Then we mixed them. Yes, she was a little apprehensive at first. This whole Kitchen Aid mixer making Boomerite is a little “different”. Six weeks ago had you told her she was going to be traveling to Idaho, making explosives to “carve” pumpkins, and shooting a rifle before Halloween she would have said, “No way!”
Here are some sample pictures of the pumpkins being “carved” (thanks to Barron for bringing them to the party):
The picture below was taken a fraction of a second after the picture above. Notice that the pumpkin pieces have slowed and are further from the origin. I wonder what the BC of a pumpkin seed is. The picture above almost duplicates a picture Ry took a few years ago. Here is a cropped version of the same picture:
There are hazards to pumpkin “carving” with Boomerite. Max wasn’t really “entertainingly close” by some peoples standards but it was close enough that he sometimes turned away to avoid getting hit in the face with pieces of pumpkin. I was extremely pleased that his finger came off the trigger and he kept the gun pointed in a safe direction:
I’m sure Ms. Peterson will be pleased to know we didn’t use guns as our primary tool for carving the pumpkins. It was just the remote detonator for the explosives. And these new shooters will share their experience and pictures with friends and family which will add to the set of people who recognize modern sporting rifles in common use are not “assault weapons” which should be banned. But instead many of them will desire their own and to share in the fun of the gun and Boomershoot culture. And what does Ms. Peterson and the Brady Campaign have to counter this?
Late last month Max and Barb had watched part of a USPSA match I participated in. I introduced them to Anette and Charles but had not been able get to the range with them for their own trigger time.
Today I took Barb and her son Max to the range. Max had done some shooting before but not a lot. Barb said she might have shot a gun once when she was about 12 years old but couldn’t remember for certain.
Max’s previous experience showed. This was with the Ruger Mark II from about 10 feet away.
This is Barb’s first target. Again with the Ruger Mark II. I would include the picture of her smile but she had her eyes closed.
This was good for a first time shooter. She was having some problems with the follow through and pulling the gun low for a bit and after we got that corrected the group moved up and got a lot tighter.
One of the first things she said after shooting the first target was, “This was more fun that I thought it would be.”
This is Max with his revolver target. He shot it single action for a couple cylinders then shot it double action. All from about 8 feet away. I was impressed. My little S&W Air-Lite only has a 3″ barrel.
This is Barb with her revolver target. All single action. Very nice! Excellent for a new shooter.
We left a little early because the people in the next bay were shooting a .44 Magnum. It was a little unpleasant for us.
As we were driving away for lunch Max invoked Markley’s Law over the guy with the .44 Magnum. I gave them the history of Markley’s Law. They had not heard of it before which isn’t at all surprising. They hadn’t heard of Godwin’s Law either so I briefly brought them up to speed on that as well.
The next planned shooting excursion for Max and Barb is a trip to Idaho for a private Boomershoot party on the 20th of this month.
The usual happened. Big smiles and almost uncontrolled glee:
Yes Kim, that is your bullet hole nearly dead center in the bull.
It’s nice to enable someone to accomplish something that gives them great happiness.
Can the Brady Campaign enable individual accomplishments that will provide a lifetime of pleasure? Despite their stated best of intentions the achievement of their goals would actually block such pleasures as well as the defense of innocent life and enable violent crime that will cause sorrow to the end of your days.
Take a non-shooter to the range, make Sarah and Jim Brady cry, and make the world a better place.
New shooter Maggie had been to the range only once before. On Saturday daughter Kim, her boyfriend Jacob, Barron and I showed her how we make Boomerite and then let her shoot about 15 or 20 seven inch targets.
Her very first shot with a rifle was at a Boomerite target. It was a hit:
Try getting a smile like that at an “anti-gun range”.
Today I took son James and daughter-in-law Kelsey shooting. This was the first time for Kelsey. James and I had told her it was an option for her if she was ever interested. But I never pushed her on it. To the best of my knowledge James has not either. A few weeks ago they informed me that Kelsey had decided she would like to learn to shoot because it would help her feel safer when James wasn’t home.
This was a really big deal for Kelsey. Her family is somewhat anti-gun. When she told them she was going to learn to shoot a gun they “sort of freaked out”.
This morning I went over to do the “classroom” portion of the lesson. I had done a tiny bit previously in the weeks previously when I would go over for dinner on Monday nights. I wanted to refresh those lessons and get her ready for actually pulling the trigger on a live round.
I reviewed the sight picture with her and immediately noticed that she was cross-eye dominate. She is right handed but her left eye is dominate. We reviewed her options and she tried various things with my plastic gun. She decided she probably would be shooting left handed.
I asked her if she remembered the three safety rules (I teach the NRA rules, not the Jeff Cooper’s). She hesitated just a bit but told me:
Never point the the gun in an unsafe direction.
Never put your finger on the trigger until you are ready to shoot.
Never load the gun until you are ready to use it.
Wow! That was interesting! She got the essence of the rules correct but she turned them all into negatives. The NRA rules are positive statements of what you should do. I explained that it was, to exaggerate the point some, like telling someone not to thing of pink elephants. The actual NRA three gun safety rules are:
ALWAYS keep the gun pointed in a safe direction.
ALWAYS keep your finger off the trigger until ready to shoot.
ALWAYS keep the gun unloaded until ready to use.
I showed her the proper grip and stance then went over the mantra “trigger prep, sight alignment, squeeze, follow through”. I had her use one of my plastic guns to practice going from a high ready position to a fire position simultaneous with using the mantra.
I told her that eventually she would be able to look at something close her eyes then point the gun at what she had just seen without needing the sights. Just like pointing at something with her finger.
It was at this point that she said, “I’m not sure I ever want to be able to do that.”
Huh?
She explained that when she held a gun in her hand she was very aware that she was holding “Life in her hands.” Interesting choice of words I thought but didn’t tell her that. Most people, in particular anti-gun people, would say, “Death in their hands.” She did not want to be so comfortable with a gun that she took it causally. She even expressed concern that she might become a sociopath. I tried to explain that wasn’t something that was going to happen at her age but she interrupted and said that she had been concerned that she might give birth to a sociopath since the age of 13 and no one had been able to dissuade of that in the intervening years and I wasn’t going to be able to talk her out of that concern in the next few minutes. I let that drop but asked, “What about using a gun to stop an attack against you?” She wasn’t sure, “It depends on what their situation was. What if they were just at a really bad point in their life?” “What about defending the life of your child?”, I asked and got a similar answer. The same for someone stomping on her puppy or cat.
Interesting.
I went on to the next lesson and showed her how to determine if a gun was unloaded–verify the source of ammunition has been removed and the chamber is empty.
I had her dry fire my STI. I repeatedly manually racked the slide and she “got” the reason for leaning into the shot and having the elbows slightly bent to absorb the recoil.
We went to the range and the public bay was crowed. Very crowded. The members bay was less crowded but we had to go through the public bay to get to the member’s bay. A shot went off as we entered the public bay and even with my best electronic muffs on Kelsey jumped and cowered. James and I hurried her into the members bay. But even there the shots from next door caused her to jump and nearly curl into a fetal position while still standing.
“It’s so loud!”, she said. After a brief consultation, James asked if I had any foam plugs she could use. I didn’t but the gun store was open and we left to get them.
She put them in and we returned. I can’t say that I could see it improved her demeanor any. And each shot made it worse. She was curled up, shaking, sweating, and crying. I told James that we should take her home. If she still wanted to learn we could go again sometime out in the woods with Ry and his suppressed .22. James started talking to Kelsey and I packing up our stuff. I shouldered my backpack and was ready to walk out but James said she still wanted to try it. I asked why. Kelsey said because she had said she would do it. “That doesn’t matter,” I told her. If you really want to do this we can do this another time when and where it’s much quieter. She insisted and I relented.
I had her dry fire the Ruger Mark II. She still jumped every time another gun went off some place. But the crying and shaking had stopped.
