Not Bad

My long range sniper deer rifle is back up after a couple of years waiting for a part.  Finally for the first time in too long I took it to the range.  Four shots with one called flyer and the other three within a 2" "group" right on target at a hundred paces.  The yellow dots are 4" circles.

Close enough.

Now if only someone would invite me on a hog hunt I could get some bacon with it . . .

Range Report: 06/01/2010

As I was sweating my [deleted] off fixing a foot-sized hole in my attic floor, my Darling Wife said she wanted me to "be done for now" so we could go to BH's place.

BH's place is the place with a standing invite to go shooting anytime.

Then she said the B family would be there. Dad B had expressed an interest in having a gun class (see "Let me take you shooting" on the right side of this page) but never worked up a schedule. I brought out some guns, ammo, and teaching equipment (including PPE) just in case, then loaded up #2's bicycle so he could ride around BH's land, and off we went.

Lunch, and socializing with another family that showed up kept us busy for the first part of the afternoon, but around 16:00 I told CB if he wanted a class, it had better get started or we'd run out of time. By 18:30 we were packing it in, because my Darling Wife is 8 months into the cooking process for VFDkiddo #4 and she can only be up and doing for so long. Between those times, I ran a class with two boys and a man, and we did much less shooting than I would have liked.

I started Boy 1 off with a .22LR Ruger revolver which he liked, except that it was heavy for him. We were about 5 yards from a few aluminum cans, which danced nicely with a good hit. He kept wanting to lean backwards from his hips for some reason. Then his dad was up, and he did quite well, only requiring a couple of minor pointers. Boy 2 has been shooting before but hadn't been through my lecture, so he sat through it and waited for the n00bs to have their turns, then he lit up the berm with his hi-point 9mm carbine. It put the hurt on the cans, including sending one flying clear off into the tall grass. I sent him to get more cans.

Boy 1 wanted to have a go at the Glock foh-ty, but one shot was all he wanted from it. I think he was surprised at the much-larger recoil He handled it ok, but the Glock may as well have been a 2x4 in his little hands, so that first shot was plenty. His dad did better with it, and was happy to see one can scoot halfway up the berm from a solid hit.

I like to start folks out with light-recoiling guns, and they were up for it, so we broke out a Marlin .22LR rifle. I think Boy 1 might need glasses or something, he had such a hard time seeing the front sight. It was also heavy for him, so I provided a third hand (mine) for a forend rest. He struggled with the sights for a minute and ended up not firing a shot. Boy 2 took a turn on it and chewed the cans up. Boy 1 saw Boy 2 having fun at it, and said he wanted another try. I held the front of the stock again, and Boy 1 was having a hard time getting off a shot. The difference between the single-stage revolver and the 2-stage rifle triggers was throwing him, plus he was maybe a little scared to be shooting actual guns. I saw him struggling with the (5lbs) trigger, so I told him to just squeeze it without aiming, to see what it was like. He did, and found out it wasn't so bad, and then he got a few shots off. I need to get some child-sized safety glasses. . . the ones he was wearing were slipping off his head. Oh well.

I could tell the Dad was having fun, and he was dealing with recoil pretty well, so (after a word from my Darling Wife that time was running out) I ran him up the power ladder pretty quickly. He liked the SKS, and was impressed with its report. #3 commented from the house 100 yards away in a 2 year-old's voice that he was also impressed with the noise from the SKS (we heard "LOUD" after each shot, very cute). Then Boy 2 broke out a Mosin Nagant and THAT was the winner of the 'loudest gun yet' award, in addition to tipping Boy 2 back on his heels despite being well-positioned. The Dad shot that one, and was suitably impressed with the recoil coming through the steel butt plate. He was also impressed with the price . . . Mosins can still be had for <$100 in good condition these days. If only they had a longer frikken bolt handle . . .

Then it was time to go, because my Darling Wife was at about 97% of her capacity for not being on a couch with her swollen feet up. One of my goals for the day was to see if a few new parts for an old Bryco 59 would turn it into a functional pistol. It got off two shots. Then it stovepiped on a live round (FTF) which I cleared. Boy 2 was curious throughout the afternoon about this gun. He had never seen one and wondered why I kept saying it was cheap junk. After the third shot it showed me the new striker spring was NOT the right part by halfway disassembling itself as the slide was going back into battery. Boy 2 was watching me shoot, and I held up the partially-disassembled weapon, and called back to the spectator's area and said "Piece of Junk." He finally understood, agreed, and said back in a suitably impressed tone: "Piece of Junk."

Then we loaded up and left. We got home around supper time, and then the Zoo went down for the night. A couple of guns got a light cleaning and fresh grease, then put back in the safe. Then it was bedtime.

