The Cornered Cat
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Crystal ball
January 3, 2013

Yesterday, someone asked me to look into my crystal ball. Do I think the current buying frenzy will ease off, prices come down, and guns become more available? If someone doesn’t already have a gun, but intends to get one, should they splurge on a high-dollar purchase now, or wait until things settle down a bit?

The question was prompted by someone looking for a good reliable gun for concealed carry, one that would be just large enough for comfortably learning to shoot. Last summer, this person had chosen to save up for a modern polymer gun which has magazines that carry more than ten rounds. They saved up all summer and planned to make the gun purchase this winter. But the gun they had chosen and have been saving up for suddenly became very hard to find, and the prices have skyrocketed. So they wanted to know if they should hold out for better days, or buy something less than their chosen ideal now.

This is what I told them.

To be honest, I have no idea what the prices will do, short or long term. It’s too unsettled right now to make that kind of guess. But I will say that if you don’t have any defensive firearm at all, any reasonably reliable gun is better than no gun.

Whether your ‘ideal’ gun will become affordable again, or how long that might take, I truly don’t know. The prices will certainly stabilize if no new legislation passes, or if it passes but does not affect your model. But even if the immediate political crisis goes in our favor, we probably won’t see a big drop in prices until everyone relaxes about the long-term legal situation, and that might take a long time. Worse than that, if any of the current proposals end up in law, prices may not ever drop. We just can’t tell right now. Also, if things don’t go well, a lot of people who are currently carrying mid-size or larger guns with standard magazines will probably move down to smaller guns, since shrinking magazine capacity erases a lot of the carry advantage of a mid-size or larger gun.[1] That would put a lot of pressure on the small gun side of the market, and that means the prices for your ideal guns might stay high or even go higher for a little while, if things don’t go well on the political side.

So there’s the financial crap shoot in a nutshell: if you buy now, prices might go down, which means you’ll feel like you’ve thrown money away. If you don’t buy now, prices might go up completely out of your price range. My best guess is that prices will subside slightly in a few months, and availability improve, if all the current uproar comes to nothing. If the political noise keeps going, all bets are off.

Money isn’t all that matters

However, the financial question isn’t your biggest problem right now. Protecting your precious family is! So I’d suggest buying something you can use to defend your family while you wait to find out what’s going to happen long term. If you can find one and can swing it, get your ideal gun. If you can’t, get what you can. If the price of your ideal gun comes down later, you can almost certainly resell your interim purchase or swap it for the one you really want. You might even make money on something like that, if you choose well and if things go just right. But either way, at least you’ll be able to protect your family in the meanwhile.

Right now, if I had a budget problem and wanted to arm myself, I’d probably be looking at a solid, used revolver – S&W or Ruger. In many places, prices on used revolvers have dropped a bit, and I believe some are heading below their eventual replacement value as panicky people are selling their old safe queens to finance purchases of modern designs.

If you did already have a defense gun that worked for you, and just wanted to move up to something else, I’d probably tell you to sit tight for a bit and wait to see what happens next.

But do you remember the old cliché about the first rule in a gunfight?

[1] We’ll also see a big clump of people moving to .40 and .45 caliber guns in the same frame sizes as their current 9mm carry guns. But I think most of the trend will be toward smaller rather than larger.

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Easy way to fill magazines
January 2, 2013

This time of year, a lot of us have fresh new magazines with super-stiff springs. If you’re having trouble filling your new magazine, try an Uplula loader. These things are like magic!

Uplula loader in use

Pink Uplula loader from www.packinginpink.com.

This type of loader is very easy to use. You simply place it over the top of your magazine, with the front of the magazine facing toward you. Squeeze the loader and push it down firmly, so that it smooshes the follower out of your way. Now you can simply drop your round into the magazine, with the bullet nose pointed toward you. Once the round is in place, relax your hand and allow the Uplula to reset, then repeat the process to fill the entire magazine.

It takes the work out of filling even the stiffest magazine, and adjusts to fit both single-stack and double-stack magazines. There’s a “Baby Uplula” for small calibers too.

When you take a class that requires you to shoot hundreds of rounds in a weekend, this nifty little tool can really save your thumbs. Oh, and don’t worry — it also comes in plain old black, so you don’t have to feel too girly at the range if you don’t want to. I love the pink one because it’s easier to find in the bottom of my range bag, and because the guys who borrow it are less likely to walk away with it.  😉

Happy shooting!

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Smile for the camera
December 31, 2012

Several years back, I took our oldest son – then around eleven years old – with me to a pro-rights rally near our state capital. Firstborn was quite excited about coming with me to the rally. Together, we made him a little sign that said, “The governor’s kids are protected by men with guns. My mom’s gun protects me!”

