Second Amendment Blog Bash

Check out the Gun Nuts Radio Blog to view our day at ParaUSA, in beautiful pictures.

This post was written by Caleb and was originally posted on Call Me Ahab. Reposted with permission.

Is better than a great day at work. And I proved that today.

I learned a valuable lesson today. I suck. I suck bad. I need to really practice a lot more. In fact, I’d venture to say I was near the worst shooter here.

It turns out, shooting at static targets using the weaver stance at the indoor range doesn’t translate well into the kinds of shooting I did today. I didn’t do too bad when I moved and shot, in fact I did well in that phase, but I couldn’t hit the Earth shooting at 25 yards.

Todd Jarrett was very patient with me. The man is a machine and a great teacher. I used to use a weaver stance, but I’ve seen the light. Isosceles (a word which my spell check tried to correct as Missiles Assholes Disposables Snowshoes) is how I roll from now on.

And the man had a magic marker - two sets of marks on our hands to show how to hold the pistol and where to grip it. And the shit worked like a charm. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a natural feel, and the tendons in my hands and arms are paying the price for my lack of vision, but it was amazing how quickly your front sight popped back on your target.

I also learned that ‘riding the trigger’ hurts you more than it helps. On the Glock, I’ve been trying to release the trigger just right until I felt the detent release. Not gonna do that any more.

Finally, I have to admit that I need to pay a hell of a lot less attention to the trigger and focus on my front sight. When I listened to everything Todd told me and let the trigger break without me knowing it, I hit exactly where the sight was. This is also why I did better shooting on the move - I didn’t have time to pay attention to the trigger.

I made one hell of a mistake this morning. I pointed my muzzle completely to my left, and got an earful from Mr. Jarrett. It took me a while to forgive myself for such a stupid mistake, but eventually I did. Firearms safety is something I take very seriously and to make such a monumental goof was embarrassing. Luckily, it was nothing more than an empty pistol, but luck isn’t something you can rely on to keep everyone safe.

Today wasn’t a day of great shooting. But it was a great day of shooting for sure. I learned a lot, realized I’m not as good of a shooter outside of my comfortable little indoor range, and that it’s time to do more competitive shooting to get better.

In fact, today, even as I sit here sore of muscles and blistered of hands, I would easily go through it all again. I learned more today in how to shoot a gun than probably the whole of my life teaching myself.

And I’ve pulled a muscle smiling from it.

This post was written by Robb Allen and was originally posted on Sharp as a Marble. Reposted with permission.

Shooting accurately is pretty easy. Use a proper grip, focus on your front sight, and squeeze (don’t jerk!) the trigger. Getting these things to all come together for every shot is the challenge.

Todd Jarrett has been an excellent teacher. He’s very personable and employs a hands on approach. He started the morning by illustrating a proper grip, and marking our hands with a Sharpie so we could quickly see if we were maintaining it or not. Such a simple act made an amazing difference. I never gave much thought to accurately shooting a non-competition pistol, with open sights, from 25 yards and having a meaningful grouping. Today I learned that if you manage to do things they way they should be done, you can do just that. Not perfect, but better than I expected from myself.

Then, it was time to move on to bigger and more challenging things. First, shooting on the move. Then, shooting moving targets. Got that down? Now let’s combine the two…and then throw in some barricades and include enough shots that several re-loads are necessary to complete the stage. While I certainly didn’t come away with any perfect scores on these set-ups, they were a blast to run.

After thoroughly crudding up our guns for the last two days, we finally got around to cleaning them at the end of the day today. I had never taken down a 1911 style pistol before. It’s slightly more complicated that my Sigma, but I’m certain that after seeing it done once, I could now repeat it myself. Of course, when we were all done cleaning them, we still had just a few minutes until we were due for chow. So we promptly began to make them dirty again.

While I agree that the problem mentioned by Joe Huffman shouldn’t be solved by telling users “Don’t do that”, my own habits have (so far) not made this an issue for me. I also agree with Sebastian’s assessment of the seeming redundancy of a thumb safety on a DA gun, but hopefully proper technique will help me avoid this issue as well.

Is this the “perfect gun”? No. Do I like it, and believe that it will be both fun and reliable for the way I intend to use it? Absolutely. And since my lovely wife has given me her blessing, I’m like a kid on Christmas Eve, waiting for the day this pistol will be back in my hands, in my own home, where I expect it will remain for quite some time.

