As an armed civilian you may need to use your weapon in defense of yourself or another innocent. Civilian self-defense shootings are wildly varied, so it’s hard to generalize about them. But if it happens in public you can bet the police will be arriving quickly, and when they get there it’s very likely they will have insufficient information. They will evaluate the situation mostly on what they can observe on arrival.

They’re going to be keyed up, knowing that people have been shot. If it was a spree shooter or if there’s an officer down they’re going to be really keyed up. It’s a situation tailor-made for mistakes. You need to be prepared to deal with them, and you need to make absolutely sure that you are not part of the problem. It would suck to survive a lethal force encounter only to be shot by the police. The other week in Colorado it happened.

Details are sketchy and we’re not going to focus on those here; the gist of it is a bad guy shot a good guy, an armed civilian shot the bad guy, the police showed up and shot the good guy. Three people dead, only one of them a bad guy.

We’re all human. A lot of us train. We all have reflexes. Good things, generally, but in the wrong situation even good training can get you killed if you haven’t thought about what to do after the bullets stop flying.

I’ve been around the block a time or two, and had some experiences most people haven’t. Despite this I’m just some guy on the internet so take my words as food for thought, not Received Gospel. This is a thing I have thought about and come to understand that the danger isn’t over until the police are in control of the situation.

When the police arrive they will have some very specific priorities, the first being to establish that the danger has passed. Close on the heels of that they will want to establish control of the scene, both to insure the safety of themselves and the public and to preserve evidence. Anything that interferes with these priorities will be dealt with abruptly and with little regard for social niceties. Because of the variability of the circumstances of civilian shootings it’s difficult to give specific advice, but anything that appears threatening to either their safety or their sense of control can have bad, even tragic, results. You need to bear this in mind.

That’s not going to be easy; you’ve just had the mother of all adrenaline rushes. Your fight-or-flight reflex has been triggered in a big way. You may be experiencing a major rush of elation as it sinks in that you have survived. Everything you have just experienced is going to make it difficult for you to control your responses and you may even be in shock. So what do do?

Think it through in advance. Be mentally prepared; understand the priorities and needs of the responding officers. Know what they want and do your best to give it to them. Condition yourself to do as they order, immediately and without hesitation. Don’t volunteer information, don’t try to explain anything and, for the love of God, don’t argue with them. If they tell you to drop your $3,000 STI pistol drop it. A gun is a lot easier to fix than a bullet hole.

There’s another thing you can do to improve the situation if it seems safe and prudent.

Dial 911.

Yes, other people have probably called them already. So what? Tell the operator who you are. Answer their questions, but don’t volunteer information. OK you’re pretty much going to need to give them basic details like the fact that you were involved in a shooting. But that thing about ‘anything you say can and will be used against you’ is very much in play here. People tend to be a bit disorganized in these situations and sometimes say things out of their proper order or express themselves in a way that later sounds bad in court. Limiting yourself to the bare essentials can insulate you from this possibility. The police will make their decisions based on what they find, and you’ll have ENDLESS opportunities to tell your side of things later, trust me. Ideally after consulting with and in the presence of your lawyer.

The 911 operators will keep the responding officers informed, and the more information they have the safer you are. They’ll also probably keep you informed and instruct you on what to do as the police arrive.

Any shooting situation is messy and chaotic. People are going to be frightened, maybe hysterical. The responding police will be in a high state of readiness and hyper-alert. Nothing will absolutely guarantee things will go as they should, but with some understanding and forethought you can stack the odds in your favor, and really that’s all you can ever do.

Stay safe and take care.

Michael Tinker Pearce, 30 June 2021

A few years back I started making pistol grips for revolvers, mostly because I liked a lot of revolvers no one makes grips for. Over the years I got better at it, and occasionally made a set of grips for friends.

People have increasingly asked me if I want to sell grips. Now, I like making grips and it’s a lot less hard on my aging body than making swords. But inletting the grips to fit over the frame is pretty labor-intensive, and labor is far-and-away the most expensive component of most hand-crafted items. In short I couldn’t charge enough for the grips to make them worth what I would have to sell them for.

What I needed was a way to inlet the grips that didn’t require as much labor. I looked at various options, and discovered that small CNC routers were not awfully expensive. After sorting through reviews and such I made my choice- a Sainsmart G3018 PROver.

When it arrived a few things became apparent. It’s a bit smaller than I expected, something like 1-1/2′ wide. It’s big enough, so that’s fine. The second thing I realized was that Sainsmart and I have very different ideas of what constitutes ‘simple assembly.’ In fairness if you have an advanced degree in engineering or regularly assemble satellite buses it’s pretty easy, and the directions aren’t hopelessly bad. Your Mileage May Vary.

The last thing was that the software that’s bundled with it is junk. It simply doesn’t work on either of my computers (one of them a state-of-the-art gaming laptop.) I tried to find out how to make it work, and the best I could discover was a fellow who said, ‘It just started working. I don’t know why.’ This will not do.

Much teeth-gnashing and hair-pulling later I realized to was simply a GRBL controller, and there are plenty of them out there. I tried several and settled on the Sourcerabbit GRBL sender. Easy to use, free and, most importantly, it actually works. As an aside I love that I get to use Gerbil-control software; plays into the ‘Mad Scientist’ trope nicely.

Then things got expensive. With the learning curve on CAD software it was apparent that the way forward was to use a 3D scanner. I finally bought a unit from SOL (about $800) that would do the trick. I made a 3D model to use as a ‘blank’ for K-frame square-butt grips and proceeded, which meant learning to use CAD software on top of everything else.

We will draw the curtains of charity over the events that followed. Suffice it to say that it was a process of Trial and Error; it was a trial that was mostly in error. I did eventually get things working, and a dozen prototypes later I had my first set of grip-blanks… which required extensive hand-fitting and ultimately didn’t work. Back to the drawing , uh, keyboard.

