http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XWtx9BmFBA
Sr. Yeager is right: it doesn’t really matter what kind of target you shoot at. That said, if you’re shooting for self-defense, make sure to check your group size (rather than ultimate accuracy). If your group is smaller than your hand you’re not shooting fast enough. If it’s bigger than your hand you’re shooting too fast. More than that, have someone call out a part of your target. Moving from target to target (no shoots are vital) improves your gunfighting abilities a hundred times more than itty bit groups. Now then, what targets do you use when you’re at a square and/or outdoor range?
This blog’s disdain for the law enforcement profession continues to annoy me.
I work in local government and work closely with the county sheriff, the chief of the local police, and their command staff. I’ve had plenty of candid conversations with them about 2A issues, and Illinois is one of the battlegrounds.
The police officers I know are strong 2A supporters. They could be our allies in this struggle (as many county sheriffs across the country have publicly opposed gun control laws and supported concealed carry). Attitudes may be different in other communities, but police mostly just want to do their jobs and go home safely after their shift. They don’t deserve to be portrayed as jack booted thugs.
When we see abusive conduct by law enforcement we need to call them out. But we also need to remember that local and state police departments are in the unenviable position of enforcing the laws created by politicians. It is unfair, not to mention counterproductive, to vilify the entire profession.
When we ridicule law enforcement today, then praise the Detroit Police Chief tomorrow, we are as hypocritical as the leftist zealots we detest.
I don’t have the full timeline, so I can’t pass judgement just yet. But if that cop let that animal murder more children while he sat in his squad car, then he is a coward and should have been fired long ago. But this just reinforces what we already know. We are our own first responders, and cannot count on police to come save the day, when their first concern may well be themselves.
This has to be the actual evidence that we use in courts to sue for the right to carry everywhere. Civilian disarmament proponents have always proposed the lame and unsupported claims that the public doesn’t need to be armed because police will stop bad guys … and that disarming the public thus improves public safety without any cost. Well this proves otherwise.
And even without this report, the fact remains that a mass murderer can injure/kill several dozen people in less than 90 seconds … the atypical and phenomenal response time of the police in the Aurora movie theater mass murder.
Indoor used human silhouettes and outdoor used metal resets.
Too damn chicken to do the job without paramilitary formation.
It’s OK, as long as they have the cool Ray-Ban’s and a buzz cut to look scary for the photographers taking pictures afterwards. Proving how intimidating they would be to a criminal… if they ever faced one, that is.
Ever since that story broke of the DHS using targets of lil’ ol’ ladies, children with cap guns and other regular people for range practice I have started printing Google Images of Police Officers and taking those to the range. I mean… fair is fair, right?
Is it wrong of me to believe that, when police violate Constitutional Rights, and the laws they are sworn to support/defend, they SHOULD feel threatened?
Asking people to call police if anyone carries? That’s ridiculous, firearms should be common place enough to the point where people don’t even bat an eye, telling people to do that is like a sneaky way to say there’s a guaranteed threat in front of them. One day in my old neighborhood, there were two men loaded to the teeth, not even hiding the firearms or ammo, Glock in leg holster, S&W MP40 on the trunk of the car, boxes of Remington UMC, and a few other toys. I waved, complimented the choice of gun, and kept going. That’s how it should be, but everyone is so damn afraid of their own shadow today that its hard to see happening.
8.5X11 piece of white paper. it’s way cheaper than pretty much any other target you can get, it’s easy to see where your shots land, there’s no “clutter” to aim at (so you can concentrate on group size exclusively), and it’s roughly the size of where you should be shooting on a human torso. I’ve been known to shoot at paper plates for a similar reason. This is all at an indoor pistol range btw. YMMV
6″ pie plates are a human relevant size.
Only the Government can make $25 in parts cost $225 and a 6-12 month wait.
Frakken’ ridiculous.
Black silhouettes with my defensive handguns. If everything is in the “9” I’m happy.
A variety of sizes of reactive splatter type targets for rifle and target pistol.
Just about anything paper for my single action revolvers.
Maybe he posted up at the driveway to keep the dangerous armed citizens away… for their own good, Cap’n.
I’m cheap and use paper plates. Works great !
Two things Robert.
1) Please do not use the Constitution State nickname anymore for CT, as we are not deserving of it at this time.
2) The debate would not have been changed by this knowledge, I’m confident the legislature and governor would have done the same exact thing regardless of how fast the police got there or stopped the shooter. What he did and the way he did it and what he used to do it were the relevant facts the entire ‘debate’.
Unfortunately I think this information is only helpful after the fact.
2.5 minute delay. AT LEAST. Shameful. Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang. How many lives were lost in that timeframe. Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang. If you were armed, knew children were dying, how fast would YOU run to save those kids? Bang, Bang, Bang Bang.
When seconds count….
Lets see Mom’s Demand Action make THAT commercial. Thought so.
Pumpkins filled with water, watermelons, shaving cream, 24 packs of Dr. Thunder from walmart, 2 liters, etc.
I can’t remember the last time I shot a paper target.
Speed, Surprise and Violence of Action, just not when it comes time to save lives. CT has become the unconstitutional state, sorry to any patriots stuck there.
More proof that you can not depend on the police / government to protect you.
Alinsky tactic: make your side of the argument morally superior. Even if it’s not. Then rinse, repeat. Until everyone believes you.
