Is Your Neighbor a Former Professional Assassin?

This weekend, I took my first precision rifle course. I’m amazed how much more I know today than I did two days ago. I would make a list of the list of well-known good shooting practices I now know to be the stuff of rumor and bloviation.

I thought “precision rifle shooting” simply meant shooting your rifle, whatever it may be, well. It looks like that’s not true. There are matches called “PRS” matches, in which shooters use strange bolt-action target rifles to shoot at long distances. The skills used by PRS shooters are applicable to activities such as hunting and the assassination of military targets, but precision rifle courses seem to draw a lot of people who compete in matches. At least it seemed that way to me this weekend. The other guys in my class talked about hunting, but a bunch of them also discussed rifle competitions.

I tried hard to get information about the nature of the course before I bought a spot, but while the course was excellent, the instructors aren’t great at communication, so I didn’t understand the nature of the class. I told them what kind of rifles I had, and one suggested I go with my DPMS LR-308B, which is an LR-10 with an 18″ bull barrel. When I got to the class, every other student had a target rifle, and most were chambered in 6.5 Creedmoor. We had another .308, plus a .300 Win Mag, but Creedmoors were everywhere. The shortest barrel in the bunch was probably 24″.

The strongest scope I own, a Leupold Vx-3, is set up for MOA shooting. It has MOA turrets, meaning each click is 1/4 MOA. They said it would work, but after I had been there a while, I saw that I really needed a scope graduated in milliradians, or “MIL’s.”

You can take this course with your favorite ACCURATE deer rifle and a 14x hunting scope, and you will get a lot out of it, but it’s really best to use a target rifle and a MIL-dot scope. These scopes have arrays of dots in the reticles spaced one MIL apart, and when you need to move your point of aim a certain number of MIL’s, you just move to the dot you need. My scope has a bunch of hash marks intended to be alternative sighting locations for bullets fired at different ranges, but they don’t correspond to any particular bullet or velocity, so they appear to be somewhat useless.

They started us out by showing us how to set our rifles up. Those of us with adjustable stocks (not me) adjusted our lengths of pull. My LOP was wrong, but there was nothing I could do. They showed us how to do a proper 90° trigger pull. Because of my LOP, I had to make do with more like 110°. They helped us set the eye relief on our scopes, too. My scope was too far back.

They took us to a short range so we could zero our scopes at 100 yards. I remember when 100 yards seemed like a long way. Anyhow, I found myself shooting odd groups. I would shoot two holes touching, or nearly touching, each other, and then I would get fliers.

Our teachers were an Army sniper and a Marine sniper. The guy working with me was encouraging. He told me I was doing about as well as could be expected with a gas-cycled gun. He said 1.5 MOA was okay.

I was very concerned. What if I was wasting my money? What if the gun couldn’t hit the thousand-yard gongs?

I was also concerned about my ability to shoot prone. The school’s website didn’t mention that we would be shooting prone the whole time. I had never done it before. When I tried it at first, during the zeroing session, I didn’t like it one bit. My shoulder and neck hurt, and I found I had to strain to stay behind the scope. I didn’t know if I could keep it up.

So here I was, far from home, staying at a hotel, possibly unable to accomplish the task I had dedicated two days to mastering. With a class full of guys who would be observing the whole thing.

Later, his partner worked with me, and I fired some terrible groups at longer range. When he looked at my rifle, he discovered that the first guy hadn’t tightened the rings enough. I was shooting with loose rings, so the poor grouping at 100 yards suddenly had an explanation not involving my own lack of ability.

Another guy loaned me a second rear bag, and I found that if I propped up my right side, I was able to get very stable. Actually, I figured this out using my new raincoat. Before I drove to the class, they said I should get a Gore-Tex jacket because it would probably rain on us. I bought one that came with a little bag. The jacket could be rolled up and shoved inside it. Before the kind stranger lent me his spare bag, I used the jacket bag, and it worked just fine. My teacher was all for it. One thing I learned was that they didn’t care at all how you got stable. There was no such thing as cheating or a silly solution. Once I got the rain jacket working, I switched to a second bag made for shooting.