My own sign said, “Don’t tell me how I can’t protect my children.”

When we got to the event, Firstborn and I met up with friends and studied the lay of the land. As expected, there was a small clump of anti-rights people in one area, and a much larger gathering of pro-rights people a short distance from them. Although we had very different perspectives on the proposed law, there really wasn’t a lot of tension in the air. My son and I had a really good conversation with one woman, who seemed genuinely puzzled that I would even let my son know we had guns in the house – let alone invite him to come with me to a political event supporting gun ownership. After some discussion, in which Firstborn showed himself very informed about gun safety, she graciously conceded that it might be all right “for you and your family,” but that other people’s families needed to be protected from themselves. We shook hands before she walked away.

A few minutes later, I noticed another woman behaving oddly on the fringes of the crowd. She had a camera. I kept spotting her out of the corner of my eye, but every time I turned to look, she ducked or turned her back. After watching her awhile, it was obvious that she was trying to get a picture of Firstborn and his sign. When I figured it out, I went over to talk to her. As soon as I approached, she put the camera behind her back and pretended not to see me. “Excuse me,” I said, “were you trying to get a picture of me and my son? We’d be happy to pose for you with our signs, if you’d like.”

She looked shocked. “You would???” she stammered. “You would let me take a picture?” I can’t really put the tone of her voice into words: taken aback, flummoxed, staggered, astonished, doubtful, disbelieving, even accusing. All those. There was something else, too, but I didn’t figure out what it was until later. “But he’s holding a sign about … [dropping to a whisper] … guns!”

I smiled. “Yes, he is. Would you like to come ask him about it?” She was obviously pleased that I’d offered, because she really did want that picture, but she was even more obviously shocked that I didn’t mind.

A few minutes later, she came over with her camera, bringing several of her friends with her for moral support. She was tense, edgy. Her friends asked Firstborn how old he was. “I’m eleven,” he replied. They asked me if he’d been shooting with me. “Of course,” I replied. “He’s a good shot. I’m proud of him.” When I said that, several of them stepped back and stopped talking. We smiled and posed. Soon, several other pro-rights people gathered around with their signs, all smiling and quite willing to talk. The woman with the camera quickly – and with an odd furtiveness – took their pictures too. It was very obvious that she expected us to come to our senses any moment, and stop her or yell at her. When she was done, I asked, “Why did you think we wouldn’t be willing to let you take our pictures?” She didn’t answer, just shook her head and moved off. I chalked it up to just one of those odd things that happens sometimes.

Two days later, I woke up from a sound sleep and it hit me: she was trying to sneak a picture because she thought we would be ashamed to be seen at a pro-rights rally! She and her friends were trying to shame us, and we were too cluelessly self-confident to realize it. Poor woman. No wonder she sounded so shocked when I invited her to come over and openly take our pictures.

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Mechanics
December 30, 2012

Here’s something interesting. Please bear with me – at first glance, this may look like a gun control rant, but it’s not. We’re going to talk about something else entirely, but the best way to get there runs right through recent public events. So here we go.

Recently, Gallup released some numbers about the state of gun control discussions in America right now. According to a CBS article about the most recent Gallup poll, 44 percent of respondents supported “a ban on owning semi-automatic weapons.” At the same time, 75 percent of respondents opposed banning handguns.

That 75 percent of people would be against banning handguns is really good news. That’s the highest number in support of handgun ownership Gallup has ever reported. The number is almost certainly driven by people like us, who are interested in being able to protect themselves both inside and outside the home using small, efficient tools.

If you are new to the gun world, it might surprise you to learn that we haven’t always had as much social support as we enjoy right now. Depending on your circle of friends, you might believe there really isn’t any social support for learning how to protect yourself. But overall, there really is a great deal more support for our choices than there used to be. We can see how much social support there is for handguns by looking at a fascinating graphic put together by Jeff Dege, webmaster at www.gun-nuttery.com. Here’s the graphic, which I can post here because Jeff released it under a Creative Commons license.

Progress in right to carry, 1986 – 2017. Click on image to see progress animation.

Cool, huh?

It’s not just cool, however. It also represents a striking change in our social lives. Those laws did not change in a vacuum. They changed because people decided to change them. So trust me on this one: no matter how unfriendly toward handguns you might perceive your social circle to be, they would almost certainly have been much more unfriendly toward your decision to protect yourself just a few years ago. That’s some amazing progress, right there.

