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Monday, August 22, 2005
Rama: Stress bust
By Karlon N. Rama
Stage five
PUMP-ACTION shotguns on double ought, or better yet Winchester or Remington lead slugs, will relieve stress faster than Stresstabs any given Sunday.
Face downrange and with the muzzle down, (1) load the shotshells in the tube – some load five and others seven, (2) rack the fore end to chamber a round, (3) point in the general direction of the target – metal plates are more cost-efficient although cardboard cutouts of an average-sized person’s upper body are more rewarding, (4) lock the stock unto the shoulder then (5) squint the eye, grit the teeth, breath out and let loose.
This will be followed, a multi-billionth of a second later, by (1) an extremely bright flash of light colloquially called a fireball, (2) a loud explosive noise, (3) a sudden excruciating pain as the gun jolts straight back and then up, sending a couple of pounds per square inch of pressure directly unto the shoulder, (4) “gunsmoke” rising from the muzzle, and (5) a mangled target.
A double ought sends eight .30 cal. round balls of lead unto a target at a variable-sized group depending on the distance between the target and the shooter. A slug cartridge, meanwhile, lets loose a .70 cal. projectile at velocities of about 1,700 feet-per-second (fps) at three feet.
If still feeling the need, increase the dosage by the number of shotshells still remaining in the tube by re-racking the fore end to clear the spent cartridge and chamber another round, breathing out, uttering an expletive for added measure, and then squinting the eye again, gritting the teeth some more and finally letting loose one more time.
It is, according to writer Peter Kokalis in an article published in Soldier of Fortune Magazine, an affair for those into heavy S&M. But it works. The stress goes away right before shoulder dislocation begins.
EXERCISES. I found myself burning shotshells at the Kamagong Gun Club, Saturday, as club members there organized a friendly shoot involving two standard shotgun exercises that will form part of the combat shotgun match of the upcoming Southeast Asian Games.
The first exercise is aptly named color confusion and involves shooting five of six colored metal plates sitting on a rack. It begins with the shooter standing behind a table seven meters from the rack and holding his shotgun, magazine loaded but with no round in the chamber, with the butt flush unto the tabletop.
Upon start signal, the shooter is required to pick up one of six colored balls inside a opaque box placed at the his or her strong-side. The shooter will then fire at all the metal plates except the one with the same color as the ball he’d picked.
The second involved shooting two round metal plates stacked on the first and the second tier of a metal platform. First to be shot in the flash sequence is the bottom gong. The upper target serves as the stopping plate.
Shooters begin with their pump-action shotguns loaded, but with no round in the chamber, being placed butt-first on a table.
Best time for the first exercise was under three seconds, while top speed for the second challenge was under one. The top guns were John Melendrez and Jerry Velez.
SHOTGUN CLASSES. Shotgun events used to be held weekly at the Kamagong Gun Club. These events, organized because of the request of club members, involve lessons that stress on the defensive deployment of the riot guns at home or inside a vehicle.
It declined in frequency early this year after the club launched its Basic Defensive Pistol Course (BDPC) program. The pistol course is given for free to all new members and most new members only have one gun – pistols.
But the clamor for the shotgun course never died down. The shotgun, specifically the pump-action riot gun because of its ability to eat up both lethal and non-lethal rounds, remain the best home and vehicle-defense weapon in the market.
Club executive vice-president Tyrone Mercader said the club is facilitating a return of the shotgun events, and is in fact in the final stages of preparing a program of instruction that consolidates the exercises into one comprehensive training course.
Part of the course, he said, will be the various defensive ready positions, including the “indoor-ready” position for home defense, area clearing, tactical load and reloads, barricade shooting and what is known as the slug select procedure.
In slug select, a shooter will load his or her pump gun with three rounds of either buck or birdshot rounds (cartridges reportedly optimum for home defense use because of its limited penetrative potential) in the tube and have one more round in the chamber.
On start signal, the shooter will fire the round in the chamber, pump another cartridge into action, slip a lead slug into the tube, pump the chambered cartridge clear and cause the loading of the slug in its place.
With practice, this can be done with considerable speed and is useful when engaging two attackers at a time, one of which is beyond a buck or birdshot’s maximum effective range.
GRADUATION. As this developed, yet another batch of gun owners has successfully hurdled the club’s 10-week BDPC program.
The batch of eight men took and passed the program’s final practical exam last Saturday, with businessman Rod Romanos, sporting a .45 cal. 1911 from Norinco, emerging as top gun.
The other top shooters were Jed Narvios with his 9mm HP from FEG, and college student Joseph Manigos, powered by his 9mm Jericho 941F. The rest of the successful passers were Alfred Largosa, Allan Yap, James Vincent Manigos, Andreas Viets and Jerome Yap.
The final practical exam was patterned out of the New Hampshire State Police qualifier course, which tested a full spectrum of defensive pistol skills such as strong and weak-hand shooting from cover up to 35 yards.
(knrama@sunstar.com.ph)
(August 22, 2005 issue)
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