Litany Against Derp

I'm still learning every day.

I must not derp.
Derp is the reputation-killer.
Derp is the little-death that brings total enstupidation.
I will face my derp.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the derp has gone there will be nothing.
Only clue will remain.

I wonder what I'm wrong about right now?

A: I have an [X] in my derp drawer!
Me: I can't fit my past derp in a drawer. How much future derp do I have lying around? #HalfLifeOfFacts

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) May 15, 2017

Derpeste.

"I have carried a 7.5” Blackhawk in .45 Colt crossdraw in a nylon holster while working at a gun store, and I was only carrying it a little ironically. At least it was one of the more upscale suede lined nylon holsters?

Oh, and it was loaded with Glasers because of course it was. I mean at that point, why not?

Derpeste."

I was being fundamentally unserious. In my defense, it was a long time ago. 

Oh, and "Derpeste" = "The derp in me recognizes and acknowledges the derp in you." 

We've all been there before and we'll all be there again. Self-betterment in any field of endeavor is a constant process and not a destination.

I'm glad that stuff I wrote on gun forums twenty years ago...heck, stuff I wrote on this blog only five years ago...is still out there. Yeah, I cringe a little when reading it, but it keeps me grounded. I've said some dumb stuff in the past and I'll probably say more dumb stuff tomorrow, from the viewpoint of myself five years from now.

Here's one: I really dig this gun, but in retrospect, Mag-Na-Porting on a defensive gun isn't exactly optimal*, and any .41 Mag loads I'd carry for defense would hardly require the porting in a 4" N-frame, anyway.

*And not for the reason the internet told me twenty years ago, which was "You'll blind yourself at night with the flash from the ports." The fact of the matter is that any flash from the ports is going to be swamped by the flash from the muzzle anyway. The real reason is because porting (as opposed to actual expansion chamber compensators) tend to expel jacket or bullet shavings and unburned powder flakes, and if you're shooting from a good thumb-pectoral indexed retention position, you are likely to get tattooed by this ejecta.

Straw Gun Training

From an older post at Gun Culture 2.0:

"...Keller argues for a combat proven approach to training that focuses on the constants of gunfighting. The post-9/11 essence of gun training is spending time on a square range mastering the basic techniques that apply in every gunfight: getting the gun up, getting sight picture, and pulling the trigger.
...
[Y]et, he observes, many of his peers who have the same operational experience do not train in this manner. Instead, they are “getting wrapped up in the whole wooing the customer thing, with the fancy drills and the running around doing the GI Joe stuff. Some of the guys that do have experience are teaching that stuff but it’s because they know that’s what sells.”"

Now, I'll readily admit that I've avoided a couple of the more... notorious? internet famous? ...trainers, but at this point my training resume is pretty varied. Since this stuff is usually for work (and could quite possibly come up if I ever actually have to defend myself), I keep a spreadsheet documenting my training hours.

Looking over that list and discarding all the various legal and medical and other classroom stuff and limiting it to only life-fire range classes, I count fifteen different trainers/schools since 2008. And those fifteen come from a wide variety of backgrounds: LE, .mil, private citizens...

I have yet to encounter anything I'd describe as "fancy drills" or "running around doing GI Joe stuff". I've certainly never attended a class where the basics of marksmanship were not stressed. In fact, in most classes I've taken, marksmanship was not just stressed but scored and graded and the best shooters were usually recognized in some way.

Maybe I'm attending the wrong classes?
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Tale as old as time...

John Doe/Jane Roe gets a CCW permit, tries out a couple of off-the-rack holsters from their local gun store, finds them uncomfortable on their regular belts from The Gap or Macy's or wherever, and after six months of this, invents some dumb new way to carry a gun.



This is how we get everything from Lethal Lace to folding Glocks.

Magnecarry fails on nearly every point of a "What makes a good holster?" checklist. It's a bad holster and you should feel bad if you bought one.
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The soft whirring sound of derp.

If you think a USB-rechargeable battery operated fan is a worthwhile addition to a holster whose claimed primary reason for existing is that it's "more comfortable" than a plain kydex rig, you need to go sit in the corner and feel bad about yourself while the rest of us point at you and laugh.

Like Joshua H. brought up on the Bookface, this might have potential for hilarity:

Guy: "What's the noise?"

