Closing out 2011.


Tomorrow night we'll be celebrating the arrival of the New Year and looking back at what 2011 has wrought. I, for one, am glad that 2011 is almost behind us (and on Monday you'll discover one of the reasons why!)

I look forward to 2012 with both elation and trepidation. This next year will bring a presidential election that is already shaping up to be one of the most hideous of recent memory, in the midst of a fragile economy and growing discontent amongst the citizenry. The threat of violence on a large scale has never been as high as it is right now, and giving some attention to your own personal protection plans would be a prudent resolution to make this weekend.

On a more optimistic note, there are a lot of really neat things in the works for 2012! I hope to kick the new year off by breaking some big news in January, and if the rumors I'm hearing are true the upcoming SHOT Show may hold some great things for revolver enthusiasts.

In the next couple of months I’ll be adding a new lever action class to my course offerings, as well as a few other surprises - including videos!

Enjoy your weekend, celebrate safely and sanely, and check back in on Monday for a raucous and somewhat tongue-in-cheek blog entry - one sure to get some people's blood pressure up!

-=[ Grant ]=-
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Monday Meanderings: Happy Holidays, looking forward, and the gun goes mainstream.


Welcome back!

I trust everyone had a good weekend, and I hope your Christmas was a joyous and meaningful time with family and friends.

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From news stories it was apparent that firearms were a major item this year. Various explanations have been suggested for this, from concern about new purchase restrictions to fear of economically-inspired criminal violence, but I prefer to think of it as a sign that the pendulum has inevitably swung: guns are once again becoming socially acceptable.

Those who remember the 1950s and 1960s will recall that shooting was a big thing amongst the Hollywood crowd, and thus with the general public as well. Actor Robert Stack, for instance, was a champion shotgunner, and many recognizable names participated in 'quick draw' competitions as a hobby. This stands in stark contrast to recent decades when Hollywood has been the source of virulent (and hypocritical) anti-gunners.

I’m not yet convinced that the era of guns-as-common-recreational-objects will be resurrected, but they at least seem to have shed the worst of their manufactured reputation as evil objects to be avoided. The gun seems instead to be assuming the role of the speciality tool: something you own or use to do a specific task. The days of the anthropomorphized, self-propelled mayhem machine appear to be waning, and none too soon. Many people - yours truly included - have been equating the gun with the fire extinguisher or first aid kit, and I'm hopeful that those analogies are helping to fuel this resurgence in gun ownership.

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This last week before New Year's Day is a good time for reflection and contemplation. From the standpoint of you and your family's safety and security, I hope you'll give some thought to getting good training in the coming year.

What is "good" training? Training which is congruent with the kinds of situations in which you anticipate using your gun. If you carry a handgun for personal protection, a course that teaches the best response to a surprise criminal attack would be advisable; if you keep a gun for home defense, a class on how to handle the scenarios you're likely to face in your own house might be in order.

There are any number of quality classes and instructors available today, more so than probably any time in history. (
Permit me to toot my own horn in this regard!) Resolve to make 2012 the year that you increase your knowledge and skill level with the guns you own.

(If you're an instructor yourself, there will be opportunities for you to advance your teaching skills and professional standing. Take advantage of them.)

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And now, a little tease: the first Friday of the new year will feature a really neat Ed Harris article which I just received. All I'm going to say is wait until you see what he got for Christmas!

-=[ Grant ]=-
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Steven Paul Jobs, 1955-2011.




-=[ Grant ]=-
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Wednesday Wanderings.


Sorry for not having a post on Monday. If you tried to check in, you probably found that the site was down. My hosting company, Dreamhost, experienced a system-wide outage on Monday which took down all of their client sites as well as their own. My site came back up, sporadically, sometime Monday afternoon. It wasn't until Tuesday night, however, that I could actually get access to upload anything. Everything seems to be back to normal (knock on wood.)

First things first: On Monday I taped an interview with Doc Wesson for the
Gun Nation Podcast. He'll be playing it tonight on a LIVE streaming podcast episode he's calling "The Wheel Of Love". It starts at 9:pm EDT, and you can listen live at this link. He'll even be taking call-ins (which gives me an idea...)