I put a single round in a magazine, racked the slide, and let her pick up the gun to shoot at the target about eight feet away. She brought the gun up and pointed it at the target. She hesitated and then quickly put the gun down. “I can’t do it!”, she said. “Okay, you don’t have to,” I told her. “You don’t have to do this. I don’t think you are ready and I think we should go home so we can talk about this.”
I started to pack up again. But she said, “How about I just hold the gun and you pull the trigger?” “I’m fine with that”, I said.
She picked up the gun and pointed it at the target. I repeated the mantra as I put my finger over hers in the trigger guard. I just barely touched her finger and was starting to say “squeeze” when the gun went off.
She put the gun down and started jumping up and down. “I did it!” she exclaimed. The guns booming on either side no longer mattered. From then on she didn’t stop smiling until we left the range except to pout when she had emptied a magazine. I started taking pictures and then a video:
I showed her where first shot ever hit. It was about 5:30, just inside the black.
She asked to do it again. I started to put in a half-full magazine. “Not that many. Just one. Maybe two,” she said.
I loaded the gun with two rounds.
Those went quickly and she asked for three rounds.
Then a full magazine.
And then another, and another, and another.
James shot for a while then Kelsey returned to the bench. I had her hold my partial brick of .22 ammo. She didn’t understand the joke but held it for me anyway:
I merely said the boxes had gotten a little bit wet, then dried, and were sticking together. I’ll have to explain it to her tomorrow when we go sailing.
She burned through magazine after magazine with fire blazing from the barrel. She emptied the magazines faster than I could reload.
She moved the target out to nearly 30 feet and could still keep them in the black at will. It was only when she pushed the speed that the rounds strayed a bit. But only one was outside the rings and all were on the paper:
When we brought the last target in she pointed to the big hole in the paper and with almost a growl said, “I killed it!”
Anti-gun for 25+ years then turned into a budding sociopath in just over an hour. Sarah Brady’s worst nightmare just came true. Damn! I’m good.
Tonight it was Julie’s turn. Julie is the daughter of this new shooter I took to the range nearly three years ago:
As I pointed out to Julie her group was smaller than that of the shooter in the next lane over. And after a couple more targets almost all of her hits were in the black at the same range.
After a couple hundred rounds I gave her an USPSA target:
Those smiles will bring tears to the eyes of the Brady Campaign people. Keep those smiles coming folks!
A third new shooter, Kelsey, is currently scheduled for a trip to the range on July 28th.
Friday we went to the shooting range and taught my roommate Shannon how to shoot (she had never shot a gun before in her life). Mike did most of the “training” since he’s in the Army. We shot a .22 pistol, my .357 magnum revolver, and… a full-auto AR-15. It was fun to introduce someone new to shooting. Shannon loved it and wants to go shooting again! Luckily we found out that Thursday nights are “date night” and two people shoot for the price of one… can you say roommate date?
Alan Gura September 10, 2011 Gun Blogger Rendezvous In response to the question he posed, “What can you do to help?” [SAF is the main funding source for the lawsuits Gura has been engaged in. Taking people to the range, particularly new shooters, decreases the odds they will vote for an anti-gun politician or donate money to anti-gun organizations. And, most importantly, it makes Sarah Brady, Josh Sugarmann, and Michael Beard cry.—Joe]
I met Rose through Oleg (who met her through Mike and Laurel last Spring) who got her into modeling. She’d told Oleg she wanted to learn more about shooting, so he got her and me talking. It took a while, but we got to the range this Monday. It was cold, with several inches of snow on the ground, but we managed to get in a couple hours of trigger time.
We went through the safety rules, loading and unloading, manipulating the controls on a Ruger Mark II and a Daewoo DP-51 9 mm, stance, grip, sight picture, trigger control, some thoughts on anticipation (flinching), and follow-through.
Rose explained that since she is a boxer, she knows all about flinching and that it would not be a problem. When you’re looking at getting punched in the face, you learn self control or it’s over quickly. Good. Shooting is very much a mental exercise. I said that flinching is a problem for everyone, even experienced competitive shooters, and that I’ve seen a new shooter hit the ground halfway to a 10 yard target because of anticipation.
