2nd Amendment Affirmation

Simply put:

"A citizen may not be required to offer a ‘good and substantial reason’ why he should be permitted to exercise his rights. The right’s existence is all the reason he needs."

That's U.S. District Judge Benson Everett Legg slapping down Maryland's "may issue" concealed permit law as being unconstitutional. See the Second Amendment Foundation press release for more on this important case.

In another instance of freedom triumphing, just a few weeks ago the City of Chicago paid nearly $400,000 to the SAF as payment for the cost of fighting city’s illegal handgun ban in the Supreme Court of case McDonald vs. City of Chicago.

While so much attention is being paid these days to manufactured "rights," it's heartening to see our true rights, those that are God-given and affirmed in the Constitution, being defended.

First USPSA Match of 2012

On Sunday it was time for the first USPSA match of 2012, held by Fredericksburg Practical Shooters. I've been looking forward to getting back on the competition horse and seeing what results may have come from my winter range workouts.

The day started out cool and overcast. And, it pretty much stayed that way all day. There were a few moments a brief rain sprinkles, but never enough to even break out the plastic bag to cover my gear. I was glad I had light gloves in my bag to wear when I'm not shooting.

I thought the stages offered a wide variety of challenges to test our skills. There were long shots when watching the front site was critical, and stages where you could go as fast as you felt comfortable. There were open targets, and targets that were almost completely hidden, or crowded by no-shoots. A few pieces of falling steel were thrown in, as well as a moving drop turner. Most of the courses of fire were intermediate in size, consisting of 12-24 shots, so we got to do plenty of reloads, and there was a lot of movement required on the part of the shooter.

While all of the courses of fire were interesting and challenging, there were a couple of points that stood out in my mind at the end of the day. Our squad started on Stage 3, which was a straightforward course with 12 targets to be engaged from 3 different shooting areas. Here it is —the first shots on the first stage at the first match of the year. It was just the stage to get the me warmed up for the rest of the day. Stage 4 looked pretty straightforward, with some strategically hidden placed steel as well. But this stage was deceptive as there seemed to be a fair number of shooters running past targets without engaging, or shooting and missing. There was one upside down target, with it's bottom half (which was at the top) blacked out as a non-target which I managed to fire at and miss with both shots!

Stage 6 was a fun course. There was a mix of paper targets and steel at the start and the finish. In the middle were two ports that gave a view of seven targets down range. The course designer had placed a no-shoot, and the walls, so that you had to use both ports to hit all 7 targets, and you couldn't see them as contiguous groups. Stage 7 had the shooter moving down a center runway, hitting targets on either side. This was a good opportunity to try shooting on the move if you were so inclined. At the end of the course was a drop-turner activate by a falling steel popper. Once the popper was hit, the drop-turner would briefly face the shooter as it lowered, and then disappear. I managed to get three shots off, and on the target, earning an A and C hit. This target make me think, if I can hit it so quickly, why does it take me so long to aim at the non-moving targets? But then again, I don't get to shoot these disappearing targets often enough to know repeatable that is. :-)

In all there were 7 stages to be shot, including a classifier. The Fredericksburg matches are always well-attended and make for a long day. This match was no exception, with about 120 shooters spread over 6 squads. I arrived at the range at 8:00AM, and the match kicked off at 9:00AM. My squad finished shooting at 3:30PM. The chair I carry around essentially serves as a table for my range bag, as there's little time for sitting since we stay busy pasting targets between shooters. By the time I arrived home I was hungry, tired, and my legs were a bit achy, but I was happy to have played that day! Despite a few misses I was pleased with my performance overall. Did the Winter range time pay off? If not in obvious ways, I did find myself going into each stage with a little more confidence, and not excessive jitters. There are always improvements to be made and things to do better, but really the key point is to have good, safe fun. And that I did!

Fredericksburg has two new Match Directors this year, and it seemed to be an unanimous opinion that they did a superb job putting together a fun match. This was a great match to kick off the season. I came home tired and looking forward to a well-earned cold beer. I can say I'm already looking forward to next month's match!

A shooter steps off on Stage 7

The Geologist In Me

My undergraduate degree is in Geology. An old college friend sent me this recently.

