Go Silent for Memorial Day

On By Tom LindsayIn Uncategorized1 Comment



SSG Jordan Bear
PFC Payton Jones


 

This Monday is Memorial Day, and I plan to spend the morning as I did last year, shooting the Memorial Day Fundraiser pistol match at Creekside Firing Range in Cartersville, Georgia. Each year for the past seven years, Joe Harris at Creekside has donated all the proceeds of the Memorial Day Fundraiser to the family of a fallen serviceman in the Atlanta area. The Fundraiser includes a steel challenge pistol match in the morning, an auction of shooting gear, and a tactical rifle match in the afternoon.

In addition, at 12:01 PM, I plan to go silent in honor of a fallen US serviceman.
The Iraq and Aghanistan Veterans of America are sponsoring this event, where you can pledge to remember an individual person, and make the moment personal.
I choose to remember two people – SSG Jordan Bear, age 25, of Denver, Colorado, and PFC Payton Jones, age 19, of Marble Falls, Texas.
Both served in Bravo Company of the 2nd Batallion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division, and were killed March 1, 2012, at COP Sangesar, Afghanistan. You can read about their encounter in this New York Times article.
These men, this incident, and this newspaper article hit home for me, because my youngest brother is a SFC in the same unit. In fact, Lieutenant Davis, pictured in the article, is my brother’s Platoon Leader. He has spoken at length with the NYT reporter who wrote this story.

Please consider going to this site and pledging to remember a fallen American.

Blogmeet AAR

On By Tom LindsayIn Blogs, Just For Fun, Molon Labe5 Comments

I was privileged to spend yesterday evening in the company of a number of other bloggers, for dinner and drinks and discourse, all arranged by Mr. and Mrs. Borepatch. The catalyst for it all was Sean Sorrentino’s visit from North Carolina on business. We were joined by Robert of the Second Amendment and Liberty blog, and his wife, and by TerriLiGunn of the ReloadNRetry blog.

As you can imagine from such a diverse crew, the conversation was literally all over the place. Some of the topics included:

Sean’s recent vacation in Europe. Suffice to say I am glad I live in the USA; how we got into shooting, and he we got involved in blogging; military experience, some overt and some covert; the absurdity of languages that assign gender to nouns; hair and lack of it; and how to deal with anti-gunners’ apoplexy over why we choose to carry a gun (thanks to Tam for supplying the consensus approach).

Interestingly absent from the discussions was any kind of caliber preference, either via rifle or handgun. I think we agreed tacitly that the best gun is the one you have.

We are starting to plan some kind of Georgia Blogger Shoot later this spring or summer. We are looking for suitable outdoor venues, and will be exploring them. In the meantime, suggestions are welcome.

Competition as Training, From Someone Who Should Know

On By Tom LindsayIn Competition, IDPA, USPSA

Competition is good. It helps you practice your gun handling skills, and it exposes you to a stressful environment which at least simulates a real world encounter. In the world of pistol competition, there always seems to be a lot of discussion about which pistol sport is more “defensive based” and more “real world” – USPSA or IDPA.

USPSA is the United States Practical Shooting Association, which is the US member of the International Practical Shooting Confederation, or IPSC. It was founded in 1986 as a way to codify the pistol matches that were springing up across the USA.

IDPA is the International Defensive Pistol Association, and it was founded in 1996, as a response by some who felt that IPSC competitions were getting too far from the intended purpose. Namely, the founders didn’t like the IPSC trend toward “race guns,” or guns purpose built for competition, and felt that there should be a sport that required the use of normal carry guns, with stages based on more real world scenarios.

The debate continues today.

Serendipitously, I came across this interesting passage the other day:

The object of practical pistol skill is not to win trophies, but rather to stop fights. Muzzle brakes and reduced loads are backward steps and not to be regarded as progress. When we see the terms “race gun” and “carry gun” as representing two different instruments, we learn that some people at least have lost sight of the object of the exercise.

This comes from none other than the founder of IPSC and its first president, Jeff Cooper.

Interestingly, he goes on.

It is important not to become dogmatic about this.

Whoa. Dogmatic doesn’t even touch some of the “discussion” I hear.

He concludes:

If there is a better way or a better weapon, let’s have it. But I have not seen this developing in pistolcraft, at least not recently. Those of us who have studied the matter deeply understood this a good many years ago. We will change when we are shown why we should, but not until then.

In this light, the recent trend in USPSA toward the Production division is certainly welcome.

So, if you’re serious about shooting, you should be competing, both to build defensive skills, and to do so in a stressful environment. It seems clear that it doesn’t matter which sport you choose, as long as you keep your goals in mind. The rules may be different, but the goal should be the same.

If we get away from the original intent, however, we risk making it into something it isn’t suited to be, and something it wasn’t meant to be.