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Harvard, MA Appleseed Shoot 4/18-19, 2009
- Thread starter dwarven1
- Start date
Mostly because I want to be out of there by 5:30 or so.![[smile]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/001.gif "Smile [smile]")
Ah! This is what I like to hear.
I have to be back in Bourne by 2300 or so, and I think its close to a 3 hour ride.
Thanks for the info guys!
Turbocharged
NES Member
I should be there, and might bring some family along to participate as well.
As of right now, yes. I just checked the on-line registration system, and verified it.
Get him signed up ASAP, to make sure there still is.
If he'll need a loner, shoot me a PM, I'll get it on the list.
Get him signed up ASAP, to make sure there still is.
If he'll need a loner, shoot me a PM, I'll get it on the list.
- Joined
- Mar 22, 2008
- Messages
- 686
- Likes
- 111
Dammit Nickle, it's that kind of attitude that makes a guy stop procrastinating, and just go out and buy a damn 10/22 already. Thanks a lot...
I'll try to get signed up as soon as I can (gotta move some money around, so Monday is probably the earliest I can do that).
Now how the hell does this damn sling go on....
RichM
Retired Army Veteran
In preparation for the Harvard Appleseed, I took my son to the range Sunday... we were there all day! He was shooting my scoped T/C .22 Classic (cheap Simmons 3-9x), and he did well. He was grouping pretty well, especially with the scope. I have see-through rings, but he wasn't as good at grouping with the open sights.
We worked in 4 positions: bench rest, prone unsupported, seated, and standing. We were working at 25 meters, and the wind was blowing almost directly in our face, so much so that it was blowing the target toward us with the gusts. He was grouping at about 1 1/2" using the scope at 25m, and out to 2 - 2 1/2" shooting from bench rest using the open sights.
I discovered that I will have difficulty in the seated position; I have a little too much gut in the way! It was a good day. We went through about 500 rounds... mostly him shooting!
I printed the "How to get ready" FAQ out, but I don't see any links to "Fred's Guide" available... We're already starting to gather our equipment... can you all tell that I'm excited to introduce my 17-year-old son to shooting?
We worked in 4 positions: bench rest, prone unsupported, seated, and standing. We were working at 25 meters, and the wind was blowing almost directly in our face, so much so that it was blowing the target toward us with the gusts. He was grouping at about 1 1/2" using the scope at 25m, and out to 2 - 2 1/2" shooting from bench rest using the open sights.
I discovered that I will have difficulty in the seated position; I have a little too much gut in the way! It was a good day. We went through about 500 rounds... mostly him shooting!
I printed the "How to get ready" FAQ out, but I don't see any links to "Fred's Guide" available... We're already starting to gather our equipment... can you all tell that I'm excited to introduce my 17-year-old son to shooting?
dwarven1
Lonely Mountain Arms
Loosen your belt up a couple of notches, and if necessary, undo the button at the waistband. DAMHIK.
![[wink]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/002.gif "Wink [wink]")
It's for sale here: http://www.fredsm14stocks.com/catalog/acc.asp
However, given that Fred is right now going to be shipping out supplies for FIFTY-TWO Appleseed Shoots in the next week and a half, I wouldn't plan on getting it in time. Instead, you can go to the AppleseedInfo.org website and read Fred's Rifleman Series; it's got a lot of the same stuff in it. It does not, however, have all the various graphs and illustrations, so Fred's Guide is DEFINITELY worthwhile. The instructors will have copies of their own with them, so you might ask them if you can browse it during lunch at the shoot if you want.
namedpipes
NES Member
Logistics question - I did skim the 11 pages! but did not spot it.
Do we pack brown bag lunch / snacks or will there be forage there? OK either way, I just need to know whether to bring bag-o-sandwiches or not! I'll have drinks and gorp in either case.
Looking forward to this!
Do we pack brown bag lunch / snacks or will there be forage there? OK either way, I just need to know whether to bring bag-o-sandwiches or not! I'll have drinks and gorp in either case.
Looking forward to this!
Lunch should be available on site. Ice water (genuine VT spring water, direct from the spring) will be available, until it runs out (in a big cooler, with ice).
However, plan on bringing some snacks and beverages, to keep you fueled and hydrated.
Peanut Butter crackers and granola bars work well for snacks.
However, plan on bringing some snacks and beverages, to keep you fueled and hydrated.
Peanut Butter crackers and granola bars work well for snacks.
Good question! 74 comfortable or 94 not-so-comfortable shooters at the moment.
