The View From Central Jersey

Mixed results

2010-09-07T13:10:00.001-07:00

So no 2430 for me this weekend. I shot a 2386. I have mixed feelings about my performance. On the one hand, I'm disappointed that I didn't shoot better. For the most part, my shooting was pretty miserable. I didn't even break 800 for the .22 aggregate. I also had a miss on one of the center-fire slow-fire strings, just outside the 5 ring. (I'm not sure how that happened -- a twitch of the trigger finger at the wrong moment.)

On the other hand, I finished strongly, breaking 90 percent on the .45 aggregate for the first time (with an 811.) So apparently there's hope.

Sharpshooter

2010-09-03T08:44:00.000-07:00

I got my sharpshooter card in the mail yesterday. I shot my second qualifying score about a month and a half ago, so it was just a matter of time.

I have two more outdoor matches scheduled this year. My hope is to shoot well enough in both to make it up to expert this year. It's not entirely infeasible, as I just need to get up to 2430, and I've already broken 2400. I just need to find an extra 10 points per gun. I really should be able to find an extra 10 points in the .22 aggregate. My 2400 included a mediocre 812 on .22. There's no reason (aside from the ones I come up with after the fact) that I shouldn't even be able to squeeze an extra 20 points out here. I've also broken 800 on .45 a few times, so if I can manage to do that again, that would put me over 2430. Of course, that all depend on the loose nut behind the trigger, so we'll see how things go.

100

2010-08-30T04:03:00.001-07:00

One of those thrilling moments for a bullseye shooter is when you shoot your first 100 target. I only started shooting bullseye this year, and I hadn't yet shot a 100, either in practice or in competition, until this past weekend. I was practicing timed fire Saturday afternoon when I shot my first 100 target. I'd shot quite a few 99's and 98's, but no 100's. I was pretty excited. I'm holding on to that target until I shoot my first 100 in competition.

What's even more exciting, though, is that I shot two more 100's Sunday morning while practicing rapid fire. It's nice to see that I'm improving.

2400

2010-08-18T11:51:00.000-07:00

I shot another 2700 this past weekend, this time down at Central Jersey. I shot another personal best grand aggregate and managed to break 2400 with a, well, um, 2400. (The results are posted here.)

I decided to shoot in the Sharpshooter class this time. I'm still classified as a Marksman, and I would have won the grand aggregate had I shot in that class. I wanted to go ahead and move up, though. Even though winning is fun, I'm mostly interested in improving, and I wanted to be challenged. (Well, okay, the challenge was purely internal, and I'm not sure that I shot any differently, but I wanted to do it, anyway.)

Now my goal will be to get that extra thirty points so I can move up into Expert. It's certainly feasible, although given that I have two more outdoor matches this year, I probably won't make that move this year. But the fall and winter will give me plenty of time to practice.

Speaking of improvement, I only started shooting bullseye this year. In my first 2700, I managed to break 1600 (with three guns, I should probably point out.) I'm now shooting in the mid-2300's. If this trend continues, I expect to break 3000 sometime early next year.[1]

[1] This was a poor attempt at a joke. They call it a 2700 because that's the maximum possible number of points you can score.

Match results -- almost a clean sweep

2010-08-12T06:41:00.000-07:00

The match results (with details in PDF) are out for the 2700 I shot this past weekend. I almost managed a clean sweep in Marksman. I won every match but the center-fire rapid fire match, which I lost by either 1 point and 4 X's or two points.

Something else interesting to note from the match is that both the top Expert and the top Sharpshooter out-shot the top Master in the grand aggregate.

Good match/bad match

2010-08-09T06:51:00.000-07:00

It was the best of matches, it was the worst of matches.

I shot the 2700 at my club this weekend. It was a good match in that I had personal bests in .22 National Match Course, timed fire, rapid fire, and aggregate; .45 slow fire; and the grand aggregate. OTOH, during the match, I felt like my shooting was absolute crap. Hell, I had a miss on one of the .45 slow fire stages (just outside the 5 ring at 12:00.)

But I think my perception was tainted by expectations. After shooting an 821 .22 aggregate, I thought to myself, "Hey, today might be the day I break 2400." I'd already shot an 800 .45 aggregate, so it wasn't unreasonable to think that. But my performance didn't match my expectations, thus the disappointment.

I haven't gotten the official results yet. It'll be interesting to see how I performed overall.

Good Bullseye match

2010-07-24T12:53:00.000-07:00

I shot the bullseye match today at Central Jersey. It was a hot day, although we were fortunate to have a light breeze from time to time. The match finished pretty early, too. We were done shooting by 2:00 or so. We were pretty lucky -- we had all of one alibi.

After one of my slow-fire strings, John Gemmill, who was running the match (and who's one of the people responsible for reviving bullseye shooting in New Jersey), gave me some unsolicited advice. He'd noticed my pistol trembling a bit, and he advised me to try relaxing my grip on the pistol. I gave that a try on the next few strings, and, although I wasn't immediately successful at shooting better, I managed to shoot a 96 slow-fire stage on the .45 National Match course. To put this into perspective, the High Masters have been shooting 94-95 on average for .45 slow-fire stages for the past few months at Central Jersey. And to give some more perspective, my other .45 slow-fire stages were pretty pitiful, including a 66. It may have been a fluke, but I'm at least on track to improving my slow-fire scores.

The other remarkable event from the match (at least for me) was my slider. For timed- and rapid-fire stages, we use turning targets. If you manage to get a shot off while the target is turning, you'll get a hole that's stretched out a bit. In my case, the hole started about 11:00 in the 9 ring and stretched to the edge of the cardboard. The aforementioned John Gemmill commented on the target and told me that it showed good control, that I hadn't panicked when the targets started turning but had gotten the shot off calmly.

My grand aggregate for the match was 2329, which gives me my second consecutive Sharpshooter score. So, depending on how long it takes the NRA to process things and update my status, I've got a few weeks to be a sandbagger and win some Marksman matches (or get ahead of myself and start shooting poorly.) At least I've met one of my goals for the year, to make it up into Sharpshooter.

Les Baer wadcutter

2010-07-09T12:22:00.000-07:00

Back in February, I ordered a Les Baer wadcutter for bullseye shooting, and it came in Tuesday. I managed to get caught by the bathtub curve -- someone else at the club ordered one about two weeks before I did and had it in 12 weeks. My order took 18 weeks, so I got mine a full two months after he did. I guess they're doing a pretty good business right now.

The one add-on I ordered with the gun was their one-and-a-half inch guarantee (1.5" at 50 yards.) What this means is that the gun is really tight. I took the gun out of the box and tried to rack the slide -- no go, even after cocking the hammer. Doing it from the rear is a bit complicated by the scope mount, so I tried to push it back using the serrations on the front of the slide. It still took a bit just to get it out of battery, but once it was out of battery, it slid pretty well.

I took it to the range Wednesday night before our monthly meeting. The first thing to do was zero it. I put up a 25-yard slowfire target and fired from a sandbag. Okay, up and to the right. I fire another round to see how the accuracy is and look through the scope. Hmm, I only see one hole -- oh, wait, that's two holes. The third hole was definitely distinct, but still close enough to make me happy. (And given that I wasn't using a vice, that very well could have been shooter error.)

I put about 100 rounds through it between zeroing it and shooting a practice 900. I shot an 800 with it, which is certainly not the best I've shot in practice, but for one, I need to get used to the trigger, and for two, I wasn't expecting this gun to make me a master-class shooter. There's a lot of work that needs to happen behind the trigger. And with this gun, it will be painfully obvious where the fault for any failure lies.

One of the things I like about this gun so far is the scope mount. The loaner gun I've been shooting so far has a barrel-mounted red-dot. Because the scope is mounted forward of my wrist, I noticed a lot of wobble. This mount gets the scope a lot farther back, so it's closer to that pivot point. I'm noticing a lot less wobble with this one.

Clean sweep!

2010-06-30T09:14:00.001-07:00

Well, okay, not really a clean sweep, but I managed to win the marksman class (grand aggregate) this past weekend. I'd been hoping that I would but I was waiting for the match results to see how things fell out. I'd also been wondering if I'd have a clean sweep (winning every match and aggregate.) I certainly wasn't expecting it, but man, would that have made my day. I did manage a clean sweep on center-fire, though, and I won both the CF and .45 aggregates and a smattering of other first and second place scores.

While its nice to win, though, I'm mostly focused on improvement. I'm currently in marksman class, and I want to make it up into sharpshooter. This was a sharpshooter score (2360, with a 2295 cutoff), and if I shoot as well in my next match, I'll be there.

WOOHOO!

2010-06-28T07:24:00.000-07:00

No, this isn't actually about the Supreme Court decision that was just handed down. This actually has to so with the 2700 I shot this past weekend.

The 2700 was at my home club (and it was actually the first time I'd shot at our outdoors pistol range.) The "WOOHOO!" is because I shot my best score yet, a 2365. Even though I'd managed to get my trigger control on the .45 up-to-snuff in practice, I hadn't yet demonstrated this in competition. I shot a 2148 the previous weekend, which was my best score at the time, but not quite what I'd been hoping for.

I shot a 797 .22 aggregate, an 800 centerfire aggregate (using the 1911, and including a 97 rapid fire), and a 768 .45 aggregate. I was surprised to have shot better with the .45 that the .22, but certainly pleasantly surprised.

Now I await the official results to see how I did compared to other people.

The most recent 2700

2010-06-22T08:20:00.001-07:00

I went to another 2700 this past weekend, again at Central Jersey.