Yesterday Breda over at
The Breda Fallacy posted a little rant about lightweight snubnose revolvers for women. Tam picked it up this morning. I read both and agreed with pretty much everything they said, but I had this odd feeling I'd read it all before. Oh, now I remember! That's because I've written the same thing. More than once. More than twice. Great minds? Well, I don't know that I can claim to have one, but they certainly do. (If you listen to the Gun Nation podcast tonight, you'll probably hear me tell Doc that the snubnose revolver is an 'expert's weapon', not something for a beginner.)

In a previous life I dealt with police reports on a fairly regular basis, and I was always amused at the language and syntax in the writing. One Deputy, who was forever on 'the outs' with his supervisors for not playing the game, was once reprimanded for using the phrase "I watched him...” instead of the more official-sounding "I observed as the suspect..." This memory came back when I read a
Miami Herald article about a Florida Highway Patrol firearms instructor who was shot in the derriere by her supervisor. The official report was that the supervisor was 'inspecting' the weapon, which is apparently FHP-speak for "screwing around with". Were I in charge I'd be sorely tempted to allow Trooper Mellow Scheetz ('Mellow'? Seriously?) a penalty kick at her supervisor's privates, just to bring home the lesson, then do some remedial safety training that doesn’t allow for the “but I thought it was unloaded!” defense.

That's it for today. Be sure to check out the podcast this evening!

-=[ Grant ]=-
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Yet another reason I don't watch reality TV.


I spent this weekend assisting at a defensive rifle class with Georges Rahbani, and sometime during the weekend thought of a great article for today.

Then I forgot what it was.

My usual habit is to carry, in the left pocket of my shirt, a small pad and a mechanical pencil. When I have an idea I jot it down, thus preserving it for a time when I can make use of it. That's assuming, of course, that I remember to look at the thing!

The weather was pretty warm this weekend (about 90 degrees) and we were in the sun for most of the two days. I'd shed my normal pocketed button-front shirt for a more comfortable short sleeved Henley. My pad and pencil, of course, was in the regular shirt and when the aforementioned great idea struck, I was without a means to record it. Thus this morning's rambling version of "my dog ate my homework!"

Luckily Chris over at
The Anarchangel posted something worthy of commentary. Go read it, then come back for a little discussion.

I tuned in for the first episode of Top Shot, recognized it as yet another overblown social manipulation festival common to reality television, and promptly turned it off. My spare time is quite limited and I have to make hard decisions about what I do with it. Even with guns and shooting Top Shot didn't make my cut, so I didn't know what transpired until Chris filled me in.

Those who live in landlocked states probably have no concept of just what the United States Coast Guard does. Here in Oregon, where Coast Guard helicopters and rescue crews are a common sight, we have a deep appreciation for the sacrifices those men and women make. Despite being ridiculed (or even worse, ignored) they go out and do their job to the best of their ability every day of the week.

Those in the other services are only in danger when they've been activated and deployed, and their tours of deployment are limited in duration (a good thing, do not misunderstand.) The USCG is always on deployment, whether doing rescue work, interdicting smugglers, or protecting our Navy's operations in foreign ports. (That's right - when the U.S. Navy needs help, they call the Coast Guard!) When I was growing up it was widely said that you were more likely to be killed in the Coast Guard in peacetime than in the infantry during wartime. While that may not be literally true, it serves to illustrate the tough job USCG does.

Much of that is because the nature of their missions requires them to always be in harm's way. One of their primary duties is to protect lives in America's waters, and here in Oregon they do so constantly. The USCG's rescue swimmers and helicopter pilots are the best that can be found; until you've witnessed a Dolphin SAR helicopter hovering nearly motionless just feet away from a cliff face, in high winds and torrential rain, you have little appreciation for the skill of those crews. I don't know where one goes to recruit such people, but they must have ice water injected into their veins upon enlistment. They are amazing to watch, and when they appear on scene there is a very strong feeling of relief - even if you're not the subject of their attention.

So, to Caleb and all the other past and present members of the United States Coast Guard, and especially to those stationed here in Oregon, thank you. We appreciate your service, your sacrifice, and above all your professionalism.

