Action Airgun Week 1

I had the opportunity to shoot the first week of the Action Airgun season this past weekend; this was the first change I had to really get the kit out and work with it. If you go to Action Airgun's website, you can see all the stuff that comes with the kit: a pistol, timer, BBs, CO2 cartridges, targets, target stands, everything you need to compete is in there.

After I shot the three courses of fire, we set up a crappy video camera to get som action footage of the stuff in action; the stages we're shooting aren't COFs from the match, but rather just some fun we had with the kit. Please note: there is one shot where the camera is downrange - the guy with the camera was behind safety glass the whole time and do not even think about doing this with a live firearm.

I'm pretty proud of the video from an ironic standpoint, because it's a great representation of everything that is terrible about a youtube video: poor video quality, hackneyed music, it's all there. But that being said, you can also get a pretty good idea of how much fun these Action Airgun matches are to shoot.



After shooting the Courses of Fire, I went and uploaded my scores at www.actionairgun.com - I had shot okay, but not great I thought. Imagine my surprise to see that I'm 2nd place overall after the first week of competition. The first place shooter has a lead of only three seconds, so if I run my guns very fast next week, I might be able to make that up.

I was kind of disappointed to see that a lot of people didn't bother to upload their times. I'm hoping for a bigger turnout for next week's course of fire, as I'll be pimping it up here, at Call me Ahab, and on Gun Nuts Radio as well.

This actually was a lot of fun; not only that it's great practice for IDPA or IPSC style competition. The courses of fire for the first week were challenging, but not so challenging that I was frustrated or didn't want to play. I've got the targets downloaded for the 2nd week's match already, and I can't wait to shoot it.

Tomorrow on Gun Nuts Radio

Tomorrow night on Gun Nuts Radio at 9pm Eastern, we've got a show coming up that should be a lighting rod for commentary - it's called The Politics of Smear, and will be focusing on the current dirty campaign that Barack "Victory at Any Cost" Obama is running, and how it dovetails into his history of smears, lies, dirty politics, and generally being a tool of the massive Chicago political machine - a political machine exceeded in corruption only by the City of Detroit.

Just this previous week in Indiana, the Republican headquarters in Delware county was vandalized by an apparent Obama supporter; additionally, Obama's Digital Brownshirts have been vigorously cruising the web and silencing or just plain flaming dissenting opinion like the good little followers that they are.

As I mentioned above, we'll also be looking at Obama's campaign history: things like the election he won by having all his competitors removed from the ballot, or how in the Illinois' House he was intentionally propped up by the local party so he could elected to the Senate, his suspicous campaign contributions to dirty politicians from other states, and his ties to known criminals in Illinois.

The one thing we're not going to do tomorrow night is make anything up - everything we discuss, every detail and fact we point are all going to items that are a matter of public record, but are also probably items that Obama and his people don't want you to know about. Tune in tomorrow night to www.blogtalkradio.com/gunnuts at 9pm Eastern time to get the most up to date information on Barack "Victory at Any Cost" Obama.

American Hunters and Shooters Association

If you're looking for information on the American Hunters and Shooters Association, I cannot more strongly recommend that you listen to Gun Nuts Radio from this last Tuesday.

Breda, myself, and our dedicated listeners and callers covered every angle of AHSA, from Ray Shoenke's association with the Brady Campaign, Bob Ricker trolling conservative blogs, and John Rosenthal's anti-gun activities. You can click the link above to listen to the entire show; it's an excellent source of information to combat AHSA as they ramp up their misinformation campaign as the election nears.

Gun Nuts Radio: AHSA Shenanigans

Last night's show on the American Hunters and Shooters Association's radio spot was fantastic. I'm very please to have Breda joining me on the show, as her knack for research and investigation really brings out the intellectual side of the show.



If you'd like to listen to the show, you can click the player above, or you can click this link to download the raw .mp3 file of the show.

We did a little bit more than just talk about AHSA's radio ad though - we covered all the bases, included American Hunters and Shooters roots; roots which run straight back to the predecessor of the Brady Campaign, Handgun Control Institute. If you missed out on last night's show but are interested in getting the real truth behind American Hunters & Shooters Association, click here to listen to the archive copy of the show.

