Trego's Mountain Ear

"Serving North Lincoln County"

Tag: Firearms

  • Rules For A Gunfight – From Gerard Van der Leun

    One of the last emails I received from Gerard Van der Leun was the following “Rules For A Gunfight.” Gerard has passed from writing his American Digest – and I kind of miss his observations and humor. These bits of wisdom are reputed to come from Drill Instructor Joe Frick.

    American Digest: Conceived in Liberty

    RULES TO LIVE BY
    1. Forget about knives, bats, and fists. Bring a gun. Preferably, bring at least two guns. Bring all of your friends who have guns. Bring four times the ammunition you think you could ever need.
    2. Anything worth shooting is worth shooting twice. Ammunition is cheap – life is expensive. If you shoot inside, buckshot is your friend. A new wall is cheap – funerals are expensive.
    3. Only hits count. The only thing worse than a miss is a slow miss.
    4. If your shooting stance is good, you’re probably not moving fast enough or using cover correctly.
    5. Move away from your attacker and go to cover. Distance is your friend. (Bulletproof cover and diagonal or lateral movement are preferred.)
    6. If you can choose what to bring to a gunfight, bring a semi or full-automatic long gun and a friend with a long gun.
    7. In ten years nobody will remember the details of caliber, stance, or tactics. They will only remember who lived.
    8. If you are not shooting, you should be communicating, reloading, and running. Yell “Fire!” Why “Fire”? Cops will come with the Fire Department, sirens often scare off the bad guys, or at least cause them to lose concentration and will…. and who is going to summon help if you yell ”Intruder,” “Glock” or “Winchester?”
    9. Accuracy is relative: most combat shooting standards will be more dependent on “pucker factor” than the inherent accuracy of the gun.
    10. Someday someone may kill you with your own gun, but they should have to beat you to death with it because it is empty.
    11. Always cheat, always win. The only unfair fight is the one you lose.
    12. Have a plan.
    13. Have a back-up plan, because the first one won’t work. “No battle plan ever survives 10 seconds past first contact with an enemy.”
    14. Use cover or concealment as much as possible, but remember, sheetrock walls and the like stop nothing but your pulse when bullets tear through them.
    15. Flank your adversary when possible. Protect yours.
    16. Don’t drop your guard.
    17. Always tactical load and threat scan 360 degrees. Practice reloading one-handed and off-hand shooting. That’s how you live if hit in your “good” side.
    18. Watch their hands. Hands kill. Smiles, frowns and other facial expressions don’t (In God we trust. Everyone else keeps your hands where I can see them.)
    19. Decide NOW to always be aggressive ENOUGH, quickly ENOUGH.
    20. The faster you finish the fight, the less shot you will get.
    21. Be polite. Be professional. But, have a plan to kill everyone you meet if necessary, because they may want to kill you.
    22. Be courteous to everyone, overly friendly to no one.
    23. Your number one option for personal security is a lifelong commitment to avoidance, deterrence, and de-escalation.
    24. Do not attend a gunfight with a handgun, the caliber of which does not start with anything smaller than ”4″.
    25. Use a gun that works EVERY TIME. “All skill is in vain when an Angel blows the powder from the flintlock of your musket.” At a practice session, throw your gun into the mud, then make sure it still works. You can clean it later.
    26. Practice shooting in the dark, with someone shouting at you, when out of breath, etc.
    27. Regardless of whether justified or not, you will feel sad about killing another human being. It is better to be sad than to be room temperature.
    28. The only thing you EVER say afterward is, “He said he was going to kill me. I believed him. I’m sorry, Officer, but I’m very upset now. I can’t say anything more. Please speak with my attorney.”
    Finally, Drill Instructor Frick’s Rules For Un-armed Combat.
    1: Never be unarmed.
    Thank you for being a member. Please forward this to others that should be members. All writers need readers. I would like to have many more like you. – Gerard Van der Leun American Digest © 2022

  • My Cheap, Accurate Pistol

    I’m not much of a collector.  A collector has a theme to the collection.  John McBride’s collection included American Military firearms.  I’m not sure how a collector would describe my TT Olympia – it’s a Chinese copy of the Walther that beat out the Colt Woodsman at the 1936 Olympics.  Somehow mine isn’t marked with anything to say ‘made in China’ – but it is.  It’s also well finished, and, since my cataract surgery a few years ago, shoots well for me again.

