Triangle Tactical

Sir Walter held their annual classifier match this past weekend, giving USPSA competitors a chance to rack up four new classifier scores. Since classification is based on the best six of your most recent eight classifiers, this was a huge opportunity for me, especially since it meant knocking off some 28% classifiers.

My goal going in was to make B-class, where I’ve been in Production since the fall. To do that, my six best recent classifiers would have to average 60% or above.

The first stage of the day was a classifier. It was still pretty chilly out, so I had taken off my heavy jacket, but left on my tucked-in fleece vest. This wasn’t a particular problem since it didn’t restrict access to the gun or mags, but as you can see during the reload, the open pocket caused me to fumble momentarily. Would have been nice to figure that out on a non-classifier warmup stage.

I felt really bad about this one immediately after sho

As a community of self defense minded folks we’re quick to practice our shooting skills, and even quicker to buy a new gadget to carry. One thing that most of us are probably lacking is practice and training when it comes to avoiding incidents all together. We talk about situational awareness, keeping our heads on a swivel and all that stuff, but not much about what to do after we are confronted by someone.

I came across a .pdf document this afternoon from Southnarc (the guy behind Shivworks). This document obviously won’t teach you everything there is to know about close quarters interactions with people but there’s a lot of good information in it. Don’t let the 19 page length keep you from reading it, there’s lots of pictures.

Southnarc: Managing Unknown Contacts .PDF

The post So

Surely you are aware that Staples (the office supply store) has become the most recent target of the Misguided Moms. Yesterday they tried to deliver a petition to the company’s headquarters telling them to ban guns in their stores and they were met my security and asked to leave.

This, of course began a social media tirade on Staples Facebook page with the pro-2A crowd thanking them for their decision, the anti-rights crowd pushing their agenda, and then a couple people who are just plain confused:

Yep, apparently Staples started selling guns, and nobody told me…

The post This Can’t be Real, Can it? appeared fir

If you follow any gun related pages on Facebook, you’ve probably seen this link making the rounds today. It’s a puff piece, written to get people worked up and it seems like it’s working.

A couple things:

Facebook may announce company policy changes for gun-related pages in the coming weeks

• They MAY make an announcement about changes, and I MAY find a breifcase filled with 10lbs of $20 bills today.

The social network has been under pressure from the powerful Mayors Against Illegal Guns and the Moms Demand Action civic group to ban gun-themed fan pages on the site.

• Neither of these groups are powerful.

Here’s the deal, it’s already against Facebook’s TOS to advertise guns for sale on the site:

Weapons:

• Ads and Sponsored Stories may not promote firearms, ammunition, paintball guns, bb guns, fireworks, explosives, pepper spray, knives, tasers, or weapons of any kind, including those used for self-defense. Ads and Sponsored Stories may not direct

John Z. from the Zombie Shooters Association let me know this morning that he has purchased a full set of steel challenge steel, and the ZSA has submitted the paperwork for an upgrade to be an official Steel Challenge club in addition to USPSA.

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This is great news, If you’ve been listening to the podcast for any length of time, it seems like whenever Steel Challenge gets brought up, Ben and I always mention how great it would be for introducing new shooters to the shooting sports, but unfortunately until now, there weren’t any Steel Challenge clubs in the Triangle.

The post

Sometimes changing your gun and shooting a different division can help you improve your skills. More often than not people change gear perceiving that it will make them better, but Ben brings up the point that getting better gear only knocks down barriers, but doesn’t do anything to actually make you better. You need to find the right balance between sticking with your gear enough to master it, and sometimes changing things up to work on certain skills.

Housekeeping:

Crossbreed MiniTuck review at Carolina Shooters Club

The News:

Connecticut Gun Confiscation rumors: As of right now, there is no gun confiscation going on in CT. There are no letters saying that there will be a gun confiscation or anything like that. As a community we need to be careful about getting too worked up about this, because if it does end up happening, we may end up looking like the boy who cried wolf, and we won’t be able to drive the awareness about it that we will need.

Judge drops charges against man in violation of 7rd NY SAFE act: What we found int

I think this is a pretty good reason. Last year there was a pretty heinous home invasion in downtown Raleigh, in a “good” neighborhood.

pleaded guilty to rape, sex offense, robbery with a dangerous weapon and assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill inflicting serious injury.

