Observations
Shooting Tip: Slow The Heck Down!
As I’ve helped quite a few people learn to shoot by this point in my life, I’ve noticed certain patterns emerging. Certain attitudes in life seem to consistently translate to a certain type of shooting. Certain flaws in technique pop up over and over again. One of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen new and even moderately experienced shooters make over and over again is rushing their shots.
Now don’t get me wrong. When push comes to shove and you’ve got Robber McCriminalpants kicking in your front door, speed will be of great importance. When you’re trying to improve your technique, however, speed can destroy your chances of hitting anything. Continue reading
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How to Tell You’re Paying a Good Price
Guns aren’t cheap. Well, some guns are cheap but most guns aren’t. For the vast majority of us, the purchase of a gun is a big deal and requires a great deal of planning, budgeting and bribing of the significant other.
Personally, I’ve always had the rule of “if it costs more than $100, I have to spend at least a week making sure I’m not only buying the right thing but getting a decent deal.” For starters, it saves me from impulse buys which rarely turn out well. At the same time, it makes sure I make good use of every penny.
When we’re at the store or gun show and picking out our gun, how can we be sure we’re getting the best bang for the buck…so to speak? Let’s take a look at how I work through it, as well as some of my favorite resources for either buying a gun or at least figuring out the going rates. Continue reading
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Noob Explains: Tiny Gun Syndrome
I’ve reviewed a few “carry guns” so far. In more than one of those reviews, I’ve referred to something I like to call “tiny gun syndrome”. This doesn’t mean that the pistol is going to go out and buy a Corvette or Porsche. It’s a strange phenomena that occurs when you shrink down the components of a gun.
When you think about it, tiny guns are the equivalent of reducing a liquid during cooking. Bear with me here, this will make sense I promise. Let’s say you cooked that steak like they do in most restaurants and seared the steak on a grill first then finished it in a heavy pan under a broiler (one of the best ways to go, mind you). When the steak is finished, there will be little bits left in the pan along with some of the juices. Those little bits are concentrated beef flavor and are wasted by so many. So while your steak is resting for a couple minutes, you take a glass of red wine and use it to deglaze the pan. This is a fancy cooking term for “dump some liquid into the pan and boil it all the while scraping the bottom of the pan gently in order to dissolve those beefy bits”. Yeah, it’s easier to just say “deglaze”. Continue reading
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Things I’ve Learned While Reloading
I recently started reloading my own ammo. There’s a lot of experimentation as well trial and error to it. Sometimes I feel like a mad scientist. It’s been a bumpy ride, to say the least. Let’s talk about a few things I’ve learned that I have yet to see in a guide or book. Continue reading
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Don’t Let an Injury Affect Your Training…
I’m an idiot. I’m man enough to admit it. Not all the time, mind you, but sometimes I can show an amazingly remarkable lack of intelligence. So, yeah, I injured my wrist pretty bad while I was under my desk fixing my computer. I like to tell people I hurt it while I was saving a busload of school children from a horde of cannibal leprechauns. In reality, I guess I put too much weight on it while in a weird angle while I was trying to climb out from under my desk.
Now, that’s not the idiot part. It was an accident that could happen to the best of us. In hindsight, I could have climbed out differently but this was the way I had done it for 30+ years with no injury. No, the idiot part was my actions immediately following said injury: I denied it. I figured it was a cramp or maybe the result of sleeping in a bad position. There was no way something that stupid could injure my wrist! Continue reading
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Conservation of Effort A.K.A. The Sloth is the Mother of Invention
Being lazy is a good thing. I know that goes against everything you were likely taught since kindergarten but, in the interest of science, let’s assume that everything you know is wrong. Question everything! That is the way of the geek. Actually, if you go back to the original definition, the way of the geek would be to eat anything and everything in sight but the usage has changed in recent years.
Sorry, I’m rambling a bit. Too much soda and donut holes this morning.
If you’re lazy, you typically look for the easiest/fastest/most efficient methods to accomplish the things you have to do. As long as the final quality doesn’t suffer, is that a bad thing?
Take the gun range, for example. At the range, you can relax, right? You have plenty of time to line up your shot, reload your gun, analyze your performance and stare at your gun when you miss like it’s the gun’s fault. Question: do you have the luxury of that time when some ne’er do well is kicking in your front door?
