The first thing to address is what the Tanfoglio is doing that’s good, which is producing out of the box accuracy that totally blows my mind. From a supported position, it shot a 0.86 inch group using Atlanta Arms .38 Super at 25 yards, which is definitely Bianchi Cup levels of accuracy. I can’t get any of the striker fired guns I have sitting around to perform like that without adding match barrels and custom tuning ammo for them. This is a factory gun with what is essentially factory ammo.

Addressing the DA trigger itself, there are two separate training issues here; the first is the DA shot itself, which is managing the longer and heavier DA trigger pull, the second is the DA to SA transition, managing the difference in trigger pull from your first to second shot. For me, the DA to SA transition has not been an issue in practice or training; I shoot the first shot and then the second shot is just a lot easier to shoot. My percentage of points dropped on shot 2 vs. all other SA shots in a string is the same. So the DA/SA transition that so many people have worried about in print, online, and forums to me really isn’t a big deal.

The DA shot itself is another issue. Yesterday at practice, I ran the Falling Plates, 48 shots on 8 inch plates, which has historically been my worst event. Out of 48 shots, 8 are fired in DA mode, and 40 are fired in SA mode using a DA/SA gun. I shot a 47/48, which is the best score I’ve ever put up on the plates, and the only point I dropped was on an SA shot moving the gun in transition. The words “slapping the **** out of the trigger” would have applied to what I did on that shot. That isn’t to say that the DA shot doesn’t require training, but after looking at some numbers I’ve realized why I don’t think it’s as big a deal as other shooters might. In 2011, 23% of the rounds I fired were through a DA only gun, whether it was an S&W revolver or a Sig P250. In 2010, that number was 26% through a DA only gun. So from a training standpoint, I have a fairly reasonable amount of trigger time on a DA system, which is why I believe I’m able to re-acclimate to it faster. I’m not learning a new skill, I’m just refreshing an old one.

That’s not to say that I wouldn’t rather just shoot the Tanfoglio in SA mode the whole time, because if I could, I would. Having a DA first shot certainly makes the shooting part more difficult, but not so much more difficult that it outweighs the benefits of what this gun offers in terms of accuracy.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

New Milford, NJ – Caracal International, a small arms manufacturer launched in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates in 2007, announced today that Simon “JJ” Racaza, one of the top Limited and Open shooters in USPSA and Steel Challenge, has joined Team Caracal as a sponsored Production Division shooter.

“My decision on which gun company I would shoot for was based on gun performance. I’ve been shooting a myriad of guns lately and it literally came down to running the guns side-by-side and figuring out the best hits and time,” says Racaza.

“When I officially made the decision to look for a sponsorship in the production division, I told myself that I wouldn’t sell my soul for the contract. I planned on going with the gun that I believed in the most. I’ve also always been a fan of representing a company who is still growing and has room for me to grow with them. I was fortunate enough to be in the position of having a few gun companies who wanted to work with me. Caracal is a company with a lot of promise and an amazing product. I am very excited to be representing them in the Production Division.”

“We’re very excited about sponsoring ‘JJ’ Racaza and are looking forward to his winning successes with Caracal pistols,” says Salem Al Matroushi, CEO of Caracal International.

“JJ” Racaza is scheduled to attend the following 2012 events:

May 18-20 MA/VA sectional match (Virginia)
June 1-3 NJ Steel National Championships. (New Jersey)
July 5-9 Ecuador Production championships (Ecuador)
July 12-22 Bolo cup (Philippines)
September 7-9 Area 7 Championships (Upstate New York)
October 13-16 US production nationals
October 18-21 US open nationals (Las Vegas)
November 1-5 World Speed Shooting Championships (Florida)
November 15-19 Copa Zemog (Guatemala)

About Caracal Pistols

The Caracal semi‐automatic model “F” and model “C” pistols are now available at select retailers in the United States. Caracal pistols feature:

Smooth, quick trigger break with no over travel, and short reset
Low profile slide, which results in very little felt recoil
Lower bore (4mm), which allows for fast, accurate “instinctive” shooting for professional users
Optional quick sight acquisition system
18 round magazine on the F model

About Caracal

Caracal is a small arms manufacturer, launched in Abu Dhabi in 2007. Working closely with the UAE Armed Forces, the company has developed a range of modern pistols in association with leading European weapon designers and international users. The Caracal range includes full and compact sized pistols, which have been sold in the Middle East region, Europe and South Africa. Caracal products are manufactured in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates. Caracal International LLC recently launched Caracal USA, LLC, located in Trussville, Alabama, which serves as the importer, distributor, and service center for the US markets.

