Aug 23, 2008 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Todd Jarrett at Work

I have been very impressed with Todd’s instruction.Â Todd is mostly concentrating on tips and techniques that will make us better shooters.Â I have never done shooting on the move before, and never shot at anything that moved except for clay birds.Â I thought I did pretty decently on both, doing my best to follow some of Todd’s advise.Â The cool thing about what Todd has taught us, is that I think I could come back and show other people his tips.Â Here are some pictures below of Todd Jarrett at work.Â Click on the pictures to see descriptions of what you’re seeing.

Todd gives some instruction on the LDA trigger and proper control

Todd shows us how it’s done on the paper targets.

Todd makes some Sharpy marks on Kevin’s hands to define the proper grip

Getting SayUncle ready to shoot his plates

Todd gives SayUncle some instruction on his shooting

Todd Jarrett gets ready to run Greg Rotz through the course of fire.

Todd encourages Joe Huffman onward through the course of fire

Caleb goes through the moving targets course.

Now I just have to go home and practice, practice, practice everything Todd has taught.

Para LDA 1911, The Good and the Bad

Overall, my experience with the LDA, after a day of shooting hundreds of rounds of ammunition, have been pretty favorable.Â The LDA trigger is nicer and smoother than the one on my Glock, and shoot pretty decently with it.Â My main complaint about the platform is the fact that it even has a safety.Â I know, I know, a Glock user complaining about a manual safety, big shocker.Â But I think, given the similarity in operation to a Glock renders the manual safety superfluous.Â More than a few times, I ended up actuating the manual safety when I was shooting, causing the gun not to fire.Â Not a big deal on the range, but in a life and death situation that could be lethal.

The platform itself is reliable, however.Â A few people had issues with it, mostly people who were used to shooting standard single action 1911s, but I had only one FTF, and it was my fault for fumbling my grip.Â I also deliberately eschewed oil and cleaning throughout the day to see if it could take it without failing.Â It did.

Para has offered us a pretty good price to buy the guns and have them shipped to our local FFL, and I plan to take them up on the offer.Â I have enjoyed shooting the gun.Â I will still remain a Glock guy for my carry piece, because I’ve put thousands of rounds through it with no failure, but if I start shooting IPSC, steel plate or bowling pin shooting, I think the Para LDA would work better for me.Â The LDA 1911 makes a great competition platform for shooters who carry a Glock as their self-defense piece.Â The feel of shooting it is similar enough that your shooting technique for one won’t interfere with the other.

Tomorrow we get to try the grips that Crimson Trace provided for us in Blackwater’s shoot house.Â I will offer my opinion on that after tomorrow.

Our Gun Nutty Blackwater Transportation

There’s nothing gun bloggers like better than Blackwater provided transportation of a shot up car.Â Blackwater is the largest single buyer of used cars in the State of North Carolina.Â They buy them for everything from stunt driving to their own version of Smash Up Derby, usually involving a lot of breaking through barricades, and often firepower.

Standing around at the Black Bear Inn awaiting our transportation

There were a lot of empty cases and simunition cases in the vehicle, and more than a few live rounds of both.

The really great thing was that I managed to fish about 40 once fired Lake City brass out of the vehicle.Â The really funny thing is, the radio in the vehicle still worked just fine.Â I guess the Blackwater mechanics have their priorities in order.Â Thanks to Blackwater for telling us “Hey, if you need some help getting to and from your range, the keys are in the ignition of those shot up cars, feel free to use them.”

Morning Shooting at Para Summer Camp

This morning we got our hands marked up by Todd Jarrett to teach us a proper grip. Let me tell you, it works. My speed and accuracy improved markedly. I still have some difficulty with the draw, but there’s nothing that will correct that except for repetition.

Todd also had us shoot a silhouette target at 25 yards. I did respectably, but let me tell you, Caleb got all of his hits in the kill zone. I had to shoot low and right to find the bullseye.