It’s been a minute since I’ve written anything for this here gun rag, but I’m back with what I hope will be the first installment of a regular series I’ve decided to call Stupid Gun Stories. I see so many “interesting” things at the range these days that I feel compelled to bring them up to people who don’t care, and TTAG generously decided to provide me an outlet.
A couple of months ago I had the dubious pleasure of being invited to go shooting with a fella who decided, after learning that I’d been trained byJeff Gonzales and Paul Howe along with a handful of experienced friends who shall not be named here, that I’d been “taught all wrong” and that he was therefore obligated to…help me out.
He proudly informed me that he was self-taught from YouTube and that his long experience with the super-secret technologies featured there meant he knew more about tactical shooting than anyone I’d ever trained with. Of course, he waited until we were actually at the range to let me know all of that valuable information.
That was fine. I think I wrote a piece back in 2018 about the guy with a homemade short barreled AK who carried around a bag of motor oil “because no other kind of lube will work” and didn’t believe me when I pointed out that his fore grip was mounted backward.
This wasn’t quite on that level of craziness, but I certainly learned a lot of interesting things about YouTube training, starting with the fact that the secret the YouTube squirrels apparently don’t believe in any type of isosceles stance. They also rack their slides by initiating the motion with their pelvises, resulting in a dance-like move that takes up a lot of time and transmits vaguely Patrick Swayze-esque vibes. Because that’s what you really want in tactical shooting.
Look, I got through the experience. I humored obliged him by doing it all wrong for one shooting session, because, you know, you can’t undo years of actual good training by indulging a pelvis rackmaster for one afternoon.
What I didn’t really expect were the 14 follow-up texts saying things like “I hope you learned some useful things and I expect to teach you again soon.”
It isn’t easy being ADHD, but I’m sure that “forgetting” to answer those texts will work out in the long run.
Til next time….
