SIG Academy

02 Nov 09

SIG Academy

We just completed an Urban Rifle Program at the SIG Academy in Epping, NH.

It's been several years since I've been there, and I need to say that SIG deserves a great deal of credit for maintaining and continually improving this superlative facility, along with a first-rate Staff, capably headed by friend and colleague, Jeff Creamer.

We had Kalashnikovs, ARs, FALs, XCRs, and SIG/556s. SIG welcomes all brands of rifles and pistols to its training Classes. You are not required to use their guns.

All major arms manufacturers need to emulate SIG and make a continuing commitment to advancing our Art and the teaching of safe gun-handling, carrying, maintenance, and storage. This is a responsibility SIG willingly bears, to their credit.

I ran a hot range, as always. All rifles carried loaded, all the time. Pistols too! Lots of movement, shooting from cover and awkward positions, and weapons transitions. Jeff's enlightened policy embraces such advanced training doctrine. Students are treated as serious, committed, and mature adults and are expected at act as such. That is my MO. SIG's too!

When the opportunity presents itself, go to SIG's Academy and take a Class. They run a wide variety, including guest instructors like me. Nice hotels and restaurants are close-by.

Everything they do at the Academy is top-drawer. Jeff sees to that!

Recommended!

/John

Urban Blight!

02 Nov 09

Urban Blight? From a friend just returning from Detroit:

"Thrill-seeker that I am, I drove around the City of Detroit last weekend, as I haven't been there for several years.

The East Side is scarcely more than rubble! Complete city blocks have been razed, leaving huge areas that have, non-unexpectedly, returned to native prairie. I saw only a handful of isolated, standing houses. None looked occupied. All had so many bars on windows and doors that they looked small jails, and all were so rickety that I concluded that only reason they were still standing was that termites were all holding hands!

Downtown, one can see the results of taxpayer-funded 'Urban Renewal.' There are sports stadiums and a nice Farmer's Market. But, surrounding the downtown area is what looks like a movie set for a documentary on the City of Dresden. Kind of ruins the mood, and belies the veneer!

Without industry (which has long-since fled), the City serves no purpose. With such a large demographic of government-subsidized, willfully, permanently non-productive, all residents can do is beg for scraps, from sleazy politicians who steal money doled out to them by the federal government.

The immensity of rotting blight is something you can't imagine until you see it with your own eyes. Total land area of abandoned/vacant property in Detroit now equals that of the entire City of Boston!

As we entered Detroit City Limits, we were greeted by a billboard advertizing employment opportunities. The job:

One thousand new CCW instructors are needed for the State of Michigan.

Imagine that!"

Comment: A system where government hand-outs are routinely used to purchase votes from the permanently dependant insures such ever-expanding blight. The only beneficiaries are erstwhile-unemployed politicians, living in luxury, who never want to see anyone else's lot improve.

"Of all tyrannies, one sincerely exercised for the 'good' of its victims is most oppressive. It is better to live under robber-barons than under omnipotent moral-busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sleep sometimes, and his lust may, at long-last, be satisfied. But, who torment us 'for our own good,' will do so without ceasing, because they do it with the approval of their own consciences."

CS Lewis

/John