Sunday, December 04, 2005

Things That Bug Me Finale

Reading Guns magazine and have sworn off anything from the desk of the increasingly popular Clint Smith, owner and operator of Thunder Ranch.

Granted, it must be difficult to stay above the maddening crowd when presenting a service that is, after all, a relatively plain and simple task. Handgun fights are mostly akin to bar brawls in that one punch after another is thrown until one combatant gives up the ghost.

Words of wiz-dumb from Mr. Smith:

"Who says you'll be using YOUR own gun?" Um, because 99.99999% of the time is happens that way?

"Speed is fine, accuracy is final." Cliches never get old, do they, Clint?

These and more can be found in the latest edition of Guns, but I wouldn't bother were I you.

Dreadful advice, ludicrous advertising, and enough mixed metaphors to drive the even moderately literate quite insane.

Get a good gun. Load it with modern ammunition. Practice as often as you can. Practice doing what WILL happen and not what MIGHT happen. "Experts" these days are making a living preaching the possible and not the probable but stick with safe and simple.

And when selecting a weapon for self-defense remember that most people walk away from a single shot from a 9mm, and recover quite nicely. You won't, repeat WON'T be able to just stand there and pump round after round from your mousegun into a willing target dummy. It'll be noisy, smokey, you and he will be shouting and moving, and shot placement will be a thing nearly akin to random chance. Cops prove this day in and day out but the "experts" still preach otherwise.

Trained law enforcement personnel miss 80% of the time and it isn't because they aren't really trying. Pay attention to what is real and leave the uber-tactics and the fancy but error-prone super-guns to the mall ninja's.

No comments: