Dot Torture
This is a great marksmanship drill that came from David Blinder at personaldefensetraining.com.Start at 3 yards. You have to get all 50 hits to pass. Once you can shoot the whole drill without a single miss, either increase the distance or add time pressure. For instance, try to finish the entire drill in under 5 minutes while maintaining 100% accuracy.
(click here to bring up the full-size version which you can then print out)
Dot 1 – Draw and fire one string of 5 rounds for best group. One hole if possible, total 5 rounds.
Dot 2 – Draw and fire 1 shot, holster and repeat X4, total 5 rounds.
Dots 3 & 4 – Draw and fire 1 shot on #3, then 1 shot on #4, holster and repeat X3, total 8 rounds.
Dot 5 – Draw and fire string of 5 rounds, strong hand only, total 5 rounds.
Dots 6 & 7 – Draw and fire 2 shots on #6, then 2 on #7, holster, repeat X4, total 16 rounds.
Dot 8 – From ready or retention, fire five shots, weak hand only, total 5 rounds.
Dots 9 & 10 – Draw and fire 1 shot on #9, speed reload, fire 1 shot on #10, holster and repeat X3, total 6 rounds.
Training with firearms is an inherently dangerous activity. Be sure to follow all safety protocols when using firearms or practicing these drills. These drills are provided for information purposes only. Use at your own risk.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Dot Torture Training Drill
Form Letter Opposing SB 6396
Dear (INSERT YOUR LEGISLATOR HERE),
I am writing to express my opposition to SB 6396, "Banning the sale of assault
weapons."
Should it become law, this bill is unlikely to prevent any crimes. It would, however, severely impact your law-abiding constituents' exercise of their right to bear arms under both the United States and Washington State Constitutions.
This alone should be sufficient justification to vehemently oppose SB 6396.
The bill's provision for warrantless searches (section (5)(a)), however, is simply breathtaking in its reckless disregard for our traditions of freedom, and hopefully provides you with even firmer grounds for opposition. The very idea of forcing law-abiding citizens to arbitrarily open their homes to State police powers is repugnant and alarming.
I sincerely I hope that I can count on you uphold liberty by standing in opposition to this irresponsible bill.
Sincerely,
(me)
(my address)
It would also be beneficial to contact the members of the Judiciary Committee and urge the bill defeat before it is allowed to reach the floor of the Senate. Contact information for the members of the Judiciary Committee may be found below, however, be advised that Senator Adam Kline and Jeanne Kohls-Welles are primary sponsors of the legislation.
Senator Adam Kline (D-37th Dist)
kline.adam@leg.wa.gov
223 John A. Cherberg Building
PO Box 40437
Olympia, WA 98504-0437
(360) 786-7688
Fax: (360) 786-1999
Senator Debbie Regala (D-27th Dist)
regala.debbie@leg.wa.gov
233 John A. Cherberg Building
PO Box 40427
Olympia, WA 98504-0427
(360) 786-7652
Fax: (360) 786-1999
Senator Bob McCaslin (R-4th Dist)
mccaslin.bob@leg.wa.gov
112 Irv Newhouse Building
PO Box 40404
Olympia, WA 98504-0404
(360) 786-7606
Fax: (360) 786-1999
Senator Mike Carrell (R-28th Dist)
carrell.michael@leg.wa.gov
102 Irv Newhouse Building
PO Box 40428
Olympia, WA 98504-0428
(360) 786-7654
Fax: (360) 786-7819
Senator Randy Gordon (D-41st Dist)
gordon.randy@leg.wa.gov
409 Legislative Building
PO Box 40441
Olympia, WA 98504-0441
(360) 786-7641
Senator James Hargrove (D-24th Dist)
hargrove.jim@leg.wa.gov
411 Legislative Building
PO Box 40424
Olympia, WA 98504-0424
(360) 786-7646
Fax: (360) 786-1323
Senator Jeanne Kohl-Welles (D-36th Dist)
kohl-welles.jeanne@leg.wa.gov 219 John A. Cherberg Building
PO Box 40436
Olympia, WA 98504-0436
(360) 786-7670
Fax: (360) 786-1999
Senator Pam Roach (R-31st Dist)
roach.pam@leg.wa.gov
202 Irv Newhouse Building
PO Box 40431
Olympia, WA 98504-0431
(360) 786-7660
Fax: (360) 786-7173
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Stop the Proposed WA State Assault Weapon Ban
11250 Waples Mill Road · Fairfax, Virginia 22030
1·800-392-8683
| Washington: “Assault Weapons” Ban Proposed in Olympia! |
| Wednesday, January 13, 2010 |
Please Stand-Up and Make Your Voices Heard! A group of four State Senators has introduced Senate Bill 6396, legislation that would bring California-style gun-control to the Northwest and ultimately ban many semi-automatic firearms commonly owned by Washingtonians. Like the failed Clinton Gun-Ban that sunset in 2004, this bill is about demonizing certain firearms based on how they look, not about crime fighting. This gun ban scheme will only punish law-abiding citizens and will do nothing to curb crime or keep criminals from obtaining firearms illegally. This is simply another attack on our Second Amendment rights in Washington State. Please contact both of your State Representatives and your State Senator TODAY at 800-562-6000 and politely urge them to oppose SB6396. More contact information for your legislators can be found here. |
Find this item at: http://www.nraila.org/Legislation/Read.aspx?ID=5293
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Sheriff:
Gun law changes will not prevent officer killingsBy Dee Riggs
World staff writerTuesday, January 12, 2010
WENATCHEE — Maurice Clemmons, who gunned down four Lakewood police officers Nov. 29, was an evil man and no changes in gun laws are going to prevent murders like he committed.
That is a conclusion that Chelan County Sheriff Mike Harum said he came to while serving on a panel of law enforcement officers looking into the shootings. He was appointed by Gov. Chris Gregoire to a panel that was asked to determine if changes in state laws might have prevented the murders, or if any changes could prevent similar murders in the future.
“Our fear was that if a legislator has a knee-jerk reaction to this whole
incident, he might come up with something that we would not be able to work with as a community,” Harum said.The panel met Dec. 29 in Olympia. Harum was the only law enforcement officer from North Central Washington on the eight-member panel.
Harum said he has heard rumors that some legislators want to ban assault weapons and others want to require that all guns be registered.
“Maurice Clemmons violated many firearms laws before he murdered the officers, so it seems rather dubious to argue additional laws might have prevented this tragedy,” Harum said.
He noted that the gun Clemmons used in the murder was stolen, and that he
stole a gun from a police officer during the shooting rampage.“If people talk about registering every firearm in the state of Washington, that’s going to put a tremendous burden on law enforcement, and won’t do anything to solve the problem,” Harum said, noting criminals will continue to get their weapons illegally.
Harum called Clemmons “a very evil person” and said, “You have to put total responsibility on him for what he did. ... Even if we had a state of the art system, it would not have prevented him from killing.”
Maurice Clemmons was under supervision by the state Department of Corrections when authorities say he shot and killed four Lakewood officers at a coffee shop before the start of their shifts. Clemmons was shot and killed by police after a two-day manhunt.
His parole from Arkansas had been transferred to Washington state, where he was living at the time of the murders.
Harum said the members of the review panel agreed with him that any changes in the system would not have prevented the killings. He summarized other panel observations:
• Since very few criminals engage in violent crime early on, all who go
through the criminal justice system must be held accountable for minor
violations.• The state should require mental health screenings before accepting
prisoners from out of state for community custody.• Police chiefs and sheriffs must have more discretion in denying concealed pistol licenses to mentally ill people.
• Legislation should be considered to hold those who knowingly provide
firearms illegally more accountable for their actions.
Friday, January 8, 2010
Some People Are Just Evil
I had seen this phenomena before, but in late November and early December of 2009 when the headlines were filled with stories of the heinous, calculated murder of 4 Lakewood, WA Police Officers by Maurice Clemmons, a violent career felon, I noticed something. None of the mainstream media, including my beloved Fox News, were characterizing Clemmons as an evil man. They were all interviewing psychologists who professed to be able to describe and diagnose his mental ailments. They all spoke of how this could have possibly been avoided if Clemmons had received proper treatment and maybe the pharmaceutical of the week. Not one mention of the philosophy of my former Criminal Justice Professor that postulated that "Some people are just #$%&*!@ evil!"
