The 4 rules of gun safety

*The 1st Law of Gun Safety - The Gun Is Always Loaded!


*The 2nd Law of Gun Safety - Never Point A Gun At Something You're Not Prepared To Destroy!


*The 3rd Law of Gun Safety - Always Be Sure Of Your Target And What Is Behind It!


*The 4th Law of Gun Safety - Keep Your Finger Off The Trigger Until Your Sights Are On The Target!

Sunday, September 25, 2011

2011 IDPA World Championship scores

Follow the link here:  http://www.idpa.com/matchresults/2011_Champ/2011_Champ_Scores.pdf

I was pulling for Morgan Allen. He's a member of the club where I shoot and a tremendous asset. Willing to help anyone and give tips.

Massad Ayoob talks with Powerfactor show about IDPA

Good video with Rick from Powerfactor show interviewing Massad Ayoob about IDPA and how it relates to self-defense.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=hC_VNi5ymo8

Friday, September 23, 2011

Tips when stopped by police

Probably won't be shooting this weekend, so though I'd share this video by Massad Ayoob and Tom Gresham on how to respond to police when you are carrying concealed.

http://www.gunsandammo.com/2011/05/27/tips-when-stopped-by-police/

Saturday, September 17, 2011

Top 5 Manufacturers at the 2010 IDPA Nationals

Found this on the IDPA website. The list manufacturers for handguns is pretty long, so I thought I'd post the top 5 and their highest representative firearms:

1.Glock = 137 (Glock 17 = 45, Glock 34 = 68)
2. S&W = 91 (M&P9 Pro =  27, M&P9 = 23)
3. Springfield = 30 (1911 .45 = 6, 1911A1 .45 = 6)
4. STI = 29 (Trojan .45 = 4, Trojan 9mm = 4)
5. Kimber = 17 (1911 .45 = 5, 1911 9mm = 2, Super Match .45 = 2, Target II 9mm = 2)

I wonder if we'll get a breakdown of the World Championship firearms. I can't find the link to the breakdown again, but if anyone want's it, I can send the spreadsheet.

That's it for me. Remember, shoot safe, shoot straight!

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Found a good site which explains scoring.

Check out the following site for a good explanation of scoring in IDPA. I also figured out what went wrong with what I scored and what the official score was. Both of us made a mistake. Doesn't really matter to me though. It didn't cost me anything in the way of place or prizes as it was just a club match, but it did show me that I need to pay better attention to the written times.

Anyway, the IDPA scoring book for dummies like me can be found here.

That's it for me again tonight. Shoot safe, shoot straight!

Scores in for my 2nd IDPA match

Ok, so I don't know how to score things yet. According to the spreadsheet, I placed fifth out of nine unclassified shooters. I would have placed fifth out of seven "marksman" shooters and had fewer points down than all but one of the marksman class. Anyway, here's my score:

Competitor          Total Score      Points Down      Proc.      HNT      FTN      Division      Class
John McDermott    171.17                   34               0             0           1            SSP          UN

Today, I worked on my draw for about an hour. I downloaded a shot timer to my android phone and used it to time my "shots" doing dry-fire. Best good first shot was about 1.76 seconds. That was a shot that I drew, got a good grip with both hands, locked wrists, and target acquisition before I fired. Averages were around 2 seconds. I'm going to try to do at least 100 dry fire draws everyday to work on muscle memory.

Anyway, that's it for me. Hope everyone is having a great day. Remember, shoot safe, shoot straight!

Sunday, September 11, 2011

Morgan Allen shooting the IDPA match from yesterdays post

Here is a video of Morgan Allen shooting the COF's at the match yesterday. Morgan will be representing the USA in the IDPA World Championship in Frostproof, Florida later this month. Good luck Morgan!

Morgan shoots the CCSC match on 9/10/2011.
and for those without facebook:


That's it for me. Remember, shoot safe, shoot straight!

Saturday, September 10, 2011

2nd IDPA match - What a blast!

Had my second IDPA match today at Central Carolinas Shooting Club in Edgemoor, SC today. Weather was great. Not too hot, nice breeze blowing. This is especially important for me. I believe I had a heat related illness in the early 90's which really causes me to now have issues when I'm outside and in the sun. Doesn't really matter if it's hot or cold, but it's worse when it's HOT. I usually wind up with a migraine which can knock me down for anywhere from four to six hours. So far, so good. No migraine yet. I stayed very hydrated with water and Gatorade, kept a wet towel around my neck, and attempted to stay in the shade as much as possible. Anyway, now on to the match.

CCSC had five courses of fire in their four berm protected areas today. Berm 3 had 2 courses of fire which you would run consecutively. I do have some pictures of the COF's, but from a camera phone, you can't expect much.

Course one was another first for me.  My first steel targets. I didn't get end stage pictures of COF1 as they were still putting it together as I was getting my pics done. Basically, you had four targets to engage in tactical sequence (each target gets one shot before the targets can be shot a second time). In these four, you had paper, steel, paper, and steel. You could shoot them, left to right, or right to left. Didn't matter. Only issue for me is that the two paper targets were turned on their sides and cutout like dogs. For some reason, I just don't seem to shoot those well. After those four were engaged, you had to move to another position and knock down a target which engaged a drop turner. My first drop turner! I was only down 1 on the drop turner and boy was it fast. After that, you engaged  engage four more targets as they become visible in ranges from about five to 25 yards. On this COF, I shot it in 33.69 seconds with 11 points down.

