart from the fact that ammunition is not normally sold by the cartridge – typical packaging is 20 to 50 cartridges per box for brass-case centerfire – it would take years to accumulate enough ammunition for a new shooter to take a firearms safety course.  And, taken to its logical stupid extreme, a hunter who preferred a single shot rifle could only have eight cartridges per year…not even enough to sight in, let alone practice and maintain proficiency.  Target shooting in all its forms would become impossible.

Why celebrate that stupidity? Because it brings the prohibitionists right out of the closet and past their fake “gun safety” argument, and exposes them to the light of day (and the light of reason) before the vast middle ground of American voters. You don’t even need the light of a full Christmas moon to see the hypocrisy in the agenda of the selfsame politicians who said in the past, “We won’t interfere with your target shooting or hunting or self-protection.”

 

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MERRY CHRISTMAS!

From all of us on this end, to all of you and yours, the Evil Princess and I extend our best wishes for a wonderful, safe, and renewing Christmas weekend.  It’s a joy to have you all here, particularly those of you whose participation in the commentary really makes this blog work!

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PASSAGES

One bittersweet thing about this holiday season is that you remember the people who won’t be here to celebrate it this year.  We’ve already eulogized my friend and fellow gun writer Frank James, who passed a few months ago. This month, we lost Jim Clark, Jr. His dad, Jim Senior, was a distinguished Pacific Theater veteran of WWII, one of the all-time great custom gunsmiths, and the first private citizen to win the overall National Pistol Championship of the United States without the financial support of an armed service or law enforcement agency. When I saw Jim, Jr. earlier this year at the NRA national conference, he seemed in fine shape; truly, none of us knows when we’ll be taken. Beyond his vast knowledge of guns, Jim like his dad was a genuinely good man who always had time to answer the most naïve question from the newest shooter, and became a national champ himself. That tradition lives in the rest of the family: his sister Kay Clark-Miculek, brother-in-law Jerry Miculek, and Jim’s niece Lena Miculek-Afentul – national champions all, and all the salt-of-the-earth good people we’re proud to have as both national champs of our chosen sport, and icons of our way of life.

A few days ago, friend and student Philippa Coates informed me of the passing of our mutual friend, legendary Chicago cop Jack Manfre. Jack and I had taught together for our mutual friend and mentor Ray Chapman at Chapman Academy in Columbia, MO thirty or so years ago, and remained friends ever since.  The Evil Princess, a Chicagoan, was fortunate enough to become one of Jack’s students early in her shooting career, and we always tried to touch bases with him when we were in the Windy City. A strong believer in the Second Amendment (like so many street-wise cops!) Jack was always as happy teaching law-abiding private citizens how to defend themselves as he was teaching brother and sister officers.

He was also a mentor to Tom Marx, one of the most knowledgeable people in the firearms industry, who also started out as a Chicago copper.  Tom has been gracious enough to share his eulogy for Jack with us, as follows:

Living the glamorous life that I do, I was just about to drive out of an airport parking lot at 0045hrs this morning when my cell phone chirped to tell me that someone had just sent me a text. Something not totally unusual, as the work I do has allowed me to travel to, and make friends in, time zones in parts of the world I never knew existed, let alone ever thought I would get a chance to visit.

It was from a close friend in the Midwest who told me that the man who, for all of the teachers and instructors I have had the good fortune to have met and learned from, was truly the mentor who had started me, not only on the path to better and more effective shooting, but on the road that led to who I am and what I do today, had passed away.

Jack Manfre, long retired from the Chicago Police Department was in his 80’s but still sharp and still teaching. It bothered him just a few years ago when he decided that it was time to stop employing some of the more aggressive turning movements he had always made a part of his shooting programs. But that didn’t stop him from regularly working out on a heavy bag; something he had done since he had boxed in the Navy (during the Korean war period).

Jack was one of those guys who while always confident and sure of himself and of what he could do, never bragged about it and for a long time, never seemed to even understand or appreciate what he had done or could do for others. Yeah, he always taught for money (whether as an Instructor at the CPD Academy or as a private teacher working a side job shooting, like others guy worked security in a bank or drug store) but I can’t tell you how many times, “just for fun”, he would simply gather up a few of us and we would spend some part of the day firing serious drills and critiquing each other, while learning all we could from him. To Jack, it was fun. And a science. And an art.

Jack was an artist in that respect and a cop and a great instructor. He taught at the Chicago police Academy for over a decade but he never stopped learning himself. He originally went to learn from Ray Chapman but he not only became friends with Ray Chapman (not an easy task itself) but ultimately taught alongside Ray Chapman. Separately, when the NRA first realized that they needed to get out of the dark ages of police training and into the late 20th century in regard to how handguns were really used, they too, called on Jack and he taught for them throughout the United States in the beginning days of that very successful reorganization. He also taught for Beretta, who too, sent him throughout the United States to represent them and teach folks what pistols were all about (in the days when people – let alone police people – knew little about them) but they also sent him to other parts of the world because they could see what he could do for others and because they knew how good he made them look.

All that, in the days when there were few schools and no factory shooters or instructors like there are now.

He also taught at Camp Perry, he did work for the FBI up at their huge facility at Great Lakes, and the CPD got creative when they realized what they had lost when he retired and for several decades afterward, they found ways to bring him back and teach all kinds of things that were well outside the spectrum of their regular programs to guys in specialty units and tons of other officers who often came in on their own time (something almost unheard of in that Department) to become better with what is perhaps, their most serious “tool of the trade”.

And when it comes to tools, the first Ed Brown guns I ever shot (from back when Ed was still working out of his house) were relatively flawless 1911’s that he built for Jack. “Built” for Jack as in “paid for” by Jack because Jack never put the arm on anybody for anything. He was a standup guy in that way and all other ways too. He never sought fame from any of this. He just liked to shoot and to help others.

As such, while he taught thousands (probably tens of thousands) of people over the years, and while in my travels, it always pleased and amazed me, how many people had met him and learned from him, I’m sure that most of you (except for Mas, because through Ray, he worked with him too), never heard of this man before.

I’m sure that Mas has mentioned him in print. I know that Brian Felter has. I believe that Mike Boyle has too. And Dave Spaulding credits him with a lot. I believe that John Benner of TDI (a wonderful “old-school” school itself) has talked about him formally as well. But while there are a few mentions of him online [Including a non-shooting one that offers great insight to policing in the 60’s within the CPD’s own official publication that existed for the benefit, amusement and recognition of its members. The Chicago Police Star said this in its January 1969 issue as a monthly report on the activities for the old Area 1 Traffic Unit (here regarding their Annual New Year’s Eve Party): The highlight of the evening was a contest between Jack Manfre and Don Dodge, to see how many parking citations could be filled out in a 5 minute period. Jack won by one citation and was presented with the “Writer’s Cup” which will be an annual presentation from now on.], there is little if anything out there that truly describes what he was like.

He was a great guy, a great copper and a great inspiration to me and the men I worked with who knew and appreciated firearms and shooting like I do.

Someday, when I can write about him more clearly, I’ll tell you about 5am breakfasts at the legendary Lou Mitchell’s in Chicago, when various Deputy and Assistant Deputy Superintendents (who were so far above me, they were like meeting the Pope) would stop by on their way in or out to say hi to Jack and sincerely inquire as to how he was doing because they were all old friends.

And lunches in a now-gone corner restaurant at Racine and Grand where everybody was either a cop, a criminal or a city worker (sometimes more than one at the same time) in a Damon Runyon-like off limits place where everybody accepted everybody else because most of them had grown up together.

And dinners in an unknown-to-the-public (let alone to-the-tourists) neighborhood, where ancient Italians sat peacefully and unafraid on their aluminum folding chairs in front of their carefully tended-to homes that they had owned and kept up forever because the miscreants from the outright horrifying zones that surrounded it, knew little but knew enough to never to screw with them or those, like us, who had come to visit.

And about shooting ranges that “ranged” the gamut from unseen indoor private ones dating back to the 1920’s to outdoor machine gun facilities from WWII where .50cal projectiles were fired well (sometimes too well) out into Lake Michigan.

But right now, I just want to tell you how one day, early-on in my getting to know him, Jack took me aside and told me that maybe I could be pretty good at this shooting stuff, if only I took it seriously. With his encouragement and his instruction, I did take it seriously. For if I had not learned as much from him as I did, I would have never travelled to those unknown parts of the world I mentioned earlier and I would never have been in the car this morning; travelling, teaching and still learning myself, while hopefully (and more importantly) helping others the way he had helped me, when I got that text.

Thanks for the above, Tom.

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EEK! ONLY A WEEK!