Pass this on to your pro-gun friends, and especially if you have friends who are primarily hunters and not sport shooters; we need to make sure that people are educated and know that AHSA is a front for anti-gun organizations. Also, if you live in the area targeted by AHSA's radio ad, make sure that you get the real truth about them out to all your fellow hunters and shooters. The states targeted by this commercial were:

• Virginia


• West Virginia


• Ohio


• Pennsylvania


• Colorado


• Maryland


• New Hampshire

I wasn't supposed to hear this commercial, since I live in Indiana, so I'm grateful that someone at ESPN radio (where I heard the ad) dropped the ball and played it on their air. The radio gods were kind to me by giving me this show last night.

Come back for next week's show, where we'll kick off our series on frangible/environmentally friendly ammo!

Friday Night Steel Results

Marion County Fish & Game has the results of the latest Friday Night Steel match up. While not my best or worst showing ever, I'm not exactly pleased with the results, and here's why. Despite finishing in the top 10 overall for centerfire pistols, I should have finished a lot higher and here's why. When you start most strings of fire from the low-ready position, there is absolutely no excuse whatsoever to not have a perfect grip on the gun.

There were more than a couple of stages where I didn't have a perfect grip on the gun, and that hurts your time, because it makes the gun a lot harder to recover in recoil. I have no one to blame for that other than myself.

On the bright side, like most matches, I can add a few more items to my list of "lessons learned" about how I show, and tips and tricks to help myself shoot better. I still had fun, which ultimately is the most important thing to do at any match. My motto is and remains that the day this stops being fun is the day I sell all my guns and hang it up.

Also, I got to introduce a new shooter to the steel game, a friend of mine who hadn't ever shot steel before, and now has the bug real bad. He wants to keep shooting steel, which is great because it means another shooting spending money on gear and ammo.

The next Friday Night Steel match is scheduled for October 10th, I'm hoping to drag Breda out here from Ohio to shoot the match with us. I'm also hoping to have finished upgrading my P22 into a race-gun with optics and a 5 inch barrel by that time. If you're in the Indy area, come out in October for the next Friday Night Steel match!

Gun Nuts Radio: taking AHSA to the woodshed

In a slight change of plans, I've moved the show with Dan Smith of International Cartridge Corporation to a later date - however, I've had a show topic essentially dropped into my lap by the radio gods.

Yesterday, while listening to ESPN radio, I heard an advertisement for Barack Obama featuring Ray Schoenke of the American Hunters and Shooters Association. You can listen to the .mp3 of the radio ad right here. Tonight, at www.blogtalkradio.com/gunnuts we'll play the ad live on the air, and then debunk the obvious falsehoods in the advertisement, as well take callers and guests to offer commentary on the show as well. Remember, tonight's show is at 9pm Eastern time - we're no longer in that horrible 11pm time slot.

Tune in tonight at 9pm Eastern, you can listen live at Gun Nuts Radio. In addition to myself, tonight I'll have my friend Breda on the show as a guest host, offering her commentary and opinions on the AHSA radio ad. Breda's agreed to help out ocassionally on the show, I'm very excited to have her on board with me.

Don't forget, tonight - 9pm on www.blogtalkradio.com/gunnuts we're going to take Ray Schoenke and the American Hunters and Shooters Association to the woodshed for a good beating. Call in live at (347) 539-5436 and be part of the show!

Friday Night Steel!

Tonight is the night at Marion County Fish & Game for a little "clang 'n bang" action. They usually run five courses of fire with six targets each (so each course is revolver neutral), although last month they had a stage with three targets, and you give them two shots each. Here's a little video of one of the more interesting stages that we've run.



The fee for non-members is $15 per entry, and they are classes for everything from rimfire pistols all the way through the standard USPSA classes. I'll be running 2 guns tonight, my ParaOrdnance 16-40 Limited, as well as my beloved Walther P22. I haven't shot the Walther in a while, so I figured that a little steel action would be just the workout that my little blaster needs. On the downside, I had the shocking realization last night that I've somehow depleted my stock of .22 LR to 200 rounds, which means I need to buy another bulk pack of CCI.

