Finally .....

I have been taking an at home vacation this week.  My cases are more or less caught up, my next court date is over two weeks away and I felt like kicking back a little.  So, I have.

Every morning, I have been going up to the 2A Shooting Center and working on my CLEET shooting drills. Those of you who know me personally know that I don't take a bad score in anything well. My nearly failing score on the handgun qualification for my PI license has burned in belly since last fall. Granted, I was in a lot of pain, I wasn't allowed to take painkillers, my trifocals were messing up my shot picture, I wasn't shooting my weapon of choice, yadda, yadda,  yadda. But, the fact is, I shot a lousy score.  I have been working on it ever since.  It has been a long haul.

But, today, finally, I started hitting my groove, letting the Zen of the thing take over.  I have had moments of this before but now it seems to be becoming my pattern.  Who knows, maybe it is muscle memory or whatever.  It also helped a lot that for whatever reason, I am in a lot less pain in my legs.  At any rate, I finally shot a group of pretty good scores.  The picture shows one of them. Adjusted for two misfires, that is an 86 on the standard Oklahoma CLEET 25 shot qualification.  Not a bad score.

Oklahoma CLEET qualification is strange.  There are two levels basically. I have always been able to shoot the plainclothes officer qualification fairly easily.  You would think that that would be the standard used for private investigators.  But, it isn't.  Oklahoma private investigators must pass the higher, uniformed officer standard which includes weak hand shooting, kneeling shots, shots from behind barriers, etc.  Here is a link to the drill:  http://www.ok.gov/cleet/documents/FirearmsQualificationJune2007.pdf  Now granted, Oklahoma's standard is fairly easy compare to some states like Texas for example.  Only a 72% score is required but still, some cops have to work at it.  When I heard that, I couldn't believe it, until I had to do it myself.  I'm not accustomed to having to work this hard to master something.  Hopefully it is building character.  It is certainly humbling me.