Gun training

[Catweazle]

which club did you belong to Catweazle? Ours has a policy of only letting "top shots" use compound because of their extra power. Compounds are certainly powerful - an American woman killed an elephant with one a while ago, but that was by wounding it and letting it bleed out, which I find abhorrent.

My point was that compounds take a lot of upkeep and fiddling with, and I'm not sure that post-fall they'd be practical.

Gravesend Archers, http://gravesend-archers.webs.com/ . I used a recurve then, not sure if there were any compound users, it was a very long time ago when they used the AEI sports ground, which I don't think would be suitable for a compound bow as it backed onto residential gardens. I shoot in the woods now, into a big foam practice target. I have used strapped bundles of waste paper and piles of old carpet tiles but the foam is much better.

This is my bow http://www.bowsports.com/acatalog/Mathe ... _-_S2.html

It's very nice to shoot because although it has 65lb draw it has an 80% letoff, so it's easy to hold drawn.

[featherstick]

I've pretty well dropped the target shooting as I found it pretty tedious. SWMBO has kept it up and is very good - Asian genes. My bow is a flatbow from Flagella Dei (Ebay). I was going to ask where in the woods do you shoot, but I remembered you had your own.

[vtsnowedin]

an American woman killed an elephant with one a while ago, but that was by wounding it and letting it bleed out, which I find abhorrent.

My point was that compounds take a lot of upkeep and fiddling with, and I'm not sure that post-fall they'd be practical.

Abhorrent or not that is how a broad-head arrow kills its quarry. The sharp blades cut tissue and blood vessels on it's way through the animal and if well hit the animal quickly bleeds out ,becomes unconscious and dies. Elephants are not recommended however and I wonder what country gave her permission to try to get herself stomped to dust in Africa.
There is quite a bit of bow hunting here in Vermont and I have had bows both regular and compound for decades. I have no problems with the compounds beyond the usual tuning and sighting in process you go through while practising for a hunt or changing arrow types. Not something I would reach for in a personal or home defence situation by any means but that is due to having much better options close to hand.
In a rural area where it is a twenty minute drive to the police station you are left to your own devices for the twenty minutes between your 911 call and the first possible arrival of assistance. You can run if possible or fight back if not taken unawares but if actually confronted with such a situation I would do whatever it takes to insure that I get to tell my side of it to the judge and jury. The rights of the stranger busting in the door come somewhere after that.
I'm not training for such events beyond normal hunting as these scenarios are extremely rare and unlikely even as peak oil plays out.
A popular door sticker here says "Never Mind the dog Beware of Owner"

[DominicJ]

Vt
If Biff phoned the police and told them men with knives were breaking into his house, he'd be lucky if the police turned up that day.

Safety first, theirs...

That a deputy would jump into his cruiser and rush to help, at great personal risk, is definatly an americanism,

[kenneal - lagger]

People murder innocents every day. In fact, in countries where gun control is the heaviest, violent crime is on the rise.

Ruandans favour the machete, I'm told.

[vtsnowedin]

Vt
If Biff phoned the police and told them men with knives were breaking into his house, he'd be lucky if the police turned up that day.

Safety first, theirs...

That a deputy would jump into his cruiser and rush to help, at great personal risk, is definatly an americanism,

It would be a rare case for an officer to come alone to a on going weapons incident. Five troopers with a S.W.A.T. team back up on standby would be more like it. One or two to handle the problem and everyone else on shift to view the excitment and provide backup if needed.

[kenneal - lagger]

This is my bow http://www.bowsports.com/acatalog/Mathe ... _-_S2.html

Back in 1963 when we shot at school my brother's fibre glass recurve bow was thought to be highly exotic. I had a plain wooden flat bow.

I've been threatening to make an ash bow for a while now as we have a few ash saplings growing. They will need a few more years yet to get a decent bit of heartwood in them to get a good mixed wood stave to start with.

To use an ordinary wooden long bow, the sort that you could make easily after TSHTF, for hunting anything of any size or at any range you need to start shooting pretty early to get used to a draw weight of 60 to 120 lbs. Mind you, the only thing of any size left in the UK, outside of a zoo, is a red dear and there aren't many of them around, especially in the south. There are some farmed ones around here but they are kept well fenced in.

