Massad Ayoob's Blog, page 111

ON-SCREEN GUN BOO-BOOS

As the FX channel’s well-crafted series “Justified,” based on an Elmore Leonard short story, winds toward its finale, there has been a boo-boo.  Senior citizen crime queen Katherine fought rival gangster’s bodyguard Mikey to mutual destruction. She emptied her revolver into him but didn’t stop him from beating her to death before he died in the arms of his boss.

Thing of it was – and perhaps only a gun geek would notice – she fired one shot more than she could have in real life.

Her revolver was clearly a J-frame Smith & Wesson .38 Special, with an obviously visible five-shot cylinder – a Model 60 Chief Special, it looked like to me – and she shot him six times without reloading.

Things like that make the aficionado roll his or her eyes: it’s like spotting a wristwatch on a character who’s supposed to be playing Robin Hood.  Gets in the way of that “willing suspension of disbelief” we all need for enjoyment of fiction.

Sure ain’t the first time something like that has happened.  A couple which come to mind:

In “Tombstone,” Val Kilmer’s character starts the central shootout armed with a double barrel shotgun (2 shots), a Colt Single Action Army revolver (would have probably been carried with 5 rounds, but could have held 6) and in the actual gunfight near OK Corral used as backup a Lightning model double action .38 Colt (again likely 5, but 6 tops.) That’d be 15 rounds at most without reloading, but in the movie he gets three shots out of the double barrel, and with a revolver in each hand (he used them sequentially in the actual gunfight) fired over 20 shots total before I lost count.

On AMC’s popular zombie series “Walking Dead,” the firearms foul-ups were so frequent I lost count there, too.  I found myself yelling at the screen, “There’s no rear sight on that rifle!” “Get your finger off the trigger, there’s nothing to shoot at!”  It was Significant Other’s turn to roll her eyes and say with her patented long-suffering sigh, “You don’t accept a rifle with no rear sight, but you DO accept animated corpses?”

In the pilot episode of “Walking Dead,” the Rick Grimes character tells his brother officers to take off the safeties…on their Glock pistols, which normally don’t HAVE safeties.  (Glock has produced the G17-S with manual safety, and I have and like Joe Cominolli’s patented thumb safety retrofit on one of my Glock 17 pistols, but the ones on the show weren’t so equipped.) Another fiction favorite is “I flipped off my revolver’s safety.” MOST revolvers don’t have manual safeties, but I have a left-handed Frank Murabito safety on one of my Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolvers, and the right-handed version works off the cylinder release latch.)

Ah, Hollywood…

Gun people, what is YOUR favorite (or perhaps, most teeth-grinding non-favorite) firearms faux pas on TV and movie screens?

Share or Bookmark

DINNER WITH FRIENDS

When teaching in Virginia recently, the Evil Princess and I were able to have dinner with Jeff Yago and his lovely wife Sharon.  Jeff and I have both been writing for Backwoods Home magazine since the latter 1990s.  Jeff’s specialty is energy, and has long been the magazine’s resident expert on all things related to solar power. Here’s his article in the current issue: http://backwoodshome.com/articles2/yago152.html .

Jeff is also an authority on prepping, and does seminars on the topic as well as all his work in the solar area.  Talking shop was interesting; turns out that we have different writing habits.  It’s amazing how many writers do.

Take a look at Jeff’s work in the archives of the Backwoods Home website, and his retired blog, here: http://backwoodshome.com/blogs/EnergyQuestions/.  Deep knowledge and meticulous research, combined with a writing style that gets the material across clearly.  Jeff is one of the great resources in the Backwoods Home group, and it’s always a pleasure to be on a team with professionals like him.

Share or Bookmark

RATTENKRIEG!

Subtitled “The Art and Science of Close Quarters Battle Pistol,” “Rattenkrieg” draws its main title from a word the Germans coined for the vicious “rat war” of the Stalingrad campaign. The author, Bob Taubert, is better known by his pen name of “Bob Pilgrim” because he began writing when he worked for the FBI. Anyone who has worked for a large organization – dot-mil, dot-gov, or commercial – understands how that goes.  Today, well into an honorably earned retirement, he is out of that particular closet.  