Other smaller highlights included the pimped out rides provided to us courtesy of Blackwater, and the thrill of running off rounds by the dozen, only to have more cases of ammo show up on the table.

Please check out the pictures at armed_citizen’s place!

This post was written by armed_citizen and was originally posted on Gun Truth. Reposted with permission.

We moved on to two shot drills from the holster on steel, then shooting from 25 yards. After lunch it was shooting on the move. We were moving, the steel was moving, and during the last stage we had two movers, three stationary plates, twelve falling plates, four barricades and pink flamingos. Okay, no pink flamingos but they would have fit right in. It took most of us six or seven mags to get through that stage.

It was a great day, and for tomorrow, we get the shoot house.

This post was written by JR and was originally posted on A Keyboard & a .45. Reposted with permission.

Overall, my experience with the LDA, after a day of shooting hundreds of rounds of ammunition, have been pretty favorable. The LDA trigger is nicer and smoother than the one on my Glock, and shoot pretty decently with it. My main complaint about the platform is the fact that it even has a safety. I know, I know, a Glock user complaining about a manual safety, big shocker. But I think, given the similarity in operation to a Glock renders the manual safety superfluous. More than a few times, I ended up actuating the manual safety when I was shooting, causing the gun not to fire. Not a big deal on the range, but in a life and death situation that could be lethal.

The platform itself is reliable, however. A few people had issues with it, mostly people who were used to shooting standard single action 1911s, but I had only one FTF, and it was my fault for fumbling my grip. I also deliberately eschewed oil and cleaning throughout the day to see if it could take it without failing. It did.

Para has offered us a pretty good price to buy the guns and have them shipped to our local FFL, and I plan to take them up on the offer. I have enjoyed shooting the gun. I will still remain a Glock guy for my carry piece, because I’ve put thousands of rounds through it with no failure, but if I start shooting IPSC, steel plate or bowling pin shooting, I think the Para LDA would work better for me. The LDA 1911 makes a great competition platform for shooters who carry a Glock as their self-defense piece. The feel of shooting it is similar enough that your shooting technique for one won’t interfere with the other.

Tomorrow we get to try the grips that Crimson Trace provided for us in Blackwater’s shoot house. I will offer my opinion on that after tomorrow.

This post was written by Sebastian and was originally posted on Snowflakes in Hell. Reposted with permission.

It is almost impossible to write a summary post of today, as it was the big big big shooting day.  We started shooting IPSC targets, and by the end of the day were shooting steel on the move, reloading behind barricades and zapping 8×8 moving targets while we were moving in an opposite direction of the target.

The level of instruction that Todd Jarrett is providing is absolutely fantastic - I know that I’m already a better shooter if I can internalize at least 50% of what I’ve learned from shooting with Todd.

For me, the most valuable piece of instruction has been all the drawing from the holster - my draw used to be slow, and while it’s not that fast it’s a lot smoother, which is aided and abetted by the excellent Blackhawk Serpa holster.  Speaking of the Blackhawk stuff, their rigger belt (in addition to being a pretty good belt) makes a decent improvised magazine holder as well.

To echo what Say Uncle said, I’ve learned more in the last two days than I had learned in the past eight years of shooting.  For example, by applying the trigger discipline and other sundry lessons, by the end of the day I was knocking down a plate rack at about 35-40 yards with the 9mm.  That was pretty awesome.

Sorry we weren’t able to do a live show, however the upcoming show on Tuesday night will contain a full wrap-up of the weekend, and will be extended out to an hour instead of the usual 45 minute show.

The last piece of business is that the bet between Joe Huffman and me has changed, instead of shooting an El Presidente bet, we’re going to use our score on the shoot house we run with the Crimson Trace laser grips tomorrow.  So that will be our final determiner on the winner of the bet.

Tomorrow, we run the shoot house - our guns are all equipped with a Crimson Trace lasergrip, so all the shooting tomorrow is going to be indoors.

Come Tuesday on the blog, I’ll have a review of the pistol I shot and the gear I used, however in the mean time you can check out the 2aBlogBash page for a great aggregator of the event.

This post was written by Caleb and was originally posted on Call Me Ahab. Reposted with permission.

Due to requests from the Tamara Fan Club Unwashed Masses (see the comments)
the pictures are heavy on Tamara.

I also took the first picture on JR’s
post.

Caleb
has pictures up too.

Please check out photos at Joe’s site.

This post was written by Joe Huffman and was originally posted on The View from North Central Idaho. Reposted with permission.