I hope to see you out at MCF&G tonight - be there around 5:30 to get all signed up and ready to shoot!

Gun Nuts Radio: Farewell for now

Man, I cannot resist throwing in a Terminator reference at 0900.

Last night's show was a little bittersweet for a lot of us, since it was Bonnie's last show for a while. We talked a lot of different topics, things she'd learned from the show, her favorite show, a little Sarah Palin, and then eventually we were rescued by Stanger73, one of our regular listeners, who called in to ask about Glocks and 1911s.

You can listen to the archive of the show here, or by clicking on the player below, or by downloading the .mp3 file.



Bonnie will be missed - she added something different to the show, something not quite as gun-nutty as me, which created a good balance for the topics.

As a promo for next week's show, I want to remind everyone that we're going to be moving to a 9pm Eastern time slot - no more 11pm shows for me, thank god. Starting this upcoming Tuesday the 16th, we'll be moving to 9pm. For our first 9pm show, we'll be featuring an interview with Dan Smith, the VP of Operations for International Cartridge Corporation. Dan will be talking to us about developments in frangible ammunition technology for training, law enforcement and self defense. This is a real "Gun Nuts" kind of show - if you don't tune in you'll miss out.

Remember, the new time slot is 9pm Eastern, but we're at the same address: www.blogtalkradio.com/gunnuts. See you next week!

Appleseed Rifle after-show

Last night's show on Project Appleseed went very well - we had good callers and good discussion, and the chat room was pretty lively. The chat peaked at about 40 people, and we had a grand total of 143 live listeners, of whom I'm sure everyone was there to hear The Breda anyway. Thanks also to Chris Byrne for calling in, sorry that the BTR panel decided to dump your call, I lost two or three other callers as well that night. Click the flash player below to listen to the show in its entirety, or you can download the .mp3 file here.



To kind of sum up what was said on the show, no one was "down" on Appleseed per se, in fact I came away from the show with a much better opinion of the program than I had going into last night, because after listening to Breda and Chris talk about their Appleseed experience, I was able to better frame the program in my mind and understand the niche into which it falls. In fact, after last night's show I'd be interested in attending an Appleseed just to see "what's up".

However, after the show, I was chatting with Breda and she directed me to the Appleseed forums, where apparently their perception of the show was about 180 degrees off of what I perceived it to be. I tried to register so I could respond to some of their claims, but my registration still hasn't gone through, so I guess I'll just have to address their grievances here. If you'd like to read the thread at the Appleseed forums, you can do so here.

The first few things I want to address are from Fred Himself, who I believe is the progenitor of Appleseed. He had a couple of specific beefs about the show:

Another consensus (on the show): Appleseed is not for newbies, even if it was a "basic" program. (There was definitely a hint of "false advertising" hanging in the air.)

No one said "false advertising" but you, Fred. My concern with the program is that from reading the Appleseed website, it seems that program is designed as an outreach for people new to the shooting sports, which I think is awesome. But then I talk to people who have been there, and they say that it doesn't seem like it would be a good fit for newbies. To me, that creates a mixed message issue which should be addressed at a certain level.

Fred continues:

Summing up, III: They made the common mistake of not putting the program in context - or even understanding the context - and then taking too limited a view of the program, which was pretty obvious. Whereas most instructors think the history is more important than the marksmanship, AS was evaluated solely as a marksmanship program.

Earlier in the post he had noted that we went the duration of the show without mentioning the word "history" or the Revolutionary War one time. He's correct, and that was an intentional move on my part. I wanted to look at Appleseed specifically for it's value as a marksmanship program, and not as a history course; the reason being that it's extremely difficult to put quantitative value on "connecting shooters with their heritage". The reason for that is some people aren't going to care about the history, some people are going to dig it, etc. The shooting on the other hand is easy to assign value to - because you can ask any attendee who has been to an Appleseed a few simple questions to assess the value of the training they received. So yes, Appleseed was assessed solely as a marksmanship program.

To the poster hawkhavn, I apologize if your point you made in the chat went unnoticed. The chat is a very freeform mode of discussion, even on quiet nights a lot goes on in there that doesn't get address on the air.