I’ve met Bob, and shot with him, and I can tell you he’s awfully good.  In a long, “been there/done that” career, he has absorbed a great deal of advanced training from authoritative sources, and he distills it well in “Rattenkrieg.”

This book is an excellent compendium of current pistolcraft doctrine from many sources. Bob takes a very analytical approach, explaining where each technique comes from, and dispassionately listing its strong points and weak points.  The book is an excellent overview for new shooters, and a very useful review for the master shooter.  Few books can encompass both ends of the bell curve as well as this one.

What I particularly like about Taubert’s approach is something a lot of writers can learn from, whether or not they have any interest in firearms.  That approach is to explain the technique clearly, along with how and why it was developed, and to present it non-judgmentally. Clearly, Bob Taubert has his own preferences…but instead of touting those and dissing the others, he explains them all without prejudice and lets the reader decide.

It’s a writing approach that serves the reader well, whether the book is about fighting with guns or how to raise prize-winning roses.

Recommended reading. Source is Saber Press, which offers other titles by qualified authors which many who read this blog will find of great interest.

Share or Bookmark

UN-BEAR-ABLE ERROR CORRECTED

I hate it when this happens, but…I made a mistake.

In the last blog entry, we had a video clip of me at Glock a few weeks ago, discussing the then-as-yet-unveiled Glock 43 pistol.  I remarked that it was not as short in trigger reach as the Baby Bear size Glock 42 .380, nor as long as that of the thicker-gripped 9mm Glock 26, designed more for Papa Bear size (i.e., average adult male) hands.  Being in between, I compared it to Mama Bear’s porridge…just right.

While I think I had the paw hand size issue biologically correct, I blew it on the fable comparison. A brother officer, Sergeant John Parsons, reminded me that in the Goldilocks story, the porridge and stuff that was “just right” was Baby Bear’s, not Mama Bear’s.  So did one of the 33,000-plus people who saw the video on YouTube.

Mea culpa.  You’d think someone old enough for second childhood and still vividly remembering the first would have a better memory for Goldilocks and the Three Bears. I owe an apology, delivered herewith:

            I am sometimes wrong (I hope rarely),

                        But to treat the matter most fairly

                        I confess to a flub

                        (Should been the darn cub)

                        So I admit I was wrong…but bear-ly.

Share or Bookmark

BEHOLD, THE LONG-AWAITED “SLIM-NINE” GLOCK 43

Mmff…Mmff…Mmff…(Gasp)…BWAH-HA-HA-HA!

Forgive the sound effects.  That’s just me, bound for some time by a legal non-disclosure agreement scheduled to time out at 12:01 AM on March 20, 2015. Another publishing entity disregarded the NDA and released it early, so Glock took the time leash off the rest of us.

For many years now, the Glock has been the best-selling pistol in the United States, and the gun Glock fans have most demanded is a slimmed-down version of the 9mm with a single-stack magazine, the better for discreet and comfortable concealment.  Official announcement is now, official revealing to the gun owning public to handle will be at the NRA annual meeting and show in Nashville, TN next month.

See it here: click here for video.

Hear about it from the people who make it, here, at the ProArms Podcast (Scroll to the bottom for audio.)

Neat little gun. More in common with the little Glock 42 .380 that garnered enormous sales after its introduction in January 2014 than with the “baby Glock” G26 of 1996.  Shot straight and reliably during the time I had with it, though I hope to put my already-ordered test samples through more strenuous paces.

Share or Bookmark

MORE ON OPEN CARRY

The last entry here, on “in your face” open carry versus concealed carry or discreet open carry, caught interest with a three-digit comment count.  I also raised some new issues I hadn’t discussed here previously.