COF2 also had a drop turner.You started up against four barrels facing downrange. At tone, you engage all the targets as they become visible to you from cover. I was first up on this one which I didn't like, but what the heck. I showed folks how not to shoot it. I engaged my targets going left first. The reason I did this is that there was a drop turner activator to the right which I wanted to save for my last shots. Now one thing I thought I did at the last match was when I was engaging targets from the left behind cover, that I closed my right eye and used my left eye to aim. Not good when that happens. I found myself doing the same thing again. I figured that out and engaged my targets around the left side, a couple pretty far out, maybe 25-30 yards. Engaged as many as I could see, came back to right, engaged the last paper target, then the activator for the drop turner. Hit the drop turner with no issues. What I didn't realize was that it was a double drop, it would be visible twice. This COF turned out to be my worst. I was down sixteen points, but ten of those points were on the furthest target. This is the one I think I shot left eyed. I hit it three times, but one shot was in the three zone, and the next two were outside of scoring (just nicked the target). That gave me a miss (down five), and a failure to neutralize (down five). So that one target cost me ten points down or over twenty-five percent of my total down points. This COF I shot in 33.42 and down sixteen total points.

COF3 was pretty simple. Another first here. I got to shoot a snubby five-shot revolver. You had five targets that you had to engage from a sitting position using the revolver with a "no shoot" covering two of the targets. Oh, the revolver was in a box too, so you had to drop the magazine you were "reading", take the revolver out of a wooden box, and engage the targets with one shot each without hitting the "no shoot". I didn't do too badly here, but I lost some time. Three of the targets were pretty easy to hit, but the two behind the "no shoot" presented a bit of a problem. The one to the right I could get the 0 zone fairly easily, but when I leaned to engage the one to the left, I just couldn't take the shot, so I elevated and gave it a head shot. I lost at least two seconds trying to find the 0 zone on that target. COF3 I shot in 10.83 seconds with two points down.



COF4 would be my best of the day, which is odd because I had another really long shot of about twenty-five to thirty yards. This COF you were standing at the apex of an inverted V. To the right were 3 targets you had to shoot through a "window". One was the long shot, and two were covered by a "no shoot". After those three, you had to engage another leaning target with "hard cover" (hard cover is when they paint the target black and any rounds in the black count as a miss). After that, you had to engage one more paper target and last was another steel popper. I shot this in 31.33 seconds and only one down.

Finally, COF five had you engage a total of eight targets. You had to draw, move forward to cover and engage two targets to the left. From there, you moved up to a "wall" on the left and engage two more visible targets, then move to the right of the "wall" and engage four more targets as they become visible. The first two targets were fairly close at five to seven yards, but the other six were probably fifteen yards or longer. Seemed that way anyway. This COF I did in 34.90 seconds and down eight points.

Anyway, if I figured the scoring correctly (certainly not official here), I shot the COF's in 163.17 and down 38. So, did I improve. Maybe. One less COF, but I didn't hit a "no shoot" and still no safety issues. Still, I had a lot of fun, so it was definitely worth it.

That's it for me. Remember, shoot safe, shoot straight!

Friday, September 9, 2011

CCW holder stops armed robbery.


WALTERBORO — A pair of Smoaks men who tried to rob a woman stranded along Interstate 95 but found themselves on the other side of an Iraq War veteran’s gun now face decades in prison.
A jury convicted 22-year-old Antwan McMillan and 20-year-old David Jakes in circuit court Thursday of possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime, three counts of attempted armed robbery and three counts of first-degree assault and battery in the 2010 botched highway robbery in which the serviceman shot Jakes.
A judge sentenced McMillan to 30 years in prison and Jakes to 35 years. The case against a third man, 21-year-old James Davis, is pending.
An Army specialist, his wife and mother-in-law were heading south in two vehicles on I-95 one night in June 2010, when one of their vehicles had mechanical problems.
The solider, just back from the Middle East, began working on the vehicle, when another car with three men inside pulled up.
Jakes pointed a gun at the man’s mother-in-law and demanded money, officials said, but the soldier popped up with his own gun and ordered the men to leave. When the robber turned to point his gun at the veteran, the soldier shot Jakes three times, according to authorities.
McMillan fired a gun from inside the other car, and Jakes crawled back to it.
The men drove off, but sheriff’s investigators found Jakes at a local hospital and arrested McMillan and Davis later that week. McMillan had been out on bail on a murder charge from a November 2009 shooting in the Johnsonville area of Colleton County.
Colleton County deputies determined that the robber’s pistol had been stolen and that the soldier had a valid concealed weapons permit.


Read more: http://www.thestate.com/2011/09/03/1956839/two-men-found-guilty-of-attempted.html#ixzz1XSoosHjG

Saturday, September 3, 2011

Scores back from my first IDPA match

I was so excited about the match, I never got my scores. They were finally posted. Yep, I don't totally suck! I posted right in the middle of the un-classified shooters.


11John McDermott200.92 (52)28.88(7)32.88(13)42.32(7)42.91(6)26.44(10)27.49(9)


I started on stage 2-6 and went back to stage 1. At stage 2, when I asked how I did, the SO said I needed to relax. I was so hyped up, I was shaking and he could see it. Well, you can see from my scores, it was my worst stage. It was the one where I had a failure to neutralize on the last target. I think stage 5 is where I had the shot on the friendly target.

So, just about where I thought I would be. Looking at the rest of the SSP scores, I would have come 9th in Marksman, and 2nd in Novice. Truthfully though, I'm not really worried about the scores yet. I'm not competing with the other folks, I'm just competing with myself and hope to see solid progression in the future matches. Sure would be nice to find a local classifier shoot so I could figure out where I really belong.

Well, that's it for me. Remember, shoot safe, shoot straight!