Uplifting and sobering (flying)

  Because this is one of those acts you can't possibly hope to beat.

  Watch Jeb Corliss fly for the video.  If not for the video, for the music.  For the thoughts of how this could apply to our future.  To wonder if the military could be using this for insertions now.  


   The song is "Sail" by AWOLNATION.

  

Seems somewhat obvious

  We all know or assume there was plenty of trained, competent help alongside those freedom fighters spraying rifles from the hip in Libya but this pic jumped out at me.  His stance almost looks (dare I say it?) sort of Costa-ish.  Notice the tucked elbow.

01/25/12 Link Roundup

  Giving this a shot, lemme know what you think of it.  rationalgun@gmail.com if you don't want to leave a comment.

• USMC shooting team is supposedly going with Detonics "1911s".  I've talked about Detonics before on here.

• Anti gun group wants to boycott Starbucks on February 14th, gun owners plan to flock to Starbucks on that day.  Help Starbucks ignore the hoplophiles and give them some good business on February 14th and every day.  

• Concealed carrying citizen does righteous shoot of robber at Waffle House.  Note the Sheriff's extremely pro CCW comments near the end of the article.  

• OIS (Officer Involved Shooting) in Monterey Park, CA discussed by friend "DocGKR."  Notice that 10 rounds did not instantaneously do the job.  Good analysis by DocGKR (as usual).  The "if you can't get it done in 6, 7, or 8 crowd" (certain revolver and 1911 guys, not all)  continue to stick their fingers in their ears and ignore the real world.

• Noted antigun zealot George Soros predicts doom and gloom for the world.  He worries about individual rights.....  Imagine if someone of his wealth started donating to the Libertarians.  Individual rights would be far safer.  

• SEALs (purportedly DEVGRU/Team6) rescue hostages in Somalia

On gun "gamers" and "training to fight with a gun" (Planck lengths & the SR-71)

  Both have their place but there's quite a few people in the gun community who sneer at those of us that dare to shoot for skill, for competition, and only at paper targets.  Same guys who only point shoot and can't go to a range unless there's "dynamic movement" involved.....  Never mind that episode of TAC TV when the former Delta Force trainer Larry Vickers learned from competitive shooter Rob Leatham.....

  Anyway, "Belisarius" over at SouthNarc's forum "Total Protection Interactive" wrote up this devastingly hilarious fictional interview with one such trainer who sneers at "gun gamers."  Slightly modified to avoid the "R" rating.  Thanks for graciously allowing me to reproduce this, Belisarius.

  

Interviewer: "So you teach tactical shooting...what does that mean?"

Tactical Death Ninja: "It f-ng means GUNFIGHT SURVIVAL, motherf-r.  Tactics, yo, tactics.  Not stupid, gay gun games."

Interviewer: "I see.  Gun games.  You mean those things where competitors come out and shoot a variety of stages that they don't get to design, at various ranges and target exposure types, against the clock to see who is the best shooter?"

Tactical Death Ninja: "Yeah, I guess.  I think that's what happens, but I don't attend those gay things because I need to keep deadly sharp."

Interviewer: "I would have thought that really good shooting ability was important in a gunfight.  Can you shoot as well as those competitors?"

Tactical Death Ninja: "In faggot contests?  No, not unless I wanted to.  I could do what they do, but I am a gunfighter, not a faggot.  In gunfights, I will outshoot all of them."

Interviewer: "Please explain.   This sounds counter-intuitive..."

Tactical Death Ninja: "I train for GUNFIGHTS, not GAMES.  GAMES will get you killed."

Interviewer: "What do you mean?  Do you mean leaving cover to go after targets, reloading on the move instead of behind cover, or something else related to cover that IPSC guys sometimes do?"

Tactical Death Ninja: "No, I don't! No one uses cover in real gunfights!  Real gunfights take place at bad-breath distances."

Interviewer: "So you actually agree with IPSC competition stages that emphasize going after targets aggressively?  I thought when you said 'tactics', you meant that people should train to move to and use cover because of the incoming rounds problem..."

Tactical Death Ninja: "No, I don't agree with the gayness of the games in any way, shape, or form.  I don't use cover because I will get ambushed in the real world.  Also, the distances in IPSC are totally unrealistic."

Interviewer: "Well, you need to make challenging shooting problems available in order to find out what works under higher performance stresses.  If all the shooting was non-technical, you wouldn't find out who the best shooters were, or about what differentiated them from other competitors and allowed them to win."

Tactical Death Ninja: "I don't care about that.  I care about winning gunfights, not games and gay trophies."

Interviewer: "Er, ok. What happens in a typical gunfight?"

Tactical Death Ninja: "A motherf-r jumps out of a garbage can or dark alley with a piece.  Range is measured in inches or feet, not yards.  I move off the X and point-shoot that motherf-r.  Anywhere I hit him, he's shut down and unable to hit me. How do I do it?  OODA, CQB fight matrix, instinctive skills, action beats reaction, natural coordination, threat focus." 

