Who is Buying DC?

Started to dig into this today after reading that the Dems will be pushing the evil of the Koch brothers again and how they are buying our government .  .  . . . so I commented that the Dems are worse and got the eventual PROVE IT response to my post. . . so I did.

And I figured I would share it here too.

I got this from Open Secrets.org so you can go there to look at the data yourself and see how they can spin things.

First how does it look when you take the Top 100 spenders?

Lets start with saying that the Koch folks are number 51. . .

If you look at how things break up just by what % each entry spends on each party and take an average you get the following:

Dems get 53%
GOP gets 47%

Not looking too bad but the Dems still get more if you look just at percentage donated. . .

Where this jumps out is if you look at how that adds up in real hard cash:

Dems get $49.7 million
GOP gets $47.9 million. . .

So now tell me who is being bought in DC???  I don't think it is the GOP - it may be close but either way you look at it the Dems take in more donations.  Even if you call it even that still says the Dems should not be throwing stones, they are bought and paid for just as bad as the GOP at BEST.

On the Road to Becoming a Gun Instructor

I spent last night at the gun club teaching again. . . .

Although this was a bit different than the standard MA class I have been doing once a month with a team of instructors.  Last night we put on a class for folks that already had a permit and wanted to get better at shooting.  It started out with an email to the members that basically said "Hey you new to shooting?  Have a new gun you want to learn?  Want a free night with an instructor to go over the basics and help you with your own gun?  How to clean  your gun?  Come on down!"

It got a good response overall but once a date was set we only had a few folks actually show.  I think we will have to do it every so often so folks can take advantage of the class as everyone is so booked up these days.  (That and it is getting nice out after a nasty winter here)

So . . . when time came to do the class we had four folks show up and we had one on one instruction with them.  This worked out very well.  I spent an hour or more with a gentlemen who has had a permit for a year or so and just got his first pistol back in December, a nice new M&P 9mm. . . . which worked out great as that is my standard carry gun = )  He was new to shooting overall and just soaked it all in.  I remember asking him if I was dumping too much info on him. . . "feel free to tell me to slow down" I said . . . He quick answer was keep it coming!  The enthusiasm was great to see and he commented that even if he couldn't fix it all now he still wanted to hear about it so he could work on it later.  A great student to have!

This was an informal class in that we did a real quick review of the safety rules then hit the range.  The lest us go over proper shooting stance and grip then get to some shooting.  With the ability to work one on one I could stay with this guy and make corrections as we went along.   It also let him ask questions not only on his shooting but a bit on carry issues since he is looking to eventually carry.  We did stick mainly to the basics, grip, stance, sight picture and such so we could keep enforcing a few changes he needs to make in his grip.  He was shooting a great group by the end, with most shots in a 4" area and a few out to maybe 6". . .  it got a bit worse later on but I chalk that up to muscle fatigue after an hour of shooting, not his skills

I have to say I found it very rewarding to see the improvement in his shooting.

I am also  pleased with my own progress as a teacher.  I will always have things to work on but still, a year ago I had taught a few friends and family to shoot - the basics, but that was about it. . . . Now I am an NRA Certified Instructor, I have taught 8 group classes at the club with other instructors, and a few personal classes to help folks get certification and a Mass licence.  I have taken a few classes - reloading for pistols, carry concealed, action shooting and I have a NRA coaching class coming up.

I know I am just starting down this road but I like where it is going.  So much more to learn, but the great thing about the shooting community is so many folks willing to teach you and answer questions!  I have yet to meet someone I can't learn something from either watching them, talking to them, or by teaching them and answering questions.  What a great ride.

Why Gun Control Will Never Work

I am constantly amazed that folks think gun control is a viable option. . .  Please folks all it takes is a short bit of history and you will see prohibition has never resulted in good things.

Lets start with the big on:  Alcohol Prohibition. . .  with a short bit of time on Google you come up with these info. (from Wikipedia)

Alcohol Prohibition was tried over and over at the star of the last century. . . .

• 1907 to 1948 in Prince Edward Island,^[5] and for shorter periods in other provinces in Canada

• 1907 to 1992 in Faroe Islands; limited private imports from Denmark were allowed from 1928

• 1914 to 1925 in Russia and the Soviet Union

• 1915 to 1933 in Iceland (beer was still prohibited until 1989)^[6]

• 1916 to 1927 in Norway (fortified wine and beer also prohibited from 1917 to 1923)

• 1919 in Hungary (in the Hungarian Soviet Republic, March 21 to August 1; called szesztilalom)

• 1919 to 1932 in Finland (called kieltolaki, "ban law")

• 1920 to 1933 in the United States

You will note each one of these experiments also has an end date. . .  it did not work.

