The Follow-Through Blog

Ya wanna know what pisses me off? Ya wanna know what makes me so angry I could scream? So angry I just want to stick bamboo shoots under my finger nails? So angry I want to swallow a bunch of helium and untie my belly button so I fly around backwards until I land flat as a pancake???

It’s when a DJ is playing a song and talks throughout the instrumental introduction and/or finish of the song as if only the singing matters. The other day on the radio I was jamming along with my man Mark Knopfler’s Speedway at Nazareth. The old boy got done singing and I was ready for the searing and precise and under-stated guitar work at the end when the DJ started yakking.  Inexcusable under any circumstances!

Well, it’s inexcusable unless the DJ is Elizabeth Cook. (You might remember her from my March "Devil’s DNA" blog.) She can talk endlessly and I’d listen to that all day. Her accent is hot.  Hell, she’s hot. A bit under fed, but still hot….  

Anyway, “what the hell has this got to do with shooting,” you ask?

Plenty, it turns out.  A good song is like a good shot.  I’ve blogged about topics like breathing, trigger control and shooting on slopes. Here’s a blog on follow-through. Think of the final instrumental jam a the end of a song as the composer’s or arranger’s follow trough. It is, to the composer, and indispensable part of the song and the song is incomplete without it.

When teaching shooters, one of the hardest things to get them to do is follow through.  Hell, they just navigated their way through sight alignment, sight picture, grip, stance, breath control and trigger control. They want to see where they hit. And right now, damn it, they want to see what they hit.  So what do they do?  Almost as one motion with the trigger breaking, they drop the gun a tad and look. And they miss. Duh! Of course they missed. They moved the gun out of alignment before the damn bullet could clear the barrel.

This is where follow through comes in, and it is crucial to any shot. After the trigger breaks the gun is going to buck. It’s physics; nothing can be done about it. The key is to roll with it and to maintain the exact marriage between you and the gun. The same grip, cheek weld, everything. As the gun settles down from the recoil, it should return to where it was before the shot. This is follow through. And it can make or break a shot.

So, you in the back with your hand up. I know what you’re going to ask. “How do I develop follow through?”

Easy. Start with a decision. A decision to follow through. Then practice with dry firing. Remember dry firing? It is one of the most important practice techniques.  Dry fire endlessly until follow through is ingrained. Then head to the range. And do it all again. Dry fire a few times and then add ammunition. After each trigger break, picture yourself in concert. The shot is the end of the words, but you still have to play some more. Give it just a second or two of follow through and see the results. Shooting fast-action combat? Fine. The idea is the same. If you ingrain the follow through, even the smallest amount, your groups will improve. In the end it isn’t the duration of your follow through, it is simply the act of doing it.

The weather is fine now. Winter cold and spring storms have mostly passed. Get some ammo, head to the range, and put some rounds down range.

Edging-Out Rust Blog

“Damn, they’re right. This blade doesn’t rust!” I was pleased to see this be the case. I had ordered a particular knife, made with Spyderco’s H-1 blade material that they claim cannot rust.  With salt water scuba in mind, I thought they had to be exaggerating. They were not.

Let’s face it: knives are cool. No EDC gear collection is complete without at least one.  Often two or more are needed depending upon the circumstances.  I’ve carried either a Spyderco or a Cold Steel with me on duty for my entire career.  Sometimes I carried both. For me, they are tools.  I used them all the time and carry a knife religiously day in and day out.

A few years ago I bought new dive gear and the new buoyancy vest I bought hasn’t got room to mount a proper knife sheath for a fixed blade knife.  My thoughts turned to getting a good folder like my Spyderco I carry all the time, but the issue of corrosion was a problem.

Then I read about Spyderco’s H-1 material and figured it was worth a try. So,I bought a Spyderco Salt series knife. I clip it onto the thigh pocket of the board shorts in which I dive. The clip keeps it in place and, even with almost two weeks of 2+ dives a day with basically no rinsing, there is no rust on the knife.

