Some random thoughts

The first thing that I wanted to spew was about Visio… and no … not 2007. If you ever want to change page properties on a page you would think you can right click the page at the bottom and hit properties… right? Wrong! You have to go to File -> Page Setup . Why would you ever want to do this? I just wanted to change the background page, and would have thought Page Properties are separate from Page ( Print ) Setup.

Anyway, onto the next fun thing that was obscure to me. I recently took a CPL ( Concealed Pistol License ) class and part of the course was some range time. I looked and looked and couldn’t find what they do. I wanted to know what the exercises were since I was told you had to shoot with your left hand and so on. I’m fairly proficient with my firearm but I don’t spend tons of time shooting left handed. So I was worried. As it turns out the drills were fairly easy.

There are 4 shooting exercises. Each exercise consists of 3 sessions, 6 rounds each. So in all we shot 72 rounds per person. I’m not going to give too many details because I don’t know if the course contents are “secret”. It’s an NRA course so I don’t think they are however I’ll just outline a few things.

There will be exercises where you have to shoot from 21 feet, 18 ( possibly ), and 7. You just have to hit a 8.5 x 11 inch sheet of paper. You will shoot standing, kneeling, kneeling behind a barrel ( or cover ). You will shoot from the left side of cover, the right side of cover and over the top. We always shot with our strong hand ( my right for example ). There was one exercise where you shot just one handed, that was pretty easy too.

I was super worried at first bc I thought the range time was going to involve a ton of left handed shooting, rapid fire from farther away and so on. Problem is when you shoot fast you shoot shitty…. that too depends on your level of expertise. There are folks that can group rounds in a 1″ area and empty a magazine in less than 1 second.

All in all it wasn’t too bad. There was a written part too that was fairly easy. A few trick questions but nothing too bad. Post comments if you have questions. No I won’t tell you what the questions are… not that I remember anyway.

So the sum of it all is that I filed my application for a concealed pistol Monday. The whole process was pretty friendly. I thought I would get weird looks and all but I didn’t. After 7 years folks have really gotten friendlier toward people that want to carry. In 2000 Michigan became a shall issue state. Since then violent crime against individuals has dropped significantly, and there haven’t been gun battles at traffic accidents and whatever other crap a bunch of quacks predicted. Reason? To even be able to apply / carry you have to be in the 95% of law abiding folks. I for one don’t have as much as a parking ticket… and yes I haven’t done anything either My record is clean because I don’t do dumb crap.

The folks at the county office were friendly, the Sherrif’s office was really nice and courteous. Took like 2 or so hours to get everything done because I had to drive between buildings and so on to get finger printed but otherwise… very painless process to apply. I suspect that at some point I will have to go in front of the gun board. If I don’t I will be shocked ( figure my age will make them want to ask me some questions ). From what I hear however that’s not so bad either. We’ll see I suppose.