I carry at home because if someone gets the jump on me, I won’t have time to open the safe and get my gun.

The post Why Carry at Home? appeared first on Triangle Tactical.

I just published a review of the Crossbreed MiniTuck holster for my XDs 9mm over at Carolina Shooters Club. It’s a great little holster, even though I’d make some minor changes to it if I were the designer.

The post Crossbreed MiniTuck Holster Review appeared first on Triangle Tactical.

I was doing some cleaning in the garage tonight, and I found most of these scattered around on my workbench, under my workbench, and one of them in a stash of .223 brass I didn’t know I had…

I’d always heard the saying “Most shooters end up with a box of holsters they don’t use anymore” and I guess that’s true, the sad part is that there are holsters in the pile for guns that I’ve never owned. Yeah, I made a bunch of them, and some aren’t in any sort of working condition anymore, but here they are, waiting for a rainy day I guess.

“Hey Luke, do you want [insert holster here] for [gun my friend no longer owns]?”

They answer is always yes. You always drink a free beer, and you never turn away free gun stuff.

• Ross Leather pocket holster – Kel-Tec PF-9
• Desantis Nemesis – Kel-Tec PF-9
• DIY Paddle Holster – Glock 19
• Desantis Thumb-break Scabbard – Glock 19 (heavily

I came across this tweet in my Twitter feed this evening, and I nearly lost it:

I’ve always been a fan of British humor, and this is no exception. Well played JobsiteUK, well played.

The post I Think the Brits Hate Piers More than we do: appeared first on Triangle Tactical.

Looks like the Illinois State Police are saying that the first IL concealed carry permits could be issued to citizens as early as next week.

I hope y’all have your holsters broken in already…

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A couple weeks back while Ben, Sean, and I were at the range doing the pocket 9mm shootout, another friend was also at the range, and he let me play with a couple of his new CZ toys. First I shot his SP-01, and it was really nice. Later he pulled out his CZ P-02, and I put a few rounds through that too.

ERRMAGHERRRD!

I’ve played with a CZ P-01 in the past, and as far as I can tell, the only difference between the P-01 and the P-02 is that the P-02 has the CZ Omega trigger. The cool thing about the Omega trigger is that it allows the pistol to be switched easily from a decocker to a safety. I’d probably keep the decocker, but it’s always fun to have options to play with.

I’ve got somewhat big hands, and this pistol is just big enough to fill my grip, and nothing more. I’ve been wanting to play around with a DA/SA pistol for some time now, and I think this may be just the ticket.

The post Gun Lust: CZ P-02 appeared first

After two years of cycling to shooting a 1911 during the winter months, I’m pretty much ready to say that Single Stack (CDP in IDPA) is the perfect off-season division for Production (SSP) shooters.

The genesis of this pattern of changing guns around the time the leaves change comes from the simple fact that I’d finally picked up a 1911 in late 2012 and wanted to shoot it for a while. The main competition season (the 2012 IDPA Nationals and Carolina Cup) had come to a close, so I decided to take it easy and play with a different gun for a while. Since then, I’ve shot my Production gun when it’s warm and Single Stack when it’s cold, which has been very instructive for a couple reasons.

The most obvious way that it helps is that shooting the 1911 is slightly harder: there’s a little more recoil, the gun is a little bit thinner, the slide release is a little bit harder to reach, and the reloads are a little bit tougher. I go back and watch last fall’s match footage and see what my reloads with big, fat, double-stack magazines are like, and think how much better they’ll be after a few thousand repetitions this winter with skinny mags that like to hang up on the magwell. Ditto recoil control, slide lock reloads, and holster draws. Obviously, this applies in both IDPA and USPSA.

In IDPA, you get out of th

Snooker game in progress. Thanks to Barfisch on Wikipedia.

Snooker is a game that is much more obviously about a good leave than 8-ball.

By the same token, USPSA is a game much more obviously about speed than IDPA. But of course, in both sports, accuracy and speed (and power, DVC) are important.