-=[ Grant ]=-
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Memorial Day.


I hope everyone enjoys their three-day weekend, but do take a least a moment to reflect on why this holiday exists. Nothing maudlin, no overblown sentimentality, just a request that you think about it for at least a few moments as you fire up the grill.

-=[ Grant ]=-
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Some news from the first day of SHOT.


The 2010 SHOT Show is just getting started. I've compiled some of the more interesting (to me) tidbits about Day One from around the 'net:

S&W GOES TO THE DARK SIDE: I'm surprised that there's not more noise about the new Bodyguard .38. It's a real departure for S&W, having a cylinder that rotates clockwise like a Colt, an integral laser sight, and an ambidextrous cylinder release. There's a good picture of it at Massad Ayoob's blog.

THE RHINO GOES PUBLIC: Chiappa is showing the Rhino revolver in short and long barrels. Here's a pic from Jeff Quinn at Gunblast - those wood grips look great!

A DARN SIGHT BETTER: S&W has introduced a version of the 640, one of my favorite guns, with very prominent tritium sights. While I'm relatively agnostic with regards to glow-in-the-dark feature, the large front and deep rear blades sights should erase one of the Centennial's few criticisms. Again, a good pic from Gunblast. (Are my eyes deceiving me, or is there no internal lock??!)

FLYWEIGHT SHOTGUN: Mossberg has introduced the Model 510, which is a very scaled-down pump shotgun chambered in .410 and 20 gauge. According to Mas Ayoob, it "weighs only five pounds, if that." As you may recall I'm a big fan of the 20 gauge, and I'll be interested in taking a look at this. (Mas' picture makes it look tiny, but the guy holding it isn't exactly a lightweight...)

UH-OH: It wasn't all milk and honey for S&W. The FBI arrested 21 people at SHOT, including a S&W sales exec, for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The indictments were handed down on December 11, but only unsealed yesterday. (Interesting choice of timing and venue, don't you think?) Note the second line of the Reuters story: "21 arrested at Las Vegas gun show" Naaah, no message being sent to the masses there...

COLT OPENS THE DOOR??: Check out this little tidbit, courtesy of Massad Ayoob:

"A Colt exec told me that rumors of a new double action revolver from this fabled old company are false…for now. He indicated, however, that both plans and equipment are in place for this to happen, somewhere down the road."

This doesn't sound like the Python is coming back, but it's intriguing nonetheless.

-=[ Grant ]=-
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Monday meanderings.


THAT TIME OF THE YEAR: I hope everyone had a great (as in safe and happy) Christmas weekend. I hope you'll accept my sincere wishes for a happy New Year - may 2010 be a darn sight better than 2009!

HERE WE GO AGAIN: Maryville, TN has had a couple of accidental shooting deaths in the past weeks. Both incidents involved guns that (brace yourselves) people thought "were unloaded." The Maryville Police Chief, one Tony Crisp, concludes that people just weren't pretending hard enough:

"Treat a gun as always being a loaded gun," he said. "Once you cleared it, check it again."

A more nonsensical statement I cannot imagine! I hope that you will save me the trouble of tearing it apart by seeing for yourself the logic failures therein. How much better it would have been had he taken the opportunity to do some
real education by saying something like: "never point a gun - any gun, loaded or unloaded - at anything you're not willing to shoot. Don't let anyone around you do so, either."

SOMEONE ELSE FOR A CHANGE: A couple years back I made an offhand remark about Charter Arms guns. That one little sentence generated a ton of hate mail, including some from Charter's president/owner and their largest distributor. Well, M.D. Creekmore over at thesurvivalistblog.net made a more pointed statement regarding Charter's "quality", and he too heard from Charter's owner. It's in the comments; scroll to the bottom.

-=[ Grant ]=-
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Yes, there are people who still think this is a good idea

Xavier Thoughts chronicles the story of an elderly gentleman who, using his gun, confronted a burglar in his home. The outcome was that the perp got sent to jail. Great, right? Well, maybe not. This may get ugly when the inevitable civil suit is filed.

You see, the perp was injured because the homeowner fired an unaimed "warning shot" which fragmented and struck the intruder. As if that wasn't bad enough in these litigious times, the gentleman couldn't help running his mouth on television, which didn't do any good in terms of his legal defense.

I'll leave the analysis to Xavier, who does a much better job than your humble correspondent. I will, however, leave you with this thought: this is exactly why I strongly encourage anyone who even contemplates keeping a firearm for self-defense to take
Judicious Use of Deadly Force from Massad Ayoob at the Lethal Force Institute. Had this fellow done so, he wouldn't have left himself open for what will probably be a whale of a civil lawsuit.

-=[ Grant ]=-
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On Virginia Tech

At first, I wasn't going to comment on the sad crime perpetrated on the campus of Virginia Tech this week. I figured that everyone, everywhere, was going to do so (with varying degrees of erudition and insight.) I decided there wasn't anything I could add. Until...

Listening to the news on the radio, I heard an interview with two students who said that they were in "the room where he was shooting." According to these people, students and faculty were hiding under and behind anything in the room that they felt would provide them some protection, or flat on the floor in the absence of same.

It's what they said next that prompted me to comment: as the gunman shot, he naturally ran out of ammunition, and had to stop to refill his magazines. After taking the time to refill then reload his weapon, he continued his unfettered spree.

He was out of ammunition, and had stopped to reload - why didn't someone,
anyone, in the room take that golden opportunity to tackle the murderer? At that point the criminal couldn't shoot anyone, and the risk even to the person who would choose that course of action would have been relatively minor compared to letting him get his firearm back up and running.

The answer is as obvious as it is sad: our society has fully inculcated the victimhood and helplessness mentalities into the last several generations of people. They didn't do anything because they have been taught their entire lives to rely on someone - anyone - else for their safety and well being.

This is what the nanny state has given us. This is what our Founding Fathers, I think, understood when they listed the natural right to keep and bear arms in their Constitution: yes, it's about the ability to resist tyrannical governments. More importantly, though, is the
choice inherent in the right.

You see, it's not the exercise of the right in and of itself that matters; it's the existence of the
choice to exercise the right that is so very important. Even if one chooses not to exercise the right, in making the choice one has experienced the self-actualization that leads to great inner strength and a heightened sense of self-worth. The very personal decision - no matter what the decision itself is - is what makes for citizens who are self reliant, who can think for themselves, and cannot be corralled like sheep.

When the "transaction cost" of the individual choice is raised - when the ability to decide for oneself is restricted or controlled in any manner - the choice is made not by the individual, but by someone else. The benefits of making the decision are denied the individual, and he/she learns (bit by bit) how to be a subject rather than a sovereign individual. Given long enough, an entire people is conditioned to be subordinate themselves to authority figures; when the "badge" of "authority" is the firearm, the people will prostrate themselves to anyone who wields one. Even a crazed killer.

Milton Friedman was right.

-=[ Grant ]=-
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On pairing women with guns

This article in the Tennessean newspaper explores the "phenomenon" of women who choose to carry a gun for their own protection. It's an interesting read, and when I saw it I was reminded of my own wife's journey to self-empowerment (in the ballistic sense.)

I'm of the belief that women should always be proactive with regards to their own safety. Sadly, our current society has inculcated a fear of weapons into the collective conscious of the female half of the population. It takes real fortitude for a lady to swim against that tide and arm herself, and I salute those who choose to do so.

Drawing from my own wife's experience I've formed some very specific opinions on the topic of introducing women to shooting. Guys, if there is a woman in your life who has decided to travel down the road of self protection, I offer you
Grant's Rules For Helping Ladies Who Want To Shoot.

1) Don't try to teach her yourself. Aside from passing on bad habits that you have (I don't care if you did qualify as "expert" when you were in the Army), it's difficult to impart what you do right no matter how sincere your desire to help.

Women learn differently than men; precious few men understand this, and even fewer understand how to teach to it. It's not uncommon for women to become extremely frustrated under these conditions, and give up entirely. It may not happen until the lessons are over - you may never know of the damage you've done. Let someone else - someone who is experienced teaching women - do this for you. It doesn't mean you're any less of a man, and it just might save you some grief.

2) Rule #1 is increased by a factor of 10 if she is your GF or wife! Ignore this at your peril!
I am not kidding!

3) If possible, get her to a women's only class that is actually taught by a female instructor. (If you're on the west coast, I highly recommend that you take advantage of the women's only classes taught by
Gila Hayes at the Firearms Academy of Seattle. She's tops. Seriously.)

4) Don't pick her gun for her. So many times a woman, bowing to the desires of the man who proffers her shooting advice (solicited or otherwise), ends up with a lightweight titanium or scandium revolver that is incredibly ill-suited for her physical makeup. The recoil is brutal (hey, even I don't like shooting them), and their stock triggers can be difficult for petite forefingers to actuate. Yes, you could send it to me and have that problem eased, but let her decide if it is right for her!

(Listen, if you've read my blog for any length of time you know that I'm a rabid proponent of the revolver for personal protection. As far as I'm concerned, there isn't a problem extant that a good revolver can't solve. Even so, I acknowledge an autoloader is often the better choice for a woman.) The very best thing you can do is curb your own opinions and take her to a gun range that rents guns, where she can pick her own way through the models. If she picks an autoloader, it won't hurt my feelings. (Not for long, anyhow.) The important thing is that it be her own choice.

Following these simple rules will result in an excited new shooter and harmony at home (where appropriate.)

-=[ Grant ]=-
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The amazing self-destructing revolvers


Many people have been following the situation with the North Carolina Dep't of Corrections and their self-destructing S&W revolvers. If you haven't,
here's a link to the story.

These pictures of one such occurrence have been floating around the net:

Pasted Graphic 79

Pasted Graphic 80

I've been exchanging emails with C.E. "Ed" Harris, who many will remember from his days as the head of Q.C. at Ruger - when they experienced a similar problem. Here's what he had to say:

"Old problem rearing its ugly head again, not really a new problem. A troublesome sporadic one when people forget about good shop practices and get sloppy.

Stress corrosion cracking is generally caused by contamination by solvents or cutting fluids too high in chlorides. Over-torquing barrels barrels creates a stress rise at the root of the thread which makes the problem worse. Microscopic examination of the failed barrels would be obvious to a competent
engineer, especially familiar to those with aerospace or nuclear power systems experience.

Ruger had a short run of this back in the 1980s when they first starting making stainless magnums. I saw a few dozen guns come back when I worked there. All were traced to one guy on night shift who was over-torquing barrels on Redhawks which didn't quite line up, instead of taking a pass off the front of the frame on a Blanchard grinder as he should have done. He also used a wrong, slippery high sulphur thread lubricant intended for chrome-moly instead of the anti-seize compound used with SS.

This condition is aggravated by tight fit of barrel threads, such as when using a class 3A, combined with high stress, high temperature, and high barrel torque. Ruger fixed their problem by changing to a looser 2A fit on the barrel threads and assembling barrels to the frames using a Loctite product to cement them solidly while reducing stress on the threads and positively preventing any seepage of cleaning solvents into the barrel threads after they left the factory."



If true, this wouldn't be the first time S&W has over-torqued a barrel: the Model 442 Airweight Centennials, particularly in nickel finish, are somewhat notorious for frame cracks under the barrel. A phone conversation with a S&W representative confirmed to me that the cracked frames were caused by barrels that had been screwed in "too tightly."

However, there's always the possibility of
user error, such as the use of certain products that contain chlorine compounds (brand name removed for obvious reasons):

"Use of [lubricants containing chlorine compounds] "could" do it, as could any number of other cleaners, especially if used with an ultrasonic which enhances thread penetration."

There are certain "miracle" gun lubricant products out there that contain chlorine compounds, and have become popular amongst the more "martial" crowd. In addition, ultrasonic cleaners have been very popular at many police agencies over the last decade or so.

Well, I got an email from one of the employees at the agency, and he claims that they use Hoppes bore cleaner, and that they do not have an ultrasonic!

So we're back to the first possibility. Given Ed's expertise, I suspect that his analysis is the correct one.

-=[ Grant ]=-
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