Good times.

Alleged Cop Killer Shot Dead By Cops.

The alleged killer of four Washington policemen
who allegedly did it in front of a room full of witnesses
who allegedly told people he was going to do it, beforehand

Has been shot down by the Police. I'm going to go out on a limb here and give 35% odds that the killing officer comes up on charges, because the account I read makes it sound like a Bad Shoot, but we'll see what happens.

By the way, when you tend your cop-killing brother's wounds after police being killed by him, shoot him, you will be arrested. When you drive him from the scene, you will be arrested. When you give him cash, phones, and try to help him leave the state, you will be arrested. I hope all the accomplices after-the-fact get nice long prison sentences.

Cop killers: worse than home invaders and less worthy of life than rabid dogs. One less, today. I say:

Good.

Range Report: 07 Sep. 2009

JF, one of the 3 students who said they would be there, and of the six who said they might, showed up for a gun class on labor(-free) day. GB came out also and brought his arsenal with him. Between GB's and mine, there were over a dozen guns for JF to choose from, and his choice was: most of them. Once again my SKS was a male student's favorite. Once again, nobody got shot, despite JF's tendency to point a loaded rifle at his feet. There were the usual couple of hours of instruction, couple hours of shooting, lunch, then more shooting, cleanup; about a 6-hour day all told. I got a sunburn where a sling rubbed the sunscreen off my left arm, and I got a little bite from the stubborn bolt on a Mosin-Nagant, but no other injuries were reported.

JF had never held or shot a gun before, so after class I had him observe the shooting of a .22LR. He was duly unimpressed by the recoil and blast, as I had hoped. He started off with a .38Spl revolver and was slightly more impressed. By lunchtime, at his pace and election, he had moved up the perceived-recoil ladder all the way to 7.62x54R out of a carbine. He declined to shoot a 12ga. shotty, but I showed him how it was done* and he did enjoy watching that. He also got a kick out of recovering bullets from the berm, including one nearly-reloadable .380ACP round, which he kept for a souvenir.

Highlights:

Once again, I got to see the creeping grin when a new shooter realizes how much fun he is having.

I was pleased as punch to get several 9s, 10s, and an X, from offhand with a revolver I had never shot before. Also I chased an empty can with it, most shots in double-action, from offhand one-handed.

For fun, we kept the shooting down to <35 yards. That means rifle sights are off vertically, for everybody, a source of minor good-natured ribbing when we figured it out.

*Shooting dry cowpies with birdshot is not such a great idea if you are standing upwind. Unless you like breathing cow poo dust, of which there will be plenty.

The rifle sights on my newest shotgun are niiiiiice to shoot with.

The grandson of our host came down and got some quality time with full-power Glocks, which were new to him. 2 students, 2 RO's, perfect ratio.

Malfunctions:

Beware listening to other people! One of the men didn't hear a firing pin strike and thought he had seen the last round out of my .22 hit the berm . . . he saw the last one that went downrange. The last one was a dud and he didn't know it. Check for yourself if you have a malfunction, if there is any question. The life you save may be your own.

GB's Glock 9mm surprised the heck out of me, with repeated failures to feed. He blamed the cheap Soviet steel-cased ammunition.

GB's brand-spanking-new DPMS AR chambered in .308 wouldn't go into battery more often than it would. There is no forward assist, so pulling and releasing the charging handle was the only workaround. I was sighting in the scope for him, and the last shot was in the X ring, so close enough. It was also the last shot for the day for that rifle, because of what happened next. It was a double-feed, because of a failure to extract. The extractor ripped the rim off the case and the case was jammed pretty good, requiring disassembly and a cleaning rod to reduce the malfunction. It turns out there is a pretty nasty burr in the chamber, and he'll probably be getting a repair under warranty.


Dig the double-fed cartridge. It was a good teaching moment for JF and a sobering thing for GB, who has n Cases of these in his stores.


If you don't notice one of your cartridges has a bullet set this far back into the case, you might just have the rifle's action explode in your hands, a few inches from your face. This is not good. The next cartridge in the magazine was smashed also, and visibly wobbled when it was rolled on a flat surface. 2 rounds discarded (not fired) due to hazardous physical condition.

Shooting with friends and teaching the newbies: Good Times.

Range Report 06-20-09

I took the children to Dad's house while my Darling Wife went to a baby shower. One of my hopes for the visit was to see if his CB caps would go all the way through the barrel of my Marlin 60. He couldn't find the CBs but he did have some Aguila Super Colibris. I did some research when I got home and one retailer says it sounds like a loud airgun when fired. To me, it sounded quieter than my pellet rifle, but I didn't do a side-by-side comparison (yet).

Everyone says to use it only in handguns, because that's what the lawyers had Aguila put on the box. I can tell you for certain, it WILL fire from a Marlin Model 60 or a Winchester Model 69B if the barrel is clean and in good condition. Both are full-length rifles and it fires them out with enough speed to smear the lead on concrete 40-ish feet away and make an impressive splash in the birdbath at that range. As expected and advertised, it did not cycle the action in my Marlin, and (due to the shorter overall length*) we had to hold it muzzle-down to chamber a round. My dad said he did see one of the rounds he fired veering like a curve ball out of his Winchester, but overall accuracy was suitable for backyard plinking (which is what we were doing).

I'll have to see how they group out of my Marlin, but this might be THE solution for my pigeon problem**

When we finished plinking, dad gave me a few rounds of the Aguila, and I gave him some CCI Mini-Mags to fill the empty holes in his cartridge box. Then we took my sister out in the front yard to show her the difference between the high velocity and the primer-only rounds. She shot a gnarly old oak tree with the Aguila and I actually saw the bullet bounce back straight toward me and stop in the weeds halfway. Then she fired a CCI mini-mag, which made a 2" blast zone in the bark and embedded the bullet at least 1/2" into the tree. When we went up to inspect the tree, we did find one little piece of bark was missing from the Super Colibri round's impact.

*Difference in Overall Length:



**The Super Colibri is short because it has a half-weight bullet. That's still 3x heavier than a standard .177cal. pellet (typically 7.9 grain), and it should hit much harder on a pigeon. Now I'm wondering if I can pull out one of the much cheaper CCI 40-grain bullets, dump its powder, and use just the primer to fire its bullet. That should be murder on crows. And pigeons. Oh . . . nevermind. That was a crow joke but you were government educated so you missed it.

::sigh::

Anyhow, I crunched some numbers and they look good. The Aguilas are supposed to head out at around 500FPS, which gets around 10FPE on a bird. That is solidly middle-of-the-pack when it comes to .22cal. pellet rifles, but a 16 foot-pounds pellet rifle is about as loud as a .22LR rifle shot. The Aguilas are quiet. For comparison, my Daisy 880 (20th Anniversary Special Edition, with metal receiver and rifled barrel, thank you very much!) is supposed to launch around 700 feet per second a 7.9 grain pellet for a whopping 8 to 9 ft/lbs. of energy on target. Note that the smaller, faster projectile is a strategy for penetration, and as I have noted before, it does too good a job at that! Now if I could get a .22 caliber 40 grain bullet on a pigeon at a few hundred feet per second, THAT would pack a wallop! I'd have to make them count, though . . . the neighbors across the subdivision wouldn't appreciate finding a .22 in their car having gone through a window. The risk of hurting a person, I think is about nil but I don't want to send random bullets flying around the sky, that's just rude! The brighter glass on my Marlin would help with that whole "can't see it!" problem as well.

Shooting is fun. Shooting subsonics in the yard is more fun.

Range Report 03/07/2009

We went out to the Super-Seekrit Schutzenfest 2009 location to make sure of the facilities and get a better idea of the Plan of the Day. After the work was done, our host asked if I had brought any guns with me.

Funny you should mention that . . .

I brought my Marlin 60 just in case the shooting window opened. The scope was close to sighted-in, but as I mentioned before, it was only close. I got it much closer using coke cans as targets. I'd have been able to get it 100% zero'd if I'd used paper targets, but by the end of the day one of the cans fell into top/bottom halves when it was picked up, the gun was so accurate. Close enough. I shot up a box of .22 and then our host's granddaughter came around and ran through a couple of magazines full. The Federal ammo was fairly clean, but the action got nasty-dirty but fast (as usual) with the Remington.

Then, for kicks, I did a couple of draw-and-fire drills with my Kel-Tek. On a coke can, from conversational distances, I got a hit and a near miss, then a near miss and a hit, in 2-shot drills. Unsighted (point shooting) fire. I was pretty happy with that.

Then, when I went to retrieve the cans I noted something strange: a bright U shaped channel in the clay, leading to a perfectly circular hole in the backstop. Knowing that bullets stop pretty fast in dirt, I dug in.



How many of you have ever recovered bullets from your daily carry weapon? It's a pretty neat thing to be able to do. I also got a few rounds from the Marlin, including some that were all smashified, and the one below. This is a pretty nice demonstration of why those nasty-dirty Remington hollowpoints are worth the effort:



There were also a few miscellaneous other rounds that were sitting on the face of the backstop since we had dug it up a little to get it ready for the Schutzenfest.



I found out the hard way that using both eyes on a scoped rifle is much harder to do when night is coming on fast.

