Do You See The Light?

I put a lot of effort into this post about what makes the best tactical flashlight over at my day job. To the best of my knowledge, there really wasn’t any independent, third-party test of what a common tactical flashlight actually can or can’t do until I published this piece last month. I tested things like stated lumen output, runtime, water resistance along with stuff that doesn’t usually get compared, such as candela and running temperature.

Plus I tested just how “blinding” the “blinding” output of a tactical flashlight really is, and I gotta be honest, the result surprised me a bit.

Look, a concealed carry gun solves one problem: It projects lethal force at a distance. That’s it. It’s true that even the threat of such a thing can solve other self-defense problems, but those other problems must also involve lethal force, or else you’ve put yourself behind one heck of a legal eight ball*.

Carrying a gun is great, but have other options as well, such as pepper spray and a bright flashlight. We face a variety of problems out there in the cold, harsh world, so it stands to reason we should have a variety of solutions to that variety of problems.

* You know the drill. Not a lawyer, not legal advice, yada yada yada.

Blog Launch Day!

No, not this blog. This blog launched quite awhile ago. Rather, we’re talking about The School Of Guns, the new blog at Ammoman, written by a Teamgunblogger alum.

Go check it out, and keep coming back, as new content will be posted every week.

 

Welcome, NSSF, To The Teamgunblogger Lifestyle.

This website, seven years ago:

We are committed to getting the millions of new gun owners out to the range and encouraging their safe use of guns in competition, training and practice.

The NSSF, last month:

One trip to the range can be all it takes to create a new recreational shooter. With your help, we can recruit the next generation of target shooters and secure a strong future for one of the greatest American traditions. Join the +ONE Movement and invite a friend on your next trip to the range.

Gun owners are being shoved into a corner. We are being marginalized, and as such, our rights will soon be up for grabs. Take someone out to the range. Make gun ownership seem normal.

Because it is.

Upcoming Training: Warrior Club At Training Grounds.

This will be a bit different for me. In the past, I’ve written about how quasi-military training is NOT what we armed citizens really need to learn, primarily because we don’t have to do the same things that the military does. The job of the military is to use overwhelming firepower to beat an enemy into submission in order to take over their territory. That, thankfully, is not my job as an armed civilian. My job as an armed citizen is to avoid contact with the criminal element as much as I can, but if I can’t, I need to use enough force to break contact wit the bad guy (up to and including lethal force) until law enforcement arrives to bring closure to the situation. Two wildly different goals such as that demand wildly different training styles. Yes, the fundamentals of sight alignment, trigger press and so on may be the same, but the reasons WHY we are learning those things are completely different.

However, the horrific suicide statistics in the United States, especially suicides that use a gun, have touched me deeply. I lost a good friend to suicide, and I think it’s high time that we as gun owners step up to the plate and do something about this tragedy in our midst before something is done to us and our rights are yet again diminished.

Men returning home from the horrors of World War Two found solace and comfort in the safe spaces of the Rotary Club and the Elks Lodge and dozens of other service organizations, but men returning home from our years-long involvement in Afghanistan and elsewhere have no such refuges to cling to. This is why I’m interested in what Training Grounds is doing with their Warrior Club.

There is a Warrior buried within all of us. Find yours as you and your team go through intense, fun and unique training exercises, designed to push you and build camaraderie among friends. Fun, fast paced and designed to teach multiple skills in a short amount of time. You will leave amazed at the new skill you’ve learned or the old skills you’ve improved on.

Social media and all the other wonders of our internet-based society are keeping locked up in our homes, away from the contact of real people. While I have gained some very close friends via social media, the fact is, they live all over the globe, and they aren’t available to be if I want to chat over a cup of coffee. We need more opportunities where men can come together and bond in-person, face-to-face and realize that they don’t have to tackle the problems of the modern world by themselves. This movement has to start somewhere, so why not have it start on the friendly confines of the firing range?

Stay tuned.

SHOT Show Predictions

Time and tide have worked against me going to the show this year, but that doesn’t mean I can’t put a finger to the wind of the industry and take a guess or two at what we’ll see rolled out on the show floor this year.

• Remington will put the R51 out of our misery and roll out a subcompact 9mm to compete with the P365 / Shield / new Glock
• And I wouldn’t be surprised to see Remington reboot the RP9 line as well
• SIG Sauer will come out with a competitor to the M&P380 Shield EZ based on the P365 platform
• Smith and Wesson with come out with M&Ps with built-in Crimson Trace red dot sights
• CZ will continue to deny the existence of the concealed carry market
• Speaking of which, I’d like to see CZ come out with a competitor to the Ruger Precision .22 this year, but with CZ being CZ, they won’t do it until the market is oversaturated
• Beretta will reboot the Nano and Pico
• Mossberg will roll out a “firearm” version of the 930 to compete with the Remington Tac14, but won’t have one available to shoot on media day for, um, reasons
• Something I’m not expecting but something I’d like to see is an XD-E from Springfield with a decocker OR a safety, not both. I’d switch my daily carry to the gun in a friggin’ heartbeat
• More precision rifle stuff from Savage and Ruger
• And it wouldn’t shock me if Ruger tweaks their American pistols a bit to boost sales, maybe with a red-dot ready version
• If Smith&Wesson doesn’t release a 4″ 9mm Shield at SHOT, they’ll release it at NRA

The M&P / Crimson Trace team up seems like a no-brainer to me. What will be interesting, if they do it, is what price point the pistols will have. Smith&Wesson bought out Crimson Trace awhile back, and if they can take advantage of the vertical integration between the two companies and come up with something that sets a new price floor on pistols with red dot sights. Cost of the sight itself is the biggest obstacle to consumer acceptance of the red dots on pistols, and someone who drops the price of a RDS pistol by even $100 will take a dominant market position.

Minor note: The success of the SIG Sauer “Tread” AR-15 is interesting to me, because it shows that if you build a lifestyle around your product, people will buy your product.

Huh. Nice to see the stuff I’ve been talking about for five years is finally starting to take hold in the industry.

We Wish You A Tactical Christmas…

The creative team at 5.11 Tactical is spreading some holiday cheer with their new Ballistic Nutcracker video, watch and enjoy: