Where's Waldo???

Believe it or not, there's a sniper with a gun in this picture. Can you see him?

Click here to check out a web site on ghillie suits.

Collateral Damage

One of the biggest worries in law enforcement is having to shoot someone. And along with that an even bigger worry of collateral damage. Where does the bullet go after it strikes its intended target. Even most low powered rounds are capable of going completely through the target and striking an unintended innocent victim. And with a shotgun with buckshot you have 9-15 pellets spreading out in an ever widening pattern. That is why many departments are getting away from shotguns altogether or else switching from buckshot to slugs.
There's a type of round called "frangible". It is designed to break up on impact expending the majority of its energy immediately so as not to completely penetrate a target. Sky Marshals were the first to make extensive use of this round.

When I work in a situation where I know ahead of time there is going to be a crowd of people as at ball games or the rally, I carry the Glaser Safety Slug in my weapon. If I don't have it in my weapon I can switch it out in seconds. It is a compressed core of #12 bird shot capped with a blue plastic tip. The two main drawbacks to this ammo is the cost ($3.50/round) and a short range.

Shotgun verses rifle

Ghillie Suit

At the time of the drunken neighbor I only had a single shot breakdown 20 gauge. I also had a Ruger mini-14 with one of those terrible long ugly banana clips that are so "bad". When I racked the bolt and he heard it and saw me with it coming up to my shoulder he actually ran into his house. Now I do have a Rem model 870 pump that makes that spine chilling ker-chunk sound when you rack in the first round. Here at the house I can either grab the Rem. 870 shotgun or my duty weapon (Springfield 1911A1 .45 auto).

One of the officers here rolled up on a fight with about a dozen people involved, jumped out of the cruiser, racked in a round and everyone froze when they heard it.

The really odd thing now is that law enforcement is getting away from the shotguns with buckshot because of the liability due to collateral damage. Bristol Va has replaced all of theirs with rifles and we have replaced the buckshot with slugs. We keep the shotguns in the overhead gun rack and the rifles in the trunk. The officer I worked with last night has an M4 (the short version of the M16) and the Deputies (sniper team) carry camo Rem .308 bolt action. They had a barricaded subject last night in Flatwoods. They borrowed our night vision because it was closer than theirs was. Anyway the sniper team in ghillie suits and night vision crept up to within a couple of feet of the subject. He had set up an ambush in the edge of the woods for whoever walked up the road. The funny thing was they smelled him (alcohol) before they saw him. Had they not had the ghillie suits and night vision there probably would have been shots fired.

I Believe in Gun Control

Pull the butt snug against your shoulder, take a deep breath, let it half out and then hold it, and ever so gently squeeze the trigger.

30 cal. M1 Carbine telescopic sights at 50 yards

This is a relatively low powered rifle with an effective range of 200-300 yards. It is the rifle I intend to use for deer hunting this year as it has already put meat on the table several times before. It is also the weapon I'm qualified on and carry in the trunk of the police cruiser.

Guns in the Home

Over the Labor Day Weekend, the town of Coeburn held their annual Guest River Rally featuring arts, crafts, rides, and displays. I spent all day on Saturday manning the Police booth handing out information on different programs and free gun locks to any who wanted them. I talked to a lot of people and we gave away 700+ gun locks. Not everyone wanted them for guns. Several planned to use them as bicycle locks and one little old lady was planning to lock her lawn mower to the fence. Anyway my standard question to those who visited our booth was "Do you want some gun locks for your guns?" I got back two kinds of "NO" answers. Some said, NO what good is a gun when you need it if it is locked up? and some said, NO they didn't have any of those horrible things in their house. Most of the ones who took locks to use on their guns said that they still had at least one weapon that was readily available upon need. So the point I'm trying to make is that there are 3 kinds of homes here in my area and 2 out of those 3 would not be the kind of home an intruder would want to break into.

REMEMBER

New Sights

Finally found a set of TRUGLO sights for my Wincherster model 94 deer rifle. Installed them with a minimum amount of gunsmithing. Decided to try them out today and get them sighted in before rifle season. Went up on the mountain to my regular shooting place and got by the Wicked Witch (another story some other time) without getting followed, run off the road, or shot at. So after setting up my target and spreading everything out on the tailgate of the truck, I snuggled up to the rifle for that first shot. Now the reason I quit using this particular rifle was due to my poor eyesight using plain iron sight. In any kind of light these new sights are little bright points of light, bright enough for even me to see them. And bright they were. Anyone who does any shooting at all knows that when using sights to shoot at a target, either the sights are in focus and the target is slightly blurry or the sights are slightly blurry and the target is in focus. I'm not really sure what's going on but when I looked at the sights, I saw three (3) orange front sights arranged in a triangular shape and three of each of the rear green sights in the same configuration. While I could keep all of the shots inside a 4 inch circle at 50 yards(which is only marginal accuracy for a deer rifle) it takes some concentration to figure out which orange dot goes with which 2 green ones. And in deer hunting you don't usually have that much time, so it's back to the drawing board for some more ideas.