Let me back up for a second. After playing APA competitive 8-ball for a few months, I stumbled on snooker, another “cue sport” played with many more balls on the table and rules that are as dissimilar as possible while using the implements of a table with six pockets, round balls, and a cue. (In snooker, there are fifteen red balls worth one point each and six other balls worth more points; a player must pocket a red ball before pocketing a higher scoring ball and alternate with red balls until he fails to sink one.)

Snooker offers many more shots since there are many more red balls (i.e. available shots) on the table than any player would normally have in 8-ball. But the game then become

A bill introduced in Michigan this week will allow special carry privileges for victims of violent crime.

But, under a piece of legislation just introduced by a Saginaw Township lawmaker, victims of domestic violence or stalking would be given special permission to carry a concealed weapons in those “gun-free” zones.

So, once someone becomes a victim, they would gain the ability to carry concealed in places that regular concealed carry permit holders cannot carry.

I can’t get behind this bill. Instead of granting extra privileges after someone becomes a victim, we should be giving them options to protect themselves so they don’t become a victim to begin with. The legislators heart is in the right place, but this isn’t being executed properly.

The post Might as Well Just Get Rid of Gun Free Zones… appeared first on Triangle Tactical.

Making a big equipment investment when you are getting into competitive shooting can be a hard thing to do if you don’t know if you will like the game. This week we talk about some low cost equipment options for getting into competition shooting, specifically IDPA.

You’ll want a pistol and at least 3 magazines to start.

Next you’ll want a holster, here’s a few inexpensive options that we’ve used:

• Blackhawk! Sportster (Don’t buy a SERPA, some ranges don’t allow them)
  • XD/XDm
  • Sig 228/229

Last weekend, while a few of us Carolinians were shooting the NC state IDPA match, the first big USPSA match of the year happened: the Florida Open.

The club hosting the Open, the Universal Shooting Academy, is the same club that will be hosting the IPSC World Shoot later this year. Despite this being a USPSA match (USPSA is technically the US chapter of IPSC, but we use slightly different rules than IPSC), the whole match used the “classic” octagon-shaped targets that will be in the World Shoot, since IPSC doesn’t use the humanoid “metric” targets.

The word coming back from competitors is that it was a distinctly difficult match. 3rd Production GM Nick Yanutola told me “At most matches the average shot difficulty is what I would consider easy: A metric target at 10 yards. There are some closer and some further, but the ‘average’ shot is not hard to make pretty well at speed. The ‘average’ shot at this match was about 15 yards on a classic target.”

“Slipping up and hosing virtually ANY shot at this match would quickly bite you in the ass, and you can see that reflected in nearly everybody’s scores including mine. The guy who won was able to keep it down to two penalties and that was the difference.”

“The most import

This is absolutely frightening when I think about it for more than a couple minutes. Someone pulls up in a vehicle, engages you in conversation, and then out comes a gun.

What do you do?

(Some “Not Safe for Work” language in the video)

These folks are lucky that they will be learning their lesson from the long arm of the law, instead of the the barrel of a gun.

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This is great news for Wake Co, NC residents. ABC 11 just reported on the evening news that starting Monday 2/24 residents of Wake County will be able to apply for PPPs online, eliminating the need to make two trips downtown to the Sheriffs Dept when applying.

Nothing on the Sheriffs Dept. website just yet, but I’ll be keeping an eye on it for any updates.

The post BREAKING: ABC 11 Reporting Wake County Getting Online PPP Applications appeared first on Triangle Tactical.

Let me start this post by saying that I’m eating a little crow by being honest here.

Every now and again I get a question from a reader or listener asking about these “trigger guard only” holsters. A couple years back these were all the rage with just an eyelet and a piece of paracord that loops around your belt. I made one. I hated it. It didn’t stay in place, and just wasn’t suitable for carry.

I had another question recently about a similar trigger guard only holster, this one having a clip instead of the paracord loop. I sent my friend elsewhere, telling him about my observations from the one I had made previously.

Earlier today I came across a picture of another holster like this, and it seems like they are gaining a bit of popularity. I decided to give the style of holster another try to see if the clip really made a difference. My observations below are based on the trigger guard only holster clip that I made, so take it for what it’s worth.

Here’s what I came up with:

(You’ll notice that I cannibalized my