I use this exact grip, but I find it natural and comfortable.  Others may not.  I also find .45 1911 natural and comfortable, while I do not find 9mm natural or comfortable (nor do I find double-stack magazine guns natural or comfortable compared to the 1911).  It may come down to choice if a shooter doesn’t come to terms with this grip, but it isn’t trivial that all the top competition shooters use this grip.  It does have a number of advantages.

Via WRSA, Max Velocity has this video.

Go read his comments on the engagement.  I sent this video to my former Marine, Daniel, who had this to say.

… if you have a team stopping behind a doorway for cover to shoot that creates a bottle neck, that’s what body armor is for.  Go in clearing the room with the bulk of your armor between you and the guy shooting at you and don’t stop moving, that way more guys filter in behind you clearing areas.

Everyone in the team has a very specific area in the room they cover.  You practice over and over again until it’s smooth and fast.  Did you see how long it took for that guy to actually start engaging the fighter?  By the time he started shooting from behind cover three guys could have filtered into … putting rounds in his chest.

The idea that a single individual in a team will clear the entire room is dumb.  So that basically means a team of 4 guys will clear the room 4 times. That’s what they need to do is clear an area and then more importantly keep that area covered and controlled.  So let’s say I am first in the door.  Everyone has to clear their front, but first guy always cleared left after the front is clear.

You clear your front by basically moving into the room – it is cleared by default.  So once the left is clear you keep side stepping left into the corner as you clear from left to right … the next guy is literally right on your ass behind you clearing his front by default and then immediately to his right.  Doing the same thing, side stepping to the right …

The next guy is going straight in forward.  You do it damn fast. This way you can get a entire fire team in a single room … I don’t know about you but 4 rifles is a lot better than one.

To which I replied this.

Okay, so in summary (a) they didn’t follow a protocol, (b) they didn’t act as a team, and (c) they didn’t go fast enough. But what if your family is in the structure, somewhere, you don’t know where, and there is a threat in the structure too, somewhere, you don’t know where, and you’re totally alone without a team?

Daniel.

Then you are forced to clear the whole house systematically room by room following a structured room clearing procedure and being consistent with it. Sometimes I had too [in Fallujah] because we were too spread out in different houses.  So you practice.  Main thing is If you can’t do it perfectly going at slow speeds, then how the hell are you going to do it fast? What I always told my Marines.  Even the hardcore team guys would practice the fundamentals at very slow and systematic speeds to fine tune.

Offered up for your edification.  He did it many, many times in Fallujah and lives to tell about it.

Breitbart:

The CT Post quoted Murphy saying:

In an era where anti-government positioning is a hallmark of the modern right, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that increasingly Republicans are absolutist in their views on the right of citizens to own guns. They want to preserve the right of revolution as a means of showing how much they truly hate the current government, administered by President Barack Obama.

Interestingly, Murphy has been bashing claims that gun rights are “God-given” for some time; this is not a new issue for him. In fact, when the Senate rejected new gun controls in the wake of the attack on Sandy Hook Elementary School, an angry Murphy reacted by assuring Second Amendment supporters that gun rights were not “God-given.” He told MSBNC’s Rachel Maddow, “The Second Amendment is not an absolute right, not a God-given right. It has always had conditions upon it like the First Amendment has.”

Breitbart is a strange animal indeed.  They have Milo Yiannopoulos as an editor, who wouldn’t have anything to do with claiming that rights of any sort are granted by God, but then they will post an article like this basing the right to own firearms on God’s law.  They can’t have it both ways.

It’s easy for me, and hard for them (or easy if they don’t care about logical consistency).  Murphy is confused, or simply a disbeliever in God.  God doesn’t simply grant the right of self defense to men, He commands it as a duty.  It is based on the Decalogue, and since that is based on His character, it is immutable.

The right of revolution doesn’t exists as some sort of perfunctory statement about how we feel about our current government, and Murphy is only saying that to insult men who believe in the second amendment.  The right of revolution is based on covenant law, eternal contracts, and the basis for this is to be found directly in the Holy writ.  It applies to all men, everywhere and in all times and epochs based on violations of agreements to live together under stipulations and within strict boundary conditions.  When the covenant is broken, it is no longer valid.

Newsmax:

Leading the troop of Republican lawmakers, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is inching towards a September showdown with the White House over transfer of internet control, according to The Hill.

“To stop the giveaway of our Internet freedom, Congress should act by continuing and by strengthening the appropriations rider in the continuing resolution that we will be considering this month,” said Cruz.