Well, her first ten rounds from the 22 auto all hit the 12″ square target, with one right in the center, from about 10 yards. Pretty good for someone who’d only fired a pistol once, more than ten years ago. It doesn’t always happen that way. Usually we don’t even look at the first target, concentrating more on stance, grip and muzzle control.
She was pretty happy afterward, having hit all the 14 ounce vegetable cans with the 9 mm pistol. We finished up with an UltiMAK equipped M1 30 Carbine, so she got introduced to the laser transmission hologram (this one had an Old Bushnell Holosight that we’d used for many years of testing at UltiMAK).
Those vegetable cans didn’t stand a chance.
It was a pretty brief run-through, and Rose was visibly shivering from the cold, but she done good. Though it is good practice in general, one would be well advised to treat her, especially, with respect.
I failed to tell her that she could be doing about as well at two and a half times the distance, with some more coaching and practice. 25 yards is the minimum distance in the pistol bays at the Kenmore Shooting Range, where I took my instructor training. They teach beginners there too, and do well with it by all accounts.
John Lennon’s son, Sean, says he really enjoys shooting guns. He also says he doesn’t people should be armed. But that might change—his girlfriend is from Georgia and “Lennon was invited down to the shooting range so that the family could see if their daughter’s new squeeze was ‘a straight shooter’.”
The more familiar he becomes with guns the more likely he is to realize his feelings toward them really are because of the misuse of the gun by a mentally disturbed individual rather than the possession of firearms by ordinary people.
Taking a new shooter to the range is an important part of winning. This example is just another small step to driving the anti-gun activists into political extinction.
I had been putting Ian off all week. Last week I told him Monday evening should work. I had forgotten about the previously made plans to have dinner with James and Kelsey.
I didn’t even offer Tuesday because that was the evening Barb was showing up from Idaho.
Tentative plans were made for Wednesday but those were scrapped when some tentative plans for dinner with some friends I expected to fall through didn’t.
Thursday I loaded up my car with over a thousand rounds of ammo, three handguns, a rifle, and some other gear. I parked off across the street (Microsoft doesn’t allow guns on campus) and that evening Ian and I went to Wades where I have a lifetime membership.
As he filled out the new shooter paperwork I paid the guest fee and purchased a USPSA practice target.
I started him out on a Ruger Mark II at about three yards:
Then an Olympic Arms AR-15 at seven yards:
Then S&W .22 revolver at three yards:
Then my STI Eagle 5.2 chambered in .40 S&W at three yards:
This is his single action revolver results (the double action results were just as good):
But he did well with .40 S&W too (the smaller holes are from the AR-15 at seven yards):
This is at seven yards with the .40 S&W:
We picked up the brass and as we drove to his bus stop I explained the economics and custom load benefits of reloading. It was during the drive he said the words I made my QOTD.
Another day, another oppressed minority from another country liberated (see also representatives from China, Canada, India, and Taiwan).
Gang is one of my co-workers. He is from the People’s Republic of China. He had some military training when he was still living there but he only fired eight rounds total from an SKS. He went shooting with some friends in the U.S. once quite a while back. He doesn’t qualify as a “new shooter” but he is still a beginner. He told me he would like to try it again sometime and I, of course, was pleased to take him to the local range. He said his father-in-law was visiting from China and would like to go along too if that was okay with me. FIL had never fired a gun before. He had field-stripped one in training but had never fired it.
Gang bought me dinner at a local Chinese restaurant. I went through the safety rules with Gang translating for his FIL. I told him which guns I had brought and Gang asked if they all fit in the car. I said there was plenty of room but I was carrying one with me there in the restaurant. They didn’t seem surprised or concerned.
When we got to the range I then had them do some dry firing with the .22 revolver. I worked with them on the grip, stance, sight alignment, and trigger control. First using the gun in single action, then double action.
Here is FIL cocking the gun in preparation to fire his first actual shot:
Here is the result of his first eight rounds from about 10 feet away:
I was impressed! I know people who have put many hundreds of rounds down range and can’t shoot that well. Gang’s efforts were similar but offset to the right and up of the bullseye about the same amount as FILs were down and to the left.
