Too Lazy to Fail

It’s great that we took a week to think about protecting the rights of victims:

But how about the right to defend their own lives?

Sorry for the crappy phone picture. Both shots taken in front of curious onlookers at the post office.

Spare magazines, like Claymore mines, face “forward, toward enemy” unless the P239 now has the ability to turn rounds over when the magazine has been inserted the wrong way.

Paul is walking down the street. It’s a beautiful day, and it’s more fun to be outside than on the treadmill. Besides, not as many cats attack his legs when he walks outside.

Paul: Oh look, a pile of crap out by the curb, with a stereo receiver on top! Hey, this thing is a new-looking 5.1 cheapo-brand version!

Paul picks up the receiver and puts it under an arm. It’s .8 miles back home, but it won’t hurt him to carry it. After all, he’s out for exercise.  He roots through the box underneath, finding only a couple of old plates and some adult magazines. Suddenly, he hears a door slam!

Lady from house: You can’t take things off of mah properteh!

Paul: Oh, I’m so sorry! Were you not throwing this stuff away?

Lady: Yeah, but you can’t take it off mah properteh!

Paul: Well, if I don’t take it, the trash man will when he comes by tomorrow. Would you take a dollar for it?

Feeling annoyed but not wanting to start anything, Paul sets the receiver down and gets out his wallet.

Lady: Fine! Screw it!

The door slams. The lady is gone. Paul schleps the receiver home, and finds that it powers up, clicks, then immediately shuts off. Paul still wonders what is wrong with it, but knows it can’t be too serious.

Level I - Basic Personal Protection Course The Basic Personal Protection Course may be the most useful and exciting class you’ll ever take. This introductory course provides hands-on training to ensure that our students become competent, law-abiding handgun-owners. The class is especially suited for men and women who are new shooters, but can be very informative to veteran shooters as well. Instruction includes:

• Informed handgun selection
• Basic handgun usage
• Firearm concealment
• Proper maintenance
• Safe storage
• Legal responsibilities
• Awareness tools
• Protective tactics

Upon completion of this course you’ll receive the Certificate of Handgun Training required by the Tennessee Department of Safety as part of your application for your handgun carry permit.

Includes certificate, workbook, ammunition, range session, testing, safety glasses, hearing protection, and use of one of our firearms, if necessary.

Course Fee: $99. Eight hours of training - conducted over two four-hour sessions on consecutive days and once a month in a single block.

I’ve long desired to get some additional handgun training at Rangemaster, but money was tight when I was unemployed and I couldn’t justify the expense. I’ve now been gainfully employed for nine months, but haven’t gotten around to signing up. Turns out that I have to audit (for free) the Basic Personal Protection Course (basically a TN concealed-carry handgun safety course) before I can take the next level, Tactical Pistol. Tracie wanted to get some basic education about the use of a handgun, as did another couple, who I’ll refer to as Bob and Jill for the sake of their privacy.

We left Jackson at about 7:15, thinking we were giving ourselves enough time to get to Rangemaster in Memphis. Unfortunately, half a dozen wrecks in the area plus heavy rain caused traffic along 40 and 240 to grind to a halt. We called the range about 10 minutes before the start of the class to let them know that the four of us were planning to be there, but were snarled in traffic. We arrived about 20 minutes after the class was supposed to start, and were rushed into the classroom where the other 17 students and Tom Givens were waiting for us. Givens was visibly frustrated that the class was already behind schedule. I felt pretty awful about it, but there wasn’t much I could have done. The next classes are in the evening, so leaving earlier shouldn’t be a problem.

About six of the eight hours we were there were spent in the classroom. The course seemed to follow the description for the most part, but little or no time was given to “Awareness tools” or “Protective tactics”. Givens told me while we were alone during a break that he figures most folks absorb less than 25% of the information presented the first time they go through the class, the implication being that I should be learning new things this time around from sitting in the back. I didn’t contradict him, but the fact was that I didn’t learn much anything new from the class, though it was very good to hear it from a different perspective and to learn that most of my thought processes in carrying a weapon were on the right track. I imagine that I was a special case, having been so interested in firearms and tactics from early on that I sat riveted during my class and devoured as much reading material as I could on the topics.

Givens told us throughout the class that completing this course, though it will technically qualify you to receive a TN handgun carry permit, will in no way even begin to prepare you for the realities of the use of that handgun. Practically, I can agree that training is essential and something every responsible adult should undertake before carrying a weapon. Idealistically, though, I hate the idea that the state says we have to come sit in a classroom or fill out a bunch of paperwork to exercise what should be recognized as a natural right to self-protection.