I had a frustrating alibi on one of the .22 timed-fire stages. I had a failure-to-eject on the first round of the first string, which was all well and good, as these things happen, and you get to reshoot. But then I had another FTE on the first round of the second string. You only get the one alibi per stage, so my only other option was clearing the gun and continuing the string. I didn't manage to get any other shots off in the string, so I ended up with four misses on that stage. Which was pretty annoying, as I ended up eight points short of a sharpshooter score on the .22 aggregate. And had I scored at least a 33 for those four shots (which is well within the realm of possibility), I would have ended up third in the Marksman grand aggregate.

The other interesting item from this 2700 was that I demonstrated my newfound trigger control on the .45 -- well, at least for one match. I managed to shoot a 181-6x on the .45 timed-fire match (a 90 and a 91), narrowly squeaking out a victory over the 181-4x fired by the second-place shooter.

I'm definitely making progress.

Thoughts on jury service

2010-06-21T12:44:00.000-07:00

Serving on a jury is exhausting. I wasn't the only one of the jurors who remarked on this.

I also noticed something that I'd never noticed before in all those TV and movie depictions of courtrooms. Perhaps I'd seen it, but only noticed it now when I had a unique perspective. You always see the "All rise!" when the judge enters the courtroom, but you never see the "All rise! Jury entering the courtroom." At which point, the judge is also standing for the jury. This is a detail that's impossible not to notice as you walk in and see the judge standing and regarding you respectfully.

And this embodies one of the things I love most about this country. We, the people, are not the subjects of some some authority, but rather we are the authority. There is no member of an elite standing in judgment of us, we judge our own.

World record permit turnaround

2010-06-15T18:56:00.000-07:00

HOLY CRAP!

I turned in the paperwork for a couple of permits to purchase on the evening of May 19. I got a call today that they were ready. Given that I turned in the paperwork after hours, that means I effectively had a 26-day turnaround on the permits. Unbe-fricking-lievable.

Not that I can use them before the end of the month, anyway, given the stupid one-handgun-a-month law, but it's still remarkable.

Jury duty

2010-06-14T04:48:00.001-07:00

My week for jury duty service was last week. I didn't know this before, but my very high number should have indicated that I wouldn't even be required to go in for jury selection. Apparently last week was a busy week, though, 'cause I was on-call for Thursday afternoon (but didn't have to go in) and had to go in Friday morning.

And when I went in Friday, I ended up getting picked for a jury. My service starts today. Should be an interesting experience.

The Road to Serfdom a bestseller

2010-06-09T06:18:00.000-07:00

Sometime last year, Atlas Shrugged was a top seller (I can't remember if it was number one or not, but it was in the top 10.) And now Hayek's The Road to Serfdom has hit number 1.

We live in interesting times.

Trigger control

2010-06-03T04:58:00.000-07:00

It looks like I've managed to work through my trigger control problems on the .45. It was really just a matter of focus and practice. Previously, I'd spent most of my time working on slow fire, my reasoning being that, if you can't do something slow, you'll never be able to do it fast. (This being something I picked up some 20 years ago while learning to play guitar.) It seemed about time for me to start working on timed and rapid fire, so I did, and it seems to have paid off. I shot three 900's this weekend as practice, and shot a 777, a 753, and a 788. Considerably better than my last match scores, which were 645, 559, and 671.

Now I just need lots more practice to cement the good habits in my brain.

Bullseye match this weekend

2010-05-26T04:58:00.000-07:00

I shot another 2700 this past weekend at Central Jersey. I learned a couple of
things during the match:

- If the safety on your gun happens to move up just enough to prevent the gun fr
om firing, that doesn't count as an alibi. (An alibi is some sort of mechanical failure that prevents you from finishing a stage, or at least prevents you from having adequate time to shoot your timed- or rapid-fire stage.) I lost three s
hots as a result. Oh, well, live and learn.

- I need a lot more work on my trigger control. I have no problem with the trig
ger on my .22, but I continue to shoot low and to the left on the .45. I was ac
tually able to correct this a bit during the match and ended up shooting a bette
r .45 aggregate than my center-fire aggregate. But my score still wasn't what i
t really should be.

The results just came out this morning. I was a bit surprised to see that I won
the .22 slow-fire match for marksmen. I was even more surprised to see that I
came in second for the .45 slow-fire match.

Adding insult to injury

2010-05-25T03:41:00.000-07:00

This is what I hate about government-run monopolies. Yesterday morning, new train schedules went into effect. They consolidated three express trains down into two. Trains that were running about 75% full are now running about 110% full. Pretty frigging annoying, 'cause it intensifies that mad rush feeling getting on the train, and because it's going to suck for anyone who doesn't manage to sit.

That would have been bad enough, but I got my monthly ticket in the mail yesterday, and the cost had gone up by close to 25%. Abso-fucking-lutely ridiculous, pardon my French.

Interesting gun statistics

2010-05-20T13:55:00.000-07:00

Having mentioned the statistics on per capita gun ownership in this post, I started playing around a bit with the numbers. What I had was a list of per capita gun ownership by state. Add state population to that, and I could figure out how many gun owners there were per state. Add land area to that, and I could figure out the density of gun owners.

These make for some pretty interesting statistics. Sure, Texas leads the country in total number of gun owners at 8.9 million, but California is close behind at 8.5 million, a good 4 million ahead of Florida (4.5 million.) But for density, New Jersey has them all beat, at 144 per square mile, followed by Rhode Island (129), Maryland (124), Connecticut (121), Delaware (116), and Massachusetts (106.) Not really the top of the list for gun-friendly states. Sure, most of the gun-friendly states have lots of wide open space, but it still makes for an interesting perspective on things.

Here's the list of gun owner densities per square mile (of land area -- I wasn't the surface are of a state that was liquid):


  1 New Jersey      144.41
  2 Rhode Island    129.01
  3 Maryland        124.21
  4 Connecticut     121.27
  5 Delaware        115.51
  6 Massachusetts   105.97
  7 Pennsylvania     97.59
  8 Ohio             91.33
  9 Florida          84.22
 10 North Carolina   79.54
 11 New York         74.50
 12 Indiana          70.02
 13 Virginia         69.88
 14 Georgia          68.41
 15 Michigan         67.40
 16 Tennessee        67.06
 17 South Carolina   64.08
 18 California       54.58
 19 Kentucky         51.80
 20 Alabama          47.97
 21 Illinois         46.92
 22 Wisconsin        46.23
 23 Louisiana        45.38
 24 New Hampshire    44.31
 25 West Virginia    41.87
 26 Missouri         36.25
 27 Mississippi      34.80
 28 Texas            33.98
 29 Washington       33.15
 30 Arkansas         30.69
 31 Vermont          28.23
 32 Minnesota        27.58
 33 Iowa             23.04
 34 Oklahoma         23.04
 35 Arizona          18.05
 36 Hawaii           17.54
 37 Maine            17.30
 38 Colorado         16.81
 39 Oregon           15.86
 40 Utah             14.88
 41 Kansas           14.50
 42 Idaho            10.33
 43 Nebraska          9.02
 44 Nevada            8.13
 45 South Dakota      6.06
 46 New Mexico        5.76
 47 North Dakota      4.75
 48 Montana           3.87
 49 Wyoming           3.33
 50 Alaska            0.71

(If I could figure out how to attach a file to this, I'd attach the spreadsheet I was working with. Oh, well, if either of you reading this want it, feel free to ask.)

New Jersey -- a competitive shooting paradise

2010-05-20T04:35:00.001-07:00

When gunnies in middle America think of New Jersey, they think it must be the worst possible place to be a gun owner. And for the most part, they're right. Instead of just strolling into a gun store, seeing a handgun you like, and walking out with it twenty minutes later, you fill out some paperwork, take it to the local police department, wait anywhere from six weeks to forever, and then go buy the gun you want. But as far as competitive shooting goes, New Jersey is about as good as it gets.

For Bullseye, there are essentially two matches per month all year round (outdoors April through September and indoors October through March.) In addition to that, there are a number of leagues shooting during the week. In addition to the one I shoot at my club on Wednesday nights, there's another indoor league on Monday night and an outdoor one on Thursday nights. If I could manage to make all of these, that would mean competing 14 times a month, effectively every other day.

But that's just Bullseye. There's a high-power match once a month from March through November, a Garand match every other month from April through October, and high-power silhouette matches every month April through October.

And all of this is just the stuff that I'm currently interested in. Looking at different club calendars, I see cowboy action stuff, practical shooting matches (both USPSA and IDPA), smallbore matches, smallbore silhouette, cowboy lever action silhouette, cowboy rimfire silhouette, etc.

So why does New Jersey have such a strong competitive shooting environment? There are probably a few reasons. The first is population density. New Jersey is the most densely populated state in the country. Even if per capita gun ownership is lower than the national average, there are still a lot of gun owners in a fairly small area. Some small percentage of gun owners are going to be interested in competing, so the higher the number of gun owners, the more likely you'll have a critical mass of competitors. (I found this graph, based on this data, which shows that gun ownership in New Jersey runs about 12.3%. With a population of some 8.7, that makes about 1 million gun owners. Compare this to Wyoming: they have 59.3% gun ownership, but with about 545,000 residents, that makes for only 325,000 gun owners.) And given the size of New Jersey, the bulk of those gun owners are probably an hour's drive or less from some competition opportunity.

Aside from the density, though, there's the fact that gun owners are a minority in New Jersey, and an embattled minority at that. There's something about being in that position that tends to make people far more involved than they otherwise might be. People in New Jersey are fighting to maintain a culture in which guns are just a normal part of life. They're looking for any way to foster that culture, and competition offers that. Not only are you out shooting, but you get to socialize with other gun owners.