Even though I never worked as a geologist after college, it would appear I did keep the beverage interest.

More Updates

I guess this qualified as a "lazy Saturday." After a busy week at work, I enjoyed just relaxing today and reading what other bloggers are writing. I considered trying to go to the range today, but decided against it since I'll get to shoot tomorrow at the first local USPSA match of the year.

Here are a couple links I've been visiting recently, and that have been added to the blog links pages. I really am thankful for my RSS reader; there's no way I could keep up with all the blogs I check otherwise.

Enjoy.

Google Map of Virginia IDPA, USPSA and 3gun venues
This is a handy collection of ranges that hold action shooting matches. i.e. IDPA/IDPA like, USPSA, Steel, 3gun, ICORE.

Gabriel Possenti Shooters
And finally a new project I'm involved in. Still in it's infancy, a local group of Catholic shooting enthusiasts is organizing to raise awareness of self defense rights and the shooting sports among the Catholic faithful. Keep reading over there to hear more as the project progresses.

Can Art

We've seen chandeliers and clocks made from leftover beer bottles. Here's an artist who creates very nice model cars from beer and soda cans. The level of detail is amazing.

The Guinness car took 16 Guinness cans.

This Rheineck Roadster uses 28 cans and took 43 hours to build.

Visit Sandy's CanCars for more pictures and the stories behind the models.

H/T to Jay G.

Round Up!

I laugh every time I watch it.

Happy Friday!

Virginia Weather

Folks around hear often lament, "If you don't like the weather in Virginia, wait 5 minutes. It'll change." Unfortunately the inevitable change applies to favorable weather too.

I had just returned to work after a nice lunch with my wife, and was enjoying the nice weather. My car thermometer read 75°. Then I saw this on my desktop widget when I got back to the office.

SOS Mobile iPhone App

For the past week or so I've been looking through the iTunes App Store, searching for an emergency notification app. My goal for such an app would be to instantly alert predetermined persons that I am in an emergency situation. Obviously, calling 911 is the best and first course of action in an emergency. However, 911 may be of limited use from a cell phone.

In general I was disappointed in most of the apps I looked at, and even bought. I looked at a number of these tools before finding one that seems to meet my functional requirements, is easy to use, and highly configurable. I chose SOS Mobile by Sylvain Deguire. This app costs 99¢ in the iTunes store.

The initial set up requires you to set up an account on the application server. After entering your contact information, you will receive a confirmation email to validate your account. After validation, you then configure the many options. I entered three contacts to receive both email and SMS alerts. I set a 5 second delay before starting, and have the alert repeat every 5 minutes until cancelled. There are a number of other options that you may set depending upon your intended use of the app. There is also an option to send tracking alerts at a selected intervals.

Once the application is set up, it is easy to use. To activate the emergency alert you simply launch the app and hit the SOS button. Your contacts will receive an SMS with your personalized message, along with a Google Maps link to your location. The emails sent out contain links to a location map and a link to a web page with the personal information you choose to supply in the setup. When the emergency is over, you cancel the alert from within the application.

The validation process did not work for me the first time so I initially struggled with the set up. I contacted the developer and received a response almost immediately. Upon reinstalling and trying again the process worked. When one of my contacts installed the app, he also had an issue with the validation process and had to repeat the install. The developer theorized, based on an invalid URL error, that Apple was serving up an old version intermittently, and he contacted Apple about the issue. I've since installed the app on two more iPhones with no issues whatsoever. The developer was very quick to respond to my emails until the issue was resolved.

Once aspect of this app, and others that I tried, of which the user should be aware, is the possible privacy issue. To provide the desired functionality the emergency alert goes out through the provider's server. The SOS Mobile developer places a privacy statement within the app to make sure the user is aware of this. He notes that the contact information will not be used for marketing. I previously used another alert app and that developer actually spammed my emergency contacts to promote his other products. Given the responsive service I've received from the SOS Mobile developer I am confident he won't commit such an abuse.

I hope I never need to activate this application, beyond these tests that I did. However, I am comforted to know that with SOS Mobile I can easily get a distress call out to trusted friends and family, with the information they need to respond, or to contact others who can.