New plan for this weekend. Helping veterans out

Found out there is a festival going on this weekend in which a portion of the proceeds go towards helping veterans start a museum in Mooresville. Guess I'll take a trip over there:

MOORESVILLE, N.C. -- The Point Blank Range in Mooresville is hoping to help local veterans during their grand opening this weekend.

There will be music, food and a chance for prizes at Bullets, Bands and Barbecue. Part of the proceeds will go to help veterans buy a property in downtown Mooresville for a military museum. Right now, veterans gather at Richard's Coffee Shop in town, and they've also collected plenty of memorabilia and want to share it with others.

The Point Blank Range is on River Highway in Mooresville between Perth Road and Ervin Road. They'll be celebrating Saturday and Sunday.

Remember, shoot safe, shoot straight!

This weekends plans

Unsure what I plan on doing this weekend. No plans for matches this weekend, so it's either going to the range to put some rounds out or possibly shooting Sunday in a "bowling pin" match. I've never done one of those, but it sounds kind of interesting.

On another note, I found myself drooling over a Para Ordnance GI LTC. My gun wishlist is down to a 1911 in .45acp, a combat 870 shotgun, and an AR15/M4 rifle. That GI LTC is right up my alley and has an awesome price under $500. Alas, the gun buying account is at $0.

And as I finish up this post, I look and find the gun back up to $632. I knew that price wouldn't last long.

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

Match at MWDS -

Ok, I participated in another match today at Mecklenburg Wildlife Defensive Shooters. Wow, what a match. All 6 courses of fire were pulled from sanctioned matches, either state, regional, or national. I could have called this match The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. The ugly, man I had a lot of points added to my scores. The bad, two procedural penalties, and a hit to a non-threat. The good, I had a great time! I have no idea what my scores or times were, but it was pretty high. This was my first match competing as a marksman, so I'll have some idea of what kind of folks I'll be competing against once the scores come in. I'm trying to get the stage documents from the match director to add to this post here as well as some photos that she took. Lots of shooting while moving, drop turners, swingers, swinging non-threats etc. I guess this would have been like a mini-state match.

UPDATE: Match scores in. I came in 6th out of 8 in the Marksman class at 209.15 seconds and 83 points down of which 26 came on stage 5 (can't even remember what it was, but seem to think it was a shoot while retreating stage where I only got one shot off on  a drop turner as I took 1 more shot than needed to hit the steel to drop it.
Total = 209.15(83)
Stage1 = 31.44(7)
Stage2 = 39.17(11)
Stage3 = 28.74(13)
Stage4 = 36.42(14)
Stage5 = 40.79(26)
Stage6 = 32.59(12)

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

IPSC/USPSA World Championship in Greece

I don't shoot IPSC/USPSA, but thought I'd throw out a link to their results of the World Shoot in Rhodes, Greece. Seems like the US shooters took home a lot of medals, so congratulations to them. You can find the results here:  http://www.wsh2011.org/results.html

And here are a bunch of videos from folks shooting over there: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5E5740B10AA50451

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

Back at the range

Yesterday was just a generic shooting day. I wanted to run rounds through all my 9mm handguns (M&P9, PT92, and Glock 19). I ran Winchester White Box 115gr JHP's through my PT92 and Glock 19. Both of the guns gobbled up the JHP's with no issues at all. Well, other than I still shoot a little low and left. I also ran some Speer Lawman 115gr through the Glock 19. The reason I did this is I'm out of USA Ammo 9mm rounds and they're out of stock. Figured if I'm going to use the Glock as a backup IDPA gun, I might as well see how if feeds and shoots the new ammo. Again, no issues at all.

Finally, I shot my M&P with the Speer Lawman ammo. No issues feeding. Seems to be pretty much POA =  POI.

So, another good day at the range.

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

Classifier Confirmed - I'm a marksman - And a CCW permit holder!

Just received the final scores from the classifier and my math skills aren't so far out of date. I was right. Shot it in 167.27 seconds with penalties added in. Now I know where I'll be when I shoot my next match which should be at Mecklenburg Wildlife Defensive Shooters next weekend.