So, inasmuch as it really sucks being a gun owner in New Jersey, there's at least something to offset the suckiness.

Competition

2010-05-18T12:09:00.000-07:00

I like competition. Not necessarily the kind of competition where you're competing against other people, although I certainly like competing with other people. No, I'm more interested in competing against myself. Having done something to some level of achievement, I like seeing if I can do myself one better.

This is why I like shooting competitions so much. Even though you're there on the line with 30 other people, you're only shooting against yourself. There's no sense of, "Oh, he's catching up to me, I'd better shoot a 10 on this next shot." Hell, if you can pull a 10 out of your ass like that, why not shoot 10's every time?

But beyond the goal of bettering yourself, there's something else I like about competitions. No matter if I'd had a crappy day, not matter if I'm pissed off at someone for something they did, when I step up to the line it all just drops away. For a while there, there's nothing but a front sight and a trigger. (Or a red dot and a trigger, or a crosshair and a trigger -- you get the idea.) And I usually find myself whistling in the car on the way home, having completely forgotten whatever it was that I was wound up about beforehand.

High-power clinic

2010-05-18T11:01:00.000-07:00

This past weekend I attended the high-power clinic they put on at Central Jersey every year. This was a lot of fun and pretty informative.

The clinic was run like a high-power match, except in reverse order and with very loose limits for the timed-fire stages. In a match, the order would be slow-fire standing, rapid-fire sitting, rapid-fire prone, and slow-fire prone. The clinic does these in reverse order so that the shooters can start with the most stable position. Before each stage, one of the volunteer instructors would go over the basics of the stage, including how to set up the sling, how to get into a good position, etc. We'd then get one relay on the line, let them shoot, and then get the second relay on the line to shoot.

I had a lot of fun, although I'd need a lot of practice with the prone and sitting positions to get things right. (The light-rifle league I shot over the winter was shot off-hand, so I have the standing position down pretty well.) I also figured out pretty quickly that I need to work on my sling setup. I bought my M1A last year from one of the members of my club, and I was using the sling as he'd set it up. I think his arms might be a bit shorter than mine. The sling was a bit too tight across the back of my hand in the prone position. Whereas the instructor had said that you should be able to hold that position comfortably for the 20 minutes you have for the slow-fire stage, my hand started hurting a bit after a few minutes, and some of my fingers were asleep by the time I got out of position.

When I started shooting that light-rifle league last fall, my intention was to get ready for shooting high-power. Then I got caught up shooting bullseye and have been focusing on that. Bullseye is certainly a more convenient sport, as you can get in lots of practice indoors over the winter and in bad weather, and you don't have to find some place where you can shoot at 200 yards. It's also a bit cheaper per round (although you end up shooting more rounds.) But there's something about shooting a battle rifle at a target 200 or 300 yards away that you're just not going to get from shooting a pistol at 25 or 50 yards.

Oh, and now I can actually say what the view from Central Jersey is like. :-)

Better bullseye shooting

2010-05-12T04:23:00.000-07:00

So I've gotten into this whole bullseye shooting thing, where a full match is called a 2700 (because there's a theoretical maximum 2700 points.) A 2700 is broken up into three 900's. Each 900 consists of 30 rounds fired slow-fire, 30 rounds timed-fire (four seconds per shot, on average), and 30 rounds rapid-fire (two seconds per shot.) The best I'd done so far for a .22 900 was 781. Yesterday, I was at the range and fired a 900 for practice and shot an 822. That's 91.3%, which is an Expert score (85% being the boundary for Sharpshooter and 90% for Expert.) And that included a 98-4x timed-fire target. I have yet to clean a target (i.e., all 10's and X's), but I won't be surprised if I clean one this year.

It had actually been a few weeks since I'd shot .22. I've been working exclusively with the .45, which is currently a borrowed .45 until the one I have on order comes in. My trigger control needs a lot of work on the .45, so that's what I've been working on. I'm getting a bit better, but I do need a lot of work, as my scores have been hovering in the low 80's there.

Guaranteed retirement accounts

2010-05-05T10:08:00.000-07:00

Following on from Alan's post, I looked a bit into Guaranteed Retirement Accounts. Probably the best source of information on these is this link from the person who is credited with the idea.

Nothing I read in this description seems to indicate that it would involve nationalizing existing 401k assets, as I've talked about. It mostly seems to be a replacement for the existing 401k program in order to do away with the concept of defined-contribution plans in favor of defined-benefit plans. This is obviously coming from that side of the political spectrum that believes that people shouldn't have any responsibility for their own futures.

The plan (as proposed) is effectively to force everyone to contribute 5% of their income (with half of that supplied by the employer) to a GRA. The GRAs would be administered by the Social Security Administration and would generate a guaranteed 3% over inflation. On retirement, the GRA would become an annuitized income stream. The tax benefits of 401k's would be replaced by a flat $600 tax credit.

What's amusing about the proposal is its political naivete. The link above addresses the question, "Why no simply expand Social Security?", but the answer to that question is, effectively, because Social Security might go bankrupt. "In contrast, the appeal of GRAs is that they are fully pre-funded...." I can't imagine that politicians (or bureaucrats) won't raid these funds in exactly the same way that they raided the Social Security "trust fund".

And while there's nothing explicit in this plan to nationalize existing 401k assets, I wouldn't be surprised to see later action to the effect of, "Gee, these GRAs are working out so well that we think everyone should just convert their existing 401k's into GRAs." But hell, I'm just paranoid that way.

Whole lotta lead

2010-05-03T14:21:00.000-07:00

So I was thinking, at a bullseye match, you might have 30 people on the line. Let's say each of them is shooting 185-grain bullets, which is a pretty safe assumption. Not counting alibis, each person will shoot 180 rounds. Add it all up, and that makes for over 140 pounds of lead sent down range over the course of a few hours.

That's a lot of lead.

Observation of the day

2010-04-30T14:28:00.001-07:00

I was into cycling about 15 years ago and did a very small amount of racing. In this sport, especially at the low end of the amateur range, it's a rare mass-start competition of any significant size that doesn't involve a crash of some sort. Personally, I was involved in two, including breaking my wrist in one, and I witnessed quite a few more.

In bullseye competition, where you have 30-40 people firing away all at once, it's an exceedingly rare competition in which anyone gets shot.

Nothing deep here, just an observation I had.

Chicago and the National Guard

2010-04-30T04:10:00.001-07:00

I started reading the Gormogons a few months ago, and I continue to be impressed by what I read there. I find myself going to that first when scrolling through my RSS feeds.

This morning's piece on Chicago calling out the National Guard, looking a bit deeper into this publicity stunt than others are wont to do, is worth a read.

UN humor

2010-04-29T14:07:00.000-07:00

If not for other the fact that I'm used to this sort of crap, I would have checked the calendar to see if it was April 1st.

Just one more reason the UN is a joke. Actually, worse than a joke, because some people take it seriously.

First outdoor 2700

2010-04-19T14:10:00.000-07:00

I shot a conventional pistol match (a 2700) down at Central Jersey this weekend. This was my first outdoor 2700, so it was an interesting experience. I was also overly optimistic in estimating when we'd be done. I was thinking we'd be done by 2:00 (with a 9:00 start), and I'd be home by 3:00. We were actually done by 3:30, I was out of the parking lot about 3:50, and home by 4:30.

I shot my first full 2700 a month ago, but that was an indoor one, so the slow-fire stages were at 25 yards and not 50 yards. So this time, I got the full effect, shooting at 50 yards for slow-fire. Not that it's significantly different, it's still just a black circle off in the distance.

The other major difference between indoor and outdoor is the wind, and I certainly got the full experience there, too. Luckily, it didn't rain on us, which had been forecast, but it was a very windy day. More than once we had to go chase down targets that had blown off the backer. I didn't lose a target myself, but I started locking mine down with twelve staples rather than the usual four.

Once again, I borrowed a .45 to shoot with. This time, though, I made sure to test my ammo in the gun. I borrowed it from a fellow club member, and I shot it during our informal Wednesday night "700" league (a 900 minus the slow-fire stage.) My ammo failed to fully seat on the first round, and again on the second round, so I finished the 700 with borrowed ammo, too. The owner of the gun suggested I run the rounds through the press again to get the bullets seated just a little deeper. I reseated them all an extra .02" and ended up having no problems whatsoever.

Of course, what I didn't think to check was the zero on the scope. I certainly wasn't shooting 10's and X's in the 700, but I assumed that was just me. And during the 2700 Saturday, I shot worse in the slow-fire stage of the .22 (with my gun) than I did in the timed- and rapid-fire stages, so when I shot crappy slow-fire stages with the .45, I didn't think much of it, especially because it was during the transition from slow-fire to center-fire. Same with the timed- and rapid-fire stages, I just assumed I was jerking the trigger, especially since my shots were grouping so nicely, albeit low and to the left. During the slow-fire stage of the .45 match, though, I concentrated carefully on getting good shots off, and they were still grouping low and to the left. I adjusted the scope a few clicks in the up direction but didn't try moving it to the right any. Not sure why not, really. Lack of experience, I guess.

I actually shot pretty well, all things considered. I shot a 781 for the .22 match, which is a sharpshooter score. I then shot 654 and 649 for the center-fire and .45 matches, for an aggregate 2084. (This assumes my scorer added things up correctly -- I didn't verify the math.) That's much better than my indoor 2700, where I scored in the 1600's. And it's a 77%, which is spitting distance from sharpshooter. If it really was the scope and not me shooting poorly, I expect I'll shoot closer to sharpshooter next time.

