Oh Sigh...

…another weekend, another bombed match. This time a 3-Gun match. Focus, Michael…focus. Ironically, I did my best on the Noveske Standards, which are really simple and surprisingly hard. Five paper targets…first string with the carbine is head shots on each at 36 yards, 6 second par time. Second string, 6 seconds, 2 shots to the body. Next 2 strings are pistol, 6 second each run. First run is 2 body shots on each of the 5 USPSA targets; second run is 1 shot, reload, 1 shot. My understanding is that in 2 major matches, no one has shot this simple exercise clean.  One of the best runs belongs to 3-Gun champion and USPSA Grand Master James Casanova, who shot the standards down one shot.

I've cleaned the rifle portion before, but I got sloppy and dropped one of the head shots (#3, I called it) just out of the hard box. Then I went to the pistol with my G34. Did the 2 shots no problem. Checked the magazine for the next reload run. Buzzer goes off, I pull the trigger, the magazine goes sailing out of the gun like a watermelon out of a 6-year-old's mouth. I go to the reload on my belt to salvage something, and — for the first time I can remember in years…and years…and years…I miss it and knock my ONLY loaded magazine off into space. "Well, damn!" says my old friend Paul Miller Jr., who was running the timer. That sums it up.

The whole day was like that.

Okay…sometimes Karma just rolls against you, and you've got to ride it out. Got another 3-Gun match next weekend…I NEED to get my head on-board before Noveske!  I will say this…all the time I've spent on carbine has paid off. Of course, as the old television commercial said, I "traded a headache for an upset stomach." My success with the AR has come at the cost of my skills with a pistol. Luckily, I know how to fix that! Jerry the Geek, no comments! from the peanut gallery!!!

Here's a piece from Salena Zito you should read, largely because I think she's onto something:

What if fear is the origin of all the anger that voters feel toward Washington? Not just fear over economic stability in our homes and communities, but fear for our personal safety, our nation's security? When was the last time that felt stable?
...
As each awful event occurred, the Obama administration refused to state the obvious — that each was an act of terrorism based on a fundamentalist version of Islam; it even insisted that the Fort Hood massacre was “workplace violence. 

In January of this year, during his State of the Union address, President Obama declared that the greatest threat to America's future was neither terrorism nor nuclear weapons in the hands of Iran. “No challenge  poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change,” he said. 

Just once, we'd love a little honesty and a lot less political division from the White House…

I've said it before on the podcast…the wheels are coming off the great experiment that is America. You can feel it in the air, like, nasty ashy grit from a sputtering volcano. Bread, band-aids and bullets, my friends...