Alien Gear wearer: "What noise?"

Guy: "That humming noise. It's coming from... your belt? What is that?"

AGw: *fitfully tries to conceal his poorly fitted holster* "I don't know what you're talking about man! Just leave me alone you weirdo!"

Maybe if strapping a huge swathe of something to your side makes you sweaty and uncomfortable and gets your buttsweat all over your gun, the solution shouldn't be electric fans and cooling ducts, but a holster that is much smaller and waterproof?

I mean, I just drove from Indianapolis to Shawnee, Oklahoma with a Dark Star Gear Orion holster carried IWB, and that was something like ten hours, only stopping to pump gas. No cooling fan required, either.
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Nostalgia doesn't belong in your CCW gun.

Super Vel Ammo: I have to vent.

What kills me is how they're hyping 90gr +P .38 Spl & 9mm and 185gr +P .45ACP bullets as if the last thirty years of accumulated terminal ballistics knowledge hadn't even happened.

Flying dimes with no sectional density moving at Warp Factor Six are how we got Miami and then wound up spending twenty years wandering in the .40 caliber wilderness, and the shit is being pimped by people who should goddam well know better because, I dunno, Cameron Hopkins is a nice guy or something and the boxes make older gunwriters feel nostalgic.

Tab Clearing...

• My current camera experiment. Amazon's algorithms were like "We noticed you bought a Ricoh GXR and a Leica M-mount lens. Customers who bought these products also bought skinny jeans, home coffee roasters, and Ray-Ban Clubmasters. Would you like to add these to your cart?"


• Beware buzzword bingo in someone purporting to offer defense advice. As a friend once cracked about a commenter here "He has slain Roget's brontosaurus and strewn its guts about the rafters."


• Interesting Vanity Fair piece about Blade Runner.

Derp Signaling

In the dystopian future, the Department of PreCrime will use online purchase data and BATFE records to note that you have bought:

• A zombie-motif AR pistol lower 
• A crappy airsoft-grade red dot and light/laser 
• A knockoff AFG 
• And a Taurus pistol

...and come to your house and preemptively arrest you for conspiracy to commit road rage with your retard gun.

Because nothing says "I should not be left unsupervised with sharp objects or permanent markers" like the gun in that picture.

The Descent of Man...

From discussion elsewhere...

" You know, Hydra-Shoks and Black Talons were both, for their times, some of the better-performing JHPs on the market. At least back then when Joe Sixpack logged into AOL on his 14.4kbps modem and hit up his clueless buddies online for ammo suggestions, the Dumb Bullet du Jour would actually work as well or better than most anything out there. I mean, unless his buddy suggested Glasers..."

With loads like the 124gr +P Gold Dot and Federal's 147gr HST on the market, both of which have proven track records of dropping bad guys, people still run around buying RIP and Civil Defense and Inceptor ARX and all kind of other goofy pixie dust bullets at a dollar or two dollars a round. 

Derp has always sold well, but it can be more effectively marketed now, I guess.
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Derp sells. Especially if it's New, Improved Derp.

Behold, the "Handgun Sling"*:



A learning-impaired tree sloth should be able to spot a number of glaring errors here. For instance, the handgun is carried right on the lumbar spine, which is practically an invitation to future hobbies like wheelchair basketball and getting to compete in 5k fun runs while sitting down.

Second, the dude orients the grip incorrectly for a handgun carried behind the back. Observe how the best-known small-of-the-back holster, the Galco SOB †, rides. This is so that if you just have to carry your gun in the wrong place, then at least when you draw the firearm in a big hurry, you don't flag your own frickin' kidneys with the muzzle. Blowing your own giblets out your belly button when trying to throw down on an ATM stickup artist is a pretty serious party foul.

But the pièce de résistance, the derp cherry on the suck icing of the giant failcake, is the blindfolded hand jive one must go through every morning just to holster up:

If dude could somehow get his strong-side traffic finger a little further into the trigger guard, he'd be a shoo-in for today's "How Many of the Four Rules Can You Break at Once?" contest.

Don't fall for this stuff. It's stupid.

* I have downloaded the video, so in case the guy goes dark, we can put it back up elsewhere.
† If I had a dollar for every minute of my life I have spent on a sales floor, explaining the "why" behind the orientation of the Galco SOB to an uncomprehending audience, I'd buy myself... well I don't know, but it'd be something pretty nice.
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Derp Still Sells: An Unfortunately Ongoing Series.