We had a lot of class time. On the first day, I learned about the Kestrel. This is a little gadget that does computations for rifle shooters. You enter things like your ballistic coefficient, your muzzle velocity, the wind speed and direction, and so on, and it will tell you how far to turn your turrets to put your bullet where you want it at a given distance.

The Kestrel is a wonderful machine. You can do everything it does using a pencil, but the Kestrel does it instantly, and if you buy an expensive model, you can store information for a whole bunch of rifles.

My muzzle velocity came in at a miserable 2500 fps. The ammunition supposedly had the potential for 2650, assuming Federal told the truth, but my gun has a short barrel, and you need barrel length for speed. Coupled with the .308 bullet’s low ballistic coefficient, the velocity set me up for non-optimal performance later on, requiring considerable compensation. The Kestrel would later tell me to drop my point of aim about 30 feet at 1000 yards, and the bullets were going subsonic, causing predictability issues, at about 800 yards. According to an Internet source, a 6.5 Creedmoore round drops about 24 feet, and it stays supersonic out to nearly 1400 yards.

Here’s what I was told: the .308 flies predictably until it goes subsonic. In the area where it transitions, it stops going where the Kestrel says it will go. Then it smooths out and becomes predictable again. The 6.5 Creedmoor doesn’t have this problem at the ranges I was shooting.

Is it better to shoot .308 and become a better shooter by dealing with the transition, or should you shoot 6.5 Creedmoor and enjoy focusing on things other than trajectory kinks? I don’t know. I would guess it’s better to do it the hard way, but it’s probably not better for a beginner.

They took us up on a tower, which is really a crude building with a big second floor with a roof over it. We shot prone under the roof. They had a series of targets lined up. I don’t recall the ranges, but I believe they started at around 450, and I know they ended at over 800, because I shot that far, and it was the longest shot I had ever made.

I could tell there were doubts about me and my semiauto battle rifle, but when I laid down and shot, and my scope rings were tightened, things went very well. There were people with target rifles who had more trouble than I did. I popped some of the targets pretty quickly. I didn’t do badly on any of them, even after the sonic transition thing popped up. My instructor spotted me, told me how to adjust the scope, and got me through it.

When I hit steel at over 800 yards, with the wrong rifle, the wrong scope, and what seemed like the wrong body for shooting prone, I was ecstatic. At that point, I knew I was going to have a good weekend. I was not going to be the goat. Someone who had a more appropriate rifle and didn’t do as well might be the goat, and that would be sad, but it wouldn’t be me.

My instructor yelled at his buddy, telling him how well my short-barreled gas gun was doing, keeping up with the target guns. Nice.

Somebody was surprised, and I don’t just mean me.

The next day, we learned about wind, and then we shot from another tower. We went out to 1060 yards. I was all about 1060 yards.

They put us on the roof, with no shade. The sun was blazing. It was nasty. We were three floors up. I went through my targets. It went 568 yards, 665, 716, 866, 890, 952, 1060. Things got a little weird in the 800’s, but I made it all the way. It was hard to believe it when I shot at a microscopic spot a fifth of a mile away and heard my teacher say “impact.”

I was not doing all that well mentally or physically by this time. I was dehydrated. Water kept pouring into us, and none went out. By the time I got to the last target, my concentration was gone.

It was not easy. I had run out of turret. I had my scope’s height compensation maxed out, so in order to hit the target, I had to aim maybe 8 feet above it and two feet to the right, with nothing to put the crosshairs on. My instructor seemed to have a lot of confidence in me, because he kept spotting and giving calls, and after maybe 10 shots, I hit it.

That was really not bad. My scope wasn’t working, I was aiming at trees, I was tired, and I still connected with the gong. There were people with better guns and adequate optics who missed just as many times at shorter ranges.

