GunBugBit

I guess I'm pretty lucky. Ben Avery is just 15-20 minutes from my home.

Brian, when you talk about shooting in your book Practical Shooting, Beyond Fundamentals, it often sounds like you're describing my state of mind when I play improvised jazz solos. You talk about seeing; in music of course it's hearing. I always want to be able to hear more. The more I can hear, the better I can do.

That link is as good as any I've seen. And that Brazos kit is very good, I installed it in two 1911s. You will probably find that you should leave pretravel alone. Some pretravel is necessary and if you find you can reduce it, it will most likely be a very, very small amount.

Never mix beer and alcohol unless you are a pro. If you aren't cute, you have to be good. I hope life isn't a big joke, because I don't get it. [ all taken from a classified source ]

-- FLAME ON -- Nothing comes to mind, which is incredibly lame, therefore I elect to flame myself for lack of creativity. -- FLAME OFF --

This was covered well previously; your daughter and boyfriend should abandon all exectations of getting CCW permits in NYC. This will not happen.

There's this request, reported as originating from the Armstrong family: "The next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink." I hope they'll forgive me if I don't wink, but instead render a most heart-felt and respectful salute.

Neil Armstrong had a stellar career as a Navy pilot and test pilot, sufficient to earn him legendary status without even considering him landing and walking on the moon. He was a well respected aeronautics/aerospace engineer, to boot. He was a humble and modest man who did incredible things. Whenever we find ourselves in "pressure" situations, we can remember his landing safely on the moon with just 20 seconds of fuel left.

The deadlift is a terrific exercise but obviously does not isolate the grip. It's possible to become a strong enough in certain weightlifting exercises that the grip becomes the weak link, in which case targetted grip training can help. In my case, I can't deadlift anywhere near enough to make it an issue! "Used t'could", as many men say of their capabilities in their younger days.

To me, Breakfree CLP is best as a cleaner and that's the only role I give it. I have a couple of cans left. When they're gone, I'll probably stick with ATF for cleaning and motor oil for lube. ATF is a good CLP, with its weakest property being the cleaning in my opinion -- it doesn't really cut through the schmutz as fast as some other things, but with patience it does the job. Best property of it is probably the protection. I've run rifles on only ATF with no problems.

I feel more optimistic about things in general when I hear that young ladies are learning how to shoot and even have their own guns. Awesome!

My grandson is too young to verbally express admiration or appreciation for his granpda, but he sure does laugh when I grin or make silly faces at him. This is an advantage of being funny looking -- instant entertainment for 10-month-old kids.

When the going gets tough, the tough get going. ( often credited to Joseph P. Kennedy, but an earlier credit to to Frank Leahy (1908-1973), a football coach, is cited )

The military never fully abandoned the 1911 since they first started using it.

Got me one o' them, happened to be my first semi-auto pistol. The thing is a champ! My policeman friend kind of sneered at it (it suffers, in his mind, from lack of Glock-ness), but then when he saw how I shot with it, he changed his tune a bit. And then he picked it up and had a right good time with it. Nowadays he is relatively enlightened, embracing the virtues of 1911s and Browning Hi-Powers (while pretending he still likes Glocks).

Last weekend I sat in my family room with my wife, two children, son-in-law, son's girlfriend, and my grandson who had just started learning to walk! He would grab various objects, like the TV remote, or the dog's ball, and hold them over his head, and walk to various people in the room with a huge grin on his face, handing them the objects. The steak, chicken, taters and veggies turned out great, to boot.

OK that's a good point. I guess I was a little concerned about a kid being verbally abused by a grown-up. But a kid in a constructive environment surrounded by healthy adults would learn strong internal boundaries and good techniques for dealing with a verbally abusive person.

This puts you high up on the scale of grip strength! Congrats. I just got the #2 closed with my strong hand a couple of evenings ago. I've had the CoCs for a few weeks -- long enough to build up a righteous set of callouses, not too different from how my hands were when I worked in a door & window warehouse as a 19-year-old lad (53 now). The #2 seemed totally out of reach earlier this summer, so I was delighted to close it!

Seems like this is a good kind of problem to have. You give yourself the freedom to shoot and you do so accurately. Be gentle with yourself in reining in what you shoot at and keep the elements that have allowed you to be accurate. You'll work this out, I'll bet.

Synthetic motor oil (yeah, I use that one very popular brand) to lube all my guns, ATF for cleaning. The only gun I don't run pretty wet is my Glock. I also disassemble/clean/lube all mags, careful to just put a light coating of oil on the mag springs and sides of followers, keeping feed lips dry to avoid inertia feeds. I seem to have far fewer malfs than I read about other people having.

I picked up a 16" barrel DPMS Oracle (bare bones AR in .308) for under $1k and put on a folding Troy BUIS set, a Midwest Industries quad rail, a Grip-Pod, a Hogue grip and a sling, and feel like I've got a very versatile rifle. So far it has shot four different brands of .308 ammo (I don't use any 7.62x51mm) out of both the factory mags and Magpul Pmags, all with no hangups. The trigger is heavy but that bothers me less on a rifle, at least where I'm currently at in my relationship with rifles. If I need light'n'crisp for precision shooting, I'll be turning to different rifles anyway. I considered a LWRC REPR, a POF-USA, an LMT, a SCAR 17s (not an AR as most of you know), and a few others, but decided to start lower-end and see if I like the .308 AR concept. I DO. A lot. As an ex-Army guy who was trained on the M16A1, I can really relate to this weapon pattern in its orginally intended caliber. I'll be using this rifle to hunt as well as finding out what I can print on paper across a wide range of yardages.

How would a child RO deal with a belligerent competitor? A grownup would have to swoop in.

I just started reading Brian's Practical Shooting, Beyond Fundamentals and am finding to be a different kind of book. In a good way. I think the audience is the well developed competitive shooter who has developed the fundamentals of shooting quite fully, but is looking to improve his state of mind to really SHOOT dynamically and creatively, without mental constraints. You could buy it now and probably appreciate it more and more as you go through phases of development as a competitor.

The existence of Doogie Howser the teenage doctor proves that a 10 year old RO is OK.

I'm not an accomplished shooter yet, as many of you are. However in the two realms where I'm considered "good", I know I'm at my best when I neither care nor try try to not-care, I just do. My whole existence during my moments of doing the things is only for those things. In common language, it's "focus" or "concentration" but I'm un-self-conscious and not even thinking of ideas like "focusing" or "trying" or "caring". I hope to transfer this state of mind to shooting, but I have fundamentals to build first.