Shooting my BAG day gun

2010-04-19T07:41:00.000-07:00

I received my BAG day gun a week ago, but I didn't get a chance to shoot it last weekend. I needed to move a scope over to this one, but the rings I had been using were too low for that scope on this gun, so I ordered a new set of rings. I finally got the scope mounted and got the gun out to the range early Sunday morning to try it out.

I zeroed the scope and then shot the light rifle course I'd shot in my club's informal Tuesday night league over the winter. I was pretty happy with how I did. I shot a 376, consisting of a 97, 96, 93 and 90. Compare this to the high 350's I'd been shooting in competition and the mid 360's I'd been shooting in practice, and I'm pretty happy. 376 is the floor for Master on that course, so if I can keep doing that well, I'll be pretty excited.

This is my first bolt gun, so it's an interesting experience. A couple of times, I found myself shouldering the gun for the next shot, trying to pull the trigger, and realizing that I hadn't cycled the action. But it was certainly nice to have all my brass sitting there right next to me instead of having to sweep it all up when I was done.

April 18, 1775

2010-04-18T04:10:00.000-07:00

235 years ago today:

So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm, --
A cry of defiance, and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo forevermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken to listen and hear
The hurrying hoofbeats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

BAG day gun

2010-04-15T03:53:00.000-07:00

Here's my Buy-A-Gun-Day purchase. A Savage Mark II BRJ. A heavy-barreled .22 bolt-action gun with a laminate Monte Carlo stock. Purty, ain't she?

I'd have the scope mounted on it already, but the rings I had were medium height, which didn't give enough clearance on this gun. I previously had the scope mounted on a 10/22 with a heavy barrel, but apparently the rings only worked there because of the extra height the receiver gave it. You could see daylight between scope and barrel, but not much.

Scope

2010-04-08T14:15:00.000-07:00

The guy at my club who runs out informal light rifle league recently bought a target scope that he wanted to check out. He's mostly an Anschutz-and-Leupold kind of guy, and he bought the scope mostly just to see what it was like. The nice thing about this scope is that is focuses down to 50 feet at high power. (Actually, he says it focuses down to 10 meters, but I shoot at 50 feet, so that's what I'm most interested in.) The scope I've been shooting is a 3-9x, but it loses focus at 50 feet beyond 7x, so that's what I've been shooting.

I've hit a plateau in my shooting, so I was thinking about getting a better scope. I mentioned to him that I was thinking of getting this model, so he offered to sell me the one he'd bought. I decided to take him up on his offer.

I put the scope on my 10/22 last week and took it out to zero it and try it out. He had it set at 20x, so I just left it there. You notice the movement a lot more at 20x than you do at 7x. At 7x, I thought I was holding the rifle steady when I had it on a sandbag, but at 20x, it looked like I had the shakes. Once I got it zeroed, I did manage to shoot a couple of perfect targets from the sandbag. (I mostly just wanted to shoot a couple of perfect targets. I hadn't the one time I tried it at 7x from the sandbag.)

Shooting off-hand takes a bit of getting used to. My first target was pretty sad, an 84. That's the worst I've shot on that target in a while. I got into the low 90's on the next target, but then I shot a 97 on my last one. None too shabby, and it certainly gives me hope that I can start shooting consistently at 370 or above.

BAD PUN ALERT

2010-04-07T14:48:00.001-07:00

So, could the gun lobby also be known as the Molon lobby?

I warned you.

The question

2010-04-01T14:42:00.001-07:00

"Dad, do you have a rifle?"

That's the question my 6-year-old son asked me about a week ago. We hadn't planned on talking about this with him for another couple of years. You see, we live in New Jersey, so if uses any words or phrases like "gun", "rifle", "bullet", "shoulder thing that goes up", or the like, my wife and I will go to jail, and our kids will end up in foster homes.

But I guess it was a little naive to think that I could hide the word "Rifle" on those targets he sees me carrying when I leave the house with my "tools", especially since our efforts to prevent him from learning how to read have met with such little success.

So my son now knows that I have a rifle, and he's seen one. I haven't gotten him out to the range yet, but he wants to make one go bang, so I'll probably do that sometime soon. He knows that he's not supposed to touch one unless I'm present. I keep them locked up in one container or another all the time they're in the house, but I'm certainly not going to trust him not to figure out how to get into locked container.

(I have to admit, though, I'm not that upset that he asked. I would have told him already if my wife weren't the one who has to put up with school, other parents, etc. She convinced me that it was better not to say anything yet.)

The Fatal Conceit

2010-04-01T14:17:00.000-07:00

So I finally got around to reading Hayek's The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism. The more I read Hayek, the more I like him. In this case, he introduced me to a concept that hadn't really occurred to me before, and that I hadn't yet seen elsewhere. In retrospect, it's logical, and it certainly fits in with other things that I've thought, but I'd never gotten to quite this idea.

The idea is that capitalism is a product of evolution. It's not that capitalism has evolved over time, which is a statement with almost no real content. It's that capitalism is a self-generated order in the same sense that life is a self-generated order (for those who see evolution as a reasonable theory.) And capitalism has survived these many thousands of years because it's a viable system, a system that provides for an efficient allocation of resources based on the information that it produces. As an economic/social system, it has competed with other systems and won because it's a better system.

In contrast, socialism is a creation of those who think they are perfectly capable of designing, from the ground up, a better system. This is the fatal conceit of the title, the idea that socialism can achieve results superior to a system that developed naturally and survived.

Of course, the socialism that's addressed in the book is "sincere" socialism. As we're all too well aware of, those currently in power who are advocating socialism aren't sincere socialists. They simply want the power socialism will give them.

First 2700 results

2010-03-27T07:30:00.000-07:00

The match results are out for my first 2700. Woohoo! I made the 1600 Club!

In bullseye competition, there's actually something called the 2600 Club. This is that select group of people who've managed to shoot a 2600 or better. I don't see myself ever making that group.

Refreshing

2010-03-23T18:17:00.000-07:00

I just got back from our club's light rifle match. It was wonderfully refreshing -- a few guys sitting around and talking about guns. No politics, no health care, just guns. Mausers, Lugers, Rugers, Garands, M-1 Carbines, 1903's, Anschutzes. Just guns.

Ahhhh.

March 23, 1775

2010-03-23T04:03:00.000-07:00

235 years ago today:

Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?

First 2700

2010-03-21T18:53:00.000-07:00

I shot my first 2700 this morning. For those who don't know, a 2700 is a match in which you fire 270 rounds. It's broken up into three guns (.22, center fire and .45, although it appears that most people simply use their .45 for both of those last two), 90 rounds and 900 points for each gun. This is broken up into 20 rounds each of slow, timed and rapid fire and the "National Match" course, which is 10 rounds each of slow, timed, and rapid fire. (Don't ask me why things are set up this way. No doubt there are good historical reasons for it.)

I did two things wrong in this match, things that pretty much anyone with any competitive experience would have advised against. What's worse is that those two things were really the same: I used new/untested hardware in a competition. In the first case, it wasn't really a problem. The S&W Model 41 I picked up yesterday shoots better than the .22 I had been shooting, and I was happy enough with my performance. In the second case, it was pretty much a disaster. For center fire and .45, I was using a borrowed gun and using my own reloads in it. While the owner has no problem getting it to feed semi-wadcutters, I had no end of trouble getting it into battery for each string. The gun cycled reliably once I started firing, but no matter whether I used the slingshot method or the slide stop, I had little luck.

OTOH, I got to shoot 270 rounds this morning, which makes for a pretty good day in my book.

Defenseless man killed in NY

2010-03-21T13:13:00.000-07:00

This man tried to save a teenager from an attack and was killed for the gesture. This is the world that Michael Bloomberg wants all of us to live in.

Buy a Gun Day

2010-03-20T18:22:00.001-07:00

So I bought my gun for Buy a Gun Day today. Okay, so technically, today isn't Buy a Gun Day. But I live in New Jersey. My (two) pistol permits came in a week ago (after only six weeks.) My FFL ordered thw gun for me the day he got my check in the mail, it came in a couple of days ago, and I picked it up today. I can't just go out and buy a gun on a whim[1]. These thing have to be planned out.

And, of course, given that I did the transfer today, I wouldn't be able to go out and buy another gun on Buy a Gun Day, as that's less than 30 days from now, and New Jersey now has the one-gun-a-month law.

But on the bright side, this is a really sweet piece, a Smith and Wesson Model 41, a .22 target pistol. I brought it home, cleaned it, then took it out to the range to try it out. I don't know if the gun shoots much better than my other .22 (a Kimber), or if I just shoot much better with it. (Or if it's just the honeymoon phase.) But it seemed to shoot really well. The trigger is certainly better. The out-of-the-box trigger on my Kimber leaves a bit to be desired. The trigger on the S&W needs no work. I'll need to get used to it, though, as it's a bit lighter than I'm used to.

[1] Well, it's still possible to go out and buy a rifle or shotgun on a whim, but I'm not really in the market for either of those right now.

Fess Parker

2010-03-18T19:02:00.000-07:00

David Boaz, over at Cato@Liberty, points out that Fess Parker has died. He played both Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett on TV, although he's probably better known for the role of Daniel Boone. The above link quotes a speech Davy Crockett made titled "Not Yours To Give". Given the current state of our federal government, it's worth a read.

