Tag: Miscellaneous Gun Stuff

Diplomacy Only Works When You Have Guns to Back You Up

I stumbled upon an excellent post on Borepatch titled Why Britain needs America around to shoot bad guys. More or less it talks about how Europe loves to think of themselves as far more civilized than the United States because they solve their problems through diplomacy and negotiations. Of course this only works for them because they can point to us and say if the other negotiating party doesn’t comply Europe can send their friend (the United States) to beat them up.

My Take on Top Shots

So the first episode of Top Shots aired but fortunately it also appeared on Hulu so I could watch it (I don’t have cable, nor basic, my television is a fancy computer monitor). I watched the first episode last night and figured I’d post my take.

It’s obvious to me that this is a reality T.V. show. The show is definitely banking more on the drama caused by the interaction of characters than the characters’ capabilities with the various firearms. Yes I know that’s how you get ratings but alas I was disappointed in how little historical information was given on each firearm. Normally I’d expect this but being this is airing on the History Channel I was expecting some, you know, history. At the very least it would have been nice if the show would have had a short thirty second clip on each firearm. Nothing special mind you just something to justify this show being on the History Channel.

Like all reality television shows at the end of the episode somebody was “voted off the island.” This was done by having people vote for who they wanted to kick off the show by shooting targets with said person’s name on it. It was obvious to me that the creators of this show were really striving for some relevancy to firearms there.

But this show is primarily about the drama with the shooting and firearms coming in second. I guess I knew that’s how it was going to be since it was a reality T.V. show but I was expecting at least some justification for it being aired on the History Channel. Having this show on the History Channel makes about as much sense as having wrestling on the Sci-Fi channel… oh wait that actually happened.

Yeah I’m disappointed to say the least. If feel bad having to say that since the show does at least portray shooting in a positive light which I really appreciate. But it’s a reality T.V. show and I hate reality television. Likewise it’s a good overall concept, a competition where participants are expected to perform courses of fire with a vast array of different firearms. A lot could be done to appease both your average viewer and gun nuts but the creators seem exclusively focused on average viewers (I don’t really blame them it’s a good move as far as ratings go).

Needless to say I won’t be watching this show but I’m glad it’s on air just for the positive portrayal of the shooting sports. I wish Caleb at Gun Nuts Media luck in the competition. It would be great to see him win.

My First USPSA Match

Last night was my first USPSA match at Oakdale Gun Club. I managed to make it all the way through without getting disqualified which was my primary goal. My score was absolutely atrocious to say the least (I nailed one friendly target twice on the first stage, but I’m pretty sure he said something racist which makes it OK). In fact the scores are already posted and I have no shame so you can find them here. I shot Limited 10 and my score is under Christopher B. You’ll notice on stage four I hate a rating of 0% because of that racist friendly. I didn’t too bad with scoring points (with exception of state four which was my first) it’s just when that time thing was thrown in things didn’t look so good.

I made some observation which I hope to learn from. First adrenaline is a bitch. When it hits everything seems to be moving at a snails pace. Even when I thought I was going slow I was going far too fast. This is what really killed me (and that racist friendly target), I didn’t take it slow and easy even though I thought I did. So my not-pro tip for anybody starting the sport is this, take it dead slow and if you feel like you’re going slow you’re probably still going too fast.

My next observation was when the stage ends check the gun to make sure it’s unloaded. By this I mean really check it. One guy in my squad was disqualified because when the range officer said to drop the hammer his gun fired. When you’re done shooting that’s it you’re no longer being timed. Take a good several seconds to triple check the gun. In fact stick your finger into the chamber to ensure nothing is in there. I state this because the guy had a nice run and it was all for not due to the DQ.

Observation three was simple, have magazines. I brought seven magazines which I figured was going to be overkill but it was certainly nice not having to worry if I was reloading too often. A few guys in my squad only had two magazines and it sucked because they couldn’t perform reloads when moving from stage section to stage section which is kind of your time to get free reloads (meaning you’re not shooting and thus the time is being wasted unless you’re doing something). I had no troubles reloading on the move although I was rather slow at it. It almost always had the gun back in fighting condition by the time I arrived at the next set of targets so I wasn’t too worried.

And that’s what I learned. Either way it was a ton of fun and I can’t wait for next weeks match.

High-Tech Scope

The military wastes no time in finding the next best technology to blow enemies away. It should come as no surprise the military is looking at making their snipers even more precise than they are now. Right now they are looking into some really bad ass sounding optics:

The “One Shot” program originally aimed to give snipers the power to hit a target from 2000 meters away in winds as high as 40 miles per hour. In the first phases of the 3-year-old program, shooters used prototype rifles dressed with lasers and fancy computer hardware to do damage from 1,100 meters away in 18-mile-an-hour winds. The scope-mounted lasers can “see” wind turbulence in the path of the bullet and feed the data to computers, enabling real-time calculation of — and compensation for — the wind-blown trajectory.

That just sounds like all sorts of awesome right there. I think it goes without saying that I want one.

Evolving Iron Sights

The Firearm Blog has a post about a new iron sight idea. The new system used a lens and “zone plates” and allows the user to focus on both the front sight and target at the same time.

It looks like an interested idea with certain applications for target shooting. I don’t think I’d put such a device on my defensive firearms simply because if you break the lens I imagine the sighting system would be useless. But this thing looks cool regardless.