I then rented a Ruger Mark III/45 since my Ruger Mark II is still with daughter Kim in Idaho. Here FIL is punching holes in the target with the semi-auto:
I fired a few rounds with my STI to make sure it didn’t go full-auto on me after getting it’s new NP3 finish before letting them try it.
They both fired it a few times then I loaded up the Gun Blog 45 for them. The loads were 230 grain bullets but downloaded to a Power Factor of only 175 (typical is about 200). Here the FIL is just getting the gun out of recoil with the slide still not closed:
They said the .45 hurt their hands a little bit but they had big smiles on their faces after shooting a few rounds each:
Next came the Evil Black Rifle:
Success! The target below has holes from both FIL and Gang from about 20 feet away. Each of them had one go low and the rest in a tight group in the middle of the A-Zone. FIL put his three on the lower left of the A-Zone with Gang having the upper three.
As I watched them shoot I keep thinking of Tiananmen Square and wondered how things might have been different had the civilians been armed and able to defend themselves. Gang, his wife, (and perhaps FIL), and daughter will be attending a private Boomershoot party next spring. After learning how to use guns of course they need to learn how to make explosives.
I’ve now taken new shooters to the range from Taiwan, India, Canada, and the People’s Republic of China. I’m exposing the world to freedom, first hand, one person at at time…
As we were leaving the range Gang asked if I was going to the gun show this weekend. I told him that I was returning to Idaho but he and his entire family (even the baby) would be welcome and he said he might go to look around. He doesn’t have a house right now but when he does he might buy a gun for self-defense then.
Tuesday I reported on taking Priyanka to the range for her first experience shooting guns. It turns out that her officemate overheard us talking and asked to go with us. He had never shot a gun before either and really wanted to try it.
I didn’t really want to take two new shooters to the range at the same time when I only had one small booth to work in. So I offered to take him to the range on Wednesday (last night).
It’s always interesting to see what different students have trouble with and how to come up with an exercise to get them past it. Priyanka had trouble shooting fast and accurately. Shooting slow and accurate wasn’t a problem. By moving the target very close she could exercise the “fast” aspect without having to worry about the accurate part so much. Then when the target went back out to a more normal distance she was able to combine the two skills she had learned.
Andrei had problems with pulling his shots low and left. Because of the Crimson Trace laser on the Ruger Mark II I could see that he was aiming well but just as the gun would go off it would dip low and left. Dry fire exercises enable him to see the problem as well. I told him to do most of the squeezing of the grip with his weak hand and concentrate on just moving his trigger finger so his dominate hand didn’t grasp at the same time as the trigger finger moved. Plus, pay less attention to having a good sight picture and more attention to getting a surprise trigger break. It was hard for him but more and more shots started going where they belonged.
After putting a 100 or so rounds of .22 LR down range he wanted to try the Gun Blog 45. Here he is looking for the little knob on the side of the magazine (like on the Ruger Mark II) to push the follower down:
I didn’t let him struggle for long and soon he was getting pretty good results with the .45:
Andrei is originally from Canada but is currently working for a company in California (this company is partnering with Microsoft on a project so he is in Redmond for a while). He asked about how he could buy a gun. What does he have to do? What kind of guns could he buy? I told him what I knew about the gun laws in Canada, California, and Washington and told him that California was more oppressive than Washington and Canada was much more oppressive but he could still have handguns in Canada if he put in enough effort. He said he wanted to stay in the U.S.
I had put on my holster and gun (Gun Blog 45 and the Blackhawk holster I got last year when I went to summer camp) as soon as we got in the car which I had parked off campus. As we left the range he commented on concealed carry and so I explained licenses, open carry, and the laws in Washington versus California. He seemed quite interested and eager to learn more. Next week is not available because Barb will be visiting but if he is still in town the week after I’ll offer to take him to the range again.
As I said yesterday I had arranged to take a new shooter to the range this evening.
She was a little nervous and at first you could even see her hands shake when she loaded the magazine of the Ruger Mark II. When she did some dry fire exercises I could see the gun shake as well. It wasn’t all nervousness though. She has very slender arms and the longer she held the gun out at arms length the more it shook and the more she bent her elbows.
Still, when she fired her first shots at about 10 feet away they were all “in the black”:
After several ordinary targets I put up a slightly used USPSA target and said, “This is a bad guy.” Here is the A-zone. Keep all your shots in the A-zone while shooting as fast as you can.
She had some problems. Many of the shots were going way low. I moved the target in very close about two feet from the muzzle and told her to point and shoot as fast as she could–the bad guy was very close. She shot fast and all the bullets were A-zone hits.
She wanted the target further away so gave her another slightly used USPSA target and she moved it to about 15 feet away and opened fire:
This time nearly all the shots were solid A-zone hits and she had a big smile on her face (Update: she didn’t like any of the pictures of her face so that photo has been removed).
I showed her my Gun Blog 45, hollow point bullets, FMJ bullets, and emptied a couple magazines. One at slow speed with maximum accuracy and one as fast as I could shoot and keep them on target. She declined to shoot the .45.
I showed her a S&W .22 revolver and let her shoot that. She much preferred the semi-auto pistol.
We had a long talk about self-defense and “who needs a gun”. She explained that in India it is very difficult to get a gun and very few people have them. Here many people have them and people use them to hurt other people. Why is it that people can get a gun so easily here?
I told her it was a choice everyone needs to make for themselves. She lives across the street from work and goes to work and gets off during daylight hours. It is in a nice part of town. She has no abusive ex-boyfriends. Other people may go to work or get off work very late at night in a very bad part of town. Everyone needs to make their own decisions. I told her of one of my first students who was a very petite middle-aged woman who told me she was a judge and some of her “customers” were very unhappy with her decisions. She had seen some of these people watch her as she left the courthouse. She had never considered owning a gun before let alone carry one when she went to/from work or when she went to the store. She sometimes traveled on her job and would spend the night alone in a motel many miles from home. She and her husband decided she needed to have a concealed carry permit, a gun, and training. She bought a gun and I taught her to use it defensively. The sheriff issued her a permit and she now carries the gun. I think she made the right decision. I told her of the person searching for “what means of self defence will you use as a woman when you are been raped by a man” who found my blog. And I told her of John Fogh’s advice for such a situation.
I told her of my Just One Question and what the numbers were on criminal use, defensive use, and suicide. I told her how a gun made it possible for a weak 85 year-old woman to defend herself against a large young man.
She said she had a wonderful time and I dropped her off at her apartment–she took all the targets with her.
I’d taken my nephew Ben out shooting several times, including the Boomershoot last Spring, and he’d liked it well enough he decided to tell his cousin Matt about it. Matt decided he wanted to learn about rifles and marksmanship, so they called me and we set up a date.
This Winchester AK-47 is in recoil as a cloud of dirt erupts from behind the 100 yard target. Ben is behind the controls (or is that terror rifle controlling him? OMG!!);
Below is Matt firing a Colt AK-47 HBAR from the bench. After starting out on a Marlin .22 rimfire AK-47 and graduating to the 1894 Winchester AK-47 chambered for the old .30-30 Copkiller cartridge, both off-hand with open sights, this Colt AK-47 shown below with its 4x Trijicon ACOG telescope was as easy for him as, well, something super easy;
And Matt again below, with a Springfield AK-47 HBAR chambered in .308 Massmurder, and a Billybob 3-9 x 40 scope on an ARMS #18 mount. The deep space telescope on the T&E mount at left is for spotting bullet holes;
The ARMS 18 mount sits nice and low over the receiver, but that nice lowness creates a problem. Several shots from each magazine result in a failure to eject due to cases hitting the mount. During Boomershoot I was told that standard M80 ball works fine and dandy with this config. We were using some super accurate, deadly at 37.25 miles, sniper rounds in this AK-47, but I had tried the far-less-dangerous-to-the-climate-and-all-things-holy, M80 earlier, and the claims made by some military shooters at Boomershoot seem to be correct. For some reason, I’ll guess op-rod velocity, the .mil stuff seems to run without being stopped by the ARMS mount. My preferred load for this AK-47 though is the Black Hills 168 grain Match/Terrorist/AngryRacistMob round.
