Hokey-Dokey Monday

You're not going to believe this, but while I was in Barry someone apparently set off a low-yield nuclear weapon in my office...at least, that's the only explanation I can think of for the mess...I would never have left it like this!

Anyway, first some big new...my old friend and COWBOYS host Richard "Tequila" Young has decided to metaphorically ride off into the sunset after six seasons of COWBOYS. He has a real job as an engineer in the petrolum industry and a real life, including wife and kids, and wisely he'd like to spend some time with them before he drops dead from overwork!

It's been a great ride, Tequila...thank you!

I'm going to wait until the press releases go out this week to tell you who the new host of COWBOYS will be...suffice to say, yes, he has a hat!

To wrap up on the Single Stacks, a wonderful time was had by all (mostly)...Rob Leatham won for the 14th time...I don't think he can actually be beaten in this match, to tell you the truth. He shoots it on cruise control while the rest of Super Squad is laboring in hyperdrive to knock TGO off. Hats off to Mr. Leatham! My favorite moment was on stages 5 & 6, where a tupical Illinois thunderstorm — just this side of Biblical — had flooded the approach to the stages. While everyne else waded through, Robbie of course just walked on the water.

Rob also had the best line at the awards ceremony as well. He got his choice of six superb custom pistols, and he chose one made by master gunsmith Dick Heinie.

"This is the fastest and easiest way to get a Heinie gun," TGO quipped. Heck, it's the only way to get a Heinie gun, except for Nighthawk. BTW, I'll have a Heinie interview on the podcast this week. We'll be talking about a lot of 1911-ish things, including hte Nighthawk guns.

For me, the greatest thing about the match was touching bases with so many old, and new, friends...I especially enjoyed meeting those of you wqho regularly comment on the blog as well as visit DRTV...THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU! I appreciate your thoughts on how we can make our projects better...believe me, we'll be cycling those ideas into implementable stuff...

I'd also like to say that I need to shoot more matches all the way through, not just so I get better — although, hey, who can argue? — but for all the reasons I tell other people to compete...enhanced gun handling skills, the internalization of shooting skills, jam-clearing under pressure, simply the ability to deliver the shot under pressure.

My next shooting event where I'll actually be shooting a match will be the first cowboy Wild Bunch match — 1911s, WWI trench shotguns, and major caliber lever guns — the weekend of June 14/15 at the End of Trail celebration and World Championships. I'll bring a bayonet for the trench gun in case everything goes to hell.

And lest we forget that the war goes on and on, here's my favorite stupid media comment, from the Chicago Tribune news blog, under the title "Anti-gun folk rather quiet":

Monitoring the feisty and zesty comment boards at Change of Subject these last two weeks has reminded me of something I became aware of in the mid-1990s, when I wrote rather often on the subject of firearms policy:

Gun-control advocates are weak. Whether they're badly outnumbered by gun-rights advocates, lazier than gun-rights advocates or simply don't have the statistical or philosophical ammunition to keep up with gun-rights advocates I'm not totally sure.

But the undeniable truth is that, whenever this subject bobs to the surface of the news pond, as it has lately, those who favor tough new laws to restrict access to guns prove to be no match for their passionate foes in the rumble-tumble of online debate.

"Gun-control backers: Where are you?" I pleaded in a headline last week.

Cue the sound of crickets.

By all means, cue the sound of crickets...could it be that the much ballyhooed "antigun movement" was never more than the media and a few strident voices in various urban cesspools? Whoops!