The instructor’s dad was taking the class. He congratulated me. I said it was all about the spotting.

Things went well until after lunch.

We had to lie on the third floor, indoors, and shoot through holes at the bottom of the wall. I don’t know what that was all about. I don’t know if it was supposed to simulate assassination or what. My teachers were experienced killers who had shot a bunch of people to death, however, so nothing would have surprised me. Maybe it simulated something shooters do in competitions.

I didn’t sign up to learn how to assassinate people, but I suppose you could say that’s what I learned. I just wanted to know how to shoot a long way.

When I went to check my rifle and set the scope back to zero for the first target, I found that the turret was frozen. When I showed my instructor, he said the set screws had come loose. That was true, but before they came loose, the turret had refused to turn.

He tightened the screws, and when my turn came again, things went okay for the first few targets. We had to compensate a lot, but I hit steel. It got harder, and the corrections that worked didn’t seem to make sense. It looked like my scope’s turret was missing clicks when I turned it. Something was broken or misaligned or otherwise messed up.

It took a lot of effort from both of us to hit 866 yards, and then we decided to quit, because we were just chasing random turret positions that happened to connect.

I bought a Leupold scope because I thought it was top quality, but when I maxed the turret in one direction, it locked up and then refused to work correctly. Now it has to go in for repairs, and I very much doubt Leupold will pay for them. My instructor said his outfit had had a bunch of Leupolds, and only half had worked. Where was he in 2009, when buying a Leupold looked like a great idea?

Probably finishing up the 8th grade. I am old.

Well, whatever. I succeeded with bad equipment, I was complimented on my trigger pull (thanks, pistols), and I didn’t embarrass myself. I got my certificate, and I’m ready for the second class.

There are a couple of long-range facilities not too far from me, so I can practice this stuff.

I am nice. I am all about God’s love, because love is the reason he created the universe. I want nothing to do with the so-called zombie apocalypse. I want to shoot paper targets and a few annoying species of wildlife. But compared to the average American, I will, potentially, be an extremely dangerous person. Shooting rifles at long distances is surprisingly easy for me. I think it’s easy for nearly everyone who has had a lesson or two. It’s not nearly has hard as shooting a pistol at 7 yards. No comparison. That surprised me.

Speaking of dangerous, this weekend, I saw something that should sober up every cocky soy merchant out there who thinks it will be easy to overrun America, loot houses, and confiscate guns. I was in a room full of very ordinary conservative American outdoorsmen, and every one of them could kill a person, or group of people, easily at 500 yards. The instructors could shoot well over 1000 yards, and there are a lot of other snipers and competitors like them.

One of the teachers is a hunting guide. He goes to Alaska and helps bear hunters. He knows how to live in the wilderness. He’s tough. He is a combat veteran. He seems like a nice guy, but anyone who tries to pull anything near his home and family could end up feeding crows and possums, fast. Based on the things I heard him say about his military history and his feelings about leftists who might try to start a civil war, he is one of the last people on earth I would want to upset.

There is a huge number of people with similar skills all over the US. I don’t think leftists understand this. Leftists tend to be very ignorant about firearms and the outdoors. They don’t know what the people they hate do for fun.

During class today, a very nice military retiree–could not have been more polite or considerate–showed the rest of us his custom-made pig sticker. To you, a pig sticker probably just means a big knife. No; he said it was a real pig sticker. You chase a pig down with dogs, and then you shove the knife into it to kill it. Gang doofuses who don’t know how to hold a Glock are not ready for this old man and his friends. Neither are dumpy Vassar graduates who think it scares people when they pose for selfies, wearing black T-shirts from American Apparel, holding Molotov cocktails.

I would never participate in that kind of hunt, but lots of very kindhearted sportsmen have blind spots about certain things. A man who can shove a knife into a live pig can shove one into a trespasser swinging a skateboard. I’m sure you could trust this guy to look after your kids for days in an emergency, but it seems to me he would show a very different side to a certain type of person, given the right provocation.