Caracal is also the parent company for the world-renowned German rifle and shotgun manufacturer, Merkel.

Caracal is a fully owned subsidiary of Tawazun, a strategic investment firm focused on the development of Abu Dhabi’s industrial manufacturing and technology capabilities and knowledge transfer, with a specific focus on the defense sector.

For more information visit www.caracal-usa.com.

About the United Arab Emirates

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is a source of stability, tolerance, innovation and growth in the Arabian Gulf and around the globe. With one of the most open and innovative economies in the world, the UAE is a dependable and substantial economic partner with the United States, and is currently the largest export market for US goods in the Middle East.

The UAE and US are reliable allies, with shared security interests. The two countries work together to enhance stability and security in the Arabian Gulf and the broader Middle East.

For more information visit www.uae-embassy.org.

The Gun
My gun history at Bianchi Cup is a little sketchy, to say the least.  I shot the match for the first time in 2009 with a Para Tac-5, which was the LDA version of their P18.  A large, double stack 1911 in 9mm seems like a pretty good gun for Bianchi Cup, and in theory it would have been if it had run.  The sights also left a bit to be desired, but the Tac-5′s biggest problem was that it just wasn’t that accurate.  I missed the match in 2010 because of some reality TV show eating up all my vacation time, and then in 2011 I returned with a Sig Sauer P250, which honestly wasn’t that bad.  It was plenty accurate, but the long DA only trigger stroke took some serious training and the sights were just bad.

This year, I honestly have the best gun I’ve ever had for Bianchi Cup in terms of features. Yes, it’s a DA/SA gun which does take some work, but it has all the desirable attributes of a Bianchi Cup gun – it’s heavy, the SA trigger is nice and light, it has adjustable sights, and it’s ridiculously accurate. Tanfoglio couldn’t have built a better gun for NRA Action Pistol Production division on purpose.

Belt
My first belt at Bianchi Cup was a good belt…for IDPA. I was using a BLACKHAWK! CQB/Rigger’s Belt, which as I said is a great belt for IDPA. I have two that I wear pretty regularly as just belts, and for that they’re fantastic. For Bianchi Cup, they pulled the holster in a little too close to the body, and while a fast draw isn’t really important in this match, a sure draw is. A fumbled draw at the Cup will kill a string. This year, I’m running a Safariland ELS Belt, which sets the gun a reasonable distance from my body and allows a positive grip each time.

Holster
Oh, my Bianchi Cup holsters. I’ve used a Blackhawk CQC (non-Serpa), a Comp-Tac paddle that I heatgunned to sort of fit my Sig P250, and this year I’m using one of my favorite holsters, a Blade-Tech Revolution Series. What’s interesting is I’ve once again found myself slightly re-engineering my holster; because Blade-Tech doesn’t make a Revolution holster for the Tanfoglio Stock II. They make one of their regular kydex holsters, but after a bit of work with a heat gun and some patience, I actually ended up preferring the fit of my injection molded Revolution. The one I’m using is technically for a Glock 17, but it accommodates the Stock II very nicely.

Ammo
I easily have the best ammo I’ve ever had for this match this year. Atlanta Arms provided some of their .38 Super minor PF load for the match, and after testing yesterday this stuff is fantastic. For the first time, I have a gun and ammo combo whose mechanical accuracy and shootability exceeds the level of skill I can apply to it. Which is actually pretty awesome.
Garments
I’ve always covered my legs with pants. This year there’s going to be a bit of a change, at least at the Colt Speed event on Saturday…

With another range session scheduled today, it’s going to be all about accuracy work and the DA trigger. I’m not worried about the DA/SA transition, because honestly it’s just not a big deal. For years, people said that “the DA/SA transition is hard” or that it made shooting more difficult. It doesn’t. What makes shooting more difficult is shooting 3.5 pound Glock triggers for a year and then switching to a gun that has a 10 pound first trigger pull. That’s what dry fire and persistent practice are for, and thanks to Winchester, Lucky Gunner, and Atlanta Arms I’ve got plenty of ammo to pull that off with. I’ve actually detailed out the range plan until the match itself gets underway.

