Saturday, January 30, 2010

Shooting improvement

Four weeks ago, I posted some recent scores I'd shot in practice (on the light rifle target, the A-32.) These were the scores:
  • 356-1X
  • 357
  • 357-3x
  • 349
  • 356-1X
  • 363-1X
  • 361-1X
Here's what I've done since:
  • 368-2X
  • 353
  • 370-1X
  • 366-2X
  • 362
  • 364
I'm happy with the improvement. I'd like to be shooting 370's, but I'm happy to be consistently up into the 360's. One of my targets this morning was a 94, and this included one 7. So obviously I can shoot well when I want to. I just need to work on doing that consistently.

Friday, January 29, 2010

Alan Gura's reply brief

Via David Hardy, I see that Alan Gura's reply brief is online.

Wow, that was fast (the reference to the Citizens United case):

Notwithstanding its unsuitability as a tool of
constitutional interpretation, negative inference is
useful in surveying the opposing briefs to evaluate
SlaughterHouse’s current vitality. Aside from pointing
out the decision is old, no attempt is made to defend
it. “When neither party defends the reasoning of a
precedent, the principle of adhering to that precedent
through stare decisis is diminished.” Citizens United
v. Federal Election Comm’n, 2010 U.S. Lexis 766 at
*90 (2010).
I also like the snark:

The concept of “ordered liberty” Respondents
invoke twenty-seven times never referred to the
government’s liberty to issue orders.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Interesting perspective on the State of the Union

Here. Why am I not surprised that Wilson and LBJ were involved into turning this into a "Speech from the Throne"?

Update: Doh! Of course, I meant FDR, not LBJ.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Monday, January 18, 2010

Recent shooting

Ah, the joy of three-day weekends -- getting to shoot three consecutive days.

My shooting Saturday afternoon was fairly mediocre. I started off well, shooting a 92. I followed that up with a 90. I dipped a bit on the next target, an 87. And then I fell off the cliff on the last target, shooting an 84. In all, a 353, but I want to do better than that.

Sunday morning, I ran up against a full-day's schedule of matches at my club, so my shooting was a bit abbreviated. (Upon learning there were matches, I offered to help get the ranges set up, and the match director graciously allowed me to shoot a bit afterwards, given that there were a couple of hours before the matches were going to start.) I concentrated on pistol, given that I need a lot of work there.

This morning was much better. I started out with a 95 before falling to a 91 and then recovering with two 92's for a total of (Woohoo!) 370, the best I've shot yet. It's nice to break that round-number barrier.

I spent time on pistol each day, just slow-fire. At the moment I'm working on getting consistently above 80. My final this morning was an 86 (well, 130 for 15 rounds, or 86.667), but that was an outlier WRT the rest of my practice. But I'm just getting started in pistol competition, so I expect I'll improve similarly to how I improved with light rifle.

One-gun-a-month lawsuit

Sebastian has the low-down on ANJRPC's lawsuit to get the one-gun-a-month law thrown out.

What's interesting is the angle they're using -- there's federal preemption on the regulation of airguns, so because NJ's one-gun-a-month law covers airguns it comes up against that preemption.

It will be interesting to see how this goes.

Friday, January 15, 2010

2010 goals/wish list

A few people have posted their gunnie/shooting goals for 2010, which got me started thinking about my own. I'd already developed my planned purchases/wish list, but each of those has an implicit goal behind it, so I figured I'd make those goals explicit.

Here's what I came up with:
  • Shoot expert-level (in NRA competition.)
Okay, this might not be the best statement of that goal. I have no idea if I'm capable of shooting expert, so this is lacking the "achievable" quality necessary for a good goal. It's probably better to state this one as, "Practice shooting twice a week." If I'm capable of shooting expert, consistent practice should get me there. This shouldn't be a difficult goal to make, given that I'm now shooting three times a week. I've also shot expert-level scores a couple of times in practice, so it's not an unreasonable goal.
  • Get started in high-power and shoot as many matches as I can this year.
This one's fairly easy. I'm already planning on shooting my first high-power match at the end of March. Once I do the first one, I'm sure I'll have no trouble making the other ones.
  • Go to Camp Perry.
I'm not so sure about this one, at least this year. One of the things I like so much about competitive shooting is how inclusive the sport is, and I'm sure that newcomers are welcome at Camp Perry, but maybe I should get some more (or any at all, really) competition under my belt before I think about doing this.
  • Shoot a 2700 match.
There are two scheduled at my club later in the year, so this shouldn't be a problem.

The goals are fairly easy. The wish list is a bit harder. These are the major items:

  • Dedicated .22 upper for my AR-15. ($1100)
  • A serious upper for my AR-15. ($1000)
  • A decent .22 target pistol. (Most likely a S&W model 41.) ($1000)
  • A decent .45 target pistol. ($1000)
  • Reloading equipment. ($400)

I've already ordered the dedicated .22 upper (from Compass Lake), so that one's checked off. I want to get a service rifle upper from Compass Lake, but that one's not really a must-get for this year.