I also got a(nother) dramatic demonstration of how slow .22LR rounds travel. It's a little trippy having to wait a second between the report of a gun and the jumping of the target.

Range Report 07 Feb. 2009

We managed to make it out to MV's place to get some shooting done. My Darling Wife was tired and didn't want to shoot, but she took the chance to socialize with the ladies up at the house. #2 and #1 were running around outside with the dogs having a great time. #2 must be growing again. He was falling a lot. Once, I saw him take a nasty spill when he was jogging and caught his feet on the steel cable restraining one of the dogs. Straight down, straight up again and back to a jog. He's a good boy. Clumsy sometimes, but he got back up.

Anyhow, we brought out a variety pack:


There were a pair of scoped .22LR self loaders, an SKS, a 1911 A1, a Glock 22, a Kel-Tek P3AT, a .357 magnum revolver and carbine, a 12 gauge shotgun, a .30-06 Enfield, and a pellet rifle in case the kids ever came down to shoot and didn't want to try anything bigger.

MV and I went down his property a ways to where there is an escarpment about 20 feet high that we used for a backstop. The target support was the remains of a few sacks of quikrete that were left out laying flat and got rained on, set up into blocks, and then were stacked up against some sturdy trees. They make an astonishingly good stop for low-power rounds, and will even take direct hits from full-power long guns without falling apart very fast. We figured they would disintegrate pretty thoroughly from high-powered shots, so we went with .22 rifles and handguns first.

I have some 4" diameter yellow stickers that are great for improvised target designation. They don't adhere very well to crumbling concrete but that just means they don't have to be removed when they are shot up. In fact, even with the .22 rifles, when a chunk of concrete spalls off, the target sticker would just jump right off the face of the target! It is sort of a poor man's reactive target setup. Some stayed on long enough to show pretty impressive marksmanship:


(this one had a 1" diameter smudge of lead behind it on the rock). Some were an indication of a near miss or a hit. When the .357 carbine, for example, was hitting close by, the concrete would explode a little bit and the target would go FLYING off. Most gratifying.

We started about arm's length apart and MV started with the .357 revolver and I started with the .45. After the first shots, I made an exclamation about the shock wave coming off the sides of the .357. He mentioned that the .45 was pushing him around a little, also. We separated by another yard and kept blazing away. We switched and when I first shot the .357, HE made an exclamation about the shock wave coming off the .357, and how much more oomph it had than the blast from the .45. These two are the top of the heap when it comes to carry sidearm calibers, and it was interesting to compare the recoil effects side by side. The .45 pushes but it pushes slower, and straight back. The .357 is, shall we say, brisk in comparison. It pushes both back and up, and those both relatively hard. It was smashing the top of my middle finger with the trigger guard, which hurt a little, or else I would have shot it a bit more.

My Marlin 60 was a delight to shoot. The first time I loaded it up, it had some shorter overall-length cartridges and it took 20 of them! It was like a bottomless well compared to the 6 and 7+1 shots of the other guns we had been shooting so far. It was also accurate enough for squirrels (or pigeons but don't tell my neighbors that) and didn't kick hardly at all. The recoil from that weapon is so slight, I could watch my targets with both eyes: little clouds of dust with the open left eye, and the individual target jumping around with the right eye through the scope.

What? You close one eye when you use a scope? WHAT? you close one eye when you shoot anything? Next time you go out shooting, try keeping them both open. Situational awareness is greatly enhanced and, when shooting a scoped weapon, you can easily (easily with practice I guess) track your targets with one eye and aim with the other. It enhances the experience, but it does take some getting used to. Give it a shot!

Just as we were running out of ammunition for the pistols, MV's father came down to join us. My hosts were really smart about range safety. We were shooting at the bottom of an escarpment, but their house is up top of the hill. We were shooting at an angle to put the rounds between the houses, besides shooting into a hillside. AND they had walkie-talkies for communication between shooters and houses. They called down when they wanted to leave the houses and when MV's dad was going to come join us. At any rate, the old man ran half a magazine through the .45 and was impressed with the very poor sights on it, which even our younger eyes had trouble with:

Then he went from the 45 to the .357. He was pretty impressed with the recoil and report of the .357 even compared to the .45. I read once that the only reason to put up with the excessive recoil, report, and muzzle blast of the .357 Magnum revolver is the devastating effect it has on human flesh. From the way it smacked up those concrete blocks, I believe it. It was raining chunks on us from ~8 yards away!

Out of ammunition for most of our pistols, we went to the long guns. The .22s were so gentle and quiet, we could almost ignore it when they were shot. Everyone stood to watch when the bigger rifles were fired. The effect was predictably impressive. We backed up to somewhere around 25-30 yards for safety from the flying debris when the target was struck by the higher powered arms and went to town.