I'm trying to get RWVA to send me more instructors so we can make it 84-107 (one more instructor), 94-120 (two more), 103-132 (three more), or 112-144 (four more).
I think eventbrite will call us Sold Out at 100 signups.
Rockrivr1
NES Member
Quick question. I'm going to the range to practice and I have a couple of the Appleseed targets from the last Appleseed. Is the correct setup distance 25 yrds from the firing line. Want to make sure I have my rifle fully zero'd before the shoot.
I'm probably going to be one of the few shooting an AR15. Seems like a LOT of 10/22s are going to be there.
I'm probably going to be one of the few shooting an AR15. Seems like a LOT of 10/22s are going to be there.
dixidawg
NES Member
Capt Phillips
Latest reports from Fox News regarding the rescue of Capt Richard Phillips indicate that:
Three pirates were taken out by 3 simultaneous head shots when Phillips was believed to be in imminent danger, and the command was given. These 3 "shots heard round the world" will doubtless change the future direction of piracy.
Once again American Riflemen save the day!
(1) SIGHT ALIGNMENT:
(2) SIGHT PICTURE:
(3) RESPIRATORY PAUSE:
(4) (a) FOCUS YOUR EYE ON THE FRONT SIGHT: (A physical task)
(b) FOCUS YOUR MIND ON KEEPING THE FRONT SIGHT ON THE TARGET: (A mental task)
(5) SQUEEZE THE TRIGGER:
(6) FOLLOW THROUGH:
Latest reports from Fox News regarding the rescue of Capt Richard Phillips indicate that:
Three pirates were taken out by 3 simultaneous head shots when Phillips was believed to be in imminent danger, and the command was given. These 3 "shots heard round the world" will doubtless change the future direction of piracy.
Once again American Riflemen save the day!
(1) SIGHT ALIGNMENT:
(2) SIGHT PICTURE:
(3) RESPIRATORY PAUSE:
(4) (a) FOCUS YOUR EYE ON THE FRONT SIGHT: (A physical task)
(b) FOCUS YOUR MIND ON KEEPING THE FRONT SIGHT ON THE TARGET: (A mental task)
(5) SQUEEZE THE TRIGGER:
(6) FOLLOW THROUGH:
Firewall99
RWVA Instructor
[Please forgive this huge off subject post, prompted by a similar off subject post. Moderator, feel free to move this to a more appropriate thread, but please don't bury it. This is important stuff for average gun owners to understand. People deprived by force of their God-given, natural law rights to their freedom of contract have the right to defend themselves. What is at issue here is to what extent those means exceed the boundaries of universal civilization.]
Before you laud the beauty of these head shots, please try to see the bigger picture. Why are these impoverished Somalis, with no national state to defend their rights, driven to so-called "piracy?" The people our governments are labeling as “one of the great menaces of our times” have an extraordinary story to tell - and some justice on their side.
Pirates have never been quite who we think they are. In the “golden age of piracy” - from 1650 to 1730 - the idea of the pirate as the senseless, savage thief that lingers today was created by the British government in a great propaganda heave. Many ordinary people believed it was false: pirates were often rescued from the gallows by supportive crowds. Why? What did they see that we can’t?
In his book Villains of All Nations, historian Marcus Rediker pores through the evidence to find out. If you became a merchant or navy sailor then - plucked from the docks of London’s East End, young and hungry - you ended up in a floating wooden Hell. You worked all hours on a cramped, half-starved ship, and if you slacked off for a second, the all-powerful captain would whip you with the cat o’ nine tails. If you slacked consistently, you could be thrown overboard. And at the end of months or years of this, you were often cheated of your wages.
Pirates were the first people to rebel against this world. They mutinied against their tyrannical captains - and created a different way of working on the seas. Once they had a ship, the pirates elected their captains, and made all their decisions collectively. They shared their bounty out in what Rediker calls “one of the most egalitarian plans for the disposition of resources to be found anywhere in the 18th century.”
They even took in escaped African slaves and lived with them as equals. The pirates showed “quite clearly - and subversively - that ships did not have to be run in the brutal and oppressive ways of the merchant service and the Royal navy.” This is why they were popular, despite being unproductive thieves.
The words of one pirate from that lost age - a young British man called William Scott - should echo into this new age of piracy. Just before he was hanged in Charleston, South Carolina, he said: “What I did was to keep me from perishing. I was forced to go a-pirating to live.”
In 1991, the government of Somalia - in the Horn of Africa - collapsed. Its 9 million people have been teetering on starvation ever since - and many of the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country’s food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.
Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died.
Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the U.N. envoy to Somalia, tells me: “Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury - you name it.” Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to “dispose” of cheaply. When I asked Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: “Nothing. There has been no cleanup, no compensation and no prevention.”
At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia’s seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish stocks by over-exploitation - and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300 million worth of tuna, shrimp, lobster and other sea life is being stolen every year by vast trawlers illegally sailing into Somalia’s unprotected seas.
The local fishermen have suddenly lost their livelihoods, and they are starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: “If nothing is done, there soon won’t be much fish left in our coastal waters.”
This is the context in which the men we are calling “pirates” have emerged. Everyone agrees they were ordinary Somalian fishermen who at first took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least wage a “tax” on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coast Guard of Somalia - and it’s not hard to see why.
In a surreal telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali, said their motive was “to stop illegal fishing and dumping in our waters … We don’t consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas.” William Scott would understand those words.
No, this doesn’t make hostage-taking justifiable, and yes, some are clearly just gangsters - especially those who have held up World Food Program supplies. But the “pirates” have the overwhelming support of the local population for a reason. The independent Somalian news site WardherNews conducted the best research we have into what ordinary Somalis are thinking - and it found 70 percent “strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defense of the country’s territorial waters.”
During the revolutionary war in America, George Washington and America’s founding fathers paid pirates to protect America’s territorial waters, because they had no navy or coast guard of their own. Most Americans supported them. Is this so different?
Did we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches, paddling in our nuclear waste, and watch us snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome? We didn’t act on those crimes - but when some of the fishermen responded by disrupting the transit corridor for 20 percent of the world’s oil supply, we begin to shriek about “evil.” If we really want to deal with piracy, we need to stop its root cause - our crimes - before we send in the gunboats to root out Somalia’s criminals.
The story of the 2009 war on piracy was best summarized by another pirate, who lived and died in the fourth century BC. He was captured and brought to Alexander the Great, who demanded to know “what he meant by keeping possession of the sea.” The pirate smiled and responded: “What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you, who do it with a great fleet, are called emperor.”
Once again, our great imperial fleets sail in today - but who is the robber?
Postscript: Some commentators seem bemused by the fact that both toxic dumping and the theft of fish are happening in the same place - wouldn’t this make the fish contaminated? In fact, Somalia’s coastline is vast, stretching 3,300km (over 2,000 miles). Imagine how easy it would be - without any coast guard or army - to steal fish from Florida and dump nuclear waste on California, and you get the idea. These events are happening in different places but with the same horrible effect: death for the locals and stirred-up piracy. There’s no contradiction.
Hope this helps you see that not all head shots are equal.
Before you laud the beauty of these head shots, please try to see the bigger picture. Why are these impoverished Somalis, with no national state to defend their rights, driven to so-called "piracy?" The people our governments are labeling as “one of the great menaces of our times” have an extraordinary story to tell - and some justice on their side.
Pirates have never been quite who we think they are. In the “golden age of piracy” - from 1650 to 1730 - the idea of the pirate as the senseless, savage thief that lingers today was created by the British government in a great propaganda heave. Many ordinary people believed it was false: pirates were often rescued from the gallows by supportive crowds. Why? What did they see that we can’t?
In his book Villains of All Nations, historian Marcus Rediker pores through the evidence to find out. If you became a merchant or navy sailor then - plucked from the docks of London’s East End, young and hungry - you ended up in a floating wooden Hell. You worked all hours on a cramped, half-starved ship, and if you slacked off for a second, the all-powerful captain would whip you with the cat o’ nine tails. If you slacked consistently, you could be thrown overboard. And at the end of months or years of this, you were often cheated of your wages.
Pirates were the first people to rebel against this world. They mutinied against their tyrannical captains - and created a different way of working on the seas. Once they had a ship, the pirates elected their captains, and made all their decisions collectively. They shared their bounty out in what Rediker calls “one of the most egalitarian plans for the disposition of resources to be found anywhere in the 18th century.”
They even took in escaped African slaves and lived with them as equals. The pirates showed “quite clearly - and subversively - that ships did not have to be run in the brutal and oppressive ways of the merchant service and the Royal navy.” This is why they were popular, despite being unproductive thieves.
The words of one pirate from that lost age - a young British man called William Scott - should echo into this new age of piracy. Just before he was hanged in Charleston, South Carolina, he said: “What I did was to keep me from perishing. I was forced to go a-pirating to live.”