[vtsnowedin]

[Mind you, the only thing of any size left in the UK, outside of a zoo, is a red dear and there aren't many of them around, especially in the south.

Really? A few years ago before peak oil came into my view I spent quite a bit of time on a website devoted to hunting and hand loading ammunition. One chap on there hailed from the UK and in his mind at least was the hunting equivalent of 007 and was licensed to kill deer all over the UK. He went on ad nauseum about how many deer he had shot "properly" so that they could be sent to market ready for the butcher to defray the cost of having his partner and himself do the work of removing the crop damaging excess deer from the midlands. As I recall it was often a matter of finding a safe point to shoot them that did not have housing or people beyond and not a shortage of deer to shoot.

[biffvernon]

Yes I think deer numbers have been growing and to nuisance numbers in places. The non-native muntjac has established itself all too successfully, though this is a rather small deer.

[Ludwig]

People murder innocents every day. In fact, in countries where gun control is the heaviest, violent crime is on the rise.

Ruandans favour the machete, I'm told.

The implied argument here seems to be "You can't stop people killing each other if that's what they want", and it is disingenuous. The Rwandan government handed out machetes to Hutus, in hundreds of thousands.

[Ludwig]

I think the media overhypes the ability for humans to kill other humans, I believe considerable training is required to desensitize soldier to fire at another person, training them to engage a target.

Previous wars have shown that efficient battlefield soldiers are not easily found in normal society (disregarding metally disturbed individuals).

Not sure about this. Violence breeds violence, and human nature adapts, for better and worse, to circumstances. Did anyone read that account that Jonny posted by the guy in Bosnia? Basically, people turn into monsters overnight if that's what they need to do to survive. And also, once the "first blood" threshold has been crossed, people typically develop a taste for violence.

Did anyone see Derren Brown's programme "The Game Show" the other week? Before an hour was up, he had a whole audience baying out for an innocent bloke's flat to be trashed. OK, it's not murder, but the mood had turned very ugly.

Several years ago I was watching a World Cup match in a pub - England playing some South American team I think. I don't normally watch football, let alone in pubs, and I was disturbed by the atmosphere: you really felt that if someone from the opposing team's country were found in the pub, they'd have been beaten to pulp.

Some people are naturally more prone to violence than others, but it is latent in most people (or at least in most men), and it can be massively amplified by experience and circumstances.

[Ludwig]

South Africa actually has very tough gun controls, you're not even allowed a .22 air rifle without a licence. The problem is that criminals don't think twice about crossing a border with a pistol.

I was not talking about gun controls, I was talking about the actual presence of guns. South Africa has corrupt government, an invisible police force, and laughable border controls (at Johannesburg airport, the customs officer let me choose which bag I gave him to check). If you want a gun in South Africa, you've got one.

[shetlandpeat]

This is my bow http://www.bowsports.com/acatalog/Mathe ... _-_S2.html

Back in 1963 when we shot at school my brother's fibre glass recurve bow was thought to be highly exotic. I had a plain wooden flat bow.

When I was competing, we had Fibreglass, Compound and composite bows. Since I have been looking again at toxophily and once being quite an accomplished toxophilist in my time and am intrigued by the "recurve" description.

[jonny2mad]

I think the media overhypes the ability for humans to kill other humans, I believe considerable training is required to desensitize soldier to fire at another person, training them to engage a target.

Previous wars have shown that efficient battlefield soldiers are not easily found in normal society (disregarding metally disturbed individuals).

For example how many people are murdered in the USA with a population of 307,006,550 only 15,241 people were murdered (in 2009) seems like a lot but is about 0.00496438937 percent of the population.

In contrast it should be noted that in history people were more willing to torture/kill/maim others or watch such activity (in the form of punishment) as their lives were in theory harsher/shorter but also their communities were arguably closer knit?

hmmm how do you account for all the bayonet charges in world war 1 and 2, yes I know they did train people but not to some incredible degree .
If you have someone try to kill you, if I attacked you with a Axe I think a lot of people would be willing to take up a Axe and try to kill me, I don't think you would need any training for that to kick in at all .

Training might help, but I think people like living

[vtsnowedin]

Training might help, but I think people like living

Yes now you have it right. When the question becomes kill or be killed the answer is universally known and self evident to anyone in such dire straits.