Here in the US we can see what we got out of the deal.  Crime went up, corruption grew, and we got introduced to the likes of Al Capone and the gangs that ran moonshine and alcohol and controlled it.  It brought us murder, drive by shootings and the gangsta era of fame and fortune. . . .

It also brought the US it's first gun laws as the .gov tried to reign in this madness.  None of it worked and eventually defeat was admitted and it was repealed.

Next we can look at Drug Prohibition in the USA. . .

1973 we get the DEA
1982 the CIA and folks get in on drug control and we have what is called the "war on drugs" in the USA

What has that gotten us?  Does anyone think you can't get drugs today?  

We have drug lords and gangs controlling the supply, and killing each other over their territories.  Innocent folks are killed in the drive by shootings too. . . ..Folks are getting drugs mixed with who knows what and doses that they don't know but they snort, smoke or shoot it anyway and many end up dead from the overdose.  

Crime has gone up as addicts steal to support their habit and rehab is a mess.

Yet the drugs keep coming into the country.  I bet any high school kid knows where to get some. . . .

So now they want to ban guns. . . 

Somehow that will magically make them all go away.  

I love how the folks that back gun bans totally ignore the basic facts I have presented above.  Criminals will still get guns and us them against good people to get what they want.  They will get them smuggled into the country without a problem, look at the drugs we have now.

So please folks, lets stop this now.  Tell the gun grabbers and the anti-gun folks that you live in the real world and you know it won't work.  I don't know what color the sky is in their world but it sure ain't blue.

Fact is gun sales have been going up at a record pace for 6 or more years now. .  and yet violent crime continues it's 20 year drop. . . you are safer today than you were 20 years ago or more. . .

How can that be?  simple.  The news media is no longer neutral and no longer reports the facts.  They are entertainment and they support the liberal big government agenda.  They bombard us every news cycle with crime and shootings to make it look like crime is up and to support gun bans. . . 

The real questions is Why?  What does the media and the liberals/socialist have to gain from this??? that is easy - CONTROL.  A disarmed populous is easy to control.  You can see it in how we responded to the Boston Bombings last year.  Folks had their rights trampled on as they went house to house looking for the bombers.  Folks were herded out of their homes with hands up like criminals.  they lived in and around Boston where guns are all but banned even though that is Un-Constitutional.  So they had no choice - they could not defend themselves from the Bombers or the State so they did what they were told, had guns pointed at them and behaved like good little sheep.  It was sickening. . . .

Fight for your rights folks.  Prohibition never works and history has shown it often if not always leads to more crime not less, and more government control of our lives.

Upgrade Your M&P Thanks to Apex.

I recently purchased two Apex upgrades for my full size M&P 9mm from Amazon.  You can see all the stuff Apex has available on their website HERE.

The first is the Apex Tactical M&P 9mm / .357 / .40 Duty/Carry Trigger Action Enhancement Kit that I got from Amazon HERE.  This is a new set of springs, a hardened sear and new striker block.  If you have some mechanical ability and access to YouTube you can do this work yourself or you can have a Gun Smith do it, but I did the work myself.  It was a fairly straight forward install and took about an hour to do all the work as I went very slow to be sure I was doing it right.  

Be warned that you do need a 1/8 in. punch, and you will have to be comfortable removing the rear sight (need a drift that won't mar the sight) on the slide to make this upgrade.  I used a laser bore sight to get the rear sight back on and aligned in my workshop so I didn't have to play with it on the range.  I checked the sights with the laser before I did any modifications so I knew what I was looking for when I put it all back together again

I also installed at the same time the Apex Tactical Specialties RAM S&W M&P 9/40/357 W/O Thumb Safety Trigger Reset Assist Mechanism RAM also from Amazon HERE.  This little add on gives you a click when the trigger gets to the reset point.  It makes it easier to feel this reset and get that follow up shot without riding the trigger all the way back to its rest position.  Since I had the sear assembly out of the gun anyway it was the perfect time to do this upgrade too.

The end result was a trigger that was a bit lighter, but was MUCH smoother to use.  Gone was the hard gritty feel of the original trigger I was use to.  It was much easier to keep the gun on target and I think the results speak for themselves.  

I should have taken a few photos of the kits but you can see them at the links.  They come with a few extra parts to help in the re-assembly of the gun when you are done and they do help making it much easier to put the rear sight back on and getting the trigger group back in and pinned in place.

Before the upgrade I tended to shoot low left and just outside the black. . . . here is the first target I shot at about 25 feet:

Here is a view of the target from the firing line.

And the target after the first five rounds. . . 

I have to say I am very happy with the upgrade.  Now I have to get use to the new feel of the trigger, it is like having a new gun again almost.  The accuracy is better, the feel is better, and it is easy to the gun back on target.  I think the original heavy trigger was part of the problem with my low left shots.

Here are a few photos of my tests at the 50 ft mark (end of the range):

 Here is the target at the end of the range

And the results after 10 rounds. . . not to bad even if I did drop a few low. . ..

To finish up my tests and to get a bit more familiar with the new trigger I did two more targets at the mid range again:

Still shooting a bit left, but now I am in the black.  I think the left thing is me, not the gun and I am working on it. . .

So two big thumbs up for the folks at Apex in making a great upgrade for your Smith M&P.  If you have one I would highly recommend this upgrade whether you do it yourself or have someone do it for you.  I think you will find the improvement in the trigger feel, reset, and weight is well worth the about $115 it cost for the parts. 

Go get the upgrades, you won't be sorry!

Cliven Bundy Stand Off

So the Fed and Harry Reid have backed down.

In what is looking like a land grab by the Fed to give it to a China business that had Reid's backing they tried to take over the Bundy ranch and take his cattle. . .

Lucky for the Bundy's word got out (not through the MSM, they are very quiet on this) and things did not go well for the Fed.  Instead of another Ruby Ridge we had patriots show up and make a stand with the family and put a stop to this. . . .

The Fed has backed off and will return the cattle it took.

Now we need to watch and see.  Are they really done or is this a ploy to get it out of the news and spotlight so they can silence him without anyone seeing.  They tried to make it a no fly zone to keep the local news out but it was too late.

This is what we have come to folks.  The Fed stomping on our rights and trying to hide it.

We should all take notice of this and remember in November.  We can stop this now with our vote before it comes to violence.  It came way too close for comfort this time.  Both sides were armed and the Fed was seen tazering folks.

VOTE in November and kick out the big government folks in DC.  It is time we take things back and follow our Constitution.  Time to shrink the Fed and it's power over our lives.  GO VOTE and REMEMBER in November.

School Stabbing Attack

OK, more news has come out since my last post.

Seems the safety officer and assistant principal are the ones that stopped this kid and it was the assistant principal that tackled him.

I am sorry to hear they had to resort to that and did not have pepper spray or a tazer to use on him without having to get close enough to get stabbed themselves.

I wish I could say I was surprised at how fast this has faded from the news but I am not.  This kid did not use a gun and by luck or Gods help no one was killed so the media will drop this ASAP as it does not fit their narrative.  This attack was just the first, their will be more, and each one will learn from the last just watch. . . sad but true.  We have done nothing to fix this problem and they are not talking about doing anything to fix it. . . .

All reports on the kid say he was nice, quiet, and no one expected anything like this from him.  He came from the perfect family. . . all of this is why the news dropped it.  This is the perfect example of why all their great ideas won't work.  No license needed for the knives, no background check to catch him. . . nothing they want to subject us to un-Constitutionally would have done a damn thing to stop this. . . .

What the hell are people thinking. . . .

Who needs a gun when you have a Knife Attack?

School knife attack. . .  20 injured, 7 life threatening. . .

When will we learn.  Disarming teachers and telling the world that no one can defend themselves in a place is asking for trouble. 

I pray for the kids, and I want to know what the attacker was thinking and why. . . and I am scared at what the politically correct idiots will come up with next for their fix as yet again we are shown that banning weapons in the schools is not stopping crazy folks from hurting and trying to kill our kids.  YOUR WEAPON FREE ZONE FIX IS WHAT IS CAUSING THIS!

All I can say to the hoplophobes who will all congratulate themselves that a gun was not used is to shut the F up.  Seven kids may still die and all may have lifelong problems because your screwed up thinking caused this mess.  One security guard, cop or teacher with a weapon (a gun preferred for their safety) could probably have prevented this.  We will see when the facts come out if that is true, but I would rather have the guard than not. .  . no guard means for sure no one can stop it.