During my tenure as a Reserve Police Officer and especially as an Armed Security Officer at the Seattle Field Division of the FBI, I had many occasions to come into contact with those who were violent because they were evil and those who were violent because they were mentally ill. There is a world of difference and I believe that due to the cold, precalulated manner in which Clemmons assassinated Mark Renninger, Ronald Owens, Tina Griswold and Greg Richards, that Clemmons is indeed an evil man and knew exactly what he was doing.
The truely evil act in a cold and calculated manner. They plan their attack and carefully choose their victim. The mentally ill on the other hand are irrational, impulsive and unpredictable. You may have dealt with this person 100 times before and never had a problem with them other that hoping that they would stop talking about the satellites that were tracking them so that you could go get a cup of coffee, then the next moment they grab your partner and try to drag him into the street. After one notable melee in the lobby of the FBI office, I actually ended up having to draw my firearm, reholster and then deploy pepperfoam. After the altercation when the suspect had been subdued, he told us that if we would have only taken the microchips out of his skull, none of this would have been necessary.
It is my belief that society is beginning to characterize all violent criminals as mentally ill for political reasons. If the person is mentally ill, the act wasn't really his fault. The logic would follow that just as you can't blame a person for having cancer, you can't blame a person for having paranoid schizophrenia with aural and visual hallucinations. It's all part of the new mentality that people are not responsible for their own actions.
That lecture still sticks with me, some people are just evil.
This is why I choose to carry a firearm for the protection of myself and my family. This is why I train and practice with my firearm of choice. This is why I follow the Cooper Color Codes of Situational Awareness when I am in public.
You may have heard the phrase "When seconds count, the police are only minutes away." This may sound like rhetoric, but it is true as is demonstrated in this audio clip of an incident in which a woman was forced to shoot a stalker who had broken into her home. At one point, you hear the woman desperately pleading for assistance from the police. The dispatcher tells the woman "Ma'am, it's only been two minutes, they're on their way." I shudder to think of what would have happened to that woman if she had not taken the initiative to be responsible for her own self defense.
In 2005 the US Supreme Court Ruled that the police have no Constitutional duty to protect individual citizens. The decision, with an opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia and dissents from Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, overturned a ruling by a federal appeals court in Colorado. The appeals court had permitted a lawsuit to proceed against a Colorado town, Castle Rock, for the failure of the police to respond to a woman's pleas for help after her estranged husband violated a protective order by kidnapping their three young daughters, whom he eventually killed.
For hours on the night of June 22, 1999, Jessica Gonzales tried to get the Castle Rock police to find and arrest her estranged husband, Simon Gonzales, who was under a court order to stay 100 yards away from the house. He had taken the children, ages 7, 9 and 10, as they played outside, and he later called his wife to tell her that he had the girls at an amusement park in Denver.
Ms. Gonzales conveyed the information to the police, but they failed to act before Mr. Gonzales arrived at the police station hours later, firing a gun, with the bodies of the girls in the back of his truck. The police killed him at the scene.
The theory of the lawsuit Ms. Gonzales filed in federal district court in Denver was that Colorado law had given her an enforceable right to protection by instructing the police, on the court order, that "you shall arrest" or issue a warrant for the arrest of a violator. She argued that the order gave her a "property interest" within the meaning of the 14th Amendment's due process guarantee, which prohibits the deprivation of property without due process.
The district court and a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit dismissed the suit, but the full appeals court reinstated it and the town appealed. The Supreme Court's precedents made the appellate ruling a challenging one for Ms. Gonzales and her lawyers to sustain.
This case proves the rhetorical statement that "when seconds count, the police are minutes away."
Great Article on Holsters by Patrick Sweeney
Rigged for Wear
CCW sense: Think holsters are unnecessary, inconvenient or uncool? Think again.By Patrick Sweeney 11-17-09
A firearm for self-defense is not a magic talisman, nor some esoteric piece of anti-virus software. It's a tool, and like any tool, you have to have it on your person in order for it to be at all useful in an emergency. And then, of course, you have to be able to get to it to actually use it. Here are a few instances, a few mental images, to get you in the mood:
Detroit, mid-1980s: A man walks up to the counter at a fast-food restaurant, and on the last step, as he's lifting his hand to point and speak his order, a handgun slings out of his pants cuff, hits the floor, skids to the counter and stops with a clunk. He quickly picks it up, and as he's stuffing it back in his belt, he mumbles a "sorry" and hurries out.