Back to the recent Gallup poll. Gallup found that 75 percent of respondents were against banning handguns – that’s the good part. The not so good part was, they found that 44 percent wanted to ban “semi automatic weapons,” according to CBS News. Oddly, though, when I stepped over to the Gallup page itself, I found that wasn’t the wording of the question at all! Here’s how Gallup actually worded the question:

“Are you for or against a law which would make it illegal to manufacture, sell, or possess semi-automatic guns known as assault rifles?”

Does this change in wording really matter? You bet your bippies it does! It matters because your friends and neighbors really don’t pay much attention to gun issues. They hear on the news that “semi automatic weapons” are bad, and that no one supports owning those things. But your friends and neighbors know you, and some of them know that you own handguns. That’s okay. You’re not a bad person, they think, and the guns you own are probably fine. It’s just those other people and those other guns. In their ignorance, your friends well might vote to take away your handguns – not because they are really against handgun ownership, or against you owning guns, but simply because they heard on the news that “semi automatic weapons” are bad and should be outlawed, so they are primed to vote for banning all semi automatic weapons – which would include your handgun. What this means is, some otherwise-supportive people could vote to outlaw your carry gun by accident!

Weird, huh?

Change gears. All of that was just an intro to what I really wanted to talk about anyway.

If you’re anything like me, you might be only marginally interested in how your gun works. When I first started shooting, my eyes would glaze over and my mind would start to wander any time someone wanted to tell me anything about the technical details. All I really cared about was learning how to use it safely and well. The specifics of how it did whatever it did inside didn’t matter to me in the slightest.

Some of my friends seemed to be really into the mechanical details. They passed around animations like this Glock, this 1911, this revolver, this semi-automatic shotgun, this pump shotgun, this semi-automatic rifle, this AR-15, and this Beretta.* They nattered on about “straight blowback” and “transfer bars” and “barrel twist rates.” They debated striker-fired versus traditional action types. Meanwhile, I just wanted to go shoot!

What’s the big deal? It’s just this: no matter how uninterested you might be in the mechanical details, you probably should make some effort to understand the basics of how your gun works. There are a lot of reasons for this – some personal, some practical, and some social.

On a personal level, understanding how your gun works helps you know how to be safest with it. If you carry a semi automatic weapon, as around 90% of concealed carry people do, when you want to load the gun you could simply memorize a sequence of moves that gets a round into the chamber and the gun ready to fire.  But it’s much safer if you fully understand what’s happening inside the gun at each step of the process, and why doing things in the correct order is so important. It also gives you better confidence in yourself and your ability to make the gun do what you want it to do. Knowledge helps develop your personal confidence.

On a practical level, knowing how the gun works helps you know what to do about it when it doesn’t work as expected. If the gun makes some unusual noise, or fails to fire when you pull the trigger, or feels weird in your hand, you’re much more likely to diagnose what went wrong when you know just a tiny bit about how the gun works. Again, this can help you stay safe, because you’ll know or can figure out whether it’s dangerous to keep shooting at that point. But it can also help you know what to say to your gunsmith when you take the gun in for repairs, and it will help you know whether your gunsmith is being honest with you when you get the diagnosis and repair bill. Knowledge provides practical tools for you to use.

On a social level, we’ve just come full circle back to current events. Right now, many pundits and opinion-makers on television and radio are misusing terms like “semi-automatic weapons.” They are saying things that make semi-automatic firearms sound uniquely powerful and uniquely dangerous. Sometimes, that misuse and the confusion it causes is deliberate,** but sometimes it’s just that the talkers don’t know any better. It doesn’t matter why it happens, though. It only matters that it happens, and that it confuses our friends and family members who really don’t want to take our guns away or make it more difficult for us to defend ourselves.***

So, socially, when you have an honestly curious friend who wants to know why you think it would be bad to ban “those dangerous semi-automatic weapons,” you’ll probably have a much more pleasant conversation if you can explain to your friend how a gun works, and why semi-automatic weapons work so well for self-defense, and how semi-automatic guns differ from fully-automatic military weapons. A small amount of practical, mechanical knowledge helps you more comfortably navigate social conversations about guns.

 ***

* If you decide you want to know more about how firearms work, you’d do well to follow the animation links and really stare at those images. They’re amazing!

** “The weapons’ menacing looks, coupled with the public’s confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons—anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun—can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons.” – Josh Sugarman, Assault Weapons and Accessories in America, 1988 (emphasis mine)

*** Of course, plenty of us also have friends and family members who do want to take our guns away and prevent us from protecting ourselves using modern weapons. I’m not talking about those folks here. I’m talking about the friendly neutrals, who would support us — or at least, not oppose us — if they just had a little education about why they should.