Learning from experience I made a new physical model, scanned it and set the machine to work. There were some bobbles, but eventually it worked. The grips fit perfectly with less than a minute of fitting. I can live with that.

One thing to point out- this process, from scanned model to a usable grip-blank, took a week. The thing is the CNC router is not fast when it comes to a complex model like this; the first run took over eight hours for half of a grip. As I learned the machine and software this got faster, but each grip-half still takes 2-1/2 hours. That’s acceptable given that setting up the machine and starting it takes about 3 minutes per half, and I don’t have to charge for the labor because I can walk away and do other things.

Once I have a right and left grip blank I cut the final shape, sand the contours on the belt-sander and go to hand-sanding. All of the external shaping and finishing is done by hand, but the labor costs of that are manageable, and I’ll be able to offer the grips at a competitive price. Achievement Unlocked: Potentially Viable Business.

Actually selling them is going to be a whole ‘nuther challenge. I reckon Linda will set up a website, then we have to figure out how to drive traffic to it etc. We’ll open that can of worms another day. In the meantime I’m going to work on grips for N-frames, K-frame round-butts and who knows what else.

I’m pushing 60; making swords and my various misadventures in martial arts demos, martial sports, theatrical fighting etc. have not been kind to my body. Making grips may provide a less brutal way of supplementing my income. While I’m not going to use this blog to push these, I will be posting a link to the eventual web-page here.

Maybe it’ll work out, maybe not… but it’s been an interesting learning experience. Hopefully it will be a profitable one as well.

Stay safe, and take care.

Michael Tinker Pearce, 27 June 2021

Disclosure– this is a product review. The product was provided to me free of charge, though not by the manufacturer. To the best of my knowledge the manufacturer was unaware of this review at the time of publication.

Some time back my friend Mike pointed these sights out to me. It looked interesting and like it would be fast to acquire a sight picture. To aim you center the ball over the line.

I looked over their website and they offer a variety of options for many popular pistols. They have a selection of rifle and shotgun sights as well, but I was mostly intrigued by the pistol sights. They aren’t cheap, but by no means out-of-line. The price of the set-up I was interested in ran $119 dollars. Not bad, but more than I wished to spend on something I wasn’t sure of.

I told this to Mike, who is perhaps a bigger gun-geek than I am, and he happened to have a rear sight for the Government model 1911a1 and a Standard front sight cut for a Novak Dovetail that were surplus-to-need and very graciously sent them to me.

They arrived last week and I wasted no time getting into the shop. I removed the custom front sight, and clamping the slide between pieces of leather in the vice I got out the files and set to work. I carefully filed the top of the slide for the dovetail, checking the fit carefully as I went.

A quick note on this kind of work- a file only cuts in one direction, pushing away from you. If you want to keep your cuts flat and true don’t saw at the work-piece; it’s too easy to angle the file slightly on the back-stroke. It also dulls the file; remember, you are cutting steel here. Sharp things cut better, easier and more precisely than dull things.

I’ve never worked with a tritium sight before, and that tiny glass vial made me nervous. I filed the dovetail to a snug fit. I don’t have a sight-pusher, and the idea of hammering with anything but a dead-blow hammer and a brass drift set my teeth on edge. Pretty sure I was erring on the side of caution, but so be it. The sights arrived with a small tube of red adhesive, and I used that to add to the sight’s security.

The rear dovetail was a tiny bit small for the sight, which is fine. Easier to remove material than to add it, and after a few strokes of the file I was able to drive it into place. No tritium in this one, so it was a less nervous proposition and is a very tight fit.

Looking good, but there seemed to be an issue… The rear sight looked like it would make the gun shoot very high. I resolved to bear that in mind when test-firing. It’s an easy fix, but it was even easier to simply use a 6-o’clock hold.

It is a very fast sight. The front sight is very easy to pick up as the gun is brought on target and lining up is quick and easy. I’ve heard that these sights lack accuracy, and i could see it would be easy to be slightly misaligned. A self-defense gun is for close-up work though, so I wasn’t sure this would be a real problem.

As an aside the tritium insert in the front sight is good, and while it’s no powered red-dot it’s visible enough to be useful even in twilight conditions.

I gave the adhesive twenty-four hours to cure just to be on the safe side, then it was off to the range.

Cut To The Chase, Tinker. Do They Work?

I got to Champion Arms, got some targets and a lane and commenced to testing. Yep, they work.

I started at seven yards with the gun at low rest, brought it up quickly and fired as the sights came on target. The POI is a bit high; I was using a 6-o’clock hold and most shots were an inch or two high. Not bad at all. I taped the hole and repeated the exercise with similar results. The last pic is the result of several mag-dumps. Hitting a bit to the right; either I had the sights set slightly wrong or likely enough it was just me. Times being what they are my ammo supply was limited so I called it good after forty rounds or so.

This accuracy was at least as good as I would manage with normal sights, and according to the shot timer the rounds were going on target a bit faster on average, 1-2 tenths of a second or so. As a sight for self defense shooting they work just fine. If I can produce groups like this the first time I used them I’m a happy camper, and it can only get better with practice.

Next time I’ll shoot at fifteen and twenty-five yards and see how they work at longer range. If they do as well as I expect these will become a permanent addition to the gun.

Final Thoughts

I think these sights work as advertised, and I like them quite well. As a low-profile alternative to an optic on a defensive pistol I think they are a good choice. Should you try them? If you are a skilled shooter I would say yes, definitely. In the follow-up I’ll be having Linda and perhaps a few other folks try them and see how it works for them.

Stay safe, and take care.

Michael Tinker Pearce, 18 June 2021

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