Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Training scars: "Cruiser ready" with hammer down on a pump shotgun

A lot of people advocate leaving one's pump action shotgun in 'cruiser ready' or 'cruiser safe', which means that the chamber is empty, the mag tube is fully loaded, and the trigger has been pulled, so that you can just rack the shotgun to get a round into the tube and fight.

In my opinion, the step of pulling the trigger while the mag tube is loaded is unsafe and unnecessary. It eventually could lead to a negligent discharge if a round somehow found its way into the chamber due to inattention.

Regardless of the potential safety issues, I think it's preferable to train always hitting the action release lever the first time that you rack the bolt.  That way, the bolt will come back whether or not it was locked forward.  It doesn't take any significant extra time and is more reliable.

I had long had this opinion, but I was reminded of it recently in a Magpul Dynamics shotgun class where Chris Costa said something to the same effect.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Quick and easy cleaning after shooting corrosive ammo

I shoot a lot of Yugoslavian 7.62x39 ammo in my AK.  It's corrosive, so I do make sure to clean the gun afterwards, but I think a lot of people spend way too much time and effort on it.  The entire cleaning process shouldn't take longer than about 10 minutes.

Key concepts:
The primers in corrosive ammo contains salts that attract and hold water, causing rust.  The salts are water soluble.   The best way to get rid of them is to wash them away with water.  The idea of 'neutralizing' the salts with ammonia or other chemicals is not necessary, and is dubious as to whether it works at all.   Heating the water or adding soap would help in the cleaning but is more effort and is unnecessary.  We want to make sure that the water we use to clean the gun doesn't get trapped in any nooks and crannies and cause rust itself. So we either displace it with WD-40 or use Ballistol which will protect the gun until after the water evaporates.

Ballistol is a gun oil that emulsifies in water.  When you use Ballistol diluted with water, the water component can dissolve the corrosive salts, and then when/as it evaporates, the oil component is left behind to protect from rust.


I have 2 different procedures that I use, depending on how dirty it is.

Procedure 1, for when it's really dirty:
1) Field strip the gun, and spray everything dirty in the gun with water from a hose, including the bore.  If you can get hot water to come out of your hose, that would be desirable, but if not, cold water is fine. If there are patches of crud that aren't coming off, brush them with a bronze brush while spraying them with water.
2) Run a boresnake through the bore a few times with a light coating of CLP or similar oil on the brush part.  Wash the boresnake later with the hose to get rid of any residual salts.
3) Spray everywhere that water was sprayed with WD-40 to displace the remaining water. This does not include the bore, since the snake + oiling should have taken care of that.
4) Wipe everything down with paper towels.
5) On parts of the gun that need lubrication, add gun oil or grease.  I wouldn't consider the WD-40 a good lube in itself.

Procedure 2, for when it's not that dirty:
1) Field strip the gun. With a spray bottle full of Ballistol diluted 1 part Ballistol to 9 parts water, spray everything dirty in the gun, including the bore.
2) Run a boresnake through the bore a few times with a light coating of CLP or similar oil on the brush part.  Wash the boresnake later with the hose to get rid of any residual salts.
3) Wipe everything down with paper towels
4) Lubricate the gun as needed.

Neither procedure should take more than 10 minutes, and you can probably get it down to less than 5 with practice.

On an AK, the key parts to clean are the chamber and bore, the gas tube, the bolt and bolt carrier, the muzzle brake and the threads on the end of barrel.

I've run my AK during training days where shooting started around 9 am, it was raining the whole day, and I cleaned the gun at about 7 pm, with no rust or corrosion.  I've shot about 1500 - 2000 rounds of the Yugo ammo total. I could probably get by with less cleaning, but this is a level of cleaning that I have found to be fast and effective.

Some other links that you might find useful and are sufficiently lazy for me:

Shooting and cleaning after corrosive ammo (Box of Truth)

Friday, September 9, 2011

Comment page for the list of San Francisco Bay Area firearms trainers

This is a placeholder for comments about the trainer list which is at http://jumpthestack.blogspot.com/p/san-francisco-bay-area-firearms.html

I made this because static pages can't receive comments, but blog posts can.

Training scars: no-look holstering

This one is probably somewhat controversial.  See http://jumpthestack.blogspot.com/p/about-me-contact.html for a disclaimer on my qualifications or lack thereof.

A lot of trainers focus on always holstering without looking.  I think this is overrated in terms of importance.  Remember, you only holster once you are fairly certain the situation is over.  One should always holster slowly and reluctantly, for safety purposes.  So, it's a relatively safe time, when looking down for one second is not that big of a lapse in awareness.

It has happened before that a piece of someone's shirt or various straps or other pieces of gear get snagged on the trigger as a person goes to holster, causing an unintended discharge even though the person was keeping his finger straight and away from the trigger.   This is especially likely with concealment holsters that hold the gun close to the body.  Holstering slowly and carefully would also help prevent that, and the shooter should pause if he feels any resistance while holstering. 
But taking a quick peek would certainly help prevent this issue as well.

Practicing holstering without looking is a useful skill that people should practice, that could be useful in some limited situations.  But I think it is overemphasized sometimes.

Edit- FYI, I recently took a class from Kyle Defoor, who advocated looking at the holster as you holster, for pretty much the same reasons as above.

Training scars: fast scan and assess

One common practice in firearms training is to scan and assess after finishing a firing string.  The purpose is to break tunnel vision after focusing on the target, and to maintain awareness of your surroundings. This is a good idea, but in practice it's sometimes done in a way that's less than optimal. 

A lot of people swivel their heads to the left and right really fast.  The problem with this is that if you turn your head that fast, it's hard to actually see anything.  It would be better to turn your head relatively slowly, enough that you can pick out distinct details.  If you actually can see things while moving your head that fast, that's fine, but make sure you can.  It's good to try to actually pick something to the side of or behind you that you see and take note of, just to force yourself to look for real.

Another common practice is to only look left and right.  It would be better to make sure to look behind you as well. 

 There's also some small controversy over whether or not the muzzle should move with your eyes.  I think that obviously if you're going to look to your sides or behind you, you can't keep the muzzle pointed in those directions, so it's better to keep it simple and keep the gun pointed at the original target or straight down while you look.

Center Mass Group on Habits of highly effective shooters

Center Mass Group is run by retired Navy Seals, and they have an excellent blog.  I especially like their series "Seven habits of highly effective shooters", which is about the fundamentals of marksmanship.  Articles so far:


http://centermassgroup.com/2011/07/the-first-habit-of-highly-effective-shooters/
http://centermassgroup.com/2011/08/the-second-habit-of-highly-effective-shooters/
http://centermassgroup.com/2011/09/the-third-habit-of-highly-effective-shooters/
http://centermassgroup.com/2011/09/the-fourth-habit-of-highly-effective-shooters/

http://www.itstactical.com/warcom/firearms/you-want-me-to-do-what-with-my-finger/