cherryriver

We've been seeing large numbers of people buying home protection shotguns off the rack right outside our classroom door at GAT all along, yet almost none of these fledgling purchasers ever get a chance to fire the guns in any practical way. Most ranges don't allow shot loads of any kind to be fired, much less at a fast pace. We wanted to provide an opportunity to do that. Given GAT's large training facility, which we've been doing handgun classes at for over ten years now, it finally came to pass that this shotgun class got put together and on the schedule. Drawing in part on our multigun match directing experience, plus some practical defensive shotgun training, we have a class where the practical shotgun owner can come and learn basic handling, loading, and shooting techniques and get some practical (i.e., fast) shooting on reactive steel targets. Along with my estimable IDPA-guy colleague Perry Stevens, we run a class that focuses on safety and good gun handling, ready conditions and multiple target shooting, all in a three-hour class on Saturday mornings. We will do our shooting in the 50-yard range, but not from in the booths. Rather, we work from tables downrange with the steel plates at ten yards. The typical round count for the birdshot portion is 36 or a little more. #7 1/2 shot size or smaller is required and no steel shot is allowed. We are also including a short section as time permits where the students bring a couple of rounds of their real-deal buckshot loads to fire at cardboard silhouettes to see the actual patterns they will get. So far, we've seen that more than half of our students have never even fired a shotgun in their lives, and this is the shooter we are most looking to serve. Not that anyone can't stand a bit more full-speed trigger time. A couple of things we've seen so far, just for information. The students with Mossberg slide-action 500-series guns pretty much dominate in numbers and successful results. If you haven't purchased a defensive shotgun, take that as a tip. Shooters with many semi-automatics find that low-brass, standard power shotshells won't run well in their guns. Be sure to bring or buy the highest-power ammunition you can. We had one poor fellow who'd gotten an AR-pattern magazine-fed 12 gauge import that hardly ran at all except with high-brass slugs. The class is on the gatguns.com website in the Events page. Typically we are running it on the fourth Saturday morning of the month, 9am-12pm, and the class fee is $100. October's schedule got a little out of the usual due to other commitments and range time availability. The next one is scheduled for 9am Saturday, October 30th, and November's is set for 9am Saturday, November 27th. Of course, our regular handgun classes continue, Intro, Women's Intro, Phase II, and Skill Builder Phase III (where we make you shoot your handgun fast and hard. Fun class.) Bill Zeller Excel Training Group

The subsequent ISRA notice about HB1092 says that it's looking like it will be coming out of the Illinois Senate Executive Committee shortly. They said to call one's state senator, so I did: John Curran is ours. The office lady was actually quite helpful and discussed how it would be best for all of us to be calling the members of the Executive Committee at this time. She correctly pointed out that a Republican legislator will have little to no impact on the bill's emergence or passage. Quite refreshing honesty, I thought. She duly noted our objection to the bill should it come up for a vote. I have not thought Senator Curran to be much of a gun-rights advocate, but this particular call made me think I could be off by a few degrees on that. I also saw on his web page that he has a link to a "Concealed Carry Handbook", which seems to be a positive, too.

Wondering what the recent timeline would be for that. We are looking to add an instructor and can't imgaine how long til she gets approved. I recall mine coming pretty swiftly in the early days, but nowadays...

Our neighbor bought a new long gun from a very large retail dealer. The background check took about 8-9 days before he could pick it up. We know it wasn't an issue with the check itself- he has high security clearances for his everyday line of work. The store managers tell us this is the new normal these days, for what it's worth.