Medal of Honor: Clifford Chester Sims
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Threatening Deadly Force: Musings On “Brandishing” and “Warning” Shots
To scare off a home intruder and alert neighbors to summon the police, one should go out to a balcony and fire a double-barreled shotgun into the air. WRONG!
Florida enacted a law to encourage and make “warning” shots (those intended to instill fear and obtain immediate compliance but taken in a way so as to be harmless to any person) legal. WRONG!
You should only draw/display (often referred to as “brandish”) your handgun after you have already decided to shoot, as doing so without shooting is unwise escalation, will likely result in the gun being taken away and used on you, or is unlawful. WRONG
A “warning” shot before actually shooting someone is preferable and legally permissible. WRONG!
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A cook aboard a ship sunk at Guadalcanal, French pulled a makeshift raft full of wounded shipmates for eight hours through shark-infested waters by swimming with a tow rope tied around his waist. His swimming pulled the men to safety, overcoming a current that would have pushed the boat toward a Japanese-occupied shore.
Though submitted for high valor awards, French never received a medal or decoration, except for a single letter of thanks from a senior admiral, a note which misstated how long he had swam in the rescue.
According to a Swimming World Magazine account of French’s story, when the French and his 15 shipmates, all white, were rescued, the staff of a hospital tried to separate French from the group into quarters for blacks. The injured Gregory men refused, threatening to fight. French was submitted for the Navy Cross but received only a letter of commendation from the commander of the Southern Pacific Fleet, Adm. William F. “Bull” Halsey.
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But Maduro was far from the first gun-loving dictator of Venezuela, and the reason is simple: dictators use guns to represent power over those who don’t have them. In fact, long before Maduro, Simón Bolívar held the title of the title of Latin America’s best-armed leader.
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All Right -- Let's Light This Candle
This whole mess is starting to look like the Satanic Panic of the 1980s - 1990s. For those who may be a little too young to remember that little blot on the Copybook of History, it started with a “psychiatrist” who had a fondness for the woo-woo — and incredibly debunked — practice of “Recovered Memory Therapy,” and was spark-plugged by well-meaning, yet clueless, people who used suggestive questions and leading questions when interviewing children … and wound up with about 12,000 reports of ritual abuse of children — including, but not limited to: child sexual abuse, ritual sacrifice of children, cannibalism of children, child pornography, child prostitution, murder of children, torture of children, and incestuous orgies.
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Honor – I: The Architecture of Manhood and the Warrior Profession
Honor is a word that lingers in the American vocabulary like the fading echo of a language we once spoke fluently. Young men today hear it in movie speeches or military recruiting videos, but seldom anywhere else. Their lives contain almost nothing that would teach them what honor is, much less how to live it. They sense instinctively that the world has become thinner, cheaper, and more chaotic, and that the older generations possessed something, some kind of backbone or clarity or standard, that men today were never handed.
That missing thing is not courage, or discipline, or patriotism. It is the structure that made those traits possible.
It is honor.
And American men live in a world that has forgotten what honor was, what it meant, and why it mattered.
Honor is not nostalgia. It is not costume. It is not the romanticized virtue of aristocrats or soldiers or dead civilizations. Honor was once the most important behavioral control system in human society. For thousands of years, it was the architecture through which men learned who they were, what was expected of them, and how to regulate their emotions, their impulses, their strength, and their responsibilities.
Modern society offers almost nothing that replaces it. And many men feel that loss in their bones.
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A Soviet Experiment - The Kalashnikov Assault Carbine
Shortly after the adoption of the Kalashnikov design in 1949, Soviet small-arms development found itself at a doctrinal crossroads. The AK emerged as the final survivor of a rigorous postwar rifle competition, and, in an odd twist, it was accepted despite not fully meeting the full-auto accuracy or, better described as dispersion requirements, the trials had set, as, at the time, this was prized over semi-auto accuracy. The choice reflected a broader attitude in the immediate post-World War II period, an emphasis on reliability and the capacity for effective automatic fire rather than the single-shot precision prized by some Western armies. The bloody lessons of the Eastern Front had impressed on Soviet planners that volume of fire and simplicity under battlefield stress were often more valuable than semi-automatic accuracy.