So there's some new gimmick bullet out whose makers followed the trail blazed by the mythical "Black Rhino" round: Shotgun out a press release full of hyperbolic claims, get the press worked into a lather, and... I dunno, it gets pretty Underpants Gnome-y from there. Maybe this is trolling for investors?

Anyhow, to anybody with a shred of knowledge about terminal ballistics, everything about these things is risible; from the part where it sheds most of its weight as underpenetrating fragments on impact to the part where the core goes on to leave a pencil-like wound track to the fact that the video tests don't appear to be in calibrated 10% ordnance gel anyway, so all the numbers they're throwing out seem to be pointless. Basically, what these dudes appear to have done is to have taken a bullet design with a proven track record, the Barnes solid copper XPB, and used an EDM machine or something to break it so it doesn't work right anymore.

Anyhow, the problem with this is that it has been shotgunned out to the conservative blogosphere, because conservatives are gun enthusiasts, right? And this has triggered firearms-related discussions in the comments of certain conservative blogs that are certainly... enthusiastic.

My soul hurts.

Jesus wept, this is why I hardly talk about guns on the internet anymore. The level of gun stupid in the comments sections at The Blaze, AoS, or Instapundit makes me long for the raw technical competence and hard factual knowledge of, say, your average Brand-Specific Fanboi or State-Level Gun Enthusiast forum like GlockTalk or INGO.

And then, of course, someone will wade in and denounce this bullet as a Joke Hyperbole Projectile, and my heart will soar, and then they'll turn around and say "What you really need is Black Talon!" and my soaring heart will plummet like a paralyzed falcon, because a twenty-year-old discontinued Gen 2 JHP design is apparently still a name to conjure with, thanks to the Winchester marketing department and the American media.

I actually saw a debate in one of these threads between proponents of Black Talons and Hydra-Shoks. No doubt everybody then jumped into their 5.0 GTs and drove off with Red Hot Chili Peppers CDs blaring from the speakers. Hey, 1991 called; it wants its ammo back.

To return to the original topic, massive strides have occurred in projectile design in the last twenty years. This bullet is not one of them. It's worth noting that the press release isn't even right when it says "The last round you'll ever need" because the last round you'll ever need is some goofy multipiece bullet that spins its bits on fishing line. This is just the second-to-last round you'll ever need.

Derp Sells, A Continuing Series

I have never jumped out of a helicopter with a knife in my teeth, won any shootin' trophies, or designed a unique firearms operating system, but I've spent many years slinging guns across the glass, enough that I'm something of a Subject Matter Expert on the buying habits of Cletus. Speaking from that middlin'-lofty height, I feel comfortable in saying that it's a good thing this looks like it's going to cost more than $50, or the ranges of America would be covered up in bandaged Cletii...



The overlap of "people likely to want this" and "people able to afford it" is hopefully very tiny. If you can't spot several big problems with the very concept, I want you to go stand in a corner and feel bad about yourself while the rest of us talk about you behind your back. At least those ludicrous pistol bayonets will let you clear a malfunction without giving you stigmata.

What I want to know is how that guy busted all those ridiculous "gun kata" poses while keeping a straight face?

EDITED TO ADD: Well, first he disabled comments, then he turned off embedding, and now he's pulled the video from YouTube entirely. I hate it for him; it's gotta sting to hold your brainchild up for everyone to see, only to have people point and laugh. Obviously some time and effort went into the design and manufacturing, but time and effort alone don't make an idea good.
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Derp sells well, especially if it has velcro on it.

So somebody comes up with some inventive new specialized way to carry a gun in situation X. It doesn't matter what the situation is, somebody's come up with some special gear solution for it.

Sometimes it makes sense, such as pistol harnesses designed to be strapped to the outside of cold weather gear in bear country. Sometimes it's of dubious utility, like "car holsters". Sometimes it's downright dangerous, like that holster that straps around your upper arm so that you can carry a pocket pistol upside down, pointed at your brachial artery for no reason that is ever adequately explained.

Regardless of the type of strange carry, if you criticize it on the internet you will inevitably encounter some dude who comes along and explains to you that he has spent dozens of hours running drills and scenarios with video and stopwatches and bunches of different shooters that totally justify his use of this system.

