I went to an introductory IPSC course at the Austin Rifle Club on Saturday. It was fuuuuuuuun…..

After a brief, 1h, classroom session about the rules and classifications of IPSC matches, we headed out to the range for some brief exercises. I learned a few things:

1. How to draw from my holster

2. That I need more practice firing in double action mode

Although, I must say, I’m impressed with how I fared in DA mode. I rarely fire from 2A mode in practice, but my groupings tightened up noticeably after about 20 rounds of draw/double tap/decock/reholster. There’s a couple reasons why I haven’t worked at this, and a couple reasons why I should. White Mike and Mark have taught me to carry cold and to rack/cock the gun during the draw, which is an Israeli Instinctive Shooting technique that looks like this:

Many people who carry a gun with a safety will carry with a round in the chamber and the safety on. Since my current carry gun (my baby, the Sig p239) does not have a safety, it is considered safer to carry cold and chamber on the draw, which also puts the weapon in SA mode. The downside to this is that, even with proficiency and speed, two hands are required, as shown in the above picture. (Although I can rack the slide off of my boot or my thigh, it’s terrible for the sights.)

The alternative to carrying cold, in my case, is to carry hot and decocked so that the gun is in DA mode: this means the first shot requires a 10 lb trigger pull. After the first shot, the gun is in SA mode, and subsequent shots are fired with a 4.5 lb trigger pull. IPSC requires that the first shot be fired from DA mode if the shooter is using a DA/SA safety-less gun.

After we practiced the range commands i.e. “shooter make ready” (draw, load magazine, equipment check, reholster), drawing and firing on the buzzer, and the “unload/show empty/reholster” (exactly what it sounds like), we did 2 short shooting segments as samples of the kinds of set-ups one would find in typical IPSC stages. The first one involved shooting through a window at a steel target, followed by two shots a piece at 2 IPSC cardboard targets while moving, and a final shot at another steel target. We practiced the comstock division, which does not penalize extra shots. I felt relieved when I hit the first target on the first shot, because that was my DA shot.  I proceeded on to the cardboard targets and hit 3 A-zones and 1 B-zone, and the last steel on the first shot as well. Despite telling myself to take it slow, I got excited and almost rushed past the third target without shooting it. My time was 15 seconds.

The second segment was the “el presidente”: Three IPSC targets in a row, double tap each, drop mag, reload, double tap each, show clear, and reholster. I managed all A-zones, but was sloppy on my reload, which cost me time: 24 seconds. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast…it’s tough to remember when you’re all excited.

I got a lot of compliments on my stance, not to mention that I outshot at least half of the participants. The best compliment I received was relayed to me via Mark. Apparently, while I was shooting, one guy turned to his buddy and said, “we should find out where she lives and make a point of never going into her house.”

Awesome. Fun times. After the shooting part of the course, I found myself relaxed, taking nice deep breaths, grinning, and repeatedly saying “that was fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuun.”

Plus, I got some swag: a free Larue Tactical Beverage Entry Tool and gun lube. Sweet.

Mark and I stayed afterwards to fire in the Mosquito. Like the P239, the Mosquito had some feed problems jamming problems due to being brand new. Also like the P239, I subconciously tightened up on it when it was misbehaving, which didn’t help matters. It’s impossible to conciously undo such subconcious changes; usually, I need to be distracted into not overthinking and then the issue magically resolves itself.

A guy showed up with his girlfriend while we firing it in at the “plinking range.” She had never shot before and he was showing her the ropes. Poor girl. She fired one shot with a .22 pistol and declared that shooting was not for her. I know that one non-shooter shouldn’t spoil a day of shooty fun, but I think her BF was a pretty big jerk. She stood at the back of the range after that, fliching at every shot that was, while he continued to shoot pistol.  As I said, we were at the plinking range – really, there’s a sign that says plinking range – which is a 30 yd mini range. Even though you’re allowed to shoot AR (air rifles) there, there are 2 rifle other ranges at the club! Not to mention that the plinking range has an extra long corrugated tin hood that extends towards the burm in order to prevent shots from firing up and over – and happens to cause a particularly nasty percussive echo. After 30 minutes had gone by, the same dude who was ignoring his GF as she stood there flinching with a mortified look on her face took out a friggin AK and starting firing that right next to us!!! Damn that thing was loud! I had to stop shooting and retreat from the firing line because my left ear was ringing so badly that it hurt. I bit my tongue. I wanted to say, “that’s some plinker you’ve got there,” but I’m working on being not-bitchy at the range. Mark was ready to go at this point but I wanted to fire 2 more mags through the Mosquito before quitting, so I stepped back up when Mr. Wonderful took a break from blowing out all of our eardrums with his AK.

…Remember how I said earlier that sometimes it takes a distraction for me to stop overthinking, and how that can affect my shooting? I had about 5 rounds to go when AK boy comes back and says, “just so y’all know, I’m gonna put the rest of this mag through the AK.”

Oh. Shit!

Bangbangbangbangbang, I’m done, not a single malfunction.

Yep. Shoots like a Sig.

“Ok, I’m happy (except for the pain in my ear), we can go now!”

Zen and the Art of Shooting, part 3

Though I consider White Mike and Marc my official teachers on the subject, the bf will always be kinda like my gun-daddy, having been the first one to take me shooting. We usually go shooting whenever I fly out to AZ, and we went to this indoor range where he was a new member back in February. I had earlier posted a lengthy rant, which I took down because I thought it was somewhat distasteful, but it was during this trip to the range that the “Shoothouse Barbie” nickname was coined. In this rant, in short, I’d expressed my annoyance with the man behind the counter at this particular range, because I felt that he was treating me like a complete ditz and was blatantly ignoring my request to shoot a glock and a sig.

For those who don’t know, Glocks do not have a safety. Thus, it is common practice to carry “cold” (no round in the chamber, as opposed to hot – a round in the chamber and the safety on) if one is practicing to carry and shoot with a glock. If you are carrying cold, you must rack the slide to chamber a round prior to shooting. I had practiced this technique earlier, and gave the gunnie a thorough account of my shooting experience.

“I’m comfortable handling the Glock 19, and I like the way it shoots.”

“Well, for you, I’d recommend the XD9, it has a double safety feature,” he said, demonstrating the feature of the gun that prevents the trigger from being pulled unless you squeeze the grips really really hard.

“I’ve shot a grip-safety gun before, didn’t much care for it. I like the Glock,” I reitterated.

“Well, I think you’ll find that racking the slide can be a bit problematic with Glocks.”

“I didn’t find that to be a problem when I shot the Glock 19,” I said, reitterating again that I had shot the Glock 19 and was comfortable with it.

“Well, see, if you’re not holding the grips correctly on the glock, the slide is probably going to bite you.”

“Well, I guess I haven’t found it to be a problem for me because I hold my pistol properly.” Call me oversensitive, but this rubbed me the wrong way. I thought I’d made it clear that I was apt enough to handle the Glock, seeing as I’d told the guy I had experience shooting it, gripping it correctly, working the slide, and here’s this guy trying to rent me an uber-safe girl gun that wont pinch my delicate girly fingers. I know that safety comes first, but I felt disregarded as a bimbo who can’t handle herself.

I proceeded to rent the XD9, because I figured I may as well increase my exposure to other guns. And then I returned it (it was a chore to shoot!) to rent my trusty Glock 19, and then the Sig P239. It was love at first site for me and the sig. The grip fit perfectly in my hand, the action felt fluid with no jerkiness whatsoever, and the recoil felt – I dunno – even, like my hands buffered the jolt in all the right places and the sights went effortlessly back on target after every shot. I didn’t keep my actual targets from that day, but here’s what I did at 10 yds, a few weeks later:

my 10 round group (circled)

How could I not love this gun? Even the BF was impressed, despite his insistence that my choice in guns was boring (glocks and sigs are like the reliable minivans of the semi-auto handguns, as opposed to sexy sportcars, so I’ve been told). The BF, who was observing as I shot the sig, told me that not only did I embarrass him, but I also outshot the entire CHL class. Feeling vindicated, I brought my targets up to the counter, along with the Glock and the Sig as confirmation that I’m not just some ditz who doesn’t know the first thing about shooting.

As we left the range that day, the BF jokingly pointed out a pair of bubble gum pink oakley M-frames.

“Yeah,” I said, “I’d look like shoothouse barbie.”

The name stuck: I am shoothouse barbie.

I bought the Sig P239 a few weeks later. The gun had been previously owned, but had not even been fired in completely. Getting the slide fired in was not a barrel of monkeys. Though not as dismaying as sitting at the gas pump, watching your money roll away, it wasn’t fun to go through mag after mag…after mag, while the gun stove-piped practically every shot. Marc took the opportunity to teach me mal-function drills”

(A bang and a stove-pipe)

Marc: Malfunction. Drop the mag….clear the chamber….ok, tap, rack, back on target.

(bang. another stovepipe)

“Dammit!”

“Malfunciton. drop, clear, tap, rack, and shoot.”

(bang. stovepipe.)

“Malfunction….”

…and so it went. Eventually Marc stopped saying malfunction and wandered away to have a smoke, while I continued to stove-pipe and practice the malfunction drill over, and over, and over again, trying to get back on target as swiftly as possible. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. Just as I thought I’d pass out from snorting in frustration, the Sig stopped consecutively malfunctioning. A little bid of slide grease helped, too, which I told Marc when he asked what happened.

“Or you finally stopped overanalyzing everything you were doing.”

“Yeah, that too.”

“Stop thinking, stop analyzing.”

Those are very hard things for me to stop doing, something Marc is constantly after me for.

“Just shut up and shoot the damn thing!”

I think I’ve heard that one before….

Imagine this: you are holding a machine that is designed to put a chunk of lead through a human being or animal, if you want it to…and still could do so, even if you don’t. Thats the first thing you told before you shoot: if you’re not careful, you might shoot something or someone without wanting to. oh, and by the way, that someone could be yourself, too.

Even if you are careful, guns can missfire. the way you handle a gun is the ultimate safety: trigger awareness, muzzle awareness, awareness of your surroundings. It’s a lot to handle all at once, and that’s just the beginning

Originally, me thinks, people were not designed to shoot guns. Firing a gun should feel unnatural the first time you do it (whether or not you like the feeling is another matter). Nobody in their right mind wants to get shot, you knew that before your first time shooting. But with increasing experience that understanding grows to new levels of awareness.

I’d been shooting two or three times with the bf when I met my neighbor and  designated dad, White Mike. Three things you should know about White Mike (who is so named because he’s a big guy, but we already had a big mike in the apartment complex, so now we call them White Mike and Brown Mike):

1. He’s Hungarian
2. He’s a whoremonger with a foot fetish
3. He could kill a man with a teacup

Somehow we got on the subject of shooting. I think I was joking that I had Texas street cred even before I got here because I like whiskey and shooting. 5 minutes later, we we’re looking at pictures of Mike’s old stomping ground, BADSHOTS (Bujinkan Austin Dojo Shoothouse and Outdoor Training Site), which he used to run with Mark, his friend/blackbelt/armoror. I was thinking, cool, cool, the bf would love to see this, and then Mike mentioned something that really caught my attention: the red gun.

“What’s a red gun?”
“This is a red gun,” he said, and fetched a red model of a gun. “It’s the same size and weight as the Sig P226, but has no moving parts. We trained civilians on the red guns, and officers on their empty weapons.”
“Why? Wouldn’t it be beneficial for civilians to go through the situational training on the weapons they’ll actually be using in a real-life situation,” I asked.
“No. If you were to do this training, you’d be hearing us yelling ‘don’t point that fucking gun at me’ at you, over and over again. Using your unloaded firearm in those drills would cause you to be reluctant to point and fire your weapon in a real life situation. By using the red gun in training simulations, what you’re really doing is teaching yourself that the only time you will point and fire your gun at someone is when you actually need to shoot them.”

I was blown away but how much sense this made to me. It made perfect sense, and yet I never would’ve guessed. I was hooked. Not only could firearms training prove useful (understatement) in survival situations, but also could impart strong tenets of common sense that are no longer so common nor commonly taught.

“But with the red gun,” I mused,”wouldn’t the simulations seem less real?”
“There’s more to training than the gun itself. You can read body language, before you even recognize that you are doing it, you can tell if a person is ready to make an offensive. For example, if I were standing like this while yelling at you, you’d be able to tell that I’m not about to climb over the table and strangle you,” White Mike says, standing up. “However, here, now point the red gun at me like you’re gonna shoot me,” he says, handing me the red gun. I point it at him, and before I can blink, he’s grabbed the gun by the muzzle, ripped it out of my hands, and points it at me with his entire body – head, shoulders, arms, hands, toes – pushing the gun in my direction. My pulse skyrocketed and I felt as though I was pulled backwards into the corner of the room by my own intestines and the next thing I know, I’m huddled in the far corner of the couch, feet under ass, fingernails gripping the upholstery, ready to spring out the window.

“I told you. Don’t point that gun at me!”

I eased back into my chair, slowly, laughing nervously.

“Well, you did one thing right.”
“What’s that,” I ask.
“You moved like hell when I took an aggressive stance with a gun. You acted.”
“I acted? as opposed to…”
“There’s action, and then there’s reaction.”

And thats just the beginning. Next, my first time on the range with White Mike and Mark.