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Category: COOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You’ve spent a lot of time and money to attend professional shooting classes. Why wouldn’t you listen to the instructors? Photo: B.T. Wheat
Every profession has “that guy” — the one who always must know the most, have the best experience, did it bigger and better and on and on and on.
It is my pleasure to greet each class on Training Day One (TD1) at Gunsite Academy. I consider it a great opportunity and honor and a highlight of my week. As we discuss the history of Gunsite, the highlights of their class, where the necessary amenities are located and more, I warn them about “that guy.”
Best Of The Best
Gunsite has some of the best instructors in the firearms training world. As our founder, the late Lt. Col. Jeff Cooper said: “They have seen the elephant.” One does not buy their way to being a Gunsite Instructor, they earn it. And it is a tough ticket to punch.
I ask the students on the first morning to keep an open mind when their instructors suggest methods of shooting to them differing from what the student currently uses. Try this stance, try this grip, let’s move your trigger finger a bit, have you considered a different firearm? The vast majority are open-minded and eager to listen to try to improve their gun handling, marksmanship and mindset.
However, we occasionally have “that guy or gal.” Gunsite Rangemaster to student: “Let’s modify your body position a bit.” Student looks at Rangemaster: “This is the way I’ve always done it.” Sigh … “Let’s modify your grip a bit.” Student: “This is the way my grandfather/dad/husband told me to do it.” Gunsite Rangemaster — How about you consider a different firearm that might fit your hand better?” “Student — “This is the gun my spouse told me to use and was best” or “This is the one the guy at the gun counter said would work well.”
As an aside — Never try to teach a family member or spouse to drive a stick shift, paddle a canoe or shoot.
Further, men should never try to purchase their lady’s gun purse, holster or firearm without them present. Find a suitable trainer and let them do it. Trust me on this …
You saved and saved your money, found the perfect firearm, picked your course, arranged for the vacation from work, purchased the plane ticket or fuel, rented a car, got the hotel, bought meals but now you want to do it “your way.” What is the point? Did you come to learn, or simply visit?
A shooting class might just puncture several of your long-held beliefs but in the spirit of learning, always try the instructor’s suggestions. You can always disregard them if they don’t work.
The Bottom Line
Let me make this simple — Why did you send us all the money? If you are going to do it the way you’ve always done it, why are you here? You could have stayed home and shot at soda cans out at grandpa’s farm. You really wouldn’t learn anything but you won’t here either, if you don’t let yourself.
What may have been cutting edge 15 years ago is no longer. Despite what inter web pundits say, The Modern Technique developed by Jeff Cooper 50 years ago has and continues to evolve. Techniques and technologies change, and good instructors know this and teach this.
Please heed the tried-and-true advice to “Listen and Do.”
Men — Put on your thick skin for what I am about to tell you. Women are better students than men as they truly “Listen and Do.” Us men folk tend to not ask directions, open the instruction manual or even look on YouTube.
We know all there is to know about everything. Ladies listen to our suggestions, do it, and discover it works. Some of the men require a switch to cut off the Juniper tree on the back of their calves.
More Than Words
I go to different schools. When I go, I pay my money to learn their way. Many years ago I returned to Bill Rogers School in rural Georgia. Bill shoots Isosceles and I prefer Weaver.
However, I tried to listen and do. Billy, the experienced Coach, kept coming up and adjusting my arm. The old Range master (God rest his soul, Ronnie Dodd) yelled at Billy: “Leave him alone. He’s hitting.” My response was for him to smack me on the side of the head as I came to learn the Rogers way.
All jesting aside, if you take nothing else from GUNS this month, whenever you go to that favorite class, heed their advice and try their methods. You might be surprised and find it works for you. If not, tuck it away in the tactical toolbox inside your brain as you might need it a later time. More simply put: Don’t be “That Guy!”
My guess is that the powers that be are warming up the local firing squad as you read this. As this looks like a major face losing FUBAR to me! Grumpy
Records of loud explosions heard on Seneca Lake date back to the 17th century, but they had become the subject of myth and folklore long before that. The Seneca people, a Native American tribe that lived around the lake, believed the booms to be the voice of a god angry at the warriors who had defiled their sacred hunting grounds, while early pioneers believed them to be drums being played by the spirits of soldiers who lost their lives in the War for Independence.
It wasn’t until the 20th century that scientific hypotheses started emerging, but none of them were confirmed until 2025, when a team of researchers using advanced equipment mapped the bottom of Seneca Lake.
The original purpose of the survey expedition was to document in high resolution the wrecks of 19th-century steamships and other ships that lay on the floor of Seneca Lake, but with the help of advanced equipment, they also discovered over 140 “pockmarks”.
The diameter of these huge depressions ranged from several tens to several hundred meters. Scientists suspected that the unusual topography on the lakebed was connected to the Seneca Guns phenomenon, but confirmation came earlier this year.
Apparently, gas builds up pressure underground over a long period of time, and when it reaches a limit, it breaks through the bottom of the lake and is released all at once. When the giant bubbles rise to the surface and burst, they create a shock wave that produces a low rumbling sound similar to a cannon shot.
Congress passed the National Firearms Act of 1934 in response to the scourge of the motorized bandit. Dillinger, Barrow, Van Meter, Capone, and others both captivated and terrified the American public. In the face of the media-fueled canard of hypothetical machinegun-toting criminals lurking behind every bush, legislators decided that something simply had to be done.
That something leveraged the taxation powers of the US Congress to effectively end commerce in machineguns, sound suppressors, short-barreled long guns, and destructive devices like cannons and hand grenades.
There is some curious cognitive dissonance at work here. The astute observer will note that the 1st and 2d Amendments to the US Constitution are next door neighbors. The 1st Amendment says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
The courts have interpreted the 1st Amendment to protect, among many other things, pornography in most of its many-splendored Information Age forms. Leave the kids out of it and use consenting adults and images depicting rape, assault, and violent dismemberment distributed via the world’s most advanced digital media are all constitutionally armored up against puritanical molestation.
By contrast, there are places where an American citizen’s constitutional right to own a firearm is restricted into irrelevancy. If we applied the same filters to the 1st Amendment that we do to the 2d, the only speech that would be truly protected would be whatever you might be able to conjure up using an 18th-century steam-driven printing press.
For the sake of discussion, let us ponder a different world—a world that is truly free and unfettered as the Founders clearly intended. Let’s imagine a scenario wherein you don’t need some kind of government writ to drive a car, build a shed, buy a gun, or cut somebody’s hair.
Let’s visualize a hypothetical America without the recognized fifty-four volumes of US Code with its more than 300,000 individual federal laws. In short, let’s fancy firearms without the artificial restrictions imposed by the NFA. What would the ideal home defense gun look like if there truly were no rules?
The Mission
There are 148 million total housing units in the United States. There are roughly one million reported home invasions each annum. That means there is a 1-in-148 statistical chance that your home will be violated in any given year.
The current life expectancy for an American male is 78.4 years. Women live longer than men for obvious reasons. Their life expectancy is a bit north of 81 years.
Statistically speaking, half of all Americans will experience a home invasion over the course of the lifetimes. Some neighborhoods are obviously worse than others, but those are the numbers.
As such, home defense guns are not just marketing hype. Precious few among us can afford a 24/7 live-in cop. How on earth would you keep him in doughnuts? As a result, free folk assume responsibility for our own security. That means a proper home defense arm.
Unlike carry guns, this hypothetical weapon need not be concealable. Weight is a consideration, but not a big one. You won’t be humping this thing on a 15-mile ruck march. It just needs to be sufficiently maneuverable to move easily within the home. So, let’s get started.
Cartridge and Caliber
Caliber selection is not as straightforward as you might think. While there are hundreds if not thousands of options ranging from .22 rimfire up through .50 BMG, caliber selection for the ideal home defense weapon really distills down to either 9mm Para or 5.56mm with a few die hard .45ACP acolytes sprinkled over the top for flavor. The performance of these cartridges in a home defense scenario is a bit counterintuitive.
The concern is typically overpenetration. The reason so few folks opt for the .50BMG round as a home defense tool is that John Browning’s massive counter-balloon cartridge will penetrate end-to-end through most shopping malls. When precious people might be hiding behind a few flimsy sheets of drywall, overpenetration becomes a concern. To a degree, modern technology actually makes that worse.
Most modern high-tech pistol-caliber social bullets spawn from research driven by Law Enforcement. The ideal cop bullet expands reliably but is barrier blind. This means that these souped-up bonded projectiles remain intact when passing through such stuff as clothing, glass, or wall board. That can result in excessive penetration for the responsible home defender.