I’m basically a smooth blade guy, but for this knife I opted for the serrated edge for emergency cutting of rope, fishing line, pirate’s carotid arteries… oh, sorry, I got carried away there for a moment.

Of course, other blade materials are available, too, and there is sure to be a Spyderco model that will fit your needs well.

Smith Optics- Now I Understand

We've carried Smith Optics sunglasses and tactical goggles since day one.  I've checked them out over the past year and a half and felt that they were nice, but I never really got the whole thing about them.  It is almost like a cult following with some of their fans.

So, I bought two pairs.  Mrs. Blog Sarge liked one pair so much that she stole 'em from me!

Now that I have tried them, I understand their loyal following.  Here's some of the things I like about them...

• Smith's technology makes great lenses; both in glass and a plastic material they call carbonic. Their lens shapes are made to project the image onto your eye in an optimum way, avoiding the distortion and waves sometimes seen in lesser optics. This is great for those like me whose eyes are not quite as sharp as they once were.

• The carbonic lenses are extremely impact resistant. They say they are the most impact resistant lenses available. Sorry, but I'm not gonna test them by shooting pellets at them.

• They add a coating to their lenses that repels moisture and contaminants, too. Which is great in a maritime environment with salt spray and suntan lotion.

• One thing that drives me to distraction is seeing light reflections from behind me on the inside of the lenses. Smith uses an anti-reflective coating on the inside of their lenses to avoid this.

• Up to 100% UV protection

So, in order to test them, and to give loyal blog readers an accurate assessment of how good they really are, I sacrificed Mrs. Blog Sarge and myself by flying down to the Caribbean just to test them out.

Grand Cayman is a sunny place. With lots of water. And lots of UV rays.  And lots of salt spray.  And lots of suntan lotion. And lots of bikinis... Ahem, sorry, I digress.....

So, after careful research, here's my assessment...

Clarity? Top notch.

Glare reduction? Top notch.

Contaminant/moisture repelling? Top notch

Style?  Well, there's only so much that can be done with me, but they do the best they can (and Mrs. Blog Sarge looks good in the pair she stole from me, damn it all).

So yes, I am now a fan of Smith Optics eyewear. We have a good stock and can order anything else in.

And another benefit, especially in the bikini-land of the Caribbean, with dark glasses they can't see what you're really looking at!

What's the Best AR...? (The Would-Be Hash Bash Blog)

Today was the Hash Bash. Well, er, I mean the Hemp Rally. I kind of thought about writing a blog about that, but I’m still on probation at my new job so I better hold off on that and behave. So I’ll write about homegrown ARs and Roll-your-own SBRs. Seems like a safer bet to me…..

Anyway, a guy walks up to me and knows that I work at A3, so he asks, “What’s the best AR you got?”

I hate these questions. Any question that starts with “What’s the best…” is fraught with peril. Almost inevitably when we answer, the guy has a come-back. Like, “Well, what about the ‘Whiz Bang 2015’ I just read about in Job Shooter’s web review?”  Sometimes it is almost as if they guy was trying to lay an ambush for us and let everyone in the store know how smart they are by asking about some obscure gun that nobody else has heard of.

So, I try not to answer these questions directly. The best response to the initial question is that it depends on a whole host of things. And often the case is that the ‘Whiz Bang 2015’ that Joe Shooter reviewed was a pre-production sample of a gun that won’t be available for another year or so. And, when it comes out, it might not actually work. (Anyone remember when the Kimber Solo came out)? Oh, and let’s not forget that "Whiz Bang" bought a whole page worth of full-color advertisement in Joe Shooter’s magazine. Still, I’m sure Joe was objective in his review….