Cruz has already initiated a website warning about the dangers of the Obama administration’s strategy, Politico reports.

This fight with the current government could be a repeat of the 2013 Obamacare fight, according to The Hill, which threatened to plunge the federal government into a financial crisis after passage of the resolution.

The Texas lawmaker warned it can be dangerous if the U.S. ignored the internet powers it enjoyed as countries like Russia, China and Iran would take over. GOP lawmakers don’t want the Obama administration to surrender its authority to ICANN, the global nonprofit organization that manages the internet’s domain name system.

According to The Hill, few Republicans, however, prefer to stay away from the showdown. House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, are not keen on pursuing the fight to retain internet power.

Go get ’em Ted.  And of course Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan aren’t interested in helping.  They are captains of a den of demons.

As far as I’m concerned, Ted should keep charging until the whole gang of the ne’er-do-wells are hung from the nearest lamp post on Pennsylvania Avenue.

USA Today:

TAMPA — Police in Tampa said one man is dead and his cousin faces a manslaughter charge after the pair allegedly tested out a bulletproof vest to see if it worked.

Officers responding Saturday night to a call of a person being shot found Joaquin Mendez, 23, with a gunshot wound to the chest, WTSP-TV reported. In the house, they found blood and a bulletproof vest with a hole in it.

The cousin, 24-year-old Alexandro Garibaldi, initially told police he heard a gunshot, the Tampa Bay Times reported. But police said a witness told them that Mendez tried the vest on as he sat in a chair, wondering whether it worked.

Police said allegedly Garibaldi took out a gun, said, “Let’s see,” and shot.

Don’t do that.  There are all levels of Kevlar, and Kevlar degrades with time, and besides, just don’t do that regardless of whether you think you have the right Kevlar and it’s in good shape.  I want all of my readers to keep reading.  There aren’t many of you, so we would all feel the loss of just one of you.

EWN.co.za:

A British sniper has killed an Islamic State (Isis) executioner as he prepared to kill several hostages by shooting a fuel tank on his back and incinerating him.

It’s reported the marksman fired a single shot from 1,500 metres as the terrorist was about to use a flame thrower.

The bullet caused such a huge fireball, it also killed three other Isis members standing next to the target, who were filming the execution.

Sources say the executioner had been on a “kill list” drawn up by American forces.

In an area near Raqqa in Syria the target was preparing to execute 12 prisoners with a flame thrower when the British sniper took aim.

With a single round from a Barrett .50 calibre sniper rifle from a distance of 1,500m the marksman hit the fuel tank on his back causing a huge explosion.

Shortly afterwards, the prisoners, thought to be civilians, were freed by British and US Special Forces.

Like a puppy or a hot cup of freshly ground dark roast coffee on a winter morning, it warms the heart, yes?

ABC News:

As gun ownership drops among young Americans and the Army trains a generation more accustomed to blasting out emojis on cellphones than taking aim at targets, drill sergeants are confronting a new challenge: More than half of raw recruits have never held, let alone fired, a weapon. Young people who form the bulk of the Army’s rookie soldiers don’t have nearly the exposure to guns as past generations. And the drill sergeants tasked with transforming these men and women into competent marksmen are going back into training to adjust their approach. Many are dropping the tendency to bark out orders and are adopting a more mentor-like coaching attitude. “You don’t hear any drill sergeants yelling, unless it’s a huge safety issue,” said Staff Sgt. Randy Fisher, one of about 600 drill sergeants working daily with recruits at South Carolina’s Fort Jackson, the Army’s largest basic combat training post. “We don’t want the soldiers to get all freaked out.” Amid deafening blasts of semi-automatic rifle fire at one of Fort Jackson’s 30 ranges, Army drill sergeants paced behind four dozen soldiers aiming M-4s at distant targets during a recent practice session. The hard-nosed, barked commands from the first days of basic training were absent. And though real bullets were being used, not one of the young recruits nor any sergeants wore heavy body armor or helmets. And, during a lull in the shooting, drill sergeants leaned over to offer guidance in measured tones to soldiers learning to fire.

My former Marine, Daniel, is thrilled he is no longer associated with a military like this.  His text reply to me concerning this article was this.

Oh …

My …

God …

Granted, he was a Marine, but even the Marine Corps is being pressed to send women through the Marine Corps infantry officer course at Quantico. We will lose the next legitimate war we fight.  But perhaps we’re already there.  A saddening question comes to mind.  The kill ratio of the U.S. military has been around 6:1 – 10:1 in both Afghanistan and Iraq.  What would it have been with no CAS, no AC-130 gunships, so helicopters, no A-10s?