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Holsters also need to securely hold the gun in its intended position while freely releasing it on the draw. A fixed opening that allows the user to reholster the firearm after it is drawn safely is also essential. Along with trigger protection, retention, and reholstering basic expectations, a good holster allows for ride height adjustment and cant adjustment so we can fine-tune, with the other features, how the holster interfaces with the body, how it feels, and how well it conceals. A holster is an administrative place for a handgun, akin to a rifle sling, and the holster should keep the firearm in position safely for the user.
AIWB holster challenges: An appendix in the waistband (AIWB) holster is no different in these general safety requirements. However, the specific carry location presents issues above and beyond that of a regular IWB holster. The appendix carry position is not a novel concept; however, it has gained popularity in recent years. There was a period when out-of-waistband (OWB) holsters were the norm and inside the waistband (IWB) on the strong side became the preferred option. Today’s modern AIWB, which we are striving to perfect, has been in production for only about 15 years. It represents an evolving approach to concealed carry that emphasizes accessibility and comfort.
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Ten Commandments of Concealed Carry
Carrying a lethal weapon in public confers a grave power that carries with it great responsibilities. Those who lawfully engage in the practice realize that. Those who are considering concealed carry need to know what those experienced people know.
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CZ 75 Legend: One of the Most Influential 9mm Pistols Ever Made
Few handguns have shaped the modern 9mm pistol landscape like the CZ 75. First introduced in the mid-1970s, the Czech-built pistol became a benchmark for ergonomics, capacity, and shootability. So influential that it’s been copied countless times across the globe. Now, CZ is revisiting that legacy with the CZ 75 Legend, a pistol built to celebrate the original design in its purest form. The CZ 75 Legend isn’t a modernized duty pistol. Instead, it’s a deliberate throwback meant to capture the feel and mechanical character of the original. The all-steel, hammer-fired pistol retains the platform’s classic double-action/single-action (DA/SA) trigger, manual thumb safety, and inverted slide-rail design. These are all features that helped define the original CZ 75’s smooth recoil impulse and excellent accuracy.
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(Note: Clicking on the link above will download a .pdf document)
First, since I’m not a woman, you might ask what would I know about handguns for women? Fair enough.
Here’s some background. I have been teaching firearms use since the early 1970’s, and my students have always included women. In 1981 I wrote the first book that I am aware of that deals specifically with the subject of women and handguns, Survival Shooting for Women.
Rangemaster trains almost 2500 students a year, and over 40% of them are female. That’s about 1,000 women a year, year after year. No other private firearms school in the US trains more women. In addition, my wife, Lynn, is an accomplished shooter, and an NRA and state certified handgun instructor, and she provides me with educated feedback. So do several other female state certified instructors on our staff. The commentary offered here is based on close observation on the range of literally thousands of women learning to shoot handguns for self-defense.
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Adapting Your Optics Mount When Adding a Suppressor
Threading a suppressor onto your rifle is one of the easiest ways to make shooting more enjoyable. Less blast, less recoil, and a whole lot less abuse on your ears. But once that can goes on the muzzle, there’s something many shooters don’t think about right away - your optics mount might need a little adjustment too.
A suppressor changes how your rifle behaves. It adds weight to the front end, alters barrel harmonics, and in some cases can even introduce heat mirage that shows up right in your scope. None of this is bad—in fact, suppressors often help rifles shoot better. But it does mean it’s worth taking a look at how your optics mount as well as how you are holding your rifle.
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Three Austin police officers saved countless lives when they shot and killed Ndiaga Diagne, the suspected gunman who had a Quran in his car as he opened fire in a packed bar while wearing clothing that read "Property of Allah" and displayed the Iranian flag. Then they spent the next two days contending with the possibility that their heroic actions could lead to a criminal indictment.
That's because Austin-area district attorney José Garza, who was elected in 2020 with the help of outside support from a PAC funded by billionaire George Soros, has a policy of bringing "all officer involved excessive force cases to the grand jury," regardless of whether he believes officers' actions constitute criminal conduct. For this reason, the Austin Police Association announced it proactively retained legal counsel for the three police officers who put a stop to Diagne's killing spree, with the expectation that Garza could bring the officers before a grand jury. That policy prompted widespread criticism on Tuesday, including from Texas governor Greg Abbott (R.), who pledged to intervene in favor of the officers if necessary.
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