Heck, I've apparently spent fewer hours at the range in all of 2013 than some of these guys have perfecting their technique of drawing left-handed against left-handed carjackers approaching from the passenger side rear, and that's even if my range time total includes the hours I spent sleeping on the Crimson Trace bus at the Midnight 3 Gun match because I went out to walk the stages on media night and couldn't find a ride back to the hotel.

(Apparently I should have had a special "Sleeping On The Bus" holster to do that, so I was doing it wrong anyway.)
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Derp sells well: A continuing series.

Here's a video. The derp starts early, so you don't have to watch the whole thing; I sure didn't.



Here we have the classic YouTube Gun Enthusiast Review of a product that anybody with a shred of knowledge about terminal ballistics, or even just basic hands-on experience of shooting things, will realize has some serious flaws built right in to its basic concept.

How does dumb stuff like this survive on the market? (And the hypetastic claims made about this junk are tame compared to the supposed abilities of some boutique BBs in the past.)

Because a lot of people are buying a gun as a fetish. And by "fetish", I'm not talking about the kind where you hang upside down covered in Saran Wrap while a midget in a clown suit throws pickles at you while yelling "Verboten!" but "fetish" in the anthropological sense, where certain powers, in this case strength and protection, are attributed to an inert object.

The gun is no longer just a tool for making holes in things at a distance, but a magical object that projects strength and wards off danger all by itself, and you can buy a power booster for it in a blister pack for only $24.99!

A gun doesn't keep you safe, okay? Guns don't "save lives". Guns don't save lives in the exact same way they don't kill people. A gun is a tool you can use to help keep yourself safe.

This seems like a good place to link to Kathy Jackson's timely "8 Ways To Spot A Bad Self-Defense Product Before It Kills You" essay.

Like the Romans used to say: "Caveat emptor, baby."

Derp sells well.

Some clownshoes stuff over here. A friend elsewhere wondered why sometimes some very smart people can be taken in by some of the more woo-woo shooting instructors. I replied:

You know, I've gone over this in my mind many times and I think it boils down to the fact that shooting a pistol even moderately well is hard, and takes practice. I mean, compared to the average shooter on the public range, I shoot like a frickin' ninja, and then I go to a match or gun school and it's like going from watching Wheel Of Fortune to Jeopardy. One minute I'm on top of the world, at least relatively speaking, next thing you know I'm struggling to get a "Thank You For Participating" prize.

It can be a cold bucket of ice water in the face to find out that, yes, one does really suck with a pistol, and there are two ways to deal with this: Put in the work to make yourself at least reasonably un-sucky, or go to some guy who'll let you dump a bunch of unsighted, un-timed rounds into un-scored targets at arm's length and tell you reassuring things about "Yeah, that's how it is on the street."

And, you know, he's probably right, at least inasmuch as the monthly NRA rag is full of the stories of Ida Blascowicz, who scared the baddie off by fetching her dead husband's service revolver from the sock drawer. It doesn't take a high degree of skill to survive that encounter, and that's what people want to hear. They don't want to hear tales of bad guys that return fire or don't fall to hardball, or whatever. It makes their .45LC/.410 lucky rabbit's foot feel less reassuring.

People talk about police handgun qualifications like they're hard; they're not. Similarly, every state handgun permit qualification test I'm aware of is pretty basic; back in TN I used to tell people not to worry, because if they could stand flat-footed and shoot at the ground and hit it, then they were golden.

Massad Ayoob has a qualification in his MAG-40 class that serves a real purpose, in that it's basically cobbled together from stages of well-recognized LE qualification courses, which looks good to juries. My first thought looking at the course of fire was that if you didn't get a 300/300, you should know why. I got a 300/300. I also shoot in the bottom half of the class at TLG's AFHF and the last time I walked a prize table at a match, I had a hard time picking between the prizes that were left and the tablecloth, which probably cost more.

Being good with a pistol takes work, and defending yourself with a pistol, at least statistically speaking, rarely requires being very good with it. But what if it does? How much time and effort are you willing to expend on being good with a pistol? I guess a lot of it boils down to how enjoyable you find it.

At the end of the day, I do this because it's fun, and because I don't like being sucky at things I think are fun. And who knows? It might even come in handy some day.