But that little son of a gun can shoot.

Todd Jarrett kept asking him when he could take classes from him.

This post was written by Robb Allen and was originally posted on Sharp as a Marble. Reposted with permission.

There’s nothing gun bloggers like better than Blackwater provided transportation of a shot up car.  Blackwater is the largest single buyer of used cars in the State of North Carolina.  They buy them for everything from stunt driving to their own version of Smash Up Derby, usually involving a lot of breaking through barricades, and often firepower.

The really great thing was that I managed to fish about 40 once fired Lake City brass out of the vehicle.  The really funny thing is, the radio in the vehicle still worked just fine.  I guess the Blackwater mechanics have their priorities in order.  Thanks to Blackwater for telling us “Hey, if you need some help getting to and from your range, the keys are in the ignition of those shot up cars, feel free to use them.”

This post was written by Sebastian and was originally posted on Snowflakes in Hell. Reposted with permission.

Right here in the USA!

Friday, we were treated to a ride on the Blackhawk bus. All I can say is wow.

That was a great ride, but Blackhawk is also a great company. After several companies closed their manufacturing shops and moved them out of the country, not only did Blackhawk buy the facilities, but rehired all the employees as well.

Their product line is fantastic. We received a great presentation of their company plus an overview of a lot of their product lines. I was impressed with their commitment to their products and how they were utilized in the field and the quick turnaround time from concept to field. Not that I have much of a need for them, but they had pants with tourniquets built into the legs. It doesn’t seem that useful, but considering someone in the field who gets shot in the extremities has a high chance of bleeding out, it makes a whole hell of a lot of sense.

They were generous with some nice gear, too. We received the gear we needed to get the job done at Blackwater. I never realized I needed shooting gloves. And their SERPA holsters are fantastic. In fact, as soon as they have on for the Glock 29, I’m getting one.

This post was written by Robb Allen and was originally posted on Sharp as a Marble. Reposted with permission.

As promised, here they are.

Please check out the photos at JR’s site!

This post was written by JR and was originally posted on A Keyboard & a .45. Reposted with permission.

Kevin has a report and pics, including our training gun the Gun Blog 45.

Video of me getting my steel plate on.

Joe has pics.

Ack! Ninjas.

Ahab has a report.

Hardy does too.

JR has a report too.

Run, gun and steel.

This post was written by SayUncle and was originally posted on SayUncle. Reposted with permission.

This is the gun (with part of the serial number obscured) I have been shooting:

Custom guns just for us knuckle
dragging gun bloggers! How cool is that?

I had some problems yesterday and finally figured out what was going on (with a simpler
repro of the problem by JR). If
the gun cycles, you let up on the trigger to the first click, squeeze (it will hit
a hard stop without firing), then let up until the next click, the pull the gun will
lock up. You have to manually cycle the slide (roughly the equivalent to a computer
reboot) to recover. I mentioned this to Kerby, the Para
USA guy, and he said, “Yes. It will do that. Don’t do that. After the gun cycles
move you finger until the nail touches the front of the trigger guard then do your
pull.” He went on to explain that this is because I’ve been shooting single action
guns for a long time. Others that shoot double action or Glock type actions before
using a Light Double Action (which this is) don’t have this problem.

At Microsoft we call a bug that is easily reached and causes the program to crash
a Priority 0 bug. Priority 0 bugs must be fixed before the product is shipped. Telling
the customer, “Don’t do that” isn’t really an option for a released product.

Yesterday I had many failures to feed as well. After oiling the gun this morning those
problems went away until very late in the day when the gun got dirty again. And after
adapting my shooting technique to avoid the system lock up (and the required reboot)
I did pretty well. On the last big “stage” at the end of the day with shooting on
the move, shooting movers, and plates racks I had the best run of anyone (possibly
even Todd who fumbled some reloads and had other problems) until Caleb shot
the stage with a borrowed gun that had 18 round magazines. The rest of us used eight
round magazines and I required five magazines to complete the stage.

At the end of the day several of us, including me, were able to hit the eight (?)
inch plates at 35 yards half the time or better.

I have to conclude the gun works well as long as you don’t run into that one bug.

Draw your own conclusions as to whether the gun (your version would look like this)
is for you.

This post was written by Joe Huffman and was originally posted on The View from North Central Idaho. Reposted with permission.

