A Tale of Two States

There has been a public place mask mandate in place in Nevada for quite a while now. It was relaxed for a while, but then the governor said we'd all been bad so on with those masks, or off with your heads, seemed to be the unspoken message. Vaccinated or not everyone must cover their …

Et tu, Sheriff Joe?

For the last three decades or so the sobriquet 'Sheriff Joe' has been the handle for one Joe Arpaio, the now former sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona... the greater Phoenix area. Mr. Arpaio has devoted much of his life to public service and to law enforcement, he is a good man and was a good …

The Not So Golden State

My wife and I have been gone from California for going on six years. Neither of us particularly miss it. Sure, we miss the beauty of California, I particularly miss the hills and mountains. The sight of Mount Tamalpias, seen from southern Sonoma County where we lived a quarter century, in the gloaming with commuters …

That was the year that was

It's pretty common during the period between Christmas and New Year for a lot of reflection on the year about to end. Since I've not been writing a lot lately and want to change that, more on that later, I'll jump on the bandwagon. 2021 was a year of massive personal change for us. In …

In Praise of the SP-101

In the modern world of defensive firearms, the revolver is often considered passé by many. We are told they have limited ammunition capacity, have a difficult manual of arms, are slow to reload and are the choice old timers, boomers and Fudds who can't embrace the change that modern semi-auto pistols bring to defensive shooting. …

Shotguns for Home Protection — Active Response Training

Greg Ellifritz is one of a small handful of highest shelf trainers in the country . When he writes or speaks, I read or listen. In this article he is making exactly the same points, backed up by evidence, that I have been making for years... first, that the shotgun is the most powerful tool …

The Last Time I Saw Carson City

I spent my entire life in Northern California. Born, bred… a fourth generation native whose family settled the north coast in 1850. Five years ago I left, and found my forever home. A considerable portion of my adult life was spent fighting the winds of political change that blew across the Golden State. I first …

Pepper Spray window of opportunity

I wrote at length a few months back on the value, if not necessity, for private persons to utilize pepper spray as a solid less lethal option for use of force in defensive encounters. This piece from The Tactical Professor offers some excellent points on tactics for deploying the spicy goodness at close quarters. As …

The Shotgun Speed Drill

An excellent fundamental skills drill from Nate at That Shotgun Blog. This will really hone your emergency reloading skill.

That Shotgun Blog

There are not many shotgun specific drills out there beyond the really basic stuff. It is even harder to find “standards” type drills, or test, that have some sort of pass/fail metric. This one sort of gets us there. I think as more people shoot it, I will eventually assign time brackets for specific skill levels, like the FAST.

The good thing is, many drills designed for pistols can be adapted to the shotgun. That is essentially what I have done with this one. It is an adaptation of Langdon’s 9 Round Close Speed drill. Just without the headshots and some reloading because shotguns.

The drill is shot from 5 yards, which allows the use of birdshot or buckshot. The target used should be an IDPA target or some other target with an 8” high center chest scoring zone (there are a lot of them out there). Start position is…

View original post 471 more words

Kindness is its own reward

Hank Aaron passed away today. The world is diminished because of it. Aaron was, and always will be a giant in the baseball universe, and his breaking of the all time home run record in April of 1974 was a moment for all times in the game. But beyond that he was one of the …