I also received a call from the Sheriffs office yesterday with confirmation my CCW permit was available for pickup (Thrusts arms into the air. YES!). Picked it up last night after work. Gotta say, I'm a little underwhelmed with it. Just a thick piece of paper which is embossed. Anyone know if you can laminate these things? Seems like they'll wear out pretty fast being in a wallet all day. On another note, anyone have any good recommendations on a good defense round? I was thinking that something frangible might be preferable so it wouldn't do much damage penetrating walls, but haven't done much research on ammo for defense just yet.

So, what will the gentleman be wearing for concealed carry? I decided on a Glock 19 with a Crossbreed Supertuck Deluxe. Already have the Glock and have put a couple hundred through it, but just ordered the Supertuck as I didn't want to spend the money only to find out I was disqualified from concealed carry for some reason. Supertuck should be in somewhere between 4 and 6 weeks according to their website and my order. Received 10% off my order because I'm an NRA member. Also ordered a Bladetech Revolution holster for it so I can use it in IDPA competitions as a backup gun in case my M&P needs repairs or updates and is out of pocket for a while (may be sending my M&P to Dan Burwell for trigger adjustment and new fiber optic sights).

Plan on heading out to the range tomorrow to try some new ammo. Picked up 1000 rounds of Speer Lawman as my usual ammo vendor was out of stock. We'll see how this new ammo works through my 9mm guns.

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

Classifier fun

Well, ran my very first classifier shoot today. It was a lot of fun, and nerve racking. I still seem to have an issue with my first courses of fire and probably being jumpy. I didn't get video of the first two courses of fire, but did get the third cof. I'll have that video up later after I'm done doing some editing of it to clean up the end.

So, if I figured out everything correctly, with penalties added, I shot the classifier in 167.27 seconds. That places me in mid to high side of Marksman class. I had a total of 87 points down which caused me 43.5 seconds of penalties and shot the 3 courses of fire in 123.77 seconds. I had a total of 6 missed targets which caused me to add 30 points or 15 seconds to my scores. Seems my working on one handed shooting may not have helped me as much as I still missed two targets at 7 yards. The other 4 misses were on the third course of fire which a lot of the shots were at 20 yards, something else I had not worked on much. Kinda surprised I didn't miss any shots on COF2. This requires two shots at each target while moving forward for one string and two shots at each target while retreating for a string. Put all 30 rounds on target in COF2. So, 2 bad COF's and 1 pretty good COF. Still, if the numbers are right, I guess I can't complain too much about being in Marksman class. I've only been seriously shooting since late March/early April when I got my S&W Military and Police 9mm. I'm shooting about 100 rounds a weekend, so there is a lot of room for improvement and MORE SHOOTING! :)

I'll edit this post later when I have the video fixed up and posted. - Update - couldn't edit the video, so just ignore the end :)

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

Qualifier coming up on Saturday

Saturday at CCSC, I'll be shooting my qualifier as part of the monthly match. The last couple of weekends, I've been working on weak and strong hand only shooting at 7 yards. I'm not a terrible shot at those ranges, but still not very accurate. I used 3 right hand shooting charts and set them up with one on each hook and then taped another target to the bottom. This way I could work at shooting 3 targets quickly while trying to maintain an accurate sight picture. I wound up shooting 42 rounds each with the strong and weak hands, then used the last 16 rounds to shoot quickly two handed. Put all 100 rounds on the paper, but had a handful fall "outside" the designated targets. I have the same issue I have shooting with two hands. Low and left when strong handed, and low and right when weak handed. Guess it's going to take more practice. Just ordered another 1000 rounds as I'm getting low, so at least I'll have something to practice with.

I'm also keeping most of my brass. I'm thinking that someday, I may want to reload my ammo and save some money. Leaning towards a Dillon 650 system, but still investigating/salivating. Maybe if there's a Christmas bonus this year (yeah, dreaming).

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

UK marches against loss of freedoms

Excellent video from our friends over in the UK decrying their loss of freedoms to keep arms and defend themselves.