By the way; if you’re contemplating installing ANY receiver scope mount on an M1A (sorry– AK-47) you must plan on hand-fitting it, or having it fit by someone who’s aware of this issue. Your chances of a drop-in fit are quite low, from my experience, and from talking with many other users. That includes a Springfield mount on a Springfield rifle too. It took me hours of file-and-try, file-and-try, to get this ARMS mount to sit on there correctly. The catch is; it SEEMS to go on OK with the first try, but if you tighten the receiver bolt, you’re potentially distorting your receiver, mount, and bolt threads, as the mount is being forced into a position it can’t fit. You then notice, either before you’ve spent hours at the range in frustration, or after, that the mount’s rail isn’t near well enough aligned with the barrel to get a zero. That’s if you’re lucky. If you’re unlucky like I was when I installed my first Springfield mount, the rail will be close enough in alignment that you can actually get a zero, and then things go all to hell afterwards as your mount and receiver slowly peen together, and the zero never stays in one place for long. If the mount is fit properly, the design and function is quite successful, other than the aforementioned ejection issue. This Springfield AK-47 has never had a single stoppage otherwise, either. ‘Course, if you have the standard barrel version, you solve all this time and heartache by using the UltiMAK M8 forward mount. One problem THERE is; a lot of owners don’t really know which barrel weight they have, and SA was making it worse for a couple years by naming one of their medium weight barrel models the “Loaded Standard”. Yeesh. But they fixed that since.
A friend of Barb’s and mine for over twenty years contacted me recently and asked to take me up on my offer to teach her to shoot. We went to Wades this afternoon. I had her shooting my Ruger Mark II. It has a six inch bull barrel and her arms got tired quickly. I went back out to the front desk and utilized my “free rental” (comes with being a member) for a Browning Buck Mark. It was much lighter and she did better.
At about 10 feet nearly all of her shots were within the black. After about 20 rounds she told me, “Maybe I should buy a gun.” I said we could talk about it after we got outside. I did a little bit of shooting with the Buck Mark and my Gun Blog 45 then we left.
In the parking lot I asked her about why she wanted a gun. The answer was the economy is probably going to get worse and Obama may make it difficult to get a gun. She wanted a gun to be able to protect herself and her youngest daughter who lives with her. She asked how much a gun costs and if a .22 would be okay for her needs. I suggested she should practice some more and try to get the strength to be able to shoot something a little bigger. But, the most important selection criteria was that she feel comfortable shooting it. If that means a .22 then that would be best for her.
I emailed her a link to this class which would let her shoot a number of guns as well as cover other important issues of gun ownership such as self-defense legal issues. She responded with:
I will sign up the class with my brother.
…
Thank you so much for teaching me. You are a great teacher. …you can post the comment to the blog too.
We are winning the gun rights issue one new shooter at a time.
A few weeks ago a new co-worker noticed the newspaper clipping (actually it’s two full pages) on my door about Boomershoot and started asking questions about guns. He wanted to buy a rifle, handgun, and shotgun. Which would I recommend?
I asked, What is your intended purpose? He was hesitant but it finally came out that it was for “home defense”. For the rifle he expressed an interest in an AR-15 type gun. And probably a 9mm or similar in the handgun. “Not something with as much recoil as a .45.” But he hadn’t ever fired anything but a .22 rifle which was “years and years ago”.
This evening we went to the range after work. This was the first time I have ever seen the parking lot at Wades completely full. I had to find parking on the street nearby. I wonder why that is…
I went over the safety rules, taught him how to grip the gun, and did a bunch of dry firing and then he put about 50 rounds through a Ruger MK III from about 15 feet away into an IPSC target. He did very well. When I had him doing slow fire he was putting about half of his shots into one ragged hole and the other half within an inch or so. This was more accurate than he thought possible with a pistol. He took his target home with him. I’m wondering if it will show up on his office door at work tomorrow…
Next week we’ll visit the range with larger pistol calibers, revolvers, and an AR-15.