    It’s an example of how things connect in the gun world.  I never found a Woodsman for sale at the right price when I wanted one – not that I couldn’t stretch a budget to include one, but that they’re more costly than I can justify for my purposes.  So is the Walther.  Instead, my Chinese knock-off was more accurate than pricey – so I kept it.  It came in cheap cardboard and styrofoam, like this: 

    The Chinese builders did a nice job – good trigger pull, and must be at least close to the pre-war German workmanship.  Admitted, the wood in the grips would never have made it into either Walther or Colt’s factory – the grips are downright ugly – but they do fit my hand well.  Bolting the weight on does control the minimal recoil of a 22 cartridge – and it’s set up to be used with one hand.  The right hand – it doesn’t fit the left.

    When Walther got too busy with World War II, Hammerli (in Switzerland) picked up the design and produced slightly improved versions.  As the Olympic competition got tougher, the basic design went to America and became the basis of the Smith and Wesson model 41.  And mine is the Chinese knock-off that directly copies the 1936 Walther.  As you can see, good looking grips didn’t seem to be a Chinese priority.  

    So what do I actually have?  A cheap, accurate, well built pistol that just barely made it into the United States before Clinton cut off importation.  Then it briefly sold well in Canada before the Trudeau government shut off sales.  I have no idea where it might be sold today, or where parts might be available.  The TT Olympia’s barrel is just under 5 inches long, it feeds just about any 22 shells I load, and, while sight acquisition is a little slow, is amazingly accurate.

    I’ve written about cheaply made poor quality guns.  This little pistol was cheap, well made, and accurate.  I’ll keep using it -though the barrel weight will stay in the drawer.  And I expect it will still be working fine when it goes to the next generation.

  • Information Control

    Information Control

    The problem with gun control is that in the end, it turns out to be information control – and that isn’t easy.  Japan has some downright strict controls on firearms – but this thing got next to the former prime minister:

    No lathe.  No Mill.  A couple of pipes, home-made black powder, batteries to ignite the powder.  Looks to me that the most high-tech component of the gun build was a large roll of electrician’s tape.

    People have been making black powder for most of a millennium.  Charcoal, saltpeter, and sulfur.  Charcoal is easy to obtain.  Saltpeter (potassium nitrate) might take a while – but you could use the Confederate Jno. Harrison’s method and get it from your own urine.  Push come to shove, I could extract sulfur from sheetrock – from drywall.  The Japanese assassin opted for electrical ignition – so I could do that with 9 volt transistor radio batteries. 

    The problem with keeping guns banned is that they are fairly simple tools – not so simple as an inclined plane or a lever, but still simple.  A tube that is open at one end and closed at the end that includes an explosive or propellant charge.  Basically a piece of pipe with an end cap.

  • A Well-regulated militia

    A Well-regulated militia

    As I listen to the comments about the need to do something to keep another Uvalde from happening, I’m hearing the usual comments that the second amendment is more to authorize a militia than the individual right to bear arms. 

    That I disagree is not an adequate reason to ignore the argument – scientific method pretty much demands listening respectfully to folks who disagree.  Fortunately, the internet gives me access to historical research that was confined to university campuses a quarter-century ago.  There is the problem of avoiding confirmation bias, but I can cope with that.

    Hartnation goes through the importance of the militias during the American revolution.  Remembering my long ago American History classes, I think George Washington expected a militia unit to be able to stand and fire 3 rounds, but not stand when the Brits closed with bayonets.  Hart described how dependent the Continental Army was on the local militias:

    At the beginning of American independence an immense task faced the colonial revolutionary. The English army, the best-trained, best-equipped military in the world, had served in the Americas, enforcing the will of the crown for many decades. American victory rested in the ability of the colonists to put together a viable fighting army. We know from history that the American Continental Army, commanded by George Washington, defeated the superior British army and expelled the rule of the crown from the colonies by 1783.