We’re only a week out from Christmas. If you’re looking for last-minute presents for your “gun culture” giftees, there’s still time for Amazon…and books are among my favorite gifts to both receive and deliver.  Any book you want to order, click on the book cover shown below.

“FIGHTING SMARTER,” the updated version of “Fighting Smart” by my old friend and fellow instructor Tom Givens would be an excellent choice.

The book incorporates the lessons of sixty-plus of his civilian students who’ve been in gunfights on the mean streets of Memphis. None of his students has lost a gunfight, though there have been a couple of “defaults” – students who, for whatever reason, were unarmed when criminals murdered them and were thus unable to fight back. Tom constantly invokes the point of one of Jeff Cooper’s acolytes, Mark Moritz: “The first rule of gunfighting is, HAVE A GUN.”  Some of the points Tom emphasizes are constant awareness, regular honing of defensive skills, using a two-hand hold and getting some sort of a sight picture if possible, and “using enough gun.”  (And having enough ammo.)

 

 

“THESE ARE MY GUNS!” by Robert L. Jordan is timely, in a world where gun owners’ civil rights are once again under powerful, focused attack. It’s an excellent compendium of clear, logical arguments and statistics to defeat the BS arguments of the Prohibitionists. Those folks were tweeting all their anti-gun minions to make “gun safety” gun confiscation a family topic at Thanksgiving. Don’t know how that went on your end, but on mine, the closest we came to that at Thanksgiving was my surrogate step-daughter showing me her new holsters for her 9mm concealed carry pistol.  Come to think of it, if you’re not averse to a family feud on Christmas morning, a copy of “These Are MY Guns” would make an excellent gift for anti-gunners on your Christmas list…

 

“Navy SEAL Shooting” by Chris Sanjog is another good example of clear writing,

and I think would be well received by any shooter on your Christmas list  and particularly valuable to new shooters. Any two instructors will debate some points within their discipline, unless they’re clones of each other, but since my review copy is conspicuously marked “Advance Uncorrected Proofs,” there’s probably fewer nits I’d pick in your copy than in mine. Lots of good stuff in the Sanjog book.

 

 

“365 Guns You Must Shoot” is written by another old friend, a scholar of the gun named Tim Mullin. Now, if you think two specialists in the field might not agree on a few things, you KNOW they’re not going to agree on 365 things, but there was nothing in Tim’s newest book that

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BOHICA

Let me get this straight. Their Bill Clinton Assault Weapons Ban that lasted for a decade until its sunset in 2004 didn’t do a damn demonstrable thing for public safety, and the Democrats are introducing it AGAIN?  See this from our friend Dave Workman at the Second Amendment Foundation:

BOHICA – Bend Over, Here It Comes Again.

Wait. Did I say “Bend Over”?  Nah – to Hell with that.  Stand up and fight.

Time for calm, well-reasoned letters to your Representatives and Senators in Washington.  (Hint: my friends with great experience on The Hill say that short, respectful handwritten letters get much more attention from our elected officials than form letters or emails.  They show that a voter cared enough to sit down and write an opinion.)

We all know why this sort of legislation is BS, but this would be a good place to collect those good reasons to oppose it, so feel free to share here.

When you write to those who represent you in the Nation’s Capitol, you might want to remind them of an on-point meme that’s going around among gun owners:

“We agree with you when you say not to blame all Muslims for the acts of a vicious few…so why would you enact legislation that hurts all us lawful gun owners for the acts of a vicious few criminals?”

As for me…I suddenly feel another AR15 coming on.

Just…because.

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CHILLING…

Last class of the year…COMPLETE.  Last court appearance of the year…DONE.

There are still deadlines, gun tests, and some demonstrative evidence and such to be recorded, but dammit, this is as close as I get to vacation, and I’m gonna enjoy it.

Christmas is upon us, and whatever your belief system, even secular folks find it to be a landmark on America’s calendar.

This is the Gun Corner of the Backwoods Home blogs.  While I may actually have all the guns I need, I don’t necessarily have all the guns I want, so there is still that element of the Christmas List in abeyance.

Elsewhere in my life, however, I expect I’ll be giving at least one firearm as a present to someone I care about, and I’d really like to give one more.

My significant other, the Evil Princess of Podcasts, Pixels, and Polymer Pistols, has become enamored of the short-lived and now discontinued Glock RTF2 series.  She wasn’t that interested in them when they came out.  However, she “rediscovered” the concept (gill-shaped slide grooves, and a gazillion little prongs sticking out of the grip that just lock the pistol into the firing hand), she decided she had to have one. Or more.

 

The Evil Princess demands RTF2 gills on a carry-size Glock 19, like these on her competition Glock 17.

There was a full-size Glock 17 9mm in the gun shop where she and I tend to hang out, and I bought it for, uh, “us.”  That was supposed to be our “shared custody” pistol, but after she put Dawson adjustable fiber optic sights on it, it has spent all its time with its female parent. She wanted another one, so I bought her a Glock 23 .40 caliber RTF2 (thanks, Ernie).  But now, not being satisfied with a RoBar Custom Glock 30S .45 apparently, she wants a Glock 19 RTF2 for concealed carry.  (Not the one Glock recently produced as a special run for one distributor with straight slide grasping grooves: she’s gotta have GILL-shaped grooves, or nuthin’.)

 

After a few months carrying this 11-shot .45 caliber RoBar Custom Glock 30S, a potential gift recipient wants one particular 16-shot 9mm version. San Bernardino and all that may have something to do with it.

The next Glock 19 for the Evil Princess must have gilled slide grooves like those on this G17, and polymids like this all over the RTF2 grip, or she will make a poor old man suffer…and it will be all YOUR fault. (The Dawson sights are up to her.)

So…help a poor old man to make his life happier. If you see a 9mm Glock 19 RTF2 with gilled slide serrations at your local gun shop, let me know and give me a seller contact, preferably in time for Christmas. Sigh…

But, enough about that.  Black Friday, the premier shopping day after Thanksgiving, set a record for firearms purchases that put our anti-gun President’s teeth on edge. (Thank you all for that!)

What guns are you buying for Christmas gifts for folks you care about, and what guns do you want for the Holiday Gift Season yourself?  (Brief but important hint: let the adult recipient decide what gun they want, and get that person a gift certificate at the gun shop, and make sure THEY fill out the 4473 form for it. If you’re buying it for someone too young to buy it from an FFL dealer themselves, make sure possession stays in your household to avoid anti-gun-motivated BS.)

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ENJOYING FREEDOM IN AMERICA

Fun class.

Remember a little while back in this blog, when I said I was about to teach my last class of the year, and because it was an advanced class it was gonna be like training with my buddies? Well, I’m in the middle of that now and so, far, it’s been proven correct.

At midweek we had the fully automatic weapons segment.  I put this into the third level class years ago because smart folks recognized even then that terrorism was on the horizon, and a good person might find himself or herself square in the middle of an atrocity in a gun free zone hunting preserve for psychopathic murderers, where the only gun they might be able to pick up might be the MP5 of a fallen protector or the fully automatic weapon of one of the murderous fanatics committing the atrocity.  Admittedly, by this time the students have spent way over 80 hours learning grim things from me and my staff…shooting full auto can be fun…and dammit, I owe them some fun back by now, too.

Most of the public doesn’t realize that in most of our country, fully automatic weaponry is absolutely legal once you’ve been thoroughly checked out by the Federal government. In a time when more than ever in recent memory it’s important to be a “certified, card-carrying good guy or gal,” no such card is better than one which says BATFE has investigated you for six months or so and determined you to be cool to have a machine gun, a silencer, a short-barreled rifle or “sawed-off shotgun,” etc.

We’re 80% through the class now and every single student has already passed a triple-speed (stuff like 6 pistol shots from the holster, one hand only including reaction time, in two and two-thirds seconds) police-type qualification, and double and triple speed police shotgun qualification.

Lydia, 7, gets her first shots through a 9mm Glock.

At one point our students took some people in a broad age spectrum, most of whom had never touched a gun, from “this is the firing pin, this is the trigger” to sustained fire including reloads, in a very short time frame.

This ten-year-old mostly center-punched her target with S&W M&P .45.

Watching a 10-year-old girl with a Smith & Wesson Military & Police loaded with 230 grain .45 hardball keep most of her shots in the center 10/X rings, and a seven year old girl with a 9mm Glock do the same, I for one came away happy.

Have I ever mentioned that I love my work…?