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A very merrry
December 25, 2012

“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength; loving someone deeply gives you courage.” – Lao-Tzu

I wish you a very happy Christmas. May you find both strength and courage every day of the coming year.

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Chambered or not?
December 24, 2012

From time to time, people ask me, “Should I carry the gun completely loaded, with a round in the chamber?” The short answer is: yes. There are a lot of reasons for that, and most of the people who ask this question have already heard at least a few of these reasons from helpful friends. But they’re still not comfortable with actually doing it.

To quickly recap what you almost certainly already know, when you leave the chamber empty on a carry gun, you add both time and complexity to using the gun if you need it. That added time might not matter. Then again, it might be the most important time you’ve ever lost. The added complexity might not matter. Then again, it might. You might not have both hands free to run the gun. You might need one hand to hold onto a young child, or push an older child down and to safety. You might be trying to hold a door shut, or trying to hold the attacker off you with one hand while drawing with the other. The fight might have started with a severe injury to one of your hands, arms, or shoulders. There’s just no way to know what the need will be until you’re there, but all of these situations would keep you from using both hands to load the gun, and some of them would make it impossible for you to load the gun at all. That could be absolutely devastating under the right wrong set of circumstances. For all these reasons, it’s best to carry a fully-loaded gun.

That’s the why for carrying a round in the chamber. But most people don’t hang up on the why. They’re more concerned with how. How can this be done – safely? If they can’t answer that question to their own comfort, all the whys in the world won’t convince them to do it.

Two challenges

So how can we safely carry with a round in the chamber? There are a lot of people who really want to carry this way, but they’re afraid to. These people almost always have one of two concerns they need to take care of. They are:

  1. A bad habit.
  2. Bad gear.

Both of these problems are fixable.

First, about bad habits. If you have developed the bad habit of treating your gun less respectfully because it’s “not loaded,” that’s something you need to change in your thinking, and also in how you handle the gun. Go refresh your understanding of the four rules, and learn more about holster safety and the four rules. Then practice handling the gun properly every time you touch it, no matter what. Never give yourself an excuse: “it’s not loaded,” or “the safety is on,” or “I’m just cleaning it,” or “I’m just putting it in its case.” These are common excuses, but that’s all they are – excuses. Don’t indulge them! Practice following all the rules, all the time. Never take the gun out of its case until you have turned the case so the muzzle is pointed in a safe direction. Whenever you pick up the gun, whether you’re taking it out of the safe, or off your nightstand, put your straightened finger high on the frame and keep it up there. Always control your muzzle direction, and never let your non-shooting hand drift in front of the muzzle, even when you believe the gun “isn’t loaded.” Work hard to build those good habits and make them a part of you.

But bad habits aren’t as common as bad gear. Bad gear means one of several things, but most commonly it means either a poor holster or a poor carry method. Frankly, I don’t blame people for being nervous about this one. If I thought there was a chance my gun could fling itself out of my holster at some random time, or if I thought the trigger could “pull itself” whenever I  wasn’t paying attention, you’d have a hard time talking me into carrying a gun at all – let alone a loaded one. Fortunately, it isn’t like that. We simply have to shop wisely.

All holsters are not alike. Some provide excellent security, while others… don’t. There are a lot of really poor products on the market right now. Fortunately, there are also a lot of really awesome ones available too. The trick is learning to tell the difference – and having the self-discipline to stick with the safe ones even when the unsafe ones look really cool.

So what makes the difference between a good holster and a bad one? A good holster does three vital things for your firearm. That is, it

  1. Safely secures the gun;
  2. Keeps the gun comfortably concealed; and
  3. Holds the gun in a way that is easily accessible.

You can find out more about all three of these points in the latest article on Cornered Cat, How to Choose a Safe Holster. For right now, though, let’s focus on that first point, because that’s where the hang up usually is when it comes to carrying with a round in the chamber.

Not long ago, I was talking with a new shooter who wanted to know how to manage her concealed firearm when she used a public restroom. “It really feels unsafe to me,” she said, “because it seems to take three hands and all my attention to keep from dropping the gun when I take my pants down.” When I asked her what kind of holster she’d been using, it turned out to be one of those floppy, loose-fitting gun-bucket thingies you can get for $15 at any gun store. She was relieved when I told her that she simply needed to step up to a better holster, one that would pass the Tip Test, and she’d be much safer and more comfortable. She just needed a holster that she could trust to keep the gun when she put it there.

Guns that fall out of holsters are one danger. Here’s another: holsters that slither down your leg inside your clothing. If you need to use the gun at all, it may very well be after a few minutes of running from or rassling with a bad guy. Don’t choose a holster that may not be there when you need it, no matter how secure it might seem on a calm day at the range. Choose one that actually attaches to either your body or your clothing.