Interviewer: "I have no idea what that last bit was about. So you draw against a drawn gun?  Why doesn't he just shoot you immediately?  Doesn't he have 'natural coordination', too?  Isn't that what makes it 'natural?'"

Tactical Death Ninja: "He can't hit me! I'm exploding off the f-n' X.  Also, only good guys have natural point-shooting skills.  That's because bad guys aren't primates and never played baseball."

Interviewer: "That was a strange thing to say.  Anyway...so he is missing you, but you are hitting him---at this range, when he already has a drawn gun?"

Tactical Death Ninja: "That's right.  I hit, he misses.  He dies.  I win.  Close ranges = I hit him, he misses me.  Proximity, reactionary gap, OODA, generalized primate shooting instinct."

Interviewer: "What if he gets off the X, as you put it, too?"

Tactical Death Ninja: "He can't!"

Interviewer: "Why not?"

Tactical Death Ninja: "Because he has to stand there out in the open and wait for me to move and shoot. He can't use cover, because then he might be a small target and I train for big ones because they are more instinctive.   He's too stunned to do anything else.  Why? Because of OODA, tactics continuum, proprioceptive skillsets, WWII, and the reactionary fuselage SR71 warhead."

Interviewer: "WTF??!!!  LOL!!!  Anyway, I'm not even sure I understand your basic point. It sounds like you are defining 'gunfighting' in terms of a fictional mugging, where a guy stands in the open and brandishes a gun so that you can shoot him from concealment while you move.   If this GOTX technique was successful, wouldn't bad guys just adapt to it or use it themselves?"

Tactical Death Ninja: "They can't adapt.  Only I can adapt.  This shit is proprietary and requires very special training that only I can provide, but it is also instinctive and anyone can learn it in 5 minutes.  That sounds like a contradiction until you realize just what kind of f-n' badass instructor I am.  The bad guys don't get it and as a result they must remain still in every way, and suffer a -4 to initiative and other modifications to both armor class and hit points."

Interviewer: "I think I see the pattern here.  How did you come to these conclusions?  What is your evidence?  Do you have any raw data that can be subjected to statistical inference techniques?"

Tactical Death Ninja: "I run classes and these are my results.  My results kick ass.  Some say that they know some shit because they were Special Forces in Iraq or because they won gunfights.  FoF is the real gunfight!  Other gunfights are lesser gunfights because they aren't real if I decide that I don't like the results or don't like competition gayness."

Interviewer: "This apparently doesn't matter to you, but how many of your students have been in real-world gunfights and how did they perform?"

Tactical Death Ninja: "It doesn't matter...who gives a f---?  My students dominate Force-on-Force simulations, which is basically the same as gunfighting, anyway, only harder because I need them to be for my marketing as I have no gunfighting experience."

Interviewer: "I think everyone does accept that FoF is a very useful tool, although then again a lot of competition shooters have extensive experience with it, too.  Did you know the biggest users of Sims in the world are---oh, forget it.  Never mind.  Let's move on.  Who do your students dominate?"

Tactical Death Ninja: "We...well, we dominate ourselves.  My students dominate my other students when my students are trained to dominate in FoF."

Interviewer: "But that basically is a meaningless statement.  It is like saying that you are the best weightlifter because you can make yourself sore." 

Tactical Death Ninja: "That's right. It's all in the Mindset.  We also outshoot IPSC Grand Masters and kill them dead in FoF (Force on Force) and on the square range." 

Interviewer: "Really?? Which Grand Masters? I know a lot of those guys."

Tactical Death Ninja: "That's classified and the info could get folks killed."

Interviewer: "Yes, somehow I knew that you would say that.  Well, why not run your stuff in IPSC and prove its value there, publicly? You could shoot the close stages with your stuff. Then you would not have to resort to self-reported results..."

Tactical Death Ninja: "No, imbecile. Those games are so fake, unlike my training courses (which are real).  The distances are way beyond real gunfights, which take place at distances measured in Planck lengths, not feet or light-years."

What to do when attacked by a piece of bamboo

  XiaCorp has got this whole protecting one's self from bamboo sticks down.  

  Keen students of self defense will note that they are following in the footsteps of another great school.....

Scientific bore cleaning test

  Unbelievably enough, someone actually did this in a controlled environment.  He soaked the bullets in the solvents for given amounts of time and then weighed the bullets afterwards (already knowing the weight, 155 grain .308 Lapua Scenars), thereby establishing which solvent dissolved the most copper.

  The winner?  KG-12.

  Now, please remember only to clean when accuracy drops off.  If you shoot enough, you will know this.  If you shoot a few boxes of ammo a year, don't worry about it.

Lever gun nightmares

I only wish it was a nightmare......

One can only dream of a stainless Browning BLR in .460 S&W.......