Which brings us back to the original thrust of the blog. The best tactical AR's.  I asked the guy who posed the original question what his intended purpose is for the AR. The response was something like “Well, I want it for home defense and maybe some hunting. If you could carry any AR you wanted in your police car, which brand, caliber, optic, barrel, etc. would you carry?” Hmmm. The options are endless.  Wilson Combat, LWRC, Smith & Wesson, Core 15, Daniel Defense…you get the idea. There are tons of them out there, most of them being pretty well made.

Truth be told, though, I’d opt for none of the above. Sure, they’re all great and most any rifle on our ‘wall-o-rifles’ would probably serve my purpose very well. But if I could take just one rifle on patrol with me and knew I would need it in the direst of circumstances, it would be none of these. It would be one custom built by me with guidance by "Tactical Corporal."

Bottom line is that I would believe in and trust a "Tactical Corporal" gun right from the start. Why? My home built guns have all been built with input from him and post-production inspection by him, and I have shot other guns he’s built. They just simply work damn well. That, and he’d probably take it out and shoot the crap out of it before handing it over.  Using my ammo, too, no doubt.

And you can have the same thing. If you've never built an AR but enjoy them and want to understand them and build your own, stop in and ask for Bill (AKA Boss Dude) or Tactical Corporal.  We have or can get all the goodies you need to build a great shooting AR.

I just guided a friend through his first build. Talk about rewarding. He’s shot a bunch but never built one. He got the parts and sat down and spent a couple of hours driving roll pins and putting some torque on barrel nuts with my guidance. When he got done, we went out and he sent a couple of magazines down range to sight it in. What a hoot!

If you want to build your own, we can give advice and pointers to you and get you on the right path. Shooting an AR is a boat-load of fun. Shooting one you built is even more so.

(So, what would I have Tac Corporal building if I could carry any AR on patrol? It would be an SBR in 300BLK with 8 to 10 inch barrel  (1:7 twist), a suppressor, a Rogers Super-stoc and probably a Leupold VX-R scope. Load it with a 20rd GI magazine full of Barnes Blacktips and watch me smile).

Cheers.

Here's Your (co)Sine

A chicken and an egg are lying in bed. The egg is not happy. The chicken is leaning back grinning and he's puffing on a fat cigar. The egg speaks. “Well, I guess we answered that question.”

And you wonder what this has to do with shooting. (Hell, you probably wonder why you still read these blogs) As for the first question, easy, follow me here. As for the question, God only knows.

We were almost to Suttons Bay on our bicycles last summer, having left Traverse City fifteen or so miles behind us. It was uphill all the way and I was thinking of the incline. Didn't really want to think of the incline, but it was better than thinking of my sore butt which regular blog readers might remember I had sprained a number of blogs ago. (Refer to the June 10 “Call Girl” blog, if you need a refresher) The incline had reminded me of an egg joke: Why did the egg cross the road? Simple. It had the inclination. Some won’t get it. Some will. Some who do get it will wish they hadn't. Either way the joke sucks, but play along for a minute. And I promise my jokes for today about eggs are all ova...

I got to thinking about shooting up and down hills and how to compensate for bullet drop. The fact is that bullets drop based upon how far they travel horizontally, not how far they travel overall. Seems kind of counter-intuitive at first, but distance traveled vertical doesn't really matter much to the bullet.

Gravity affects a bullet basically at right angles to horizontal. So, the distance over which it affects a bullet’s flight is measured horizontally and does not count true distance on the incline. Some range finders do the math for you; they measure the true distance to the target, compute the angle up or down at which they were held, and render the horizontal distance.

If this is not taken into account, the bullet impact will be above the point of aim. How much? Well, for most of us it isn't that much. But to someone interested in the utmost precision, it will matter.

To find out how much, we need to know a few things; the actual distance to the target on the slope, the horizontal distance, the angle of the slope from horizontal, the cosine of the angle and the trajectory of the gun. If we know the measured actual distance to the target and the angle, we can calculate the horizontal distance and then plug in the rifles ballistics (and I’m sure you all know your rifle’s ballistics, right?)

