Regular Guys
By Mitch Berg
“Why do you shooters get so anal-retentive about details?”
Because when you get details wrong with a gun, people get hurt, go to jail, or both.
Lucas Kunce, a former Marine Jagoffosaur [1] and candidate for the US Senate against Josh Hawley, is reaching out to win over “Regular Guys”.
WIth him, he took Adam Kinzinger a bunch of union guys, and an entourage of reporters to the shooting range for some guy time.
It’s fair to say Kunce spun the results for all he was worth:
A richochet clipped one of the reporters.
Where did they screw up?
Let us count the ways:
- Shooting at steel targets – at 10 yards. That’s pretty much guaranteed to richochet.
- Eye protection? Kinzinger apparently wanted to protect his hairdo.
- Oh, yeah – they had a box of Tannerite on the firing line. If that ricochet had hit that instead of the reporter, it would have made a bigger headline than a boom.
Here’s hoping that reporter’s insurance company takes Kunce to court (I have little. hope he’d do it of his own volition).
So – how is that battle for blue-collar guys going?
[1] UPDATE: I’m told the title is “JAG Officer”, short for Judge Advocate General Officer, or military lawyer.
I regret the confusion.
October 24th, 2024 at 6:58 am
I’m no expert shooter but the few times I’ve been to a gun range, I’ve never seen shrapnel flying from hitting targets. Btw, why would a guy need a scope that big to hit targets that close – heck, why would you use long guns to shoot at targets that close?
October 24th, 2024 at 7:01 am
Well, geez, Mitch, you can’t wear eye protection while looking through a 3 x 9 power scope. It makes the image all blurry. And you need a powerful scope to see a target 5 yards away, how else can you hope to hit it? Iron sights? Ridiculous.
The reporter is just lucky that the rifle didn’t have the chainsaw attachment, this could have been ugly.
October 24th, 2024 at 7:37 am
JDM, I was a member and occasional Range Safety Officer at an outdoor shooting range on the East Side of the Twin Cities, in Lake Elmo, until this summer. Paper targets were clipped to chicken wire suspended between metal posts set four feet apart. If you shot anywhere between the posts, the bullet would pass through the paper, clip off a bit of chicken wire, and bury itself in the earth berm backstop. Beautiful range, loved shooting there.
But inevitably, some shooter would manage to hit the post and sometimes that caused bullet fragments to rebound to the shooting line. Mind you, these posts are 25 YARDS away, minimum, but bullets travel fast and depending on the angle of the strike . . . I believe one or two people did get nicked. That’s why when the shooting line is active, EVERYBODY wears eye protection, not just the guy holding the bang stick.
How did the clowns in the video manage to produce shrapnel from this incident? Not sure. First, it was not a public shooting range, it was a couple of tables set up in somebody’s back yard – could have hit the table to produce a rebound. Second, shooting at metal targets – the metal may deform and separate instead of simply parting like paper. Third, there was no backstop, just shooting toward the woods and we don’t know what’s back there – rocks, metal fence posts, etc.
The stupidity shown in that video is one of the reasons I cringe when I defend the Second Amendment. The Founders intended that ordinary people should have weapons of war equal to whatever the government had, so ordinary people could overthrow the government again to form a new one, should that become necessary. But the Founders assumed that “ordinary people” would possess a level of firearms familiarity and common sense which seems to have died out since 1960 or so. It certainly has with that crowd, despite one of them having served as a lawyer for the military. Whatever safety training he got, he has forgotten.
If “ordinary people” no longer have the morals, the character, the grit, the skills, the common sense, to think for themselves and act wisely, maybe Liberals are correct – maybe we no longer need a First Amendment or a Second Amendment or a Fourth Amendment. Maybe we don’t need a 13th Amendment either, since “ordinary people” have devolved into involuntary servants of the government. I don’t believe it, at least not in my circle of acquaintances, but I’m part of the deplorable masses, the bitter clingers, the flyover people of rocks-and-cows land. Maybe the enlightened elites and their involuntary servants in The Place That Matter are different?
October 24th, 2024 at 8:04 am
Thanks, Mr Jones. Good info.
October 24th, 2024 at 8:45 am
Aren’t those scary black guns they’re firing the kind that most Democrats want to ban?
Notice as well that the table they’re using is overloaded to the point that the support beam broke free from the legs. We are not talking rocket scientists here.
October 24th, 2024 at 11:09 am
I don’t recall ever taking Tannerite to the shooting range (the Marshall isn’t going to like that, Yogi”, or wanting to keep it on the bench next to me even if I did.
Since this freedom-loving outing was all about image, I suspect the scopes were viewer “optics”, not shooter optics, and metal targets were selected for the video-friendly clang sound. But Tannerite? WTF for? Did they think they might make a “manly” big explosion with a shot – and at that distance?
Also, did any of these jokers have ear protection? Jeez, even Dukakis knew better than that.
October 24th, 2024 at 11:28 am
OK, this was too funny not to pass on.
https://babylonbee.com/news/giddy-dick-cheney-joins-democrat-party-after-hearing-they-get-to-shoot-people-at-gun-ranges
October 24th, 2024 at 12:58 pm
From my experience more often than not the ricochet injury comes from the bullet jacket rather than the bullet itself.
October 24th, 2024 at 1:09 pm
JDM,
They were apparently shooting at steel targets.
At 10 yards.
I’m told one never ever uses steel targets at less than 50.
While Bigman is correct in that ricochets can fly good ways, and to Scott’s point the injury was apparently a piece of jacket, steel targets are pretty much built to get ricocheted off of.
October 24th, 2024 at 10:01 pm
steel targets are pretty much built to get ricocheted off of
Hell, so are teleprompters if you listen to the Left.
October 25th, 2024 at 9:34 am
Off topic but I ask indulgence. It is fine to talk about voting harder so we win the election and put Trump back an office but what happens next?
This is an insightful article discussing Appointments to key positions. Yes, I know it’s extremely long, but you can’t understand the reason for the recommendation until you understand how bad the system has been perverted and how badly it needs reform.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2024/10/24/trump-staffing-2025/
October 27th, 2024 at 9:06 pm
I’ll allow it
And probably write about it, later this week or middle of next.
October 28th, 2024 at 6:35 am
^ You might find this interesting
NEW: Robert Kenendy Jr. says that Donald Trump is breaking tradition by privately funding his transition team and has already started it three months early.
October 29th, 2024 at 9:45 pm
Gross idiocy all around in that video.
The Darwin principle in action.
Packaging of most steel “gong” targets state a minimum safe shooting distance of 25 yards for handguns, 30 yards for rimfire, and 100 yards for rifles to protect the shooter from splatter fragments of bullets disintegrating against the ballistic steel.