The .45 target pistol probably comes before the .22 target pistol. I have a Kimber .22 rimfire target that will suit my needs for the moment. It could certainly use a trigger job, but I'm guessing I can get that done cheaper than $1000 (assuming it's worth doing it
on a pistol I plan to replace.)

So I'm looking at a low of $2500 to a high of $4500, and that's not including the incidentals. .22 ammo alone will run somewhere between $500 and $1000 based on my practice schedule (for low-end target ammo, as the cheap stuff just won't cut it anymore.) .45 and .223 would probably run about the same, given that I'd be shooting a lot less of each. And once I start reloading, that cost will go down a bit.

So I'm looking at somewhere between $3500 and $6500. I predict it will be on the low end of that. I also predict trying to shave off as much of that expense as possible. I doubt I have to spend that much on reloading equipment, and maybe I could look at putting different sights on my existing 1911 (a Kimber Pro Carry II with fixed sights.) It certainly wouldn't be optimal, given that it's a 4" barrel, but it could be a reasonable alternative.

Monday, January 11, 2010

Scott Brown moneybomb

I don't live in Massachusetts, but I've been following this one today (and I donated.) They wanted to raise $500,000 today for his campaign. They passed that figure sometime around 4PM EST.

I'm not holding out much hope for the final result, but the appears to be close enough to be a nail-biter. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we have good news come next Tuesday.

Weekend shooting

In my ongoing efforts to demonstrate just how boring the lives of real gun owners are, I discuss this weekend's shooting:

There's a group that gets together to shoot smallbore on Saturday afternoons, and I've started shooting with them. Even though things are fairly quiet once the shooting gets going, there's a lot of conversation before and after, and that's always fun. I'm the new guy, and the others have known each other for years, so I'm mostly listening, but it's still interesting.

On Saturday, I chose to shoot a make-up for the night we missed because of snow. I didn't shoot horribly (a 354 or so), but if I'd chosen to do this Sunday morning, I would have been a lot happier (a 368-2X, the second time I've shot a 368.) But once I'm shooting 368's consistently, I'm bound to shoot one officially.

I also practiced a bit with pistol, and then shot my first for-the-record .22 National Match course. I have a lot of work to do here: slow-fire 79, timed-fire 84 and rapid-fire 59, for a 222. Even though this isn't an NRA match, sharpshooter for this course is 255. It's good that I'm starting out poorly, as it will make my progress seem that much more impressive. ;-)

And in other news, I've ordered a Compass Lake dedicated .22 upper for my AR. Once that arrives, my modified 10/22 will probably start suffering from lack of attention.

Saturday, January 9, 2010

More on 401k's

I posted before about the possibility of the federal government attempting to get their hands on the large pool of money sitting out there in 401k's. It looks like my suspicions weren't completely off the mark.

(Via SnarkyBytes by way of Say Uncle.)

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Starting USRA shooting

My club's light rifle competition is on hiatus for a couple of months. We'll shoot four more matches in March to finish up. Luckily our USRA matches have started up, so I still have something to do on Tuesday nights.

As opposed to the light rifle competition, in which there's a single course of fire, we're shooting a number of different courses of fire for the USRA competition. I'm shooting the .22 National Match course -- 10 rounds slow fire, 10 rounds timed fire (two strings of five), and 10 rounds rapid fire (again two strings of five.)

Fortunately, I didn't have a set of envelopes waiting for me there when I showed up last night. (Even though we have scheduled times to shoot, we're free to shoot at any time, so we get all of our targets up front.) I say "fortunately" because it gave me the opportunity to shoot the course once as a freebie. My slow and timed fire scores weren't completely miserable for a first time for someone who's not been shooting pistol lately -- 77 and 84, respectively. My rapid fire shooting was a bit worse, though, a 57, which gave me a combined 218. I expect I'll improve with practice, much like I've done with light rifle.

Monday, January 4, 2010

Corzine thinks he's Gore

My wife goes to the same gym that not-quite-soon-enough-to-be-ex-Governor Corzine goes to. She sees him there working out occasionally.

She went to work out Saturday afternoon, and she knew he was there because she saw the two black SUV's sitting there idling. And he was still there when she left and saw the SUV's still idling.

So, not only does he need two SUV's to get to the gym (what, the second one's for that part of his ego that overflowed from the first?), the drivers leave them idling the whole time. Maybe he's got some Gore-envy going on there.

Sunday, January 3, 2010

Decent shooting lately

Given that I've had two four-day weekends recently, I've had plenty of chance to shoot. And I've been happy with my shooting recently:

  • 356-1X
  • 357
  • 357-3x
  • 349
  • 356-1X
  • 363-1X
  • 361-1X
I'm pretty happy. I'm not that terribly excited about the 349, as I'd like to see that about 10 points higher. But I'm happy that I'm consistently shooting in the high 350's and low 360's.

And I shot a 355 in our competition last Tuesday night. I've been informed that I've been moved up to sharpshooter, or at least I will be if I shoot again next year.