Surprisingly, the 7.62x39 and .357Mag carbine had about the same perceived recoil, with the SKS just a little bit softer due to the squishy butt pad it has. That was a little surprising, but consider:

The cases are about the same size and the bullet weights are within 20% of each other. Interesting. Also interesting was the effect on the target. The SKS was shooting pointed FMJ ammunition. The .357 was shooting heavier, semi-jacketed, wad cutter, soft pointed ammunition. The SKS put the hurt on the concrete, but the .357 just wailed on it. Chunks and chips went flying every which way when the .357 carbine hit and they rained down on a shed at least 20 yards away, sounding like bird shot on the tin roof. Most impressive. I would not consider anyone to be outgunned with a .357 revolver and carbine combination, unless their opponent was wearing armor or far enough away to be using a real rifle. I thought the SKS was more fun to shoot, because there was no lever to pump and the recoil was a little tiny bit softer. It does have peep sights though, so the scoped .357 carbine had the advantage for easy hits for those of us with *ahem* older glasses.

One nice thing about shooting on private land is that you can cook off the rounds as fast as you like. I did it with the SKS but muzzle climb limits how fast you can fire with any accuracy. I did it a couple of times while advancing with the Kel-Tec which is my regular carry pistol, and I did it a few times, including once while advancing, with the Marlin. You know what? It is the most fun I ever had shooting (and that is saying a LOT) when I was emptying a full magazine while advancing on a target. We're going to have to try to find a way to integrate that activity into the Schutzenfest.

Once again I was reminded how snappy that P3AT is to shoot. It truly kicks about as hard as the 1911, but it's harder to hold on to. MV remembered and didn't want to shoot it, and his dad took his word for it. This was also my first time second time firing it one-handed, as well as one-handed while advancing and moving laterally. I hope I'll never have to use that thing when there are people behind the Goblin, because, even at conversational distance, accuracy is poor thanks to the short barrel. Sure you can get a fist-sized group out of your P3AT on the range, two handed, slow-fire. Try it advancing, one-handed, rapid-fire sometime and see what you get!

OH! I found out what happened to those crazy dented-mouth .22 cases from last time. After a hunner't-fifty or 200 rounds including some filthy dirty Remington ammunition, the works were well and truly gumming up. The charging handle was getting stubborn by the time this happened:


The marlin kept shooting after that, but it probably would have started jamming worse and worse if I kept shooting for another hundred rounds or so. Also I found out the Marlin is accurate enough to hit a 4" target from ~40-50 yards, and when all the targets are shot off the concrete, it is accurate enough to chase a 1" diameter stick around the bottom of the concrete pile (toward the end of the shooting session, it was more of a gravel pile than a stack of blocks). Oh, and that was from offhand. I still haven't got it sighted in from a stable rest. Oh well, good enough for good fun!

Firing the shotgun was interesting. MV had a Bad Experience when he was younger with punishing recoil from a single-shot 20 gauge shotgun, so he was a little shy of shooting the 12. I gave him a few pointers on how to stand (see post #83, here)to absorb the recoil properly and he did fine, but he still was a bit more impressed by the recoil of the shotgun than I was. His father declined to fire the 12 gauge. I thought it was fun, and the shotgun pointed fairly well for me, plenty good enough to blast the heck out of the cement. We put a few rounds of buckshot through it first. Then MV put one slug out of it, and that was enough slug shooting for him. I put the other four slugs through it in quick succession, and the last one went all the way through what was left of the cement and into the escarpment behind it. Yowza!

My Darling Wife was getting tired and MV's wife had to go to work so we knocked off after about 3 hours of shooting. Well, it was almost enough range time for one day, anyway!

********

Spent case post-mortem:

The .45 is slinging them against itself, not the wall. The flat spot looks like it was rubbed as the cartridge spun out of the weapon, and is almost directly across from the ejector. Most of the cases show nearly identical damage, so I'm going to say I was wrong, it is the gun itself denting the cases on their way out. The extractor is hard on the heads, too.


The .40 is doing something similar, but instead of denting the cases much, it is creasing them in the same general area, and most of them also display a wiped-dent at one side of the mouth. More disturbingly, and I think it is probably typical Glock behaviour, all the spent brass iss visibly bulged at the back of the case. I found a shell on the ground that was expended last time we went shooting at MV's place, and it showed identical damage. Let's guess which gun fired that one, eh?


It was pretty obvious from looking at the 12 gauge shot shells which were for rifled slugs & which were from shot. The slug has a round mouth, the shot has a star-flared mouth.


The SKS put a dent from ejection on all the cases, and that was the only damage they all share. There are various nicks on the steel, but that might be because it was flinging the empties 15+ feet onto rocky ground.