I grew up on Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett. This isn't necessarily because I grew up in Tennessee, but it probably had some part to play. I remember reading biographies of the two and everything I could get my hands on related to the frontier era. (When I was in elementary school, that is. Later, I discovered science fiction, and then that's all I wanted to read.)

WRT Davy Crockett, it's probably also worth noting that we recently passed the anniversary of the Battle of the Alamo. While this is remembered as one of the pivotal points in Texas history, it should be pointed out that 32 of the 180 or so men who died at the Alamo were Tennesseeans, including Davy Crockett. This is where Tennessee earned the nickname the Volunteer State -- some 30,000 Tennesseeans volunteered to fight in the Mexican War in order to exact their revenge on Santa Anna.

Pistol permits in

2010-03-12T04:20:00.000-08:00

Woohoo! My two "permits to purchase" are in. I picked them up last night and will have a new gun within the week.

For those who live in reasonable states where purchasing a pistol can be a 15-minute affair if the person behind the counter isn't otherwise busy, this is how things work in New Jersey. If you want to purchase a handgun, you drop by the local police department, pick up the paperwork, fill it out, bring it back with the appropriate checks, hope you crossed all your t's and dotted all your i's, and wait. They actually do things quickly in my township, so I got my permits in only six weeks. (The law explicitly states that the permits must be issued within 30 days, but the courts gutted that requirement.) In less-friendly municipalities, permits might take six months.

Not for the last time do I wish I were still in Tennessee. Admittedly, being forced to wait on a handgun purchase is better for my wallet, but I'd be willing to take a chance on myself being fiscally responsible in exchange for regaining some basic rights.

USRA postal match over

2010-03-10T14:11:00.000-08:00

Well, it's over for me, at least. It was a ten-week pistol match, and I just shot my tenth set of targets.

I was shooting a .22 National Match Course, 10 shots each of slow, timed, and rapid fire (indoors at 50 feet.) My score for the first week of shooting was a 217. I worked my way up to a 252 in the 9th week and ended with a 245 in week 10. Even better, I shot a 96 on my last timed-fire target, of which the first 5-shot string was perfect. (Of course, that also means that I shot a combined 149 on my slow and rapid-fire targets, a 72 and 77 respectively.)

I'm looking forward to doing more of this. Summer's coming up, so there'll be all of the outdoors 2700's to shoot. I don't have a reasonable .45 bullseye gun yet, but I hope to remedy that soon. (Blasted stupid pistol purchase permit system. In any reasonable state, I'd have that gun by now.)

Cheap primers!

2010-03-03T18:26:00.000-08:00

The club I belong to had their annual swap meet this evening. Lots of reloading equipment, including some fairly ancient stuff that may have dated back to the Roman era.

But as I was looking through stuff, I noticed a box of 1000 large pistol primers.

"How much for these?"

"Five bucks."

You bet I bought 'em. Of course, it would have been sweeter if he had 10,000 or so, but it was still pretty nice.

McDonald

2010-03-03T13:49:00.000-08:00

So, at long last, the oral arguments have been made in the case of McDonald v. City of Chicago. I would post my analysis of the arguments here, but that's been pretty well covered elsewhere. (Some links here at Say Uncle. Not to mention the Volokh Conspiracy discussion here, here, here and here. And Randy Barnett's WSJ op-ed here.)

I had an invitation to attend the SAF's reception Tuesday night (no doubt as a result of donations, not because I'm otherwise a heavyweight Second Amendment advocate.) I would really like to have gone, but I couldn't justify taking the time off from work to do so. Not to mention that there were a number of other people who were far more deserving of being there.

So now we wait. As good as it looks for incorporation, I'm still not holding my breath. Even if we win, I fully expect to see some text in there weakening the Second Amendment. Sotomayor's question about "reasonable regulation" doesn't give me the warm fuzzies.

Unexpected result

2010-02-24T18:37:00.000-08:00

So, the match results for the conventional pistol sectional I shot last weekend have been published. Even though my aggregate score was pretty poor (537/900), as it turns out, I was actually the number one shooter for the .22 slow fire stage for the tyros (i.e., those who'd never competed before.) I shot a 146 to beat out the 143 for the second-place shooter.

So there's something I can be happy about.

Armed self-defense during the civil rights movement

2010-02-23T04:04:00.000-08:00

Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, David Kopel recounts some stories about how armed self-defense prevented a number of deaths during the civil rights movement. Interesting reading.

First bullseye match

2010-02-22T04:31:00.000-08:00

I shot my first bullseye match this past weekend. This was actually an NRA conventional pistol sectional, so as soon as the results are in from all the sectionals, I'll actually have a national ranking. Given that I'm currently unclassified, I was officially competing in the master class. Which is pretty funny considering how I did.

My performance was piss-poor. My aggregate was a 538 (out of a possible 900.) I knew I was unlikely to be scoring an 850, but I thought I had a reasonable chance to score in the 600's, and it wasn't unreasonable for me to think that I would break 700. The scores I've been getting in the USRA postal match I've been shooting range from 225 to 241 and have mostly been in the 230's. The bullseye match was effectively just three times as much shooting, so it's reasonable to assume I could just scale these scores up and shoot somewhere between 675 and 720.

I did notice that I was grouping low on my timed and rapid-fire targets, to the point of scoring a number of misses. (One of my rapid-fire targets actually scored a 33, as embarassed as I might be to admit that.) This in spite of the fact that I thought I had a good sight picture for all of those shots. It's unlikely that my sights suddenly broke in the middle of the match, so it's probably something I'm consistently doing wrong. At least, for being misses, they were consistent misses, so I can figure out what to pay attention to.

Frustration

2010-02-18T19:08:00.000-08:00

So, this evening I went to the range. The main reason was the USRA competition I'm shooting (.22 National Match course), but I had plenty of time, so I first shot my usual light rifle practice. Not horrible, a 364, but I looked at the targets later at home, and something hit me.

I shot a number of 7's and 8's. I also shot a bunch of 10's to bring my score up to that 364. But I counted up the points I lost on those 7's and 8's, assuming I'd shot them as 9's instead. I lost 14 points by that calculation. So if all those had been 9's, I'd have shot a 378. That skips right past expert and lands solidly in master (376 for off-hand light rifle.)

So all I have to do now is eliminate those 7's and 8's.

Weird McDonald v. Chicago dream

2010-02-10T17:01:00.000-08:00

Last night, I dreamt that McDonald v. Chicago had been decided, in our favor. But all I knew was the decision, none of the details. I kept going up to people to ask, "But was it due process or P or I?"

I think I've spent too much time reading amicus briefs.

Shooting improvement

2010-01-30T12:41:00.000-08:00

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.

Alan Gura's reply brief

2010-01-29T14:16:00.000-08:00

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.

Interesting perspective on the State of the Union

2010-01-27T07:24:00.000-08:00

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.

WOOHOO!

2010-01-19T19:07:00.000-08:00

Scott Brown wins!

Recent shooting

2010-01-18T13:27:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-18T13:10:00.000-08:00

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.

2010 goals/wish list

2010-01-15T14:01:00.000-08:00

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.

Scott Brown moneybomb

2010-01-11T13:05:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-11T04:59:00.001-08:00

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.

More on 401k's

2010-01-09T08:36:00.000-08:00

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.)

Starting USRA shooting

2010-01-06T08:41:00.000-08:00

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.

Corzine thinks he's Gore

2010-01-04T07:57:00.000-08:00

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.

Decent shooting lately

2010-01-03T13:54:00.000-08:00

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.

Consistency

2009-12-30T04:26:00.000-08:00

I've discovered what separates the good shooters from the mediocre shooters. (Or the really good from the pretty good, if you prefer.) It's not the ability to shoot well, 'cause you have to shoot well to shoot, say, a 350 on a light rifle target, the dividing line between marksman and sharpshooter. And it's not just the ability to shoot 10's. For example, last night during my club's light rifle competition, I managed to shoot two 10's on the last bull on a target. On each of those, I fully intended to make the shot a 10 because I needed to make those two 10's. I needed to pull what was looking to be a miserable 83-85 target up to a barely-acceptable 87.

Of course, what frustrates me is that, if I can pull out those 10's when I really need to, why can't I do it every time? Why am I not shooting 100's on every target? Why did I have to work so hard to pull that target up to an 87? And this brings me to the difference between the good and the mediocre: consistency. The good shooters can pull off those 10's far more consistently than I can. They're not dropping the occasional shot down into the 7 ring.

This statement becomes obvious at the extreme end of the scale. For a 400 target, every shot is a 10. The mean is 10, the median is 10, and the standard deviation is 0. This is perfect consistency.

But consider a score that's below perfection but still a very good score, a 380. Each target scores on average a 95, each bull a 19. For each 9 you shoot, you have to be able to pull out a 10 to stay on track. Dropping a shot into the 7 ring means that you need to shoot six 10's to bring yourself back up to where you need to be.[1] And given that you have ten shots on target, the dropped shot only leaves you nine shots from which to pull those six 10's.

Now go farther down to a 360. Each target scores, on average, a 90. For a shooter who otherwise shoots 9's, every 10 gives him leeway to shoot an 8. Two 10's can afford him to drop a shot into the 7 ring without harm. This shooter can likely shoot a 6 and still pull out a 360.

So all I need to do now to pull myself up from a 360 (my latest official score from our light rifle competition) to a 400 is learn how to shoot consistently.

1. Put another way, you'd need to bring three of your succeeding 9's up to 10's. But you already needed three 10's to match those 9's, which makes six. And that's assuming you dropped a 10 to a 7. If you'd dropped a 9 to a 7, that would mean two 9's to 10's.

