Random Thought Thread

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"I don't see what everyone's getting so worked up about. The water's fine."
 
carnifex knifeworks said:
They've never been in a fist fight, no physical confrontation. They've never seen first hand or experienced physical violence so it's so distant from their mind that it doesn't seem like a possibility.
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I've been in fist fights. I do believe violence solves certain kinds of problems. I grew up around guns, some of them under completely unsafe conditions - I still distinctly remember in elementary school a friend of mine handing me his father's revolver when no one else was at home.

I've also spent time working with young children and on child protective services cases. Kids dying because the U.S. is culturally not capable of responsible gun ownership is not a good thing. I'm not saying a culture of responsible gun ownership is impossible (see Finland), just that empirically it isn't in the U.S.

There absolutely is a correlation between bad gun policy and kids dying, and I would be in favor of good policy. It's not because I'm naive, gullible, idiotic, woke, or whatever else you might think. Information like this seems pretty level headed: https://www.rand.org/research/gun-p...lls-us-about-the-effects-of-gun-policies.html
 
Blues said:
I just got a chuckle reading that above, since Tom Givens just addressed that particular sentence in his November newsletter.
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Since when are personal attacks from mods a good thing? You don't know me at all.

I took myself, my wife, and son to the best handgun instructor in the state. I told him I hadn't fired a gun since I was a teenager, was ignorant, and wanted to make sure my family understood how to use guns safely.
 
kod said:
Since when are personal attacks from mods a good thing? You don't know me at all.

I took myself, my wife, and son to the best handgun instructor in the state. I told him I hadn't fired a gun since I was a teenager, was ignorant, and wanted to make sure my family understood how to use guns safely.
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I'm not attributing anything to you. The fact that you used that sentence as a preamble to your experiences in other realms made me think of the article.

I didn't see you professing to have any particular skill or acumen with firearms, but a simple declarative sentence stating that you grew up around them, for good or for bad.

Untwist your panties, and stop looking for a reason to be outraged. If I had intended to demean you, I'd have sent you a DM or otherwise made my intention clear.
 
Heh, I used to instruct rifle, pistol, and shotgun shooting at a summer camp. Invariably, the kids with the worst safety habits and aim were the boys who immediately announced they already knew how to shoot. Some of the best were the girls with little to no experience who were excited to learn and paid attention to advice and instruction. I have noticed the same differences in mindset often affect success in pretty much every other aspect of life.
 
oldmanwilly said:
Heh, I used to instruct rifle, pistol, and shotgun shooting at a summer camp. Invariably, the kids with the worst safety habits and aim were the boys who immediately announced they already knew how to shoot. Some of the best were the girls with little to no experience who were excited to learn and paid attention to advice and instruction. I have noticed the same differences in mindset often affect success in pretty much every other aspect of life.
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I have found that women do better when learning both rock climbing and shooting, since they actually listen, absorb the info and don't try to "muscle up" the solution. (I know it's a broad generality, but it's something that has come up in prior discussions on those two topics.)

When we were visiting Rob Simonich, (rest in peace), in Montana, he taught my wife how to shoot a revolver and a rifle, and it was a joy to see how good an eye she had, despite never having picked up a gun previously.
 
oldmanwilly said:
Heh, I used to instruct rifle, pistol, and shotgun shooting at a summer camp. Invariably, the kids with the worst safety habits and aim were the boys who immediately announced they already knew how to shoot. Some of the best were the girls with little to no experience who were excited to learn and paid attention to advice and instruction. I have noticed the same differences in mindset often affect success in pretty much every other aspect of life.
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Yup.

Seen the same thing while instructing people in Martial Arts, as well as firearms.

Contrary to some men’s personal beliefs, the females I’ve instructed in those two specific areas, developed proficiency more quickly, especially when they had little to no experience, because they were open to instruction and correction.

Many of the males would just continue doing things in whichever way they were used to.
 
I had a hard time sparring with the gals in my Shotokan dojo, because I didn't want to hit them in a tender spot.

Right up until a couple of them tried to clean my clock and I got over it. LOL. We had some accomplished female martial artists in that dojo who fought at both national and international meets.
 
Nathan the Machinist said:
...

If anybody would like to compete in a friendly bottle cap competition with me, I'll put down a hundred bucks that I can make the shot before they can, I'll use that grip.
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I think I'll put some bottle caps up between my 4" plates. What distance are we talking about here?

Speaking of instruction, can I put in a plug for Gunsite Academy? Speaking from a perspective of having carried almost daily since the mid-80's, burned through many tens of thousands of rounds, and never having had occasion to defend myself with a firearm (thus thankfully not qualifying as an expert in the subject), I think they do a pretty good job... especially eye opening is the force-on-force exercise with simunitions in classes like 350.
 
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Blues said:
I just got a chuckle reading that above, since Tom Givens just addressed that particular sentence in his November newsletter. (Tom is a retired LEO and one of the more sought after firearms trainers nationally.)

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Lol. Tends to align with my experiences. The particular expression seems to be a generalized expression to IMPLY experience and thus, proficiency, by folks who haven’t had much experience training, or using firearms, and are just correlating having been around them, with proficiency.

People who’ve had training, experience tend to cite specific things (i.e. “taken classes”, “been competing” etc.).

kod kod
I didn’t take Blues post as a personal attack on you, and simply a comment on that particular statement, as explained in my personal experiences and observations.

*** the most important part, to me, is the last section of what Blues pasted;
A tool is only as effective as the skill of the person using the tool.

Give 2 people a block of wood and a knife, and one person might produce a sculpture worthy of displaying in a museum, while another one produces a pile of wood chips.

I’ve known more than a few people (including friends, family, coworkers), who seem to have the Magic Talisman mentality wrt the firearms they CC, i.e. they don’t really practice or train to develop and maintain proficiently with their firearms, and seem to just have the belief that having the firearm provides them with +6 defense, like some Magic Talisman of Protection.

I’ve gone shooting with some of them, and even taking their time, their accuracy was atrocious at just 12 FEET, and the ONLY type of shooting they ever did while at the range, was slow, target style shooting (which goes to show how little proficiency they had, and how rarely they ever actually went shooting, when their targets at 12 FEET (not yards), patterned like buckshot at 30-40 yards).

When they saw me practicing fast doubles, Mozambiques and Bill Drills @7-10 yards from low-ready, they thought, “Oh, that’s cool. Lemme try that”, and completely missed (as in not even hit the paper, much less the silhouette) full-size IPSC target at 12 FEET, because they’ve NEVER practiced staying on target with fast trigger pulls, and were yanking their guns waayyyy off target.

I have no doubts they never train their draw, presentation, target acquisition, target transitions, recoil control for fast follow-up shots, or anything else related to actual combat/defensive use of a pistol.
 
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