We never found any of the .30-06 cases, but that was partly because it was only fired 4 times. Nobody else wanted to shoot it. Oh well.

********

Man Alive is it ever fun to shoot guns at stuff that blows up a little bit when you shoot it. Accurate guns are even more fun, and a variety of guns is good great fun. It also helps when half the guns have historical significance that you can tell each other about, and one of your shooting party is an old man who knows how to tell a good story about when he was growing up in Africa. If you're not shooting for recreation, you are really missing out.

Range Report 02/01/2009

The shooting session at MV's property fell through. He was supposed to be part of a gang of fellows from his work helping one new guy move. Lots of guys, lots of trucks, 1, maybe 2 trips. MV was the only one who showed. I told him I hope the new guy never has to move any bodies. MV is the kind of People, he got the joke.

Anyway, the shooting session on Saturday fell apart. Sunday I was antsy to a degree rarely experienced since I left the high-stress semiconductor manufacturing industry and I felt like blowing off some steam. Saturday night I sent a few score BB's across the yard, but it only took the edge off. Sunday on the way home from church, my Darling Wife agreed to let me go out to the range after we got home. I got the children acceptably fed and tucked in or medicated as required and said I'd try to be back in less than an hour. Absolute max. was 1.5 hours before we had to get ready to go back to church.

At the very least, in this session I wanted to verify the function and check scope alignment on my two newest rifles, and verify proper function of the 1911 I borrowed from a co-worker. I had previously stripped and cleaned the 1911. The rifles have been sitting probably for several years without any cleaning to speak of by the previous owner. He seems to be of the "clean the bore and the action will be alright" school of rifle cleaning. I grew up when the M4 was the U.S. service rifle, so my idea of adequately is "you could eat off the action if you don't mind the taste of oil". Oh well, I gave a hunner't bucks for each rifle so even if there are some minor functional problems, the price is still right.

I was going, as I said, to verify function, not to enjoy myself. To truly get all my shooties out, I like to spend at least a couple of hours at the range, preferably with another Grey Man. At least I got to go out, and some is a fair piece better than no shooting, any day.

The man behind the counter recommended I go with a rifle range first because they are fewer and fill up faster at their shop. I did. First up was the Marlin Model 60 with a Redfield 4x scope. The rifle I got from a friend who is now dying of a defective heart. The scope is the only tangible thing, and one of the two things of any value Crazy New Daddy ever gave me. Maybe some other time I'll say what he gave me that you can't see. Anyhow, I loaded the Marlin with two rounds to check for doubling. I ran the target out to 25 yards, set the scope adjustments to zero, and let loose. It fired and did not double. So far so good. The second trigger pull got me bupkis. I cycled the bolt, and an empty case came flying out covered in nasty dirty gun oil. The second round loaded and pulled the same act. The first spent casings wouldn't eject, and when the bolt was cycled they came out filthy dirty. After a few shots, it started ejecting about 2/3rds of the casings, but it wouldn't cycle the bolt far enough back to load the next round. I chalked the performance up to being run very dirty. I noticed that a few of the casings had crushed mouths, but I won't know what to think of that until I shoot it again now that it's been cleaned. The scope was off, but not by much, and I got it close enough for recreational use. The air conditioning in this range is so strong that it makes the targets move a couple of inches side-to-side, but I could tell that it was close, so I killed a couple of paper people and enjoyed the near-total lack of recoil from the puny little .22LR round. It was truly almost like shooting my pellet rifle the other day. Fun, even as a bolt-action. Besides, I got some high quality malfunction drills in .

Next up was the Enfield M1917 that my source had "sporterized" by installing a Monte Carlo style stock, a Lyman All American 4x scope, cutting off the rear sight and its wings, cutting off most of the front sight, reblueing the action, and cutting off the end of the firing pin. This thing, being a bolt action, was visibly filthy. I had to jam the bolt home with considerable force with every round. I can't see how anyone could hunt with this thing, but I guess if it's just one shot at a time it would be useable. I just wanted to see how the scope was lined up. It was much more obvious with this rifle that the target, even at 25 yards, was just not stable. I put one round 2" right and the next 2" left without any scope adjustments. I ran the target out to 100 yards (love the moving target system, hate the low-mass swinging paper target feature) and put a few more down range. It was minute-of-Goblin accurate from offhand, which is the whole idea. The Lyman scope has an interesting reticule. A fine cross-hair with a coarse needle from the bottom, tapering to a point just above the cross-hair. It's a bit like a German, but the cross-hair is fine and the upright is tapered along its length. Very fast target acquisition. I decided to shoot a few more magazines full just so I could have the spent brass.*


I collected my brass and target and put the rifles away, and switched to a pistol range. The 1911 was clean and 100% rattles-when-shaken G.I., so of course it ran perfectly with 230 grain ball ammunition. It also slung the brass hard enough to dent about 40% of the case mouths on the wall next to my shooting station. An unfamiliar gun, an unfamiliar round, and a drifting side-to-side target got me a head-sized grouping from two full magazines at 7 yards. Good enough. I just wanted to be sure it worked. It did. Time's up, and I'm off back to the house.