Mothers-in-law and hoplophobia

2009-12-19T19:28:00.001-08:00

So, my wife informs me that my mother-in-law now refuses to enter our house. She has yet to have the discussion with my wife that she's threatening to have, but that will come at some point.

I'm curious to know why she refuses to enter the house. The obvious assumption is that it's a safety issue, but I don't think that's it. I think it's purely a moral issue, that guns are bad. The irony here is that my mother-in-law is Jewish and very pro-Israel. (I'm not Jewish, but my wife is, and, by implicit agreement from long before we were ever married, so are my kids.) She has relatives living in Israel who, no doubt, have guns in their homes. She's visited them, and I assume that she was aware that there were guns there. But that's no doubt a different situation.

Even though she won't enter the house, she will still come to pick up the kids to take them for an overnight. I'm tempted to refuse to let my kids enter her house. As compared to a house that contains guns locked up in a safe, her house is a death trap. The stairs to the second floor alone are excessively dangerous: they're very steep, and I've slipped and fallen on them. Some grandchild of hers is likely to fall and break something on them at some point, if not worse.

But that would simply be escalation and unlikely to ameliorate the situation. I certainly wouldn't be doing anything to win her over to reason with that approach.

Unfortunately, she's unlikely to ever have a reasonable attitude with respect to guns. She's well-known for always being right, no matter what anyone else says. She has an absolute inability to see things from a different point of view.

Oh, well, I'm sure this isn't the end of things. I'm not ruling out cutting her off from the grand-kids. Moving elsewhere would probably be the most effective way to achieve that. Especially if it's someplace like Texas. Mmmmmmm, Texas.

Amazing shooting

2009-12-19T19:12:00.000-08:00

Okay, so maybe it's not that amazing for other people, but this was pretty significant for me.

I went this afternoon to practice for my club's light rifle competition. I shot a 368, consisting of a 94, 93, 93, and an 88. I was disappointed that I dropped so low on the last target, 'cause after the third target I had visions of shooting a 370. I would have been astounded had I done so, but I'm still pretty excited that I managed to shoot a 368.

(As some measure of what this means, 368 is the lower limit for the Expert classification for light rifle standing. Given that I'm currently shooting Marksman, that would mean skipping Sharpshooter altogether. Assuming, of course, that I could shoot 368 or better consistently in competition, which I haven't done yet. But it is nice to see that I'm making significant progress.)

Tuesday night shooting

2009-12-16T10:56:00.000-08:00

I shot pretty well in last night's light rifle match. Unofficially a 357 (88, 88, 89, 92.) I was a bit disappointed that I didn't break 360, but this is still the best I've done so far. And I'm convinced it was the cheap ammo I was using that was holding me back (last week I shot a 332 with the cheap stuff. I can't imagine I've changed 25 points' worth in a week, so it's got to be something else.)

Mothers-in-law and guns

2009-12-14T08:41:00.000-08:00

Mother-in-law has discovered that I own guns. We've tried to keep this
from her, and we've been remarkably successful. But I think this was
mostly because the guns were kept in their cases (locked) up in my
office, and she never goes into that corner of the house. But she
happened to walk through the garage on Saturday morning and saw the
recently-installed gun safe.

As some background, my mother-in-law has very definite opinions about
certain things, mostly concerned with what people do and don't do. Or,
to be more specific, what decent people do and don't do. These
opinions are simply prejudices based on her experience growing up
in a middle-class neighborhood in Philadelphia surrounded by decent people.

As additional background, she doesn't always handle things in the most
mature of manners. For example, when a boy of the wrong religious
affiliation called my wife at home when she was in high school, her
mother sulked about it for weeks. As another example, when my
father-in-law bought a pool table some years ago, she was unhappy.
(Decent people don't even play pool, much less have a table in their
house.) She made him put it in a very cramped corner of the basement
where it was impossible to make a decent shot. She then proceeded to
move a freezer right next to the pool table, making it even harder to
use.

So I now wait to see what my punishment will be for having guns in the
same house as her grandchildren. This should be an interesting
experience, as I've not yet really been in the doghouse with her (even
after 10 years, and even though I don't have the correct religious affiliation.)

OTOH, this could be a good thing. I wouldn't mind moving somewhere
with better gun laws and lower taxes. This could open up my options.

Good shooting

2009-12-13T19:04:00.000-08:00

Woohoo! I actually shot a 360 this afternoon. That currently stands as my best score on the light rifle target.

So, how'd I get there? Yesterday, I was shooting with my fairly-stock 10/22. (It's had some minor part replacements, but I've not replaced the barrel.) My shooting was pretty abysmal, low 80's and high 70's. I decided to try my heavy-barreled 10/22 this afternoon. I still didn't shoot well, a 332. Benchrest showed a larger grouping than that barrel should produce, so I tried some Eley Target ammo I'd gotten recently (rather than the el-cheapo ammo I'd been using.) That made a significant difference. I shot a 91, 90, 88, and 91 for that 360.

It remains to be seen if I can reproduce that, but I'm looking forward to finding out.

Reading

2009-12-10T07:19:00.000-08:00

When I started this blog, I wasn't sure that I'd be able to write enough to justify it. Then I surprised myself by writing on average more than once a day for a couple of months. I slowed down a bit due to taking a couple of weeks of vacation (during one of which I had the kids to myself), but the other major impact is that I've been reading a lot lately.

I just finished Friedrich Hayek's Road to Serfdom. This is one of those classics that everyone should read. He makes the case that any type of state that attempts to plan some part of our lives must necessarily[1] end up planning all parts of our lives. Furthermore, he argues that a state of this nature must necessarily attract the worst kind of people to its leadership (thugs, essentially.) There's obviously more to the book, and it's definitely worth a read.

I'm also on the verge of finishing Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism. It was fairly interesting reading these two books at the same time. He covers a lot of early 20th century American history that I'd been unaware of (or possibly managed to forget since high school.) He argues that, rather than conservatives being Fascists, as every protester of the last 8 years would have us believe, it's actually liberals that have far more in common with the Italian Fascists and the Nazis.

Next on the list: Thomas Sowell's A Conflict of Visions.

[1] Modulo his comments about the inevitability of planning.

Self-defense dream

2009-12-09T11:54:00.001-08:00

I had my first (or at least first that I remember) self-defense dream last night. Details aside, when it came down to pulling the trigger, I couldn't do it. Not in a moral sense, my finger just wouldn't pull the trigger.

It's probably purely coincidental that I shot really poorly during my club's light rifle competition last night. I just never could get the trigger to break when I wanted it to. My final target was a 78, a good 10 points below where I want to be (and where I've been shooting, so it's not an unreasonable expectation.) Pbbbbbt!

Rapid fire better than slow fire

2009-12-07T08:34:00.000-08:00

Well, okay, it's a bit premature to say that, and it probably wouldn't hold up if I were to do a serious long-term comparison of the two. But it was an interesting experience.

I was shooting Sunday afternoon, practicing for my club's Light Rifle competition. I'd done reasonably well on the first set of targets (a 344.) I did reasonably well on the first two targets of the second set, an 86 and an 89. Then I shot a 79 on the third target. This was probably a result of still being tired from the 10-hour snowy drive of the day before, but I just couldn't make any decent shots. I got frustrated (again, probably from being tired), and I shot the last target in rapid-fire mode, just firing as fast as I could while keeping the target in my sights. I probably fired all 10 rounds in a minute, maybe less.

And I shot an 86.

Snow

2009-12-05T20:12:00.000-08:00

There's nothing quite like driving 150 miles on the PA Turnpike in the dark while it's pouring down snow. Unless you've already spent hours driving through the same on mountains in Virginia and West Virginia.

Mustang

2009-12-04T15:01:00.000-08:00

I drove to West Virginia today to celebrate my uncle's 91st birthday. My wife and I have only one car (since I commute to work by train, and the train station is less than ten minutes by foot from our house), and I couldn't leave my wife without a car for two days, so I rented a car.

Instead of renting some generic small or mid-size car, I decided to rent a Mustang. I've never had the chance to drive an American muscle car for any extended period of time (five minutes once doesn't really count), so I figured I'd make use of this opportunity.

Thursday evening, I went to pick up the car. Did all the paperwork, got a parking spot number, and walked out to find it. It wasn't hard to find. It was the BRIGHT BLUE Mustang sitting there in the parking lot. Not some generic shade of gray, not black, not white, BRIGHT BLUE.

On the way out of the lot, the attendant commented on it. "Nice car. And nice color, too."

I got home and told me wife to go look at the car. "No, I'm cooking, and the kids are leaving me alone. I'll look at it later." "No, really, go look at it." So she went to the window and looked. The laugh that came out was a purely unintentional, caught-by-surprise laugh. The laugh came out of her before she even thought to make fun of me for it.

It's been getting a similar reaction from assorted family members of various degree here, too.

But you know what? It drives like any other Mustang out there, so I don't really care that much.

91 years old

2009-12-03T19:10:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow, I'll be going to the a birthday party for my uncle, who's turning 91. I would have seen him at my parents' over Thanksgiving, but he'd gone hunting and bagged a turkey, and his neighbor offered to cook that for him, so he stayed home.

He's quite a character. He's obviously still pretty mobile, and he's definitely still pretty sharp. And, at 91, he probably has a stronger grip than I do.

He served as a pilot in the war (WWII, that is.) He was shot down over Germany and spent the rest of the war in a POW camp.

I don't know how much longer he'll be around, so when I heard they were throwing this shindig for him, I figured I'd do what I could to be there.