It’s time to get lazy. You don’t want to expend any more effort than you absolutely have to. The official term is “conservation of effort” or doing the most amount of work in the least amount of time with as little effort as possible.
Let take a hypothetical situation in a practice (that totally isn’t how I ever did something. Ever. **cough**): reloading practice. The way I started…I mean the way this hypothetical person started was to not realize right away that the gun was out of ammo, then fumble around for the magazine release button. Then he would catch the magazine with his left hand so that he didn’t have to chase it down later and set it down on the table. He would then reach into his pocket and pull out the new magazine. Look at the magazine to see which way it was facing and then fumble around to orient the magazine correction. Then he would look at the gun and insert the magazine and then push on the bottom of it a couple of times to make sure it was seated. The final step was to spend a lot of time trying to push that tiny release slide release button on the Glock pistol while muttering to himself about how he needs to get one of those aftermarket slide release extensions because this is just ridiculous. I mean really, the thing is nearly flush mount. How the heck is anyone supposed to use that darn thing. Every other manufacturer seems to recognize that you need a surface that sticks out more than a millimeter or two in order to be useful. Who in their right mind would design something like….oh..uhm…got a bit off track there again. Sorry.
A quick glance tells me there are eleven steps there. Is there room for improvement? You bet your box of donut holes there is.
First off, as you shoot more and more, you get a feel for when you’re out of ammo and your slide locks back. Pay attention to that. Eventually, you don’t even have to look at the gun. You’ll feel that shot and your brain will say “slide locked”. Secondly, take time to practice hitting that magazine release button. There shouldn’t be any fumbling at all. If you just can’t reach it without fumbling, you might look into a gun that’s more suited to the ergonomics of your hand. That’s not to say there shouldn’t be a slight adjustment of the grip, mind you. Sometimes you just have to reach a bit. What I mean is if it’s taking two hands to hit that button, it’s not right for your hands.
Those are just time savers, though, let’s look into reducing steps.
The big thing where you can save a lot of effort and thus time is the magazine itself. Invest in a magazine holster. This will keep the magazine in the same place and in the same orientation each time. Typically, for a magazine holster kept on the belt on the left hand side, you want the bullets facing forward. If you were to reach down with your left hand…wait…I forgot to mention everything here is assuming you’re right handed. If you’re left handed, just swap the directions. Anyway, with the bullets pointing forward, it will take advantage of the body’s natural ergonomics and the magazine will be oriented correctly by the time you get it to the gun.
Secondly, just drop the magazine on the floor. Seriously, it’s ok. You’re not going to hurt its feelings. The magazine won’t be sitting there saying “he abandoned me!” but will instead say “I’m glad I was able to provide him the ammunition he needed and I hope my brothers will continue to supply him ammo in his time of need.”**
Third, combine your motions. Instead of doing a Step 1, Step 2, etc type of process, do steps at the same time. This will save you a surprising of time during a maneuver and make things flow so much smoother.
Finally, instead of fumbling with that dang button which, in my opinion can too easily lead to your finger slipping off, just rack the slide. Pull the slide back and let it go then get your hand on the gun’s grip again.
So let’s look at how this process should be done and see if we saved any effort…
Slide locks back because you’re out of ammo. While your right hand pushes the magazine release your left hand reaches down for the magazine in the holster (two motions at the same time count as one step!). As you pull out the magazine, your left finger indexes the ammo so you know it’s in the right orientation. Because everything is essentially lined up already, the magazine slides right into the magwell of the gun. Don’t just slide it in, though, use a good amount of force. Finally, the left hand reaches up, racks the slide and then moves to position to resume firing.
I don’t know about you but it seems to me we cut the number of steps in half there. Partly due to practice and partly due to reducing the amount of movement we have to make. That’s a win for laziness in my book.
It doesn’t have to stop there. Look at every process you do. Is there any way you can reduce the steps when reloading your AR? How about your shotgun? Not just shooting either. Is there a way to efficiently clean your room? How about an easier way to do your bookkeeping?