Recommended
By contrast, those zippy little high-velocity 5.56mm rounds typically go insane upon contact with common building materials, spending their energy expeditiously without punching too deep.
The downside is muzzle blast and noise. Rifle rounds of any sort, particularly when fired out of short barrels, will reliably produce an earth-shaking report while lighting up the night. These are all simply data points in our decision tree. However, I’d still opt for 9mm myself and just maintain my situational awareness.
Barrel Length and Buttstocks
We’ll start with a long gun, because pistols are horrible. Most of us carry them regularly, but a traditional handgun is the toughest of all common firearms to run safely and well. It is innately imprecise in the hands of anyone but a trained professional. We use handguns because rifles are tough to hide underneath shorts and a t-shirt. For home defense purposes, we will start with something that has a decent buttstock.
The original text of the 1934 NFA purportedly included handguns for that onerous $200 tax. Realizing that enterprising Americans would simply cut down their long guns if handguns were banned, the barrel length restrictions were codified in the law.
Handguns were dropped to get the vile thing passed, and nobody thought to get rid of the barrel length dicta. That’s why you can walk out of your local gun emporium with a pocket pistol cash and carry, but cutting the barrel down on grandad’s single-barrel 12-bore to 17 inches can get you ten years in the Big House. If none of that existed, home defense guns would all have short barrels.
How short that barrel gets is always a compromise. The shorter the tube, the slower the bullet and the more egregious the muzzle flash. Longer barrels are more accurate and hard-hitting but tougher in tight corners. Ideally, I’d say eight to ten inches for a pistol-caliber gun is a good compromise.
Sound Suppressors
Of course the ideal home defense arm will have a sound suppressor. It is asinine that we encumber suppressors with so much artificial legislative baggage. You can buy rimfire cans without any ancillary registration in France, of all places. That’s just embarrassing.
Sound suppressors on a gun that is intended to be used indoors are simply intuitive. Nothing about a sound-suppressed tactical firearm is truly silent, but the inclusion of a quality suppressor makes it easier to communicate. The diminution of muzzle flash also enhances both accuracy and control.
Suppressors can be either integral or removable. Removeable cans are just that. Integral suppressors in a 9mm platform often incorporate ported barrels that drop standard supersonic rounds into the subsonic range. In the world of sound-suppressed pistol-caliber firearms, this is as good as it gets.
Giggle Switches
All serious close combat weapons should have selective fire capability. A four-position selector offering a three-round burst option is even better. That having been said, while the option should be there, serious gunmen almost never use it.
The 22d SAS operators who cleared Princes Gate in London in 1980 purportedly terminated most of those Iranian terrorists with a full auto mag dump apiece from their MP5’s. That means not having to say you’re sorry in any of the world’s recognized languages. However, not many of us can run a gun quite so well as might your typical SAS operator.
Serious professionals nowadays train to put semiauto double taps onto their targets in an expeditious fashion. So long as Level III body armor is not in play, this will reliably do the deed. However, retaining the full auto option, especially in a placid pistol-caliber gun, is a no-brainer.
It is Alive!
So, what does that hypothetical ideal home defense weapon actually look like? I would propose that it doesn’t actually exist. In my experience, the HK MP5SD is the most controllable, most precise CQB tool on Planet Earth. However, HK launched the MP5SD in 1974. The gun is overly complicated, it’s old, and it doesn’t readily lend itself to optics or accessories.
The HK UMP launched in 1999. If you haven’t had the pleasure, the UMP (Universal Machine Pistol) is the Glock of submachine guns. It sports a polymer chassis and weighs about five pounds. The UMP is readily configurable between 9mm, .40S&W, and .45ACP while offering a sedate rate of fire and superlative ergonomics. However, it is not integrally suppressed. The UMP will take a can, but only the detachable muzzle sort.
So, in a world without rules, I would approach our buddies at Oberndorf and ask them to build me an integrally-suppressed UMP in 9mm with a ported barrel that rendered standard 9mm rounds subsonic. I’d outfit that hypothetical gun with a combination white tactical light/green laser and a top-flight red dot or Holosight.
I’d secure it against little fingers and stage the gun alongside a couple of spare magazines where I could get to it quickly. Then I’d sleep well knowing that my castle was defended by the finest home defense weapon mankind could contrive.