The last thing I want to address are the criticisms by the forum member Scout, who says the following:

These people sound like yuppies just chatting, nothing about them says anything to me about them having any credentials for having a radio talk show other than they just happen to have one. And where is their work on any kind of 2A program? Geeze, I have never seen more "If it didn't originate here, it is no good" than these guys on blogs/talks

Well Scout, I am a yuppie. And my only credentials for having a radio show are that I have the drive and initiative to start one. That's the great thing about the modern age, because if you wanted to start a show about how much I suck, you have everything at your disposal to do so, and are more than welcome to.

After reading over the thread at the Appleseed forum, I was a little disappointed in their reaction - we treated the show fairly on its merits as a marksmanship program. Plus the emails I'm now getting after the show, I get the impression that a lot of the Appleseed guys are digging real hard into my statements to try and find the negatives in them, instead of looking for value.

My bottom line on Appleseed, after the show is that I'd still be interested in attending one. Despite some of the antics of their forum members, I do actually believe that the program has value as a marksmanship program, because that's the only part I can judge the quantitative merits of fairly. I've got a pretty solid rep for fairness, and I'm not going to jeopardize that now - so I'll make a promise to the Appleseed guys that after the IDPA State Championship, I'll go to an Appleseed shoot. I've got a 10/22 and plenty of bullets for it, and I'm a pretty handy shot already, so I'll give it a try.

ParaOrdnance 16-40 Limited

After spending a weekend shooting my ParaUSA LTC 9mm, one of the things I decided that I wanted was a single action 1911 platform pistol in .40 S&W for shooting Enhanced Service Pistol division in IDPA and Limited in USPSA.

Saturday, after trying out my Storm Lake Glock 24 barrel, I made the mistake(?) of stopping by Gander Mountain on my way home, and low and behold what did I see other than a ParaOrdnance 16-40 Limited, a 16 round .40 S&W on the 1911 platform. After hemming and hawing for a bit, I decided that since the gun was in great condition to go for it. That next day I went out to Eagle Creek with Tam, Roberta X, and Brigid to try out my new toy. For comparison, I took along my Glock 24, also chambered in .40 S&W.

Upon seeing the pistol, Tam declared on the spot "That is a serious Limited gun, right there", to which I agree wholeheartedly. The pistol itself has forward and rearward serrations on the slide, adjustable sights, a full length guide rod and all the other accoutrement that you'd expect on a purpose built Limited pistol.

After loading up the magazines, which was no mean feat, by the way; I tried running a few double taps from low ready - recoil was easily managed, especially if I remembered to grip the gun 20% tighter and bend my "shock absorbers". Doing fast double taps at speed, I was able to handily keep all the shots within the "Down Zero" zone of an IDPA target at 7 yards.

This gun, in addition to being pretty, can flat out shoot. This and my LTC (when I get my little mitts on it) are going to be my Steel and IDPA guns - which creates the ability for me to transition from platform to platform quite easily because they're both 1911s.

Compared to my Glock 24, recoil on the 1911 was a bit easier to manage - although felt recoil wasn't that bad, the Glock 24 had more apparent muzzle flip to me - the all steel construction of the Para 16 40 Limited seemed to cause the gun to settle quite nicely back on target after each shot.

The only thing I don't absolutely love about this gun is the magazines, which are absolutely murder on my thumbs. I'm actually keeping them loaded at all times in the hopes of breaking the springs down a little bit so that I can load them in the field without the aid of "Ahab's Reloading Kit", which consists of a toothbrush that I use to hold the spring down while I shove bullets into the mag.

This weekend is the IDPA match at Atlanta Conservation Club which is where I'll be in the morning, running my new Para 16 40 Limited. That match is part of the prep for the IDPA State Championships in October, which I'll probably run with this gun as well.

You know, I blame Todd Jarrett for all of this. Before going to Blackwater, I was content to live in a world without 1911s, I figured between my Glocks and Berettas I had everything covered. But I have to say, the 1911 is the most shootable gun I've ever played with. By "shootable" I mean that the pistol has a very low learning curve; plus the grip angle seems to make the gun want to point at what it to point it at.