Basic truth, folks: economic rhetoric has never fed the hungry, and Second Amendment rhetoric has never armed the helpless.

The gains the gun owners’ civil rights movement have made can be attributed to decades of legal scholarship, working within the system, and reforming anti-gun laws which largely trace back to anti-black bias in the antebellum and Reconstruction-era south, anti-immigrant bias in the industrialized north, and culture war at multiple levels.

Gun-banners will never convert most who read this blog, and we who support a responsibly armed citizenry will never win over the Pelosis and Bloombergs of the world. The battleground lies with the vast majority of people who are in the middle on this polarized issue.  I am old enough to remember when Massachusetts and California each held a referendum on whether possession of handguns should be banned in their states.  Neither state had a majority of gun owners in the voting pool, but in each case our side won the referendum, because “the people on the fence” didn’t want to go that far.

Doing things that alarm those people in the middle will do nothing to help the pro-gun side.  Fear is the key ingredient that creates hatred.  Doing things that put the general public in fear will cause more people to hate us, and anyone who seriously thinks flaunting rifles around schools in cities and suburbs will somehow acclimate the public to an acceptance of armed citizens is simply delusional.

Please, don’t compare the heavily armed guy who video-records himself confronting police to Rosa Parks on a segregated bus. Ms. Parks did not put anyone in fear of their lives. Don’t tell me that “a right not exercised is a right denied,” when we’ve seen confrontational open carry result in stricter laws in California, and hamper the responsible open carry movement in Texas much more recently.

This blog post, like the most recent one, grew from a fellow prancing around a school with a visible rifle and handgun.  Even gun experts will tell you that handguns are carried holstered, in case they’re needed for a life-threatening emergency, while long guns are traditionally carried only when their immediate use is anticipated. For us, that’s hunting, response to an already identified emergency (think “Rodney King riots”), or a target shooting range.  To the general public, that image instantly calls to mind Columbine, Virginia Tech, and Newtown.  When an otherwise obviously smart and articulate poster says the officer confronting such a person with hand on service pistol is the one being provocative, I can only say “Wow…just…wow.”

Some open carry advocates hope for test cases to go to courts and validate their cause. I wouldn’t be betting on that outcome. When someone’s behavior is sufficiently frightening that the school in question goes to lockdown, I don’t expect the courts to say that’s just fine.  Depending on the jurisdiction, the mood of the court, and the mood of the prosecution, some of the cards on the table may include “disturbing the peace,” “trespass after warning,” and “going armed to the terror of the public.”

But, the people who want to traipse around schools with visible military rifles and camcorders will have had their fifteen minutes of YouTube “fame.”

On this discussion thread, a poster by the username of “usagi” said it better than I: “Open carry of long guns to advocate for 2A rights is exactly the same as blowing smoke directly in people’s faces for smoker’s rights.”

Share or Bookmark

OPEN CARRY: WHAT’S YOUR TAKE?

Open carry is the practice of wearing a presumably loaded firearm, visibly.  It normally takes the form of a holstered handgun.  It occasionally takes the form of someone carrying a rifle or shotgun into a restaurant, which has a history of causing restaurant chains to ban or at least decry the practice. There is also what gun writer and blogger Tam Keel  calls “Open carrying at people,” which I think is the province of those colloquially known as “attention whores.”

A few years ago, Mark Walters hosted a three-way debate on the topic on his show “Armed American Radio.” The “pro” speaker came, IIRC, from Georgia Carry.  The “anti-open carry” speaker was a cop from the Midwest who, though generally pro-armed citizen, thought open carry was counterproductive to both the public peace and the Second Amendment cause. I took the middle ground, which I still hold. One the one hand, I would like for every state to allow any citizen who has a clean record and hasn’t been adjudicated mentally incompetent to be allowed to open carry a holstered, loaded handgun. First, because there are some jurisdictions where if the wind blows your coat open and reveals the gun you are legally carrying concealed, a genuinely frightened citizen or vindictive anti-gunner can combine with an anti-gun prosecutor to create a perfect storm of criminal charges for illegal open carry. Second, because if a good person suddenly becomes a stalking victim or the target of death threats, I don’t want them to have to wait up to 90 days (gun-friendly Florida) or six months (the time it takes before a new resident can even apply for a concealed carry permit in California, which for the most part is decidedly non-gun-friendly).  But on the other hand, I don’t think we win any friends for gun owners’ civil rights by flaunting deadly weapons in the face of a general public conditioned to fear guns and their owners by generations of anti-gun media and political prejudice.