(WARNING: I am about to commit the crime of math here. For you who are math professors and physicists, please forgive me! It’s been a long while since high school math class. Hell, I can’t even tell a sine from a cosine anymore… So, feel free to add your insight if you can clarify things.)

Example:

Measured distance to target on the slope=300 yards           

Angle up or down = 30 degrees

Cosine of 30 degree angle = .87 (And we all carry cosine charts, don’t we???)

So, 300 yards x .87= 261 yards.

Or, if the distance to target on the slope is 200 yards, then the actual horizontal distance is 200 x .87 which yields a horizontal distance of 174 yards.

In my 300 Blackout, which is admittedly not a flat-shooting round, the difference in the 200 yards example is two inches. If I did not compensate for the incline, I would be shooting two inches high.

The difference will be even smaller if shooting a flatter round like the 308 Win Mag. The difference here would be about .4 inches.

At a 45 degree angle, which has a cosine of .71, the actual distances from the above examples are 213 yards for 300 measured and 140 yards for the 200 yard measured.

Does this matter in Michigan? Probably not, from a practical point of view. But for those of you who head to mountainous areas, it could make the difference between a miss and a meal. And, you can impress your hunting mates around the campfire with your erudite grasp of ballistics.

This Ain't No Polar Vortex

I think I can go out on a limb here safely and say that most of us are done with winter. What sucks is that it isn't done with us.  It seems that one polar vortex after the other has had us in its sights.

I thought I'd never want to see another vortex. Then we started carrying the Vortex line of optics. Vortex is an American company from Middleton, Wisconsin and is building a solid reputation for bullet-proof optics with fail-safe warranties.

What kind of warranty? Unlimited. Unconditional. Lifetime. If it breaks, they will fix it or replace it. Period.

Their line of optics covers everything from red dots to long-range sniper glass. Prices range from under $300 to, well, how much do you want to spend?

Our order from SHOT show is starting to come in and I like what I see. We have their Crossfire II 1-4x24 with 30mm tube for $289 and we have a Razor HD 1-6 x 24 with 30mm tube for $1,900. We are still receiving shipments and will have models filling in between these. And to complement the optics we also have mounts arriving from Vortex so you can screw them securely onto your rifle.

If you haven't been in to see us lately, stop on by and check out the Vortex line. The glass is great, the features well thought out, and the cost competitive.

Hope to see you soon. And think spring.

PIG Gloves

“Oh, you meant the food kind of pig roast,” I said.  Someone had just mentioned a pig roast and I thought they were referring to a typical law enforcement retirement party.  “I always feel a bit cannibalistic at the food-type of of pig roast,” I continued.

“You’re an ass,” they replied. Yeah, I already knew that, but I amuse myself so I just roll with it.

Which brings us to the blog’s topic, PIG (Patrol Incident Gear) Gloves. We’re starting to carry them and are excited about it.

Yeah, I know, our Boss Chick is Jewish and is supposed to avoid pork, but hey, it’s bizness! And besides, as far as I can find, no actual swine were injured in the production of these gloves. 

For those not familiar, PIG Gloves burst on the scene advertising a level of fit and dexterity not found in most gloves. As a bonus, they have a model that allows use of touch screens while wearing the gloves. According to their website, they accomplish this by using “magical thread made from the hair of the unicorn pu...”… ahem, well, ummm never mind, let’s just say they use something that makes the touch screens work and leave it at that.

For now, we just have the PIG Gloves and they are here now.  As time progresses we might branch out to their other products but for now we are tight for space. That should change soon. Stay tuned for more on that later!

For your edification, and for something to do until you can come in and check them out, here’s the PIG Gear website.  As you’ll see, they have a refreshingly lighthearted and irreverent view of things.

And for those of my brother and sister law enforcement types who might be offended by the pig thing, be sure to check out their FAQs wherein they address the issue.  And then lighten the heck up!

Cheers