Near Chicago, early 2000s: An off-duty police officer is in the freshly refurbished departmental ready room when his pistol slips. He grabs at it, hits the trigger and fires a shot into the newly carpeted floor.
A couple of years later, New York: A celebrity club-goer feels his pistol slipping, grabs at it, and it discharges; he's wounded in the leg.
Within the last year: An experienced gun owner bends over; his handgun falls, hits the floor and discharges, striking him.
I watched the first incident, was a few hours away from the second and was time zones away from the latter two. Injuries? In the first incident, the gun owner left before he could be arrested.
The second? The officer received a letter of reprimand in his file and had to pay for the reweave repair on the carpeting. The third incident cost the owner his freedom for a number of years and cut short a multi-million dollar career. In the last one the owner died.
What did all these situations have in common? Simple. None of them--not one--involved a holster.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Why is the 2nd Amendment Any Less Important Than The 1st?
We don't let the states "experiment" on the First Amendment. Should the Second Amendment receive any less respect?
In 1932, progressive Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis penned one of the most famous passages in American jurisprudence. "It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system," Brandeis wrote in his dissent in New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann, "that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory, and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country."
Since then, Brandeis' famous words have been quoted or referenced countless times, appearing everywhere from legal documents to campaign speeches. Most recently, they surfaced in the arguments leading up to the landmark Second Amendment case McDonald v. Chicago, which the Supreme Court is set to hear in early March 2010.
At issue in the case is Chicago's draconian handgun ban, a restriction that largely mirrors the gun control law struck down last year by the Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller. The key difference is that Heller only decided whether the Second Amendment secures an individual right against infringement by the federal government (which oversees Washington, D.C.). McDonald will settle whether the amendment's right to keep and bear arms applies against state and local governments as well.
That's where Brandeis comes in. In Chicago's view, the Second Amendment should have no impact on its vast gun control regime. As the city has argued to the Court, "Firearms regulation is a quintessential issue on which state and local governments can 'serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.'" Thus, Chicago claims it should enjoy "the greatest flexibility to create and enforce firearms policy."
That certainly sounds like a classic case for federalism and the states as laboratories of democratic experimentation. But look a little closer and Brandeis' celebrated words start to lose some of their shine. The issue that confronted the Supreme Court in New State Ice Co. was a 1925 Oklahoma law granting a handful of companies the exclusive authority to manufacture, sell, and distribute ice. Under the law, anyone that wanted to enter the ice business had to first justify their plans by providing "competent testimony and proof showing the necessity for the manufacture, sale or distribution of ice" at all proposed locations. In other words, upstart ice vendors faced the nearly impossible task of securing the state's permission to compete against a state-sanctioned ice monopoly.
That's the "courageous" experiment Brandeis got so misty about. What precisely was so "novel" about a business currying favor with the government in order to suppress competition? That's one of the oldest tricks in the book. Besides, as the great classical liberal Justice George Sutherland declared in his majority opinion striking down the Oklahoma ice monopoly, "in our constitutional system...there are certain essentials of liberty with which the state is not entitled to dispense in the interests of experiments."
Quite so. In fact, Brandeis himself occasionally shared this skeptical view of state power—at least when it came to state "experiments" on the First Amendment. Just one year earlier, in the case of Near v. Minnesota, Brandeis joined the Court in striking down that state's defamation law as a violation of the freedom of the press. So much for allowing a "courageous" state the free rein to experiment.
It was Sutherland's majority opinion in New State Ice Co.—not Brandeis' famous dissent—that got it right. "In [Near v. Minnesota] the theory of experimentation in censorship was not permitted to interfere with the fundamental doctrine of the freedom of the press," Sutherland wrote. "The opportunity to apply one's labor and skill in an ordinary occupation with proper regard for all reasonable regulations is no less entitled to protection."
Which brings us back to the Chicago gun case. The Windy City would like to "serve as a laboratory" with the "flexibility" to ignore the Second Amendment. But there's nothing "novel" about that. It's just another case of the government violating our rights. And since the Supreme Court would never let Chicago ban free speech, establish an official religion, or conduct other "experiments" on the First Amendment, why should the Second Amendment receive any less respect?
It's time for the Supreme Court to give the entire Bill of Rights its due.
Damon W. Root is an associate editor at Reason magazine.