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MUST…BLOCK…OUT…BS…WITH…SOMETHING…GOOD

Murderous religious fanatics who identify with a self-declared caliphate that subsequently cheers and embraces them, slaughter 14 innocent people and pump bullets into another 21 or 22 before being righteously killed by police.  The leader of the Free World declares that it might be premature to call it a fanatic terrorist problem and declares it instead to be a gun control  “gun safety” issue requiring prohibitionist laws that only law-abiding American citizens will obey.  A newspaper once considered the august standard for impartial news in our country takes the unprecedented (in most of its readers’ lifetimes) step of printing an editorial on its front page. The editorial demands that law abiding citizens turn over their guns to the government, presumably without compensation, for the good of the order.

Aauugghh!  Bullshit overload!!

Time for something positive, the sort of thing that defensive firearms are intended to keep good people alive to enjoy. Like, oh, Christmas. 

I’m putting a Christmas tree up this weekend. One of the gifts I’d have liked to see under it for me, if I hadn’t just read it already, would be our own Jackie Clay’s third novel in her Jess Hazzard series, “Winter of the Wolves.”  It’s a particularly bad season in the northern American heartland where it’s set in a time long ago, and Jackie’s evocative prose makes  you feel as if you’re there in the howling blizzard, and helping the mare foal, and going through the myriad other torments of self-sufficient life. I haven’t actually felt writer-created hypothermia in fiction like this since I was a little kid reading John Greenleaf Whitter’s poem “Snow-Bound” inside a warm house with mom and dad and sister while looking out the window as we actually became snowbound during a northern New England blizzard.

It’s not surprising. Jackie lives where she writes about, in much the same homesteading, horse-riding, self-sustaining rural lifestyle, and is living proof that “write what you know” is a wise mantra for those who live by the pen. She also understands human nature, and this volume’s theme of redemption and judging people by what they do, not who they are or what they proclaim themselves to be, is likewise well sustained. Order in time for Christmas from Amazon.

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SAN BERNARDINO…

Apparently the pre-Thanksgiving warnings of terror attack in the US weren’t false, just off by a few days.  Kudos to the well-trained cops from multiple agencies who “rode to the sound of the guns” and extinguished two mass-murdering “radicalized” Muslims. Condolences to the 21 wounded victims, and the survivors of the fourteen killed in the massacre.  The government building where it happened, presumably, was yet another gun free zone hunting preserve for mass murderers.

The chief of police in Detroit makes an excellent point on the matter.

I’m told that in Paris these past few days, our President repeated his line about mass shootings not taking place in other civilized countries save our own, surrounded all the while by the ghosts of three figures worth of victims of terrorist mass murderers in that very city only a matter of days before.  Naturally, he called for more restrictions on law-abiding American gun owners.  Let us not forget, France’s strict “gun controls” are well known, as are those of California.

Those inside the Democrat halls of power have known for more than twenty years that their focus on firearms prohibition is meaningless. Kudos to longtime Second Amendment activist David Hardy, who found proof of this in – irony of ironies – the Bill Clinton Library, here.

In Garland, TX, a 58-year-old traffic cop with a Glock 21 pistol similar to this one dropped two long-gun-armed terrorists Al Queda claimed as their own before they could commit any murders at all.

Innocent people are dying. There’s no time anymore for mendacity or cluelessness. There IS time for America to listen to the Chief in Detroit.  The best chance for saving lives is for good people right there at ground zero of the attack to defeat these things when they first flare up, before they turn into full-blown conflagration.  To those who say one good person with a pistol and a skilled hand has no hope of defeating multiple long-gun-wielding jihadi, I answer with two words: Remember Garland!

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POST-THANKSGIVING THANKS

Authoritative warnings of jihadi attacks in our country did not come to pass, for which we can all give thanks. The only atrocity of the long Thanksgiving weekend was the home-grown nut case who killed three including a brave police officer, and wounded more, at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs.  Too bad it couldn’t have been nipped in the bud by an armed doctor, like the Pennsylvania case in 2014, where the gunman had 39 more bullets and a plan for mass murder when the doc shot him down.

We all have much to be thankful for.  In my case, significant other and I and our families are all doing well health-wise.  Classes have been full.  We’re home from our last “away” class of 2015, with only one left on this year’s calendar at home base, a 40-hour advanced course that’s always fun to teach.  Gonna be more like “shootin’ real fast an’ grapplin’ with our buddies” than work. My last trial for this year is done, too.  Christmas season looks like something close to a vacation.  We get to see how normal human beings live, for a few weeks.  Looks as if we’ll have time to shoot some matches, even.

What did all y’all find yourselves giving thanks for?

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