I do open carry a few times a year in public, just to gauge typical response, and have done so in jurisdictions from New Hampshire and Connecticut to Washington State. Most folks don’t even notice.   I just got back from a class in Tucson, hosted by Dan Southard and his Gator Farm Tactical training group.  There is no more open-carry-friendly state than Arizona, though Tucson is pretty much “blue yuppie central” on firearms issues.  At the airport hotel, about a fifth of the students open carried, while a majority of the rest were packing concealed.  There were no incidents or complaints.  Interestingly, if you look at the class photo below, you’ll be hard put to spot even the openly carried handguns, including the Glock on my own hip.  Yes, open carry can be discreetly performed.

Now, contrast that with this YouTube video, taken by a true attention whore and cop-baiter.  Ask yourself just how much of an ambassador this guy, trolling a school while wearing an openly carried handgun AND a slung long gun, is for the cause of responsible armed citizens. Note that at the end, he and his flaunted guns walk right up to the door of the school, doing a remarkable imitation of Adam Lanza approaching Sandy Hook Elementary School. Note that it was the Bloomberg anti-gun-owner forces who made it go viral.

 

Let me ask again…what is YOUR take on the matter?

Share or Bookmark

“SUMMER OF THE EAGLES”

I don’t read fiction often, and I review it even less frequently on this blog.  I’ll make an exception for something that touches the brain, the heart, or the gut, however…and Jackie Clay’s “Summer of the Eagles” scores a triple-tap of center hits on all three targets.

When people whose work you know and like create a book, it’s a safe bet you’ll know what you’ll find in that book, and like it.  I’ve never met face to face with either Jackie Clay or Oliver Del Signore, but I’ve been reading Jackie’s work for almost twenty years, and have been thankful for Oliver’s skills since I’ve been doing this blog.  You see, Jackie Clay wrote this novel, and there’s a reason she’s the most popular Backwoods Home writer. Oliver Del Signore published it, and he’s the webmaster for Backwoods Home, and has pulled my sorry Luddite butt out of the depths of cyber-confusion more than once.  They are both very good at what they do…but since you are here, you obviously read Backwoods Home and obviously know that already.

A Western, “Summer of the Eagles” is a book you actually can judge by its cover. A proud horse is carrying its human burden through a dark rainstorm, and you can just about feel the cold and the damp, and the need to keep going when there’s no safe place to stop.  Now, open the book. It gets better.

The protagonist has led a hard life, and it’s about to get harder. He’s in a dangerous place, his Winchester ’73 empty in its scabbard because the last five .44-40 cartridges he still has are in the Colt Frontier Six-Shooter on his hip.  (I found myself thinking of Cormac McCarthy’s classic novel of future post-apocalypse dystopia, “On the Road,” with its protagonist in dangerous places armed only with a revolver and two cartridges. As a gun guy, I can relate to that.)

When the hero breaks a rogue Morgan stallion and makes the animal his own with loving patience instead of a whip, it seems real because it is: Jackie based that part on a couple of her own Morgans.  When he helps a benefactor raise a building on his homestead, it rings true because it is: Jackie Clay has been there and done that, too, and BTDT authors write the best fiction.

