USCCA Concealed Carry Map

You have to give then an email address but it might be worth it for this "important, free tool".  

You can download the map here. 

Shoulder Holsters

 

Don’t Overlook Using A Shoulder Holster

I've never actually used a shoulder holster before but this seemed like pretty good information if you wanted to know more about them. 

 

Warning Shots are worthless

Armed homeowner quickly learns firing shot into ground won't scare off intruder moving toward him.

Warning shots are a bad idea, waste valuable time and are often illegal.  Shoot to stop the threat - period.

A spouse who can shoot is a force multiplier

"All too often, among married couples, the husband is the firearms enthusiast and the one interested in personal defense, while the wife tends to rely on that protection. Unfortunately, things don’t always work out so well when that kind of thinking prevails. "

Make It A Team Effort

HT: NRA Shooting Illustrated

 

 

News you can use

Multiple sales in one transaction can result in a visit from the Feds.

ATF Shows Up At Your Door (DON'T DO THIS!)

HT: USCCA

 

More free advice from the USCCA

Free guide for post-shooting behavior from the USCCA

Free is good, right?

Self-Defense Screw Ups

In his recent article 6 Ways Good Guys Screw Up in Self-Defense Situations, John Boch outlines several ways that folks put themselves in danger in a defensive shooting both from the perp and the law.  Great insight into a mindset that will serve you well in your self-defense journey.  Definately take the time to read it. 

From our friends at TTAG.

Know What To Say — And What Not To Say

Pulling the trigger in a defensive situation ends one problem and begins another one.  First important takeaway in this article is to NOT have a gun in your hand when law enforcement arrives.  Good advice, right?  Lots more HERE.

HT: TTAG

Four Rules

If you've been around firearms for even a short time you know there are four basic rules of firearms safety.  Here's a particularly catchy way to remember them.  

HT: NAAGA

 

Analysis Paralysis

This article is obviously about radios but the diagnosis and prescriptions are the same for firearms.  Define as well as you can what you want to do with your gun, narrow down available choices online and through friends then head on down to your local gunstore and put you hands on them to find out which one feels best to you.  You'll learn more pertinent information from this exercise than you can from hours of YouTube videos.  Follow your heart. 

HT: The SWLing Post

Laughing Wolf: Thoughts on buying your first gun

Preparedness blogger Laughing Wolf has some good ideas on how to think about things before buying your first weapon.  He uses the term "weapon" a lot as most folks trained by the military do while we suburbanites prefer the term "firearm" or just "gun", but no matter.  Solid information all around.

HT: Instapundit

A Very Lucky Woman

I just shot him out of the house': Woman who never fired her gun before wounds burglar who's now behind bars — and she tells other women to get armed, too

Buying a gun and then sticking it in a drawer for that "just in case" situation is like buying a car but waiting until you have to take someone to the emergency room to figure out how to drive it. Not particularly smart.  Glad she's well and good on her but the obituary pages of newspapers across the country are littered with the stories of people who weren't so lucky.  Just sayin'. 

 

 

Gun Sales still strong

 

LINK

Little guns hurt your hand!

A lot of folks will come into the store with little idea of what kind of gun they want.  Now that's fine of course.  You have to have seen a YouTube video or two to really be an "expert"/sarc. Most of them will want "just something small to start with".  What these folks don't yet realize is that small guns produce more felt recoil and are generally harder to shoot because you can't really get your whole hand on them.  

Recoil is a function of the size of the powder charge in the cartridge (the bang) and the weight it has to move before that bang gets to your hand.  "Felt" or "perceived" recoil is what you feel in your hand.  Any given cartridge, say a 9mm with a 115 grain (weight) bullet goes boom the same way no matter what gun it's properly loaded in.  It follows then that the difference in the recoil you feel is a function of the weight of the gun. Further, that recoil can be spread across a larger or smaller surface of your hand depending on the size of the gun (the gun's grip) and how you lay your hands on it (your grip). Smaller guns, like a Ruger LCP, Smith &Wesson 380 Bodyguard or any small revolver have smaller grips and less weight and will produce a lot more felt recoil than say a 1911 or any 5" barreled Duty gun which are both much bigger and heavier.   

This is important because I've seen folks get one of these smaller guns to learn to shoot with only to be massively turned-off by the recoil.  They'll generally shoot a round or two then put the handgun down on the bench, pack it up and you never see them again. It doesn't have to be that way.  Your handgun-buying experience will always be a choice between a smaller, more concealable gun that takes expertise to shoot well and a larger gun that shoots wonderfully but makes you look and feel like you have a small boulder on your hip.  

It would probably not suprise you to know my solution to this dilemma is to buy one of each.

Initial Perspective

It's always been true I suppose, but the Covid/Riot panic of 2020/2021 really revealed how much humans are the pretty much the same regardless of demographic group.  Most adults will remember the time.  We were only a few weeks into "two weeks to flatten the curve" and we were seeing Washington DC and other major cities in flames during the George Floyd riots nightly on the news.  Old folks like me had flashbacks to the 60's and the civil unrest of that era.  But even without the flashbacks, most folks knew that these were NOT normal times.  And so they came...

Little old ladies who thought it might be a good idea to have a little gun for protection "just in case." Young suburbanites with even younger kids who wanted "options".  Older guys who suddenly realized they needed to "man-up" or at least try to.  Teens who were convinced they'd save themselves with a rifle exactly like the one they saw in a video game.  They were tall and short, fat and skinny, black, brown, yellow, red, white and even a few who were a light shade of green. Gay, straight or somewhere in between - it didn't matter - they were ALL scared.  And they're still coming in though not in the numbers they were at that time.  The panic has been replaced with a low-grade unease as folks learn to cope with what looks for all the world like the end of civilization as we've grown to know it.  

Like most normal folks, I'll be looking out for me and mine.  That said, GrandMa and I have a little "wisdom" in the area of firearms and firearms culture and if posting it up here helps folks get a solid grip on the choices they have in their future we're glad to help.  

Be safe, have fun.

G Pa