Givens is opinionated and abrasive, and his language is not always family-friendly. I was not present for the range time, being only someone who had to sit through the class, not qualify with my pistol; my weapon never left the holster that day. I was told that on the range the no-nonsense by Givens and the other instructors was a source of frustration for new shooters who were having trouble with the basics, and that a little more patience and understanding might have gone a long way toward making some more comfortable. Perhaps so, but with most police, military, and civilian “gun types” being of the type-A leaning, I imagine that abrasiveness and impatience are the best ways to get results when someone is “doin it wrong”. The roughness may work great on those types of students, but most of the folks in this class were newbies. Nine of the twenty folks there for the class (not counting my audit) were female.

During the initial range time, my wife and friends observed one young man in a purple shirt repeatedly failing to follow safety instructions, firing after ceasefires were called, and asking irrelevant questions of the instructors while they were dealing with other students. Givens eventually had seen enough, and ordered the man to sit down and sit out the rest of the shooting for that session. During the actual qualification shoot after lunch, purple-shirt and an older lady were sent out to sit in the lobby, and together we waited for the others to finish. Blue-shirt was a nice fellow, but seemed to not be all there. The problems with following instructions didn’t seem to stem from an attitude problem, but from a lack of capacity to understand what was being required of him. The lady was as nice a person as you would ever meet, but didn’t really want to be there. Apparently her son, fearing for the safety of his mother living alone in Memphis (Mogadishu on the Mississippi, as Givens called it), paid the $99 for her and convinced her to come. Further, she thought it was only a half-day course, and was missing appointments at work as the class drug on into the afternoon. She said that she knew that she should probably take more care to protect herself, but that she was having trouble following along with the fast-paced instruction, and a lack of understanding about the terminology had caused her to have trouble keeping up with instructions on the range.

I did my best to encourage her, saying that she shouldn’t worry too much about the attitudes of Givens and the other instructors, that they probably weren’t mad at her, just very direct because they were trying to keep 20 students shooting safely in a limited amount of time. After the qualifications one of the assistant instructors took her and purple-shirt back for one-on-one instruction and qualification. They both came back into the classroom after we resumed, smiling and holding qualifying targets. The lady told me that if I hadn’t talked to her, she would have walked out of the course.

After two more hours of instructions on the legal considerations of carrying a weapon in TN, it was time for the written test. Givens seemed to have loosened up as the day drew to a close, talking with me and the other instructor about the rising crime rate in Jackson while the other 20 folks did their written test. When time was up, the students swapped the tests amongst themselves and graded the work of their peers.

I don’t know what the passing score is supposed to be, but my wife graded purple-shirt’s test and he made an 82, missing every one of the questions about the four rules of gun safety. He got his safety certificate. The lady that I had encouraged earlier and another man apparently scored too low on the test, as an assistant asked them to come with him out of the classroom. She left muttering that she never should have wasted her day there in the first place. I wish I could have caught her and talked to her after the class, but by the time the certificates were printed and we were released from the room, she was long gone.

Overall, I highly recommend the class, but understand that it is not for the meek at heart. The instruction is absolutely excellent, but the instructors do not leave time for any foolishness. I don’t seem to be the only one who liked it, though: both my wife and “Jill” decided to sign up for Tactical Pistol on the spot. I take the course on the 16th and 17th this month, so I’ll post my thoughts over that weekend I’m sure. The ladies will have to get together to decide when they can both get available to go.

From the Kinetic Church:

One weekend in early March, the trailer containing about 75% of Kinetic Church’s equipment was stolen; leaving our portable church with virtually nothing.

Over the past few week, our church has worked hard to recover from this difficult event. And yet, we still wonder about the people who stole our gear.

The “church trailer” billboard campaign is our intentional attempt to make contact with the people who took our church’s stuff. Our hopes of recovering our stolen property have faded but our dream of meeting our offenders has not.

If you know the people who stole our trailer, please ask them to watch our video message to them. It’s the reason for this entire deal.

The church posted billboards all over town, donated anonymously, to get the attention of the folks who took their stuff:

The hope was that the thief would visit the church website and see this:

I think the signs are probably a little sarcastic and bitter-sounding if the intent was to maximize the effect of the video, but overall I’m impressed with the attitude of the church. Jackson had a rash of church burglaries a few months back, and though I’d like to think that my first thought upon seeing about $15k of stuff missing from the sound booth would be to pray for the crooks, I doubt I could be that gracious at that very moment.

Here’s hoping the crooks take Dave up on his offer and come listen to what he has to say.

I do not think it means what you think it means.

In Wisconsin, a man is shooting at black-clad masked men who have surrounded his home. In the process, he is learning what Fee Simple means.