****

Post-mortem examinations of the cases, conducted after church that night:

The .45 was really flinging them hard. Dented mouths all over the place. Solid hits on all the primers and nasty scraped rims from the extraction. This extractor works good for one time use of brass, not so much for reloading. Oh well, it's not my pistol. I'd give it a trigger job and tune the extractor at least, but that's up to the owner to do or not as he pleases (I think, he doesn't care). This pistol is so worn it's almost in the white anyhow, so I guess the dinged-up brass just adds character. Or something.



The Enfield was also hard on the cases. They all show a nasty triple-score that tells me something is either sticking out from or stuck in the action, or the cartridges are not feeding quite as straight-in as they should be. The rims all got chewed as well. The extractor can be dealt with and that's not too hard. The burr or whatever, makes me think this is also not a weapon to shoot for reloadable brass (yet). I'll have to get that taken care of, pronto. Good, hard primer hits in every case.



The Marlin was hard on the mouths of a few rounds and I wish I knew why. The first few cases were nasty dirty but it started to clean up the more I shot it and baked off the oil.




****

Clean-up:

The 1911 gave me no difficulty, and cleaning was as expected. Light GSR where you would think to find it, none where you wouldn't. The final assembly went well until I got to the last step, which gave me fits as you can read here.

The Enfield was nasty. The bolt was grey when I started and black & white when I finished cleaning it. The rags looked like I had cleaned up the garage floor with them, and that was just the action. This guy cleaned his barrels but not his actions. He had cut off the end of the firing pin which means I couldn't use a nickel behind the cocking piece to disassemble the bolt. Using screwdrivers to pry, I got the bolt apart after all, and it was full of GSR and cosmoline (!) when I got in there. Oh, and I pinched myself a new blood blister putting the bolt back together, thanks for asking. I've bled on this rifle now, so that means it's officially mine. The reciever was filthy too and also changed colors during cleaning. The locking grooves had not only chunks of powder, but also little chunks of metal in them. Maybe that explains why the bolt was so stiff to close and lock eh? It's smooth and fast now though, and I'm really looking forward to shooting this piece next time.

The Marlin had sand-sized chunks of powder stuck on and in the greasy action. Almost like it had never been cleaned since 4 years after I was born, when it was manufactured. The barrel, again , was spotless.

****

Lessons:
*Shooting is fun
*Col. Cooper was right. Percieved recoil is mostly mental. Playing football will give you a harder hit than shooting a .30-06 as long as you hold it properly to your shoulder.
*Of course, when I was just shooting to empty the brass, I got sloppy and put the corner of the butt to my shoulder. Once. Ow.
*Don't try to sight in a rifle at that shooting range


*At my work station, I have various decorations held up by push pins. The push pins have spent shell casings on them. It looks like my flair is held up with cartridges jammed into the wall, and I like it. I wanted some .30-06 brass up there, so I fired it off.

Gun Range Tomfoolery Stories

Xavier relates a story about some people doing things approximately as stupid and dangerous as driving drunk when he went to a gun range recently. It reminded me of an event that happened when I was a boy in Houston.

I suppose I was 12 or younger at the time. We had gone out as a family (at least Dad, Mom, and me, I don't recall if Sister #2 was there) to a local outdoor range to kill some paper people. The firing line at this range had a row of separate benches with a small table or counter at each station attached to the 4x4s holding up the corrugated roof. There was a space between every couple of benches to let you out onto the range. The floor was a long strip of concrete maybe 3 meters wide. The short pistol range targets were upright 4x4s with oriented strand board walls to which targets would be stapled. There was an elevated platform behind the firing line with the Range Master on overwatch, and roving Range Officers as well. It was a firing session, with guns a'blazin' and lead flying downrange. A family that must either have been populated with stupid, unthinking people, or else they were from a very bad part of town, showed up. There were at least 3-4 of them, maybe more but I was focused on what a specific few of them were doing.

What they were doing was walking downrange, and then posting targets on the backstop. During a live firing session. As in, the stall next to them has somebody with a gun very obviously going BANG BANG BANG, and they bebopped out onto the grass and started stapling targets up. Firing nearby stopped immediately as the shooters with some [deleted] sense saw what was going on. The Range Master got on the 1MC and called a cease-fire and proceeded to bawl them out over the PA. I think we left not too long after that but I'm not sure if it were because of them or if we were done anyway.