There are thousands and thousands of people out there who use bows and crossbows; weapons that can kill you and your friends without giving you a clue where your attacker is hiding. There are people who can hide right in front of you. Some conservatives have packs of dogs that aren’t afraid to run down bigger, stronger animals. They’re already trained.

People talk about civil war. Is it really a possibility? I suppose it is. In the US, we think of civil wars as fights between opponents occupying distinct territories, but you can have a civil war in which people kill their neighbors. Isn’t that the most common kind of civil war? Think of Spain, Vietnam, and Iraq. Think of just about any nation in Africa. Think of Cuba.

I’ve been expecting a leftist takeover that would work primarily through political successes, but maybe the arrogance and cluelessness of the “rioting works” kids will lead to something even uglier. If that happens, there may be terrible bloodshed and atrocities, and leftists will probably suffer the most. If they don’t wait till the government is in their control, they may end up feeding themselves into a meat grinder.

I’ve written a lot about my belief that the police and the military can’t handle leftists who take over cities, but maybe civilians would do it for them. They are more numerous, and they don’t have to wait for a chain of command to deploy them and authorize their actions.

Leftists like to say the Second Amendment only exists to help us create militias. Ironically, leftist violence has led to our first real efforts at raising militias which clearly demonstrate the need for privately owned guns.

Rural Americans have dug out their guns and stood in unison to welcome and intimidate imported leftist rioters. I didn’t realize this was possible until this month. A town in North Dakota was successfully preserved by citizens who assembled with rifles on display, and the police worked with, and supported, the ad hoc militia. According to one man who witnessed it, leftists met at a restaurant and discussed their plans for arson and rape, but when the agitators saw the firearms, they scurried away in fear. They just didn’t know what to do.

How far will people go? I wish I could say I knew.

America’s insanity seems to be getting worse very fast. Antichristians are accelerating as they plunge into the abyss of hate-filled delusion. Their appetite for the destruction of things the rest of us hold dear has become ravenous, to the point where they seem to know no restraint. They are deliberately choosing targets they think will hurt us and humiliate us the most. I have the feeling that real chaos could be here by August.

They’ve gone after the national anthem and pictures of Jesus. I guess the flag will be next. That won’t go over well with the millions of dangerous battle-trained veterans who live in America.

President Trump isn’t polling well. Does that mean America is so crazy the attacks on our cities have
majority approval? Biden would pour fuel on the flames. He would back the looters and lynchers to the hilt before dying of dementia. In a country that wasn’t completely lost, the spectacle of the antichristian left’s rage and cruelty would be swinging gigantic numbers of Americans into the Trump camp. If that doesn’t happen, we are doomed, because it means we are too crazy to be helped. Welcome to Somalia.

Is it possible the three destructive horsemen of the apocalypse have been loosed? If so, then their troops, which are innumerable demons, have been released to spread incurable insanity. Most Americans can’t resist demons. They will do whatever they’re told, just as they have in every bloodbath in history, and the difference is that this bloodbath won’t end until Jesus stops it or there are no victims left to attack.

Can the age of the Gentiles, and the world as we know it, be finished already? Is the rapture really that close?

If Trump loses, and the Democrats elect a babbling dotard, I will have to conclude that history is wrapping up. I can’t think of any way to explain that level of irrationality in a world not embarked on its death throes. What stronger sign could we ask for?

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe sanity will simply move to a new haven. Maybe China. There is a big Christian nation-within-a-nation there now. Is Russia going insane, or are they just watching us with disgust? Maybe Russia will be the new America. That would be weird.

Whatever. In any case, I am developing a very useful new skill, but I will never have any desire to use it for the most obvious purpose. If America becomes the new Somalia, and we start slaughtering each other in the streets, I will be busy praying for God to remove me whenever he’s ready. I keep asking him to use me during my remaining time, but maybe the little I’ve done for people is all I will ever be able to do.