Regular readers know that Jackie Clay is a damn good writer. I don’t know if anyone has compared her to Shakespeare or Mark Twain yet, but if they haven’t, allow me to be the first. The comparison lies in the fact that the Bard, and Samuel Clemens, and Jackie Clay all write on two levels. There’s one part that a teenage kid reading for a book report can “get.” But there’s another level, like sound frequencies that only dogs can hear, which only someone who has been kicked in the ass by life can hear and understand.  If you haven’t read “MacBeth” or “Huckleberry Finn” since high school, re-read them both again now and you’ll see what I mean.

When people do good for others, good comes back to them when it’s their turn to need it.  When the protagonist gains the fine new Morgan, he doesn’t send the broken-down sorrel that has been loyal to him to the glue factory; he finds a placement for the animal that has purpose and dignity.  “Summer of the Eagles” is a subtle celebration of the values the Backwoods Home extended family of writers and readers has shared from the beginning.

Go to www.backwoodshome.com/blogs/jackieclay, and you’ll find at the top of the page order info for hard copy or Kindle, and a free sample chapter. Start there. Get the book and finish.

I’m betting that you’ll see what I’m talking about, and that you’ll enjoy Jackie Clay’s new novel as much as I did.

Share or Bookmark

RANGEMASTER TACTICAL CONFERENCE

I’m still sorting voluminous notes taken at the annual Rangemaster Tactical Conference, held last week at the Memphis (TN) Police Academy.  Though police and to a lesser extent military folks were certainly represented, the majority of the turnout was comprised of law-abiding citizens who keep and carry guns to defend themselves and those within “the mantle of their protection.”

Host and founder Tom Givens makes this conclave an extraordinary mix of participatory hand-to-hand work, live fire defensive shooting, and classroom lecture by subject matter experts. The attendee picks his or her chosen classes from an agenda too big for any one person to take everything. A good overview can be found here  from Andrew Branca, who presented articulately there on his signature topic, the law of self-defense.

As always, a side event was the famous Polite Society Match, named after Robert Heinlein’s famous quote that “An armed society is a polite society.” For 2015, 136 of the 180 or more participants shot the match. This year’s event was deceptively simple: two targets at only three to seven yards, timed including mandatory draw from concealment, with hellacious penalties for hits outside the relatively small (and indistinguishable) “five out of five point” boxes in the center of the targets’ heads and chests.  What made it tricky was extremely dim light.  As you watch one attendee go through it, bear in mind that DrZman, who took the video, had to use his techno-magic to brighten the scene up considerably so a viewer could see what the heck was going on in the first place:

Or Click here to see video: http://youtu.be/8jBiemCQKC4

Congratulations to Tim Chandler, who won with an awesome score fired with a 9mm Glock 17.

February weather was ugly in the mid-South, so next year they’ll be putting it closer to spring. You can’t get a better deal on a smorgasbord of America’s top self-defense trainers. It’s now a regular stopping point on my own learning calendar. Sign up here: http://www.rangemaster.com/2016-tactical-conference/.

Share or Bookmark

DEATH OF AN ARMED CITIZEN AND HERO: 10TH ANNIVERSARY

Today marks the tenth anniversary of a mass shooting in which a courageous armed citizen ended the carnage. 

Tragically, the bullets from Mark Wilson’s subcompact Colt .45 auto were stopped on the killer’s vest, and he was able to shoot and murder Wilson.  But after that he fled, and he inflicted no further gunshot wounds. In the pursuit that followed, the murderer was shot and killed by Lt. Rusty Jacks of Tyler PD.

I’ve been to Tyler a couple of times since then, once for a grand jury and once for a civil trial arising out of another fatal shooting, both in the courthouse where the atrocity we’re discussing went down. You can still see the pockmarks from the gunman’s bullets on the walls of the building. I’ve debriefed some of the lawmen and lawyers who were in the courthouse when that nightmare took place. I’m proud to have been able to shake the hand of Rusty Jacks.

And I’ve stood in front of the monument in the Tyler town square to a courageous armed citizen who used his pistol to stop a mass murder, and save the lives of God knows how many people in his community.

RIP, Mark Wilson. You were a hero.

Share or Bookmark