********

Thinking of that shooting range reminds me of a few other times we went there. Once, it sounded like someone was shooting a cap gun as we got out of the car, and then again as we were walking from the shop to the range. It was a woman shooting a little tiny Beretta or Taurus .22 pistola.

Another time, we got a bench next to an old man (like 75+) with a BIG gun. It was a Desert Eagle in .50AE and he was shooting it slowly. Slowly as in, he would pick the hand-cannon up and take aim and fire once BOOOOOOOM and then rest the pistol on the table again for a few seconds. It must have been a fun way to get tired in a hurry.

Yet another session was with Mom trying out her new Glock 17. Limp-wristing it a little. She managed to limp-wrist bad enough to get it to stovepipe pretty reliably, but only with Blazer aluminum-cased ammunition. The funny part, though, was that she was also limp-wristing badly enough to have it eject the shells straight up and slightly to the rear, and they were coming down on her head. She had a poofy big-curls hairdo that day, and the shells were getting caught in the curls and she did a hot-shells-in-my-hair dance that was moderately amusing.

Range Report

or, I Know What You Did Last Memorial Day

Yesterday (Memorial Day) we observed the holiday by spending it with those living people we love, including several families from our church and their families. In the morning, our a/c at the house was acting up, so I missed the 14:00 range session, but I figured our host, M.V. would at least like to see my highway patrol surplus Glock, so I took it and the Kel-Tek and a small pile of ammunition, on the chance that he might want to do some more shooting once the party thinned out some.

I knew that M.V. had shot a revolver and some pistol-caliber carbines, so I was somewhat surprised when he said he had never fired a pistol. C.B. may have a revolver (I'm not sure) but if he's fired off a full box of cartridges, ever, I'd be surprised.
E.M. has never been shooting.

We lit off some fireworks after a few hundred too many calories, and the majority of the guests split. Right at the crack of night, E.M. got clearance from his Wife to go shooting before they left. It was M.V.'s land, so he was good to go. C.B. joined us as we arrived on the range.

Distance: about 15yds. Target/backstop: some sacks of quickrete that had set up in the rain last summer, that were propped against some trees. I set my coke bottle on the sacks.

The 1st shot was mine. I went through the manual of arms for the Glock 22 and, with the first round, made a clean kill of my recently-emptied bottle. Everybody got a few rounds off with the Glock, and there were comments about the biggish recoil.

The next course of fire was with the Kel-Tek .380, and there were no more comments about the recoil from the foh-tay.

Then once more round with the Glock, me first. I was very pleased with the controllability in rapid-fire, and happy to put my first rapid-fire string out of it (Red's doesn't allow more than a controlled triple in rapid-fire). I also put out a much less accurate rapid-fire string from the Kel-Tek, and shot both single-handed. Fun.

We picked up some spent casings for souvenirs and recycling (and, for me, to have a quick check to see how the guns were running) and headed back up to the house. I tried to assuage E.M.'s fears when he asked how much all this shooting was costing me. The answer would have been different if we were shooting 30-06, but if you count the price cut I got on the Kel-Tek, I basically spent $0 on ammunition last night (yay!). We had a discussion with the neophytes about the relative power and size of various chamberings, including a discussion of E=MC(squared). Score: 3 made better militia members, 1 militia member got more gun time with his own weapons. Also, a 4-year old got to handle his first-ever live cartridge and got a very brief saftey & explanatory lecture, and E.M.'s wife heard from mine, that shooting really is fun. Plant the seeds!

The shooting was good. The quick-set concrete seems to be an excellent backstop for pistol fire. The Kel-Tek had zero malfunctions of any kind. The painted sights were of little use, due to low ambient light and a handheld spotlight that put daylight brightness on the target. The night sights on the G22 were of little use, also due to the spotlight's brightness. The Glock had one stoppage, a failure to feed, with a Speer Gold-Dot that had never been chambered before. That's a 5% failure rate and I think I'll be getting some Expanding Full Metal Jackets instead, in the future. Accuracy was fair, but since we were just shooting to shoot (no paper targets), the shower of cement shrapnel was much more impressive than the accuracy of the weapon.

Good times.

In the iterest of promoting familiarity with weapons of all sorts, and the advancement of the level of skill and knowledge amongst the members of the People, I will reiterate The Offer, again: if you have never shot a firearm, and are in the Central Texas region, contact me. I will take you to a well-lit, air-conditioned, controlled environment and supply the guns and ammunition. No strings attached. I want you to not be afraid of guns. I want you to know how to shoot. I want you (eventually) to be at least armed and able to defend your own home against Goblins.