UPDATE - security guard is one of the injured. . . guess he had no way to disarm or otherwise stop the attack such as a weapon, lethal or not. . . hope they post more facts on this.  Even pepper spray may have helped but it does not work on everyone.  . . 

These nuts look for a place to go where they know no one can fight back. . .  that is where they attack, and have time and time again.  Only one attack since the 1950’s has not been in a gun/weapons free zone.

When will we learn?  When will we tell the politically correct hoplophobes to shut up and sit down while the grownups fix their mess.  Time to get rid of any kind of weapons free zone.  Time to let teachers fight back and give them the ability to defend their kids and themselves if they want to take that responsibility.  I do not want to force anyone to carry a weapon who doesn’t want to – But I am sick of us disarming those willing to defend helpless kids from the acts of madmen.

IDPA and Action Shooting

Took a class at my gun club last night on Actions Shooting. . .

It is their own version of IDPA with slight modifications to the program due to the safety rules at the club like no loaded weapons in holsters. . .

Anyway I must say I had a great time.  I tried a class from Boomstick Firearms a bit back that I talk about HERE and that got me started.

The goal of IDPA (International Defensive Pistol Association) is to practice real world skills you may need in a self defense situation in the real world.  Now it is still a sport and we don't want anyone to get hurt so there are limits to what we can do, but it is much more than just standing there shooting paper.

The biggest changes I noticed was shooting and moving and multiple targets.  The goal is not a perfect bulls-eye but to hit the "man" shaped target in the A or critical zone to score.  Again this is not for pinpoint accuracy but self defense accuracy.  They then did some moving forward and backwards while shooting.

Now some of this was familiar to me as I did a few years playing paint ball in my day which was also a great force on force way to train  . . . especially since many of the players I played with were either ex-military or cops. . .

Anyway I hope to go to a few of their training classes and see how it goes.  I may even try an event or two and see how I do on the score front.  No better way to fix my ego about thinking I can shoot than to do a competition or two with the experienced folks to show me how little I really know.

More later. . . but I think I may be hooked. . . .

First One on One Class

Finally had the stars align and my friend and I both had a free day to do the Pistol Class for his Mass LTC.

I have done a number of classes at my gun club as part of the team, each of us teaching a part of the course but this was the first one on one class I have done.

While a bit intimidating at first it was fun.  I found once I got things going it went very smoothly after all the time I have spent at the club classes.  I had a few hiccups with one of my demos videos on how the various types of rifles and pistols work but that was minor looking back at it.

The overall class ran about 4.5 hours with the shooting part included so not too bad.

I am amazed at how natural the class felt, and how much my nerves have gone away since teaching it.  I think it was like a right of passage or something, I did my own class, it went well, and my friend is now going for his LTC here in MA.

I can see what I want to work on for the next class.  I need to get my videos under control and maybe do a bit more practice with the NRA posters boards to really clean it up but over all it went well and I think I am now well on my way as an instructor.

Boomstick Pistol 101 class

Spent last night at the gun club with the guys from Boomstick Firearms Training for their Pistol 101 course - which was an intro to action or combat type shooting. . . . If you want the quick review then this is it - If you can take their classes!  They have a web page you can go look at HERE

There were 12 students and three instructors from Boomstick there.  They started with going over the safety rules then went into the basics.   They worked with us very closely as we stepped through the following drills:

• Stance
• Drawing from a holster safely
• Re-holstering safely
• Standard slow reload with press check

After going over this with empty guns and doing corrections they broke us up into two groups of six so that each instructor worked with two students at a time and we worked on the drills with live fire in the range.

Once we had that down good they moved on to dealing with a few more complex issues such as:

• Trigger Reset
• Scanning the area after you shoot
• Quick or combat reloads
• Switching from center of mass to head shots

we did most of the drills at about 3 yards, with some back at 5 and then 7.

This was a great class - I know I picked up a lot from this class and would love to take more classes from these folks.

If you get the chance you need to take these classes.  These guys are great teachers, work well with the students as a group and as individuals and you can tell right away they know their stuff.  They were very good at keeping things firmly under control so you felt safe every moment of the class.  They were also good at pushing you to push yourself but safely. . . I know I was shooting much faster than I thought I could at the end and still getting good hits and completely safe.  they helped me with my grip, stance, and holster work and I came out of this feeling much better about my ability to hit my target if I need to.

By the end of the class everyone had had a great night, I think we all picked up a few pointers (some of us more than others) and we were all asking about other classes they offered.

If you are in the Eastern Massachusetts area you need to check theses guys out.