The power of bureaucrats

2009-12-02T14:40:00.000-08:00

I spent Thanksgiving at my parents, during which time I got to see my brother and his family. Some fifteen years ago, my brother's wife started a day care center that she's been running since then. She's now essentially been forced to give it up because some petty little bureaucrat got a bug up her butt.

Apparently, a couple of years ago, the day care center was assigned a new bureaucrat from the county to do their evaluations. The first visit from said bureaucrat went swimmingly -- she was delighted with how the center was run. Unfortunately, her boss didn't like her findings and came back for another visit with said bureaucrat. Things didn't go well this time, and evaluations went poorly every time thereafter. The one time that my sister-in-law commented on how well the visit was going because the evaluator hadn't found anything wrong, the response was, "And I'm not leaving until I do."

So, finally, after a two-year campaign to shut down this day care center, the bureaucrat has won. And now all of those parents have to find other places for their children, and the employees have to find other jobs. You just gotta love the power that these people hold.

Fortunately, this was an isolated incident, and nobody need fear treatment like this once our new health care system has been put in place.

Tuesday night's Light Rifle

2009-12-02T09:09:00.000-08:00

So, this last weekend, I shot a 352 and a 354. I didn't do quite as well in the Tuesday night match. I shot (unofficially) a 343. To keep perspective, though, it's still where I want, which is to be shooting consistently in the 340's.

One of the guys I was shooting with (a Master-class shooter) shot a 98 on one of his targets. That's some impressive shooting. But he is human, though -- his final two shots on his last target were 7's, both pretty much accidental shots.

Compassionate conservatives

2009-12-02T09:05:00.000-08:00

I read this article over at the Volokh Conspiracy. This anecdote jumped out at me:

Senior year of college, I took a political economy class from a very left-wing, but very fair-minded, Sociology professor. One of the books he assigned was David Stockman’s The Triumph of Politics. Stockman was a libertarian Republican who served as Reagan’s first budget director. At the beginning of the book, he provided a concise summary of why he thought limited government was beneficial to the American people. When the class discussed the book, one of my fellow seniors exclaimed, “This was very interesting to me! He seems like a good guy... I didn’t know that any conservatives actually cared about people!.” Kudos to this professor for enlightening my classmate, but how does someone get to her senior year of college without being exposed to the radical idea that not all conservatives are innately evil?

While I'm certainly not shocked that someone in her senior year of college would have led so sheltered a life, I do consider it a failure of that university (and most universities) that there should be so little diversity of thought that this should happen.

One of my friends, who earned Ph.D.'s in both economics and political science, once told me about visiting an older uncle of his who'd never been to college. My friend told me of some of the opinions his uncle had offered and how they demonstrated that he'd never really had anyone seriously challenge him on them. Unfortunately, it appears that going to college wouldn't necessarily prevent that nowadays.

(As an aside, this reminds me of a conversation I once had with my sister-in-law. She's a typical northeast liberal who went to Columbia, quite possibly the most liberal of the liberal northeastern universities. She actually said to me, and I kid you not, "Republicans ... oh, I hate them so much!" The last time I'd heard a line like that was in some bad Saturday morning cartoon. And she was obviously assuming that I shared her political opinions. But then, why shouldn't she? She'd probably never met someone who didn't.)

I am the child who says, "Nu!"

2009-11-30T06:13:00.000-08:00

This was a fairly perfect setup: On Thursday, at my parents with other cousins there, my 5-year-old son was walking in circles in the den saying, "Nu!" Mind you, he's never seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail, so he didn't get the joke when I corrected him to say, "Ni!"

And by amazing coincidence, my high-school-aged nephew actually had the DVD in his laptop at the time, so my son got to see it. He was a bit bored during the credits, but enjoyed the movie afterwards. Now he keeps asking to see that movie "with the knights dancing on the table."

Post-Thanksgiving shooting

2009-11-29T14:16:00.001-08:00

We fot back early this morning from our Thanksgiving trip to see my parents. We aimed to arrive at 3AM, and we pulled in around 2:56. Not too shabby. (This target time was intended to minimize the amount of time we had to spend in the car while the kids were awake while also maximizing the amount of time they'd sleep once we got home.)

I went shooting this afternoon after my wife got up from her nap. Again, not too shabby. I started out pretty poor with an 82, but then shot an 89, 91, and 90-1x to end up with a 352-1X. On the second relay, I shot an 86, 89, 88-1X and 91 for a 354-1X. I'm definitely improving.

Of these 80 shots, 9 were outside the black (6's or 7's), 5 in the first relay and 4 in the second. Had I been able to bring those into the black, I would have shot a 357 and a 358. I'm obviously making progress at bringing those in, but it's frustrating to keep seeing them.

The Pilgrims and private property

2009-11-26T06:50:00.000-08:00

Ilya Somin over at the Volokh Conspiracy points out how private property saved the Pilgrims. I'd read this years ago in Tom Bethell's book The Noblest Triumph: Property and Prosperity Through the Ages. It's too bad that people aren't being taught this fact in school.

Tonight's shooting

2009-11-24T15:53:00.001-08:00

Tonight's light rifle competition wasn't as good as I'd hoped, but it was on par with how I've been doing.

Last week's shooting was excellent. My official score was a 352-1X, the first time I've broken 350 in competition. My previous best had been a 341. And this was with iron sights. I've since put a scope on this rifle, and, even though I've had more than the usual opportunity to shoot in the last week, I'm still a bit new to shooting scoped. I need a bit more practice to get comfortable with it.

Since I shot an earlier relay than usual, I had the chance to stick around to get my official score -- a 334. Not inconsistent with my performance so far, but I'm still trying to get consistently in the 340's.

History

2009-11-22T11:45:00.000-08:00

I'm reading Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism right now. It's a pretty interesting book, and not quite the "right wing nuttery" that I'd expected of it. No offenses to Mr. Goldberg, but a book whose cover consists of a smiley face with a Hitleresque moustache might be assumed to be not quite as academic as it's turning out to be. While it's by no means (and by the author's own admission) an academic tome, it's a bit more academic than expected.

But this isn't meant to be a review of the book. One of the themes of the book is that "progressives" tend to ignore their own history and have rewritten history so that Mussolini, Hitler, et al., are seen as being right-wing when most of their policies were progressive, i.e., left-wing, policies.

This theme reminded me of a quote from my father-in-law: If you can destroy the history of a people, you can destroy that people. He was referring to the Jews and the Middle East conflict (specifically with respect to certain countries who won't allow archaeological research into Biblical places.) This quote reminds me of this segment by Bill Whittle, in which he discusses (a bit indirectly) the attack on American history in an attempt to destroy it and, as a result, the American way of life. (I would argue that there is not an American people in the same way that there is a Jewish people. This country was founded on a philosophy, and I'd argue that anyone who buys into that philosophy is essentially American. Thus "way of life" rather than "people".)

This also ties into the books I've been reading by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., about how progressive educational ideals have been slowly weakening this country by removing content (such as American history) from primary education. I've seen some overlap in the names mentioned in both books (like John Dewey.) It's also a bit depressing to see Columbia University mentioned in Hirsch's books (specifically Columbia Teacher's College) and Whittle's commentary (as the temporary home of the Institute for Marxism, er, the Institute for Social Research, aka the Frankfurt School.) But then, I should hardly be surprised that a liberal northeastern university has played such a large part in the progressive movement.

This week's shooting

2009-11-22T05:51:00.000-08:00

Wednesday morning, I had the chance to try out the new barrel on my 10/22. I'd like to say that it's a tack driver, but that would imply that I can shoot well enough to determine that. I shot the light rifle course of fire benchrest with it and shot a 384/400. Note that this was with a 4x scope, so it's entirely feasible I could have done better with a better scope. OTOH, it could just be me. (For comparison, the Master's-level shooters are shooting in the 380's in our club's light rifle competition. Standing.)

I did give it a try standing, and I shot an 89 and a 91. I didn't have time to shoot the whole course of fire, but I was pleased. (Again, for comparison, I've shot 91 a couple of times with my other 10/22 and its stock barrel.)

This week, I decided to replace the Tech Sights on my other 10/22 with a scope. So I'll be shooting that one scoped from now on.

I shot pretty well yesterday morning. I was under a time constraint, so I rushed my last few shots. Specifically, my last three shots were 7's. While it's certainly conceivable that those would have been 7's, anyway, it did lower my score to a 344. I was a bit disappointed that I could have shot anywhere from a 347 to a 350 if I hadn't dropped those three, but I'm still reasonably happy with the 344.

This morning's shooting went well, too. I shot the light rifle course twice, shooting a 342 the first time and a 346 the second time. I'm pretty pleased with how I'm doing, specifically that I'm consistently shooting in the 340's.

Light rifle -- woohoo!

2009-11-17T17:42:00.000-08:00

I just got back from this week's light rifle match at my club. Woohoo! Best shooting I've done so far. I shot an 87 and an 83 on the first two targets, which would have had me shooting a 340. We swapped targets, and then I proceeded to shoot 89 on the remaining two targets, which puts me at 348. I scored on the conservative side, so it's entirely possible I scored as high as 350. I'll find out next week.

In any case, I'm pretty psyched. It's nice to see improvement.

SSAFU

2009-11-16T18:36:00.001-08:00

Shooting schedule -- all fouled up.

I didn't get to go shooting this weekend. My wife's flight left late Saturday evening, so I would certainly have had time to go Saturday morning, but Friday evening, she had an accident that required some emergency dental work first thing Saturday morning.