Tired, Sunburned, Achy, and Happy

I’m back at the Black Bear Inn after a full (and I mean full) day at the range. We started out the morning with Todd Jarrett checking and correcting our grip on our pistols. Now, I’m not one much for tattoos, but I’m giving serious consideration to having the witness marks he put on our hands with a sharpie permanently replicated in subcutaneous ink. By merely altering my grip and teaching the isosceles stance I firmly believe he has reduced my shot-to-shot recovery time by about half. I have complained before about my split times when shooting controlled pairs. That slowness is due to the fact that I have a hard time reacquiring the front sight after the first shot.

Not today. Each and every time the front sight was RIGHT THERE after each and every shot.

When I did it right.

Now I just have to practice that grip, because I’ve been shooting with a different (and wrong) grip for so long I instinctively use it. And go slow.

As always, it’s practice, practice, practice!

The Para ran almost flawlessly for me today. We gunked it up pretty bad. They told us we’d be shooting like 500 to 1,000 rounds a day. I’d say I did at least 500. Towards the end of the day the slide stopped locking back on some of the magazines.

Whoopee.

There is one fly in the ointment, however. Joe Huffman discovered that it was possible to manipulate the controls on his pistol in such a way as to cause the sear to release without first cocking the hammer on the trigger pull. This resulted in essentially the same condition as a misfire - the round in the chamber had to be ejected to re-cock the action. To duplicate the fault, you have to pull the trigger with the thumb safety engaged, then disengage the thumb safety with the trigger partially depressed. You have to do it just right, but Joe, being the analytical type, was able to duplicate the malfunction on his pistol, and on mine, and on a couple of others. He was not able to get SayUncle’s to fail, however. I was then able to do it - unintentionally - on the range.

Solution: Don’t use the thumb safety. It’s not necessary, anyway. The grip safety and the long trigger pull are safety enough. Not encouraging, really, but I still like the pistol. A lot. I WOULD use it as a carry piece.

We shot paper, we shot steel. We shot standing and we shot moving. We shot moving steel, while standing and while moving.

We had a helluva lot of fun. My hands hurt. My face hurts from smiling. My legs hurt from standing all day. And I’ve got some sunburn despite borrowing some of Armed Schoolteacher’s SPF55 sunscreen. I forgot to put any on the sides of my face.

Tomorrow morning we get to shoot in a shoothouse.

This trip is made of awesome.

This post was written by Kevin and was originally posted on The Smallest Minority. Reposted with permission.

This morning we got our hands marked up by Todd Jarrett to teach us a proper grip. Let me tell you, it works. My speed and accuracy improved markedly. I still have some difficulty with the draw, but there’s nothing that will correct that except for repetition.

Todd also had us shoot a silhouette target at 25 yards. I did respectably, but let me tell you, Caleb got all of his hits in the kill zone. I had to shoot low and right to find the bullseye.

This post was written by Sebastian and was originally posted on Snowflakes in Hell. Reposted with permission.

…there are whole battalions of ninjas doing their morning kung fu exercises, like in the SPECTRE hideout in a James Bond flick.

Well, not really, but I’ll bet some hippie read that and said “I knew it!“

Actually it’s like the cross between a military base and a… well, a school. Except that the classrooms are, on the whole, a lot cooler. And I’m supposed to be at one of those classrooms in an hour and a half to make some noise. I’m going to have to sign off and get to the chow hall. (How cool is that? I’m going to eat breakfast in a chow hall!)

Anyhow, more later…

This post was written by Tam and was originally posted on View from the Porch. Reposted with permission.

I learned more in the last three hours than I have since I’ve been shooting.

Say Uncle
August 22, 2008
Referring to instruction from Todd Jarrett while being taped for Michael Bane’s television
show.
[I had told him, several times, that professional instruction would make a big difference.
Not that he ever disagreed with me. But it's nice to hear him confirm what I had been
saying. This is not to say that his shooting was particularly bad. Just that you learn
a lot from someone who knows what they are doing and how to teach.--Joe]

This post was written by Joe Huffman and was originally posted on The View from North Central Idaho. Reposted with permission.

Here’s some video of a few familiar bloggers shooting plates with Todd Jarrett with us today at ParaUSA Gun Blogger Summer Camp.  Caleb is looking pretty sharp.  It’s going to be an interesting settling of this bet.

Tomorrow is going to be a lot of fun.

This post was written by Sebastian and was originally posted on Snowflakes in Hell. Reposted with permission.