Which is why gun rights groups like the NRA should be pushing a sub group of women gun owners as spokes people and a counter to Shannon’s group of pissers and moaners pretending they are the only group of moms that care for children.
Get off their ass and start getting mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts and grandmothers out in the public eye saying we want our right to defend ourselves.
They need to be more proactive. Start interviewing the victims of gun control, organizing them, and having them protest outside MDA’s HQ and Brady’s HQ with catchy slogans.
Another reason for the .gov and JBTs not wanting to be armed with Smart Guns. All it would take would be some enterprising young felon (or group of terrorists) to activate an EMP weapon and all the cop’s guns would be deactivated.
I think the “I am a gun owner” pictures need to make a come back and tag mda in them
Most often I use a 1 inch dot drawn with an extra fat shaprie on a piece of cheap drawing paper from a drawing pad I got for the range. At 100 yards with irons I draw an + sign the size of the whole paper because I can’t see where they cross.
Sometimes I draw an IDPA target shape on it. Or I print target centers for standard NRA targets on my computer.
They look like a bunch of fabulous nazis.
Paper plates. A jumbo marker gives me a black dot in the middle. Cheap and it works.
Hey, KJW is good with a 12 gauge too.
You can whine and carp and carry on about how evil the World is when it comes to packing rifles and shotguns in public places and how it should be just SO ordinary to see long guns carried into malls and Starbucks and maybe elementary schools that nobody would EVER call the cops. . .
The reality is that it will NEVER be ‘normal’ to do this. Not ever. Rational people will still call the police, and that’s that.
First, Temple isn’t exactly a small town, it’s population last year was 69,148. Having lived in Central Texas (first in the greater Fort Hood/Killeen/Temple metroplex and now in North Williamson County) and being a member of the Army I’ve noticed a few things. The police in the Fort Hood area with the exception of Killeen and Harker Heights don’t much like Soldiers. A Soldier in Austin will spend a night in jail for things that UT Students get a gentle admonishment for. No run in with a law enforcement officer tends to be pleasant, but when LEO’s in the Fort Hood (and from what I’ve seen Fort Bragg, Fort Riley, Fort Irwin, Fort Knox and Fort Benning) area realize they are dealing with a Soldier, particularly a senior NCO or Commissioned Officer, they tend to puff up their chests and flaunt their authority. This goes beyond open carry. In Officer Ermis’s eyes he was dealing with two things, a gun nut and an uppity Soldier boy. Uppity Soldier boy was the biggest crime. When I was a battalion commander I had a Soldier spend a night in jail over “failing to signal a turn within 50 yards” despite being on a thirty yard stretch of road.
I don’t know Grisham from Adam. He may be a great guy, he may be a jerk. Don’t care. I honestly believe this had more to do with “walking while being one of those guys who used to bust my chops when I was in the service” than with open carry.
Defensive practice:
I’ll cut old cardboard boxes in the shape of silhouette targets. There’s a 8′ deep wash on my property with lots of twists, turns and branches. I’ll set them up in some random-ish pattern (not the same places every time) walk down-stream a few yards, then return trying to take a couple of shots at each one as they become visible.
With the grandkids:
Whatever we have that’s fun to shoot. Old DVDs, paper plates, milk-jugs full of water (that’s especially fun with a .50 Kentucky) and cheap 50′ .22 targets.
JWM is right. We all win.
I wonder when this “scholar” will demand to have his 1st Amendment right to use his keyboard repealed?
TTAG please stop feeding this storyline. It is time for the author to pass back into anonymity.
Mom’s Demand Action [MDA] to be renamed: Control Freaks Demand Submission [CF-DS].
A photo as old as the internet.
Y’all niggaz posting in a troll thread.
His name is RICHARD CABEZA
Richard = Dick
Cabeza = “Head” in Spanish
Are the “people of the gun” this dense???
Australians, can’t even get the simple stuff right.
“Hey Brad… do you see that yellow cat by the tall cottonwood that’s way in the back? TAKE THE SHOT, BAYBEE!”
RFK got killed in there too. I remember mail order guns without needing any license.
You could also make the argument that the 68gca saved gun ownership in America. Hunters were the great majority of gun owners then. As a country we were shifting from rural to urban at a fast rate. Hunting was dying out. Few people owned any guns other than traditional hunting types. If a person owned a gun strictly for self defense it was likely a revolver. Lawful concealed carry was practically unknown in most of the nation.
Prior to 1975 I had never seen an AR type rifle owned by a civilian. The 68 gca was a wakeup call and call to arms for Americans that had nearly let their rights go by default.
It’s just my guess, but without the 68 gca I doubt we would have a full 25% of the gun owners we have today. And most of those would be what TTAG refers to as fudds.
The guy is a douche nozzle. That’s all.
He really thinks we’ll take his word on this after he pretends to carve that 1911 with a Bowie knife? WTF?
Photo evidence that the defendants dog did in fact tell him to kill his neighbors chihuahua.
While I totally disagree with the professor, it seems to me we should embrace her right to argue for this, and appreciate her forthrightness. She is not calling for a softer or different judicial interpretation of the Amendment, she is calling for its outright appeal. I for one applaud her candor.
Stupidity in a red state…no way.
“…twenty seven homicides…” Wasn’t the 27th the suicide of Lanza himself? Are suicides counted as homicides for the purposes of investigation or other legal purposes?
The mother’s homicide before the school shooting is #27
I use old newspapers and aim for a specific spot on a photo on each page. Cheap and gets the job done.