• May 15th: 2-3 hours live fire, focus on accuracy and DA trigger management. Drills include Dot Torture at decreasing distances, simulated runs on the Barricade.
• May 16th: 30 minutes dry fire, DA trigger management. Physical training.
• May 17th: 2 hours live fire, simulated runs on The Practical (minus the 50 yard stage)
• May 18th: 30 minutes dry fire, DA trigger management.  PT
• May 19th: Rest

May 20th, Sunday I hit the road for the Cup, which gives me Monday and Tuesday at the practice range to fine tune any weird issues I may have.  The goal with the practice range is usually to get as much time in on the mover as possible, since it’s the only event I don’t have access to at my home ranges.  I’ll also work on going prone at 50 yards, which is something I’ve never done before at the Cup.  I fire my first rounds at 12:38 Wednesday afternoon, my first event is going to be the Mover in Metallic division, followed the same day by the Barricades in Production.  Thursday is the Practical and Mover in Production, and the Barricades in Metallic.  Friday has me shooting the Falling plates back to back in Production then Metallic, and closing my match out on the Practical in Metallic.  And somewhere in all of that, I’ll also be taking pictures and covering the match.

It’s going to be a busy, but awesome week!

Welcome to the Western Shooting Journal Online. Shelley will still be producing content and other projects for the team here at Gun Nuts, but for what should be obvious reasons her primary focus is going to be on launching her magazine.

In the two years she’s been writing for us at Gun Nuts, I have the chance to watch not only her shooting skills improve, but also to see Shelley go through a pretty impressive transformation as a writer and editor. She’s gone from “the girl at the range” to a respected and trusted name in the firearms industry in an impressively short amount of time, and I couldn’t be more proud. Of course, this means I’ll have to stay on my A-game, because if I’m not careful she’s going to be my boss in a few years at this pace.

Head over to her fan page and congratulate her on the new gig as she continues to kick ass all over the place.

This may come as a surprise to you, but not everyone likes me. I know, it’s shocking since I’m just a thoroughly likable dude, but there you have it. People have accused me of being a “self-aggrandizing show-off” (guilty), talentless hack, overrated, short, etc. Right there you have the first aspect of dealing with critics, is figuring out the difference between a valid criticism of your writing style/presentation or just someone being a hater. I’d like to tell you that it’s easy, but frequently it’s not. I’ll use an example from my own experience: I’ve had people say that the reason they don’t like me is they feel like all I do is self-promote and inflate my own image. That’s a valid criticism in the sense that yes, that is in fact a thing I do…but at the same time, that’s also how I put food on the table and keep ammo in my guns, so it’s not really valid. So to get back to the subject of separating valid criticism from haters, here are the two guidelines I always use:

• Is the person criticizing your work itself? For example: “I wish that instead of just showing videos of mag dumps that you’d actually talk about how the M&P Shield carries and conceals”. That’s a fairly legit complaint to make about a video review of a gun, so it’s something I’d try to listen to.
• Is the person criticizing you personally? Just ignore it. The minute a person can no longer view the substance of your work and has nothing left to do but call you names, you can ignore them.

I don’t use these as hard rules – there’s wiggle room. For example, it’s important to have a group of people you trust, that you can go guts-up with and that won’t bullshit you. For example, if any of my close friends in the blogger community sent me an email saying that I was kind of being a dick to someone, I’d take it very seriously. If it was just a random stranger, not so much. Make sure you have people that you trust to hold you accountable. Without those people, you’ll just end up as the petty tyrant of an echo chamber.