That takes care of the “secure” part of holding the gun. But let’s talk a little more about the “safely” part. Whatever carry method you use, and whatever holster type you choose, it has to be something that will protect the trigger from outside influences. Years ago, it was common for holsters to leave the trigger exposed. This made sense with old-fashioned single-action cowboy revolvers, which would never fire unless the shooter pulled the hammer back by hand. But modern revolvers and modern semi-auto carry guns will fire when you press the trigger, and that means the trigger must be protected from unexpected events. So make sure the holster or carry method you choose will definitely cover the trigger and the entire trigger guard area, and that it protects the trigger from outside movement.

The Bottom Line

So here’s the bottom line: you really should carry with a round in the chamber. If you’re not willing to do that right now, think about improving either your gun handling habits or your carry gear – or both. You’ll be glad you did!

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Round up
December 22, 2012

Still working on a few longer pieces, but I don’t want to leave you without reading material. If you’ve finished Larry Correia’s awesome article, take a look at these.

Jew Without a Gun. Robert Avrech, a Hollywood screenwriter, wrote a very vivid account of  his family’s experiences during the 1992 LA riots. The story is hair-raising and compelling, a meaningful read. Quote:

Karen carries an extremely cool and very feminine leather backpack. It’s something of a joke in the family that the backpack is magic. Whatever you need, whenever you need it, it’s gonna be in the backpack.

Except for a pistol.

Sigh.

….

Karen says: “Maybe there’s another exit.”

“Nope.”

“How do you know?”

“DGA building. I’ve been here like a zillion times.”

“What are we going to do?”

We.

The Talmud teaches that when a husband or wife uses the collective “we,” it means there is love in the relationship.

Is there a finer way to enter battle than with the woman I have been in love with since fourth grade?

Why Not Renew the Assault Weapons Ban?  Written by a political leftist for leftists, this older article provides a very fair and very clear argument against renewing the expired assault weapons ban. It explains what various gun features are and how they work, and also explains why progressives should not encourage this type of legislation. An excerpt:

The most important question, of course, is: “What exactly is an assault weapon?”

The term was specifically designed to conjure images of military machine guns, but for those totally unfamiliar with firearms, it should be made clear that automatic weapons (those that fire more than one bullet with each pull of the trigger) are already illegal for the average citizen to own. They are heavily regulated by the federal government, registered with the ATF and very difficult to obtain licenses for. Almost no crime is ever committed with them.

So in 1994, legislators were forced to ask themselves, “What exactly will this ban do away with?” The category of “assault weapon” didn’t actually exist, and this was an opportunity for gun control advocates to create it, to say exactly what they wanted off the streets.

As it turns out, they were mostly opposed to things they saw in movies. 

I Am a Mother. This awesome guest post showed up on A Girl and Her Gun‘s blog. I think it says what a lot of us are feeling right now, and says it very well. Excerpt:

Like most parents I dropped my children off at school the following Monday with a heavy heart and a knot in the pit of my stomach. I watched my little man walk in to the school, his Gamecock bookbag covering his whole back because he’s so small, and I dealt with knowing I was leaving him in a place where he was entirely defenseless, not a police officer or a security guard in sight. All day I fought the urge to go sit in the parking lot and keep a watch over him and his schoolmates, to stand guard over the smallest and most vulnerable in our society. I admit I did give in to the urge and join him for lunch, where I regrettably was forced to leave my gun in the car.

With only a few days left ’til Christmas, I’m sure your life is as busy as mine right now. There are a few more things I intend to post before the holiday, but just in case, I’ll say it now: Merry Christmas! May your days be filled with good friends, good food, and good cheer.

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One more thing to read
December 20, 2012

My friend Larry Correia, author of many excellent books, also happens to be somewhat of an expert on firearms topics. Not only has he been an avid shooter, firearms instructor, and competitor in years past, he also owned a gun store in Utah that was licensed to sell NFA items. What I’m saying is, he knows what he’s talking about.

So? Today Larry put out a very long, very thorough, very well-written blog post about gun control. He pretty much addresses every one of the objections the anti-rights people have brought up over the years, and discusses them with very calm logic. The post isn’t at all rant-like and there’s nothing in it your maiden aunt couldn’t read. I’d suggest reading it, linking it if you’re so inclined, and keeping it in your bookmarks as reference material — it is that good.

Larry Correia’s excellent post about gun control.

And that’s all I have to say about that. Back to our regular program tomorrow…  🙂

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