And his politics? He’s a self described liberal. Before Tuesday I’m going to let him know what Obama thinks of the guns he likes and wants to buy.
One of the more interesting things about working at Microsoft is the people I meet from all over the world. My officemate is from India, our PM is from Pakistan, my boss is from Sri Lanka, the new guy is from Australia, and a couple others are from Canada. We work with people in the bay area, China, India, and Dublin.
The guy from Pakistan is forbidden by his Entry Visa from touching weapons or explosives while in the U.S. and has to get “his fix” when he goes back to Pakistan once a year or so. A new member of the team in Dublin is here this week and I took him to the range last night. He had a little bit of experience with shotguns and clay pigeons but had never touched a handgun.
I started him out dry firing my STI then he shot a semi-auto .22LR pistol and then a .22 revolver. After he had gone through a couple hundred rounds I asked if he wanted to try the STI (chambered in .40 S&W). He did. I put just one round in it and he carefully aimed and fired. I could tell by the sounds he made and the expression on his face that it was a bit more than what he expected. I asked if he wanted to try another. There was some hesitation but he agreed. The second round didn’t improve his attitude. He wanted to see me shoot it. I emptied a 16-round magazine in about half that many seconds with a group of about four inches at 15 feet. I did another five rounds at a much slower rate into a group about half that size.
If offered him the chance to shoot again and he chose the .22 semi-auto. We took turns shooting in the lane. I with the .40 and he with the .22. I finished up one box of .40 ammo and purchased another (I had accidentally left my handloads back at my bunker). The second box was a different brand and bullet weight and had a little less recoil. I offered him the .40 again and he fired about three or four rounds before saying he had enough. This is more tolerance for recoil than the previous guy from the U.K. I took to the range about 10 years ago.
I kept thinking there might be an application for the “9mm Europellet”.
The following is from a reader regarding my post Slaves are about to be freed. He reveals that he and his family are so far unarmed but strongly support the RKBA. He lives in the California which puts a severe chilling effect on actually possessing firearms.
From: Rob Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2008 2:42 PM To: Joe Huffman Subject: Re: Your post: “Slaves are about to be freed “
Joe,
I was waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“I think we should start preparing to use a new weapon that we might well have in our arsenal by July. As with all new weapons we need to train with it and plan how to use it before we can use it to maximum effectiveness.”
I thought you were going to write about a newly informed populace and moreover, new shooters.
The biggest thing we can have/build is numbers. Politicians can read polls. If we have the majority of folks behind us (as I think we do) we tend to win. If we have repeated instances of the Kim du Toit happy dance for new shooters, then we have motivated people behind us.
Numbers are what the Brady Bunch worked on for a long time, but they are in trouble because they are selling a negative – the momentum has shifted.
The intermediate victory is that we have begun to sell gun ownership and carrying as a positive. A place not to let up is the “Gun Free Zone” nonsense. We need to make darned sure that private defensive use of firearms in such situations is responsible and underscored in the media as such. The Brady Bunch has no answer for this.
People are the new weapon. The most potent weapon is people who understand RKBA truth and wield it well – freed slaves, empowered private citizens.
I see the training as literal, for new shooters. (My little family – for example – will someday, God willing, be new shooters. We are pro-gun and pointedly so, but not –yet- armed.) The gun community needs to train train train, Now is not a time for a blossoming of gun accidents because people do not know and strictly follow Cooper’s four rules.
When we add to our numbers (who this we unarmed white man?) we win.
When even those who do not choose to arm themselves are happy to allow us to do so, we triumph.
I think I hear the sound of triumph approaching just over the next hill.
Rob
All good points. I’m sure there are others that can be made. I just threw things together off the top of my head to get people started thinking. Please keep thinking and if you want it to have more visibility than a comment email it to me and I’ll probably post it.
