Note to self: in copious free time, look into IPSC shooting. Joe Huffman, the full-throated Second Amendment activist behind such glorious joys as Boomershoot, posted an interesting account of the time he designed a Pink-Pistols themed IPSC course. Pink Pistols, for those who don't know, is a gay-oriented shooting group, with a heavy emphasis on defensive shooting. In Joe's case, a local chapter had just formed; he'd been put in charge of running his gun club's IPSC shoot for the month; and Fred Phelps had come to town and done his usual job of making a rude ass of himself. As Joe put it, "I took full advantage of the alignment of the stars."
START POSITION: In pickup A, door shut, driver’s side window open with loaded gun on the seat.
While returning from an anti-Fred Phelps (owner of the web site http://www.godhatesfags.com/) rally in Moscow Idaho you see something suspicious on the side of the road and park your pickup behind a pickup that was apparently filed with drunk frat boys who are now tying someone to a fence post across the road. Three of them are approaching you and the closest one to you has a tire iron in his hand and tells you, “Move along, it’s just a couple of fags.”
On signal engage T1, T2, and T3 with two rounds each through the open window (door may be open or closed). Engage T4 and T5 with at least two rounds each. Set gun down and use the ‘dropped’ knife of the attacker to cut the hostage free (-10 procedural for each cut on the no-shoot). Set the knife down, pick up gun and engage T6 and T7 with at least one round each. Between the signal and the last round fired the shooter must shout “Pick on someone your own caliber!” (-10 procedural for failure to perform).
IPSC shooting: it's magnificently dorky! And civic-minded.
(And, for the record, given George Carlin's recent passing: my favorite Carlin bit is "Stuff." "A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it! If you didn't have so much stuff, you wouldn't *need* a house. You could just *walk around* all the time.")