It will get worse, as the U.S. government continues to fill the ranks of the military with weaklings, homosexuals, women and nonconformists (here you can safely assume what I would have to say about people like the Sikh Army Captain wearing nonconventional cover).  It’s a sad day for the U.S. military

This reviewer has a lot of love for the RRA rifle.

Rock River Arms’ new Fred Eichler Series LAR-15 Predator joins a growing number of AR-platform rifles and carbines specifically configured for the serious coyote and bobcat hunter. Sporting a medium-weight 16-inch stainless steel barrel, it represents the top of Rock River’s current four-model line of ARs specifically configured for coyote pursuit.

It was developed and field tested with the extensive help of Fred Eichler, host of the television show Predator Nation. The Fred Eichler series embodies not only the basic functionality of the AR platform that has made it so widely popular with predator hunters in the first place but also an impressive set of individual custom touches that elevate it to a pack leader among this category of guns.

Anyone who is at all familiar with AR-15 rifles understands why they are virtually perfect predator hunting tools and why predator hunters were early leaders in the mass migration of AR-platform carbines and rifles from the world of tactical, military and law-enforcement applications into full status as “modern sporting rifles.”

This is an interesting article, but this bit caught my eye.

There’s a lot of misunderstanding out in the world about the relative “inherent accuracy” of long barrels and short barrels. In reality (all other things being equal), short barrels are inherently more accurate than long barrels because they are stiffer, don’t flex and vibrate so much while bullets are passing through their bore and experience less muzzle displacement shot-to-shot due to variable harmonics.

In other words, the vibration amplitude isn’t as great with a shorter barrel.  This is a very interesting point, and one that I’ve overlooked before.  Although it could also be observed that the longer barrel is necessary at times to get the full potential out of the muzzle velocity of the round.

In the picture above I have to think they are shipping that rifle with a Pmag or Hexmag if you bought it today.

Mother Jones has made a habit of removing my comments, especially when I’m winning the debate (which is always).  I rarely link them since they’re such a rag, but this case is special.  It’s breathless over-drama you could find anywhere about any profession, but this bit caught my eye.

But there were certain people who were difficult. At some point during the day, you would have a gun pointed at you. I had a guy with Parkinson’s, and he had severe muscle tremors. He can’t hold the gun properly, and it jams. He walks off the range, he’s pointing the gun at me, and he’s saying, “Hey, hey, my gun is jammed!” I sidestep the muzzle and say, “Let’s have a look, shall we?” All the while that I am handling it I am saying, “You really shouldn’t be doing that.” And the guy, without missing a beat, says, “It’s all right, the safety’s on the gun.” I pull the slide back and there’s a live round that ejects from the chamber. And I’m thinking, okay, I was a three-pound trigger pull away from getting shot.

[ … ]

There are some good bosses that run these ranges, but for the most part they willingly overlook the fact that this stuff is dangerous. And I’m not just talking about the guns. They’re supposed to properly train people for handling lead, which gets released in large quantities by spent bullets. There’s not really a safe level for lead in your body once you get above five micrograms per deciliter of blood. At the end of the day, you’ve got various things that you have to clean up: the brass shells, paper from the targets, un-burnt powder from the ammunition, little bits of atomized lead. Anything with high enough concentrations of lead is supposed to be put into a canister and treated as hazardous material, but that didn’t always happen.

We’d get tested for lead in our bodies maybe once or twice a year. They would kind of look sideways at you if you asked for the test results. I knew better than that. I just said, “The hell with it.” But the last test that I had, it came back high. I was contacted by the California Department of Public Health, and the guy said, “Uh, why is your lead level so high?”

Some RSO, huh?  He just admitted to contributing to an unsafe range where people muzzle flag others, not following procedure concerning hazardous material protocols, and a host of other problems.

Mother Jones thinks they’ve found some sort of ticking bomb on gun ranges.  Bad, bad places they are.  In reality, they may have done everyone a favor by outing a dishonest, incompetent worker for what he is.  He is a liar and mental pygmy.  Additionally, his managers were guilty of malfeasance.  I don’t go to any ranges like that (and I go to a lot of them).  Every one I go to is safe, clean, well-designed and well-maintained.  The authorities ought to consider putting this guy in prison.

Oh, and Mother Jones still sucks.