In 1991, the government of Somalia - in the Horn of Africa - collapsed. Its 9 million people have been teetering on starvation ever since - and many of the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country’s food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.
Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died.
Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the U.N. envoy to Somalia, tells me: “Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury - you name it.” Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to “dispose” of cheaply. When I asked Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: “Nothing. There has been no cleanup, no compensation and no prevention.”
At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia’s seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish stocks by over-exploitation - and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300 million worth of tuna, shrimp, lobster and other sea life is being stolen every year by vast trawlers illegally sailing into Somalia’s unprotected seas.
The local fishermen have suddenly lost their livelihoods, and they are starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: “If nothing is done, there soon won’t be much fish left in our coastal waters.”
This is the context in which the men we are calling “pirates” have emerged. Everyone agrees they were ordinary Somalian fishermen who at first took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least wage a “tax” on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coast Guard of Somalia - and it’s not hard to see why.
In a surreal telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali, said their motive was “to stop illegal fishing and dumping in our waters … We don’t consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas.” William Scott would understand those words.
No, this doesn’t make hostage-taking justifiable, and yes, some are clearly just gangsters - especially those who have held up World Food Program supplies. But the “pirates” have the overwhelming support of the local population for a reason. The independent Somalian news site WardherNews conducted the best research we have into what ordinary Somalis are thinking - and it found 70 percent “strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defense of the country’s territorial waters.”
During the revolutionary war in America, George Washington and America’s founding fathers paid pirates to protect America’s territorial waters, because they had no navy or coast guard of their own. Most Americans supported them. Is this so different?
Did we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches, paddling in our nuclear waste, and watch us snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome? We didn’t act on those crimes - but when some of the fishermen responded by disrupting the transit corridor for 20 percent of the world’s oil supply, we begin to shriek about “evil.” If we really want to deal with piracy, we need to stop its root cause - our crimes - before we send in the gunboats to root out Somalia’s criminals.
The story of the 2009 war on piracy was best summarized by another pirate, who lived and died in the fourth century BC. He was captured and brought to Alexander the Great, who demanded to know “what he meant by keeping possession of the sea.” The pirate smiled and responded: “What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you, who do it with a great fleet, are called emperor.”
Once again, our great imperial fleets sail in today - but who is the robber?
Postscript: Some commentators seem bemused by the fact that both toxic dumping and the theft of fish are happening in the same place - wouldn’t this make the fish contaminated? In fact, Somalia’s coastline is vast, stretching 3,300km (over 2,000 miles). Imagine how easy it would be - without any coast guard or army - to steal fish from Florida and dump nuclear waste on California, and you get the idea. These events are happening in different places but with the same horrible effect: death for the locals and stirred-up piracy. There’s no contradiction.
Hope this helps you see that not all head shots are equal.
namedpipes
NES Member
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Then take the courtesy to send an e-mail saying you won't be there.
That will let some one else pre-register. Do it right off, as this event is likely to sell out!
Something might or might not come up, that could prevent my attending the Harvard Appleseed this weekend. I'm hoping it doesn't and that I get to attend. If I cannot attend, I should send an email to "info@harvardriflemen" correct?
______________________________________________________________________
Off topic (in response to the above), any U.S. ship or sailor that dumped industrial or radioactive waste would be subject to prosecution in the U.S., no matter where the dumping took place. See Title 33 of the U.S. Code section 1411 (1401 et seq. have the applicable law). The crew of the Maersk Alabama did nothing to offend the Somalis. Ironically, the Maersk Alabama was carrying aid cargo that will, in part, benefit the Somali people. I've never been prouder to wear my Mass Maritime attire. As a proud alum, I do wear it reguarly anyway. My fellow alums that made the news during this past week are awesome examples of and for American merchant seamen, none more so than Captain Richard Phillips.
______________________________________________________________________
Off topic (in response to the above), any U.S. ship or sailor that dumped industrial or radioactive waste would be subject to prosecution in the U.S., no matter where the dumping took place. See Title 33 of the U.S. Code section 1411 (1401 et seq. have the applicable law). The crew of the Maersk Alabama did nothing to offend the Somalis. Ironically, the Maersk Alabama was carrying aid cargo that will, in part, benefit the Somali people. I've never been prouder to wear my Mass Maritime attire. As a proud alum, I do wear it reguarly anyway. My fellow alums that made the news during this past week are awesome examples of and for American merchant seamen, none more so than Captain Richard Phillips.
Last edited by a moderator:
![[rolleyes]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/042.gif "Roll Eyes [rolleyes]")