I did get to go this morning, though, while my son was in school and my mother-in-law had the twins. Nothing to write home about (although apparently worth blogging ;-). A 329 and a 340-2x. The 340 actually could have been a bit better. I was on my way to shooting a high 80's or possibly a 90 on my first target. I was sitting at 80 after 9 shots, and my tenth shot went high. Non-scoring high. Guh. I lost focus from having shot so well on that target up to that point.

After I got home and ate lunch, a package arrived. I'd ordered a Butler Creek target barrel/stock combo for my other 10/22. The leaves needed raking, though, and then kids needed attention, so I didn't have the chance to play with things until after bedtime. The stock was a bit of a tight fit, but everything's assembled now. With luck, I'll be able to try it out Wednesday morning.

Home alone

2009-11-14T18:09:00.000-08:00

Well, not actually home alone. Home alone for a week with the kids while my wife is visiting her sister far away.

Wish me luck.

Last night's shooting

2009-11-11T07:42:00.000-08:00

It occurs to me that I'm not terribly creative when it comes to titles for my blog entries. This isn't the first one titled, "Last night's shooting."

Last night was Tuesday night, which means that it was my clubs weekly Light Rifle competition. I got two weeks' worth of results (I missed a week and shot a make-up.) A 339 and a 341-1X. I'm certainly doing better, up from my initial scores in the low 330's.

Last night's score was somewhere in the high 330's. I started off exceptionally well, with 87 or 88 on the first two targets (depending on how the official scoring goes.) I then hit a slump on the third target, somewhere around 80-81, and came back up a bit on the fourth target. We'll see how the official scoring goes.

The highlight of the night was the one target I shot two almost-perfect 10's on. The sight picture was perfect, the trigger pull was perfect, and I managed to do that twice consecutively. Now if only I could do that on every shot, I'd be a happy camper. I'd even settle for a 9 here and there.

Weekend shooting -- iron sights vs scope

2009-11-08T18:18:00.000-08:00

I had a little extra time this morning, so I took along my scoped 10/22 (a 4X scope) to see how I could shoot with it vs. with iron sights. I'd previously commented on how I felt more comfortable with iron sights, but I hadn't really put it to a significant test before this morning. I shot the light rifle course twice on each.

I shot the scoped rifle first. I shot a few sighting rounds benchrest to zero the scope, but the first shots I fired offhand were for the record. My first target was a 79 -- about what I'd expected, thinking that I was going to be worse with a scope. I got better as I went, though, as I followed that up with an 83, an 89-1X and an 89-2X, for a 340-3x. The second course I shot scoped was an 81-1X, 85-2X, 90-2X and 90-1x, for a 346-6x. Certainly towards the top end of how I've been shooting lately.

Then I picked up old faithful, my iron-sighted 10/22. My first course was a 78, 91-1X, 80 and 83, for a 332-1X. The second course was a 82, 83-1X, 80-1X and 85, for a 330-2X.

So, this morning, I shot better with a scope than with iron sights. Even though this isn't enough data to say that I'm better with a scope than with iron sights, it's certainly enough to say that I can shoot at least as well with a scope. Perfectly logical, of course -- everything else is equal, I just need to adjust to a different sight picture.

Aperture sights

2009-11-05T19:40:00.001-08:00

I've decided to give front aperture sights a try on my 10/22. Specifically this Lyman globe front target sight. I'm currently using a Tech-Sights TSR-200, which is an aperture rear sight combined with a post front sight. While I certainly don't expect to suddenly start shooting 400-40x's with these sights, at least it will be an interesting experience.

Gun safe

2009-11-05T12:39:00.000-08:00

Gun safe's a-comin'. Back before the Great Gun Hiatus, I got by without a safe because I was single and lucky. Now that I'm a responsible homeowner with kids, and now that my post-Hiatus collection is getting big enough to warrant it, I've decided to get a safe. (A Liberty safe, if anyone's curious.)

I've ordered a model that holds up to 30 long guns. I can't imagine that I'll end up owning more than 30 long guns anytime soon. Of course, having said that, I'll probably be wishing soon that I'd gotten a bigger safe. I'd be hard-pressed to buy more than one a month, so it should last me for at least another couple of years.

Last night's shooting

2009-11-04T06:34:00.000-08:00

So, last night was our weekly Light Rifle competition. I shot reasonably well, at least a 333, maybe as much as a 336, depending on how the official scoring goes. (I tend to score myself conservatively, so there's usually a 3-5 point between my self-scoring and the official version.) I'm still not breaking 340 in competition yet, but at least I'm being very consistent.

There were four of us on the line last night. I don't know what everyone else was shooting, but I think they were all shooting standard velocity fare. I was shooting CCI Mini-Mags, and I could definitely tell a difference in the sound. Compared to the polite from the guy beside me, mine was verging on a .

Can you hear me now?

2009-11-04T05:51:00.001-08:00

Hey, all of you Democrats in Congress who want to shove socialized health care down our throats: the Republicans took Virginia and New Jersey last night. Are you sure you want to go into next year's elections having voted for something that people don't want?

Give them spoons

2009-11-03T14:25:00.000-08:00

I heard this anecdote many years ago, and it's stuck with me since then:

An economist was visiting China, and he saw a large number of men digging with shovels to build a dam. His host was very excited and remarked on how many men they were employing. The economist pointed out that a smaller number of men could more efficiently build the dam with the right equipment. "But then we wouldn't be employing the other men," his host replied. "Well, in that case, why not give them all spoons?"

I've seen this anecdote attributed to Milton Friedman, which certainly seems plausible.

Efficiency

2009-11-03T14:20:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I'll notice a theme popping up in my life. One of the themes I've noticed recently is efficiency.

For example, I've been talking about how to exercise with my friend Mike the Mad Russian, specifically with respect to goals. I mentioned to him that I'd done 500 pushups one Saturday, and he said that it's pointless to do that, as you're just making your muscles more efficient at doing pushups. Evidently, you want to keep changing the exercises you do so that your muscles never get too efficient at doing what they do. Of course, that assumes that the goal of exercise is to burn calories, in which case you want to be doing things as inefficiently as possible. If you actually use your muscles (say if you're in the military or a professional athlete), you actually want your muscles to operate as efficiently as possible.

Another place I've seen the word used frequently is in Economics in One Lesson, which I've recently read. The word is used to describe the failings of protectionist trade policies or job creation programs. Most (if not all) government intervention in the economy leads to inefficient use of resources. Actually, the most "successful" job creation programs necessarily involve the least efficient use of resources, i.e., workers.

I've also been thinking a lot about efficiency with respect to education. It seems to me that one of the purposes of education is simply to increase the efficiency of the students' thought processes. Repetition and memorization in education serves the same purpose as the thousands of layups, free throws, fadeaway jumpers, etc., serves for the professional basketball player -- to become efficient at doing these things. (And note that I'm not saying that education should consist of nothing but repetition and memorization, any more than I would suggest that a basketball game should consist of nothing layups, free throws, and fadeaway jumpers. But they do server a purpose.)

And just to make sure this can still be considered a gun blog, I'll toss this in: And that's why I go shooting every weekend, so that I can become efficient at all of those little things that go into making a shot -- acquiring the sight picture, maintaining the sight picture, controlling my breathing, putting the minimal effort necessary into pulling the trigger, etc.

Watching the earth rotate

2009-11-03T05:45:00.000-08:00

This morning, standing on the platform waiting for the train, I watched the earth rotate. The nearly-full moon was sitting on top of an electrical wire when I looked up and noticed it, and then I stood staring at it, watching the wire slowly creep up until it was bisecting the moon. The entire process took about 30 seconds or less.

(Okay, geek that I am, I need to give a better estimate of how long it took. The moon subtends an angle of about half a degree. It takes 12 hours to traverse 180 degrees (less than 12 hours at this time of year, but also less than 180 degrees. And anyway, that traversal rate is going to be constant, I think, so we can safely use those numbers. And if I'm wrong, it's close enough.) So that's four minutes to traverse one degree. I watched the wire go from touching to bisecting the moon, so that's a quarter of a degree, so about one minute. A little longer than I'd estimated.)

Voting

2009-11-03T05:40:00.000-08:00

I went to vote a little after 6AM, just after the polls opened. I commute to New York by train, so I voted early in order to still make a decent train. I also have my weekly light rifle competition tonight, so I didn't want to worry about timing in the evening.

As it turns out, I was voter number 6 in my district.

Cows and sheeps and pigs, oh my!

2009-11-02T14:36:00.000-08:00

I ran across this blog entry today about schoolkids from Harlem being taken to a farm to get an exposure to rural life, including looking at sheep, cows, and other farm animals. What's interesting is that the New York Times reporter spins it as an attempt to raise test scores. Here's a quote:

New York State’s English and math exams include several questions each year about livestock, crops and the other staples of the rural experience that some educators say flummox city children, whose knowledge of nature might begin and end at Central Park. On the state English test this year, for instance, third graders were asked questions relating to chickens and eggs. In math, they had to count sheep and horses.

As the blog points out, this is all well and good if it's part of a commitment to broadening students' horizons, but as a one-day gimmick, it's probably fairly pointless.

To go slightly off-track, this reminds me of something I ran across many years ago that I just didn't understand. The nickname other cyclists had given to Bernard Hinault was "the badger" because of his exceeding competitiveness. I didn't really get it. Couldn't they have nicknamed him after a more suitable animal? I only learned later that badgers are pretty vicious little animals that you wouldn't want to get in a fight with. My lack of cultural education was getting in my way.