    . . . How much did the colonial militia contribute to enable the Continental army to defeat the British? I would posit that the militia movement was the driving force behind the Continental Army’s victory over the British because they were the main source of manpower, because they were already trained and armed with a 150 year harden tradition of defense to protect their own communities, and because the militia was made up of mostly  farmers and landowners, they stood to gain the most from independence giving them something tangible to fight for other than “liberty”.”

    battlefields.org

    Militias also provided the Continental armies in the field much-needed manpower, albeit on a temporary basis. When British commanders planned for their campaigns against the Continental armies in the field, they had to take in account the size of the militia forces operating in those same geographic areas. The British knew the militia were unpredictable, but they could not totally neglect their presence either. In some instances, militia units were the deciding factors in important battles. The war’s first battles of Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts were fought mostly by militia with some minutemen units. At the Battle of Bunker Hill, outside Boston, militia dealt a deadly blow to the British. Later in the war at battles such as Bennington, Vermont, King’s Mountain, Cowpens, both in South Carolina and Guilford Courthouse, in North Carolina, the militia was crucial to American victories.”

    Reviewing those historical comments, I get the feeling that the militia at the time of the American Revolution could have been described (as in the quote misattributed to Admiral Yamamoto) as a rifle (or at least a musket) behind every blade of grass.  The better regulated, the better drilled and prepared, the more essential to the security of a free state.

    The Supreme Court  (Miller case) ruled that the Second Amendment did not protect weapon types not having a “reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia”.  This kind of invalidates the arguments against “weapons of war.”  That 1939 decision protects them.

  • Firearms and Marijuana

    An illegal combination, under federal law. Regardless of the legality at the state level, marijuana is still classified at the federal level as a schedule 1 prohibited substance. This means that possessing both is a federal crime, punishable by up to $10,000 and as many as ten years in prision.

    The Montana Free Press contacted the Bureau of Alcohol,Tobacco and Firearms to confirm, learning that the Federal Gun Control Act prohibits anyone who uses a controlled substance from purchasing firearms or ammunition.

    Even if its medical? Yes. Even if it is medical, federal law still prohibits possession.

    While the possession of marijuana alone is still a federal crime, it carries only a $1000 and up to a year of jail time for the first conviction. Add a firearm to the mix, and the potential consequence is multiplied by ten.

    The state of Montana has an estimated 66% rate of gun ownership. Estimates suggest that about 20% of the adults in the state use marijuana, but those are probably low (given that using was illegal at the time of the survey, it seems very likely that people would under-report). Given these numbers, it is very probable that the two groups intersect. Federal law makes that risky.

  • The Man Sounded Knowledgeable and Confident

    A pleasant man stopped by asking to hunt on the place.  He explained that he uses black powder, and his bullet can only travel 70 yards.  He sounded confident in his assertion. If I hadn’t had the opportunity to teach a computer course for gunsmithing students half a lifetime ago, I might have believed him.  I did make the comment that I had watched a movie about a guy named Quigley, and he seemed to have shot a bit farther than 70 yards.  His response was that he uses round balls.

    It wasn’t like I was being paid to educate him.  So he left with a no hunting answer – and yet the incorrect statement, and the confidence bothers me.  He isn’t making an Alec Baldwin quality mistake – but the error remains.  A round ball leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to aerodynamics.  That’s why the minie ball (invented in 1849) replaced the round ball when the war between the states came along.  Still, it’s not like a round ball rifle has a 70 yard range – my math tells me that if I can put a 50 caliber roundball out of the barrel at 1800 feet per second, I have a projectile that, if I sight in 3 inches high at 50 yards, will be pretty much on target at 125 yards. 

    There’s the Civil War story of General Sedgwick – Confederate sharpshooters were firing from around 1000 yards away when the general said “Why are you dodging like this? They couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance.”  He was apparently unfamiliar with the Whitworth rifle and the fact that the Confederacy had at least 20 of them.  There is no record of the Confederates hitting an elephant that day, but one marksman did hit General Sedgwick. 

    Tim Murphy is credited with a 350 yard shot from a flintlock at the battle of Saratoga, in the American Revolution, that ended the career of the Scots general Simon Frazer.  There are arguments as to who actually fired the shot that took the general out and what the range actually was – but it would take another 75 years before the minie ball was developed. 

    Black powder has been effective for a long time.