I read every comment that I receive on Gun Nuts, and I read every email I get. I may not reply to everything, but I see it all, and that’s value because it helps give me a sense of perspective. That’s the real value of critics, and in this even haters can find their value to you. Think of this way: some people will offer criticism because they want you to be better, some people will offer criticism because they can, and the last group of people will offer hateraede because, well, haters gonna hate. As I mentioned though, even haters have their value – it’s said that during Roman triumphs, the imperator would have a slave in his chariot reminding him of his mortality; think of haters as doing exactly that.

Ultimately, I have felt and continue to feel that you should embrace criticism. Good, bad, personal – your critics provide a window to how you’re perceived by others and their input can be used to modulate negatives and improve your overall blogging product. Just don’t take them too seriously, because haters gonna hate.

None of these shows are perfect. Top Shot, which I have a deep and abiding love for, has gotten stale with the same formula over and over again. The characters (and make no mistake, they are playing characters on that show) of Sons of Guns frequently say and do things that make me facepalm like Optimus. American Guns has some fairly appalling T&A on display that makes me glad I don’t have a daughter, because I wouldn’t want to explain to her why a grown man lets his teenage daughter flounce around on TV dressed like that.

But that’s not the point. What I’ve been hearing lately are people saying that these shows, with their over-the-top weapons demos and questionable attention to factual accuracy could/can somehow damage the gun rights movement by giving anti-gunners ammo for the ridiculous things they say. That’s a bunch of nonsense. Stop and think about this for a moment. Show of hands, who here thinks “reality” TV is real? Even better show of hands – who exactly do you think is going to take the anti-gun folks seriously when they say “You can buy a grenade launcher over the counter, I saw it on Suns of American Top Guns!” – the answer of course is no one, because most people don’t take reality TV seriously.

The entertainment industry that producers these shows is going to continue to make shows that are entertaining and bring in ratings, that’s their job. Flipping out and accusing them of providing anti-gun folks with “ammo” against us is just silly. If we’re going to criticize these shows, let’s do it on their merits, or the lack thereof. But first, let’s just sit back, relax, and in the words of my people: Take a chill pill, bro.

“I should be able to shoot this classifier in under 5 seconds” as thoughts go seems pretty safe. But then it gets into “I’ve shot an 80% on this classifier in Limited-10, 90% in Production should be cake.” For me, that’s when trouble really starts to happen because I’ve stopped focusing on my actual performance and started focusing on hypothetical performance. It’s difficult to get the proper focus when you’ve decided in your head that you should be able to make time X on Day Y for no real good reason.

There’s a difference between this and setting performance goals. Setting performance goals is good, and your goals should be made realistically and incrementally based on hard data. A goal sounds different than mental pressure. For example, this is a goal: “I know I’m capable of shooting 95% of the points at a match if I go slow, today my goal is to push my speed and just accept that I’m going to drop more points.” As long as you’re tracking your performance, you can then look back objectively on past goals and see how they’ve benefited or improved your performance itself.

The biggest way that goals are different from expectations is that it’s okay to fail at reaching a goal initially. You may have set your goal too high, which is fine. Take your performance data, and keep that goal. If you hit a point where you realize that it’s not a goal you’ll be able to reach, that’s fine as well. The important thing to remember is to keep your own personal expectations of performance off the match field. For me at least, when I roll to a match thinking “I should be able to do x”, it will usually mess up my head. Mentally, my prep needs to be “I know what my skills are, so lets push those today and see what happens.”

The match itself went fine; I’m slowly adapting to the DA trigger for the first shot. There were a couple stages where I didn’t start working the trigger early enough and ended up at full extension on a wide open target thinking “why hasn’t my stupid gun gone off” only to have a truly surprise break about a half-second later.

I had a failure to feed on stage 6 with the Tanfoglio, a simple tap-rack drill reduced the malf, which didn’t repeat. The Winchester round has a flat point which just kind of hung up on the feed ramp. I’ll be doing some additional testing today and tomorrow with PMC 130 grain FMJ as well which uses a round nose bullet. The full write-up on the Tanfoglio will appear in an upcoming issue of Combat Handguns.

We’ll announce the winner of the caption contest on Wednesday!