I didn’t intend for this to be Revolver Week, but I did find several good revolver-related items — plus information on surviving wildfires, con men, shooting out of fear, why some people put off training, and more!
Are you prepared for wildfire?
This is the first of two articles I’m sharing about lessons learned from the recent wildfires in California. These fires, pushed along by a sudden shift in wind patterns and fueled by a dry environment from a very hot summer, have killed people and destroyed homes, businesses, and the region’s famous wineries. There are a lot of things we can learn from the experiences of the people whose lives have been affected, and this article starts with some things we all can do to prepare for these kinds of conflagrations.
First-hand experiences from the CA wildfires
This article, written by someone who lives in the area scorched by the California wildfires, has a list of things you need to understand if your home is in the path of an uncontained fire. Some of them are commonsense, while others you may not have even thought of (there are a couple I certainly hadn’t.) You’ll no doubt find things that are definitely worth adding to your preparedness planning!
Revolver grip adaptors
It’s quite rare that I feature a purely commercial link in the Reading List, but in this case I’m making an exception. Until relatively recently the factory grips installed on most revolvers left a lot to be desired; they typically didn’t fill in behind the trigger guard, which left an area of very small circumference for the middle finger to grasp. The result is a gun that wobbles in the shooter’s grasp and significantly reduces their ability to shoot well. I see this in revolver classes constantly, and my usual recommendation is to buy new grips. In the old days, though, the advice was usually to get a grip adaptor — a device which attached to the front of the grip frame and dramatically changed the shape of the gun. They look funny, but they work really well!
In years past these adaptors have been made by Pachmayr and Tyler; the former discontinued the product a couple of decades ago, and the latter went out of business (then back in, then sort of back out, and reportedly back in again.) The Pachmayr design has been resurrected by a small company calling themselves BK Grips, and it’s their website I’m sharing today. Disclaimer: I haven’t ordered anything from them and cannot personally vouch for their quality or responsiveness, but what I see and hear is pretty good. If you like your revolver’s factory grips or “old school” look but wish they were more functional, these may be worth consideration.
Is the revolver still a viable self defense tool? One expert says yes!
A good article on the resurgence of the defensive revolver, including some thoughts on what makes a good candidate for that job, from Sheriff Jim Wilson. (He mentions a couple of books you might be familiar with; if not, here’s a link where you can get your own copies!)
Speaking of that revolver article…
Claude Werner takes on some criticism of Jim Wilson’s opinions, and finds out that the data supports the Sheriff’s conclusions — much to the chagrin of some people!
Blind fear isn’t a reason to shoot
The person on your porch might be an intruder determined to do you harm; on the other hand, it could be your drunk neighbor, your spouse coming home early from work — or a police officer. In this case out of Detroit, a 19-year-old decided to “defend” his mother and younger brother by shooting through their front door at a couple of unidentified people. As it happens, the two on his porch were police officers and the shotgun blast that the kid unleashed injured both of them.
Responsible self defense includes making sure the person you’re shooting at poses an immediate and otherwise unavoidable danger to your life. You need to have an articulable fear that your life is in grave danger, not a blind fear of noises or a generalized fear for your life. An articulable fear includes who you’re shooting at and specifically what they were doing which would lead a reasonable person to conclude the same thing you did. If you can’t see them, you probably don’t have such an articulable fear. Turning on a porch light, looking through a window, or loudly asking “WHO’S THERE?” are all reasonable ways of averting this kind of mistaken identity shooting.
The marks of a swindler
Con artists got their name from the term “confidence man”, white-collar criminals who would gain the confidence of their victim before stealing from them. I found a terrific article about fraudsters and how they work, and I recommend everyone read it. (This is particularly important to share with your soon-to-be-on-their-own kids, who generally lack the ability to spot these characters before it’s too late.)
Do you need to train before training?
I remember the time my parents hired a housekeeper. All their kids were finally out of the house, they had some discretionary income for the first time in their lives, and decided the demands of running their store left them with little time to clean their large Victorian home. The funny thing about it was my Mom; I still remember her fretting about the first arrival of the housekeeper. She spent an entire weekend cleaning the house so it wouldn’t be dirty when the person hired to clean it showed up!
Like my Mother, many people don’t want to take self-defense training until they’ve “gotten in shape”. Cecil Burch explains why that’s a crazy way of looking at your defensive preparedness.
A media appearance
I was a guest on HANDGUN RADIO this week, talking with Ryan Michaud and Wee’rd Beard about my newest book, PREPPING FOR LIFE. It was a great discussion about the origin of the book and why I think it’s so important for anyone serious about their personal and family safety. (You can get Prepping For Life in paperback, Kindle, and iBooks formats!)
– Grant
Opening photo by Backpacker – pixabay.com (CC0 public domain)
The post Your Hump Day Reading List for October 25, 2017 appeared first on www.GrantCunningham.com.
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