Today was a full day, even though we only were on the range (shooting) for about an hour and a half. We started off the morning with a stop at Blackhawk USA before leaving Norfolk, where we took in presentations about their various product lines, and a very generous box full of swag.

Among the items were two Serpa holsters (to fit the gun we’re shooting this weekend - one with the autolock, and one without), two mag holders, tactical belt, tactical gloves, two shirts, a canteen, a Todd Jarrett shooting tips DVD and a few other misc. items.

After arriving in NC and touring the Blackwater grounds in the bus, we had lunch, dropped our stuff in our rooms and headed off to a safety briefing and introduction to the pistol we were using before finally getting in a bit of shooting before dinner.

After a couple hundred rounds, I’m liking this gun. It probably won’t satisfy die-hard SA fanatics, but as someone who currently carries a Sigma DAO, I’d definitely choose this gun over my current daily carry piece. The addition of special lettering commemorating the weekend, fiber-optic front sight, adjustable rear sight, Crimson Trace laser grips and a total of six magazines are going to make this a tough package to pass up. There have been a couple of minor hiccups with these guns on the line, but so far, the one I’m using has performed flawlessly. I hope that continues!

I think I’m on the way to convincing the wife to let me back into the house if I make such a purchase, since I won’t need to spend additional $ for accessories and add-ons. We’ll see what kind of mood she’s in tomorrow when I call.

Tomorrow should be a much more demanding day, with many more hours spent putting bullets down-range (no lead though, we’re shooting all frangibles). Here are a couple of pics from today.

This post was written by armed_citizen and was originally posted on Gun Truth. Reposted with permission.

Day One of the ParaUSA Summer Camp was pretty cool, right up until the part where Joe Huffman shot me.  I’ll get to explaining that later, so instead I’ll begin at the beginning - getting up in the morning.

I woke in the morning and I was amped, I had so much adrenaline pumping through my system that I didn’t know what to do with myself, as many of the bloggers can attest.  Eventually we got calmed down, and we all got on the Blackhawk Bus, which is a site to behold.  I took pictures of it, but forgot the sync cable for Camera number 1, and the battery was dead on camera number 2.  I’ll hopefully be able to get all the day one pictures uploaded sooner than later.

So, we went to the Blackhawk corporate headquarters, where we had a nice intro to some of Blackhawk’s products, including the Serpa holsters, the clothing line, and what I thought was the coolest thing of all, the Knoxx stock.  It sucks up recoil, and if I have any money left over after buying the gun, then I’m going to pick up one of those Knoxx stocks for my Remington 870.

After that, we got to Blackwater, where we were given a tour of the facility, had some chow, and eventually some classroom time with Todd Jarrett…and then the guns.  I’m actually going to do a whole separate post on the guns tomorrow, because then Camera 2 will be up and running, and I can get some good shots.

After the classroom time, we finally got out to the range to do some shooting - in less than an hour we managed to run about 100 rounds downrange from our guns.  We shot quite a few relays, first at some paper then at some steel, but didn’t do a lot of shooting.  What really impacted me was how much difference in my shooting a couple of minor adjusts made.  Todd told me I wasn’t gripping the gun hard enough, so I tightened up my grip and got deeping into my stance, and next thing I know my group at five yards closed up quite a bit.  I think I’m going to learn a lot from this.

I’m still working out the details of our live show for tomorrow, however if tomorrow is anything like today, we can plan for an 8 or 9pm show, coming in live from Blackwater.  Squeaky will be hosting and I’ll have to call in, but it should be a pretty awesome show after a day of shooting, and I’ll be able to give you a full update on the products and and everything that we’re doing out here.

I’ve got some pretty good audio as well, so when we do the ParaUSA wrap up show, we’ll have a lot of different clips to play for the show.

I will break the coverage down a bit and talk about some of the gear as well, we have holsters and mag carriers and gloves from Blackhawk - so far the best piece of gear that I have from Blackhawk hasn’t been the Serpa holster (which is good rig), but the GLOVE they gave me.  The factory new 9mm mags were a little…rugged, so I was really happy to have that tactical glove from Blackwater to keep my thumb from getting all ripped to pieces loading these mags.

Tomorrow is going to be a full day of shooting; we’re basically going to shoot all day, which means by the end of the day my trigger finger is going to be hurt and I’m going to be grinning from ear to ear.  More to come as we get it!

Remember, you can check out the coverage of the event at one handy place, the 2A Blog Bash.

This post was written by Caleb and was originally posted on Call Me Ahab. Reposted with permission.