Think of it this way: time is money. Assign an hourly rate to your life. Say that you determine that your time is worth $30 an hour. If it normally takes you 2 hours to mow the lawn, you’ve just spent $60. Let’s say you can figure out a way to do it in one hour? Well, there’s $30 you’ve saved. What if your kid or the neighbor’s kid will do it for $10? Hmm…
If you don’t want to do the monetary value thing, let’s just look at time itself. If you were to find a way to save 10 minutes of time per day doing something. With an average lifespan of 75 years, those 10 minutes a day will save around 192 days. That’s half a year added on to your life. More time saved equals more time added on to your lifespan.
Look at that, we here at Gun Noob just showed you how to live longer.
**The anthropomorphism of the magazines was meant to illustrate a point. If your magazines are, in fact, talking to you then please see your doctor at your nearest possible convenience.
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Another open letter to people buying ammo (a.k.a. “for cryin’ out loud, people!”)
While some might disagree with me, I love Academy Sports. Yes, it’s a big box store. Yes, I’m aware of all the whargarble concerning big box stores and their effect on communities and so on and so forth. Don’t judge me. I like Academy because their ammo prices are, by far, the absolute cheapest in town. Heck, their guns priced pretty reasonably as well. There’s only one or two stores I can think of off the top of my head that have cheaper guns. There’s also one within a very short distance of my house.
But I digress…
Some of you may have noticed that there’s been a bit of a shortage lately in terms of ammo. Some places have combated this shortage by raising the price of their ammo which, in theory, results in preventing Slappy Kincaid from buying 100 boxes for his weekend shooting lest he not be able to pay his mortgage. Other stores, like Academy, kept their ammo at the same price and just put limits on how many boxes a person is allowed to buy. Both policies work well enough to ensure that as many people can get their hands on ammo as possible. Continue reading
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Can We Actually Learn Something From TV and Movies?
It’s pretty much cliche for firearm bloggers to write about how Hollywood gets stuff wrong. Heck, I’m guilty of it myself. Sometimes, you just get a bit of writers block and it’s just too dang easy to turn on a random action movie or TV show and pick apart a scene with a “Lulz…look how stoopid this guy is” type of attitude.
Now, I’m not saying Hollywood doesn’t deserve every bit of the criticism and more. They really do screw stuff up more often than not. We’re talking scopes on backwards, horrible trigger discipline, incorrect terminology and more. Don’t even get me started on their laughable grasp of basic physics.
Either way, this isn’t going to be a rip on Hollywood article. In fact, I’m issuing a moratorium on “how Hollywood gets it wrong” articles on this site.
Let’s talk about something you actually can learn from movies. Maybe not in the gun department, mind you, but hear me out. Continue reading
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The Top 5 Things They Don’t Tell You About Concealed Carry…
There comes a certain turning point in the lives of most gun owners. You’ll probably face it yourself, if you haven’t already. At some point, you’re going to be looking at that gun in your dresser or lock box and you might say to yourself “I want to bring that with me when I leave today.”
Some will say “nah, too much trouble”. Statistically speaking, most will say that, actually. Others, however, will decide to take the plunge and get their carry permit. To those people who have decided to jump through the bureaucratic hoops, I say, “Bravo!”
For those thinking about getting their permit, I say, “Come on in! The water’s fine!”
Before we go any further, let me make it clear that this isn’t an article on how to get your permit. I’m not a lawyer and concealed carry laws are so different from state to state that someone could dedicate huge websites to keeping track of them…and many already have. This is for those of you who have either decided to take the plunge or who have just gotten your permit.
Now, here in Florida, they make you take a class as part of the permitting process. There are a lot of other states that do that as well. In this class, they go over the obvious stuff like where you can carry, when you can use force, and more. You can also read lots of guides online like “holster tips” and “What to look for in a carry gun”. There are some things, however, that no one seems to tell you and I wish someone had told me when I first started.
These are the top 5 things they don’t tell you about concealed carry.
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Your New Gun is Broken. Now What?
So you’ve got that shiny new gun you’ve been wanting for years now. You take it to the range and it stops working after a dozen rounds. It’s not your average bad ammo or bad technique type of thing either. Nope, you saw something important looking fly off. If it was a Nerf gun, you could just take it and the receipt back to Toys R Us and exchange it for a new one. Unfortunately, the store (and the law in some places) isn’t too keen on taking guns on return. At least not according to the huge signs all over the store that says “No returns or exchanges”.
So have you just flushed a few hundred dollars down the toilet? What is a consumer supposed to do? Continue reading
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