In my home county. The report said “shrapnel” but that term doesn’t quite apply here. “Shrapnel” consists of separate metal fragments, usually balls, placed around an explosive weapon for the purpose of increasing lethality, not to be confused with shell fragments or secondary projectiles. The differences in this case being “purpose” and “weapon”.
No, Young Grasshopper– If you’re going to blow up something with your exploding target, put the explosive target in front of it, so the fragments fly back and away from you and any spectators, then make sure there is ample backstop because fragments, especially from a ductile metal like mild steel or copper, have been known to accelerate to some major percentage of the explosion velocity (or so I was told by those who claim to know). This guy was airlifted to hospital in serious condition. Estimated distance from target; 50 yards. Some mistakes are painful. And expensive. I bet he won’t make that particular one again.
Ry and I once detonated a teeny weeny Boomerite target in front of an extra heavy railroad tie plate (nearly an inch thick, IIRC), and that plate flew 75 yards (back and away from us – we were thinking a little bit at least) after being severely bent. Maybe Ry could fill in some detail on that one.
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 think 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.
The National Shooting Sports Foundation estimates that 10-12 billion rounds of ammunition are produced domestically each year, while billions more are imported.
If you like your eyes and are a shooter you need to read this post:
Non-ballistic eye protection is fine for keeping relatively slow-moving objects away from your face. Empty cases ejected from a firearm, dirt kicked up by muzzle blast, etc. For faster-moving projectiles such as ricocheted bullets, you need high quality, tested eye pro. I would personally prefer eyewear with a single piece lens for any activity where my face might be struck by small, fast-moving objects.
There are lots of tables and video of the test results. I would have liked to have seen more brands tested but I wouldn’t have wanted to pay for even the selection they did test.
I just might attend this. I have a life membership at the gun range and it’s only a few miles away:
As Seattle and the state weigh tighter gun control measures the King County Sheriff is locked and loaded. He’s ready to take the gun control debate to the firing range.
It’s an upcoming campaign event called, “Shootin’ With the Sheriff,” and some say the timing couldn’t be worse.
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Strachan’s “Shootin With the Sheriff” campaign fundraiser happens July 27 from 6-8pm at Wade’s Gun Shop in Bellevue.
And that the anti-gun people are wringing their hands and whining makes it all the more attractive to me.
New shooter Julie from last week and her mother invited me out to dinner on Sunday night. Julie said she wanted to go shooting again—soon!
We went to the range again last night and she shot 200+ rounds through my Ruger Mark II. I had her doing timed drills such as a modified Bill Drill. From the first timed exercise to the last she cut her time, while getting equivalent hits, by about 25%.
Iconic Casting has issued a call for shooters from all walks of life to cast a new shooting competition program which will be filmed for CMT – Anyone is welcome to apply. They are eager to begin interviewing prospective participants as early as this week. Check out their flyer today and follow the instructions in order to be considered for the next big shooting competition reality show! No need to be an ‘expert’ to appear on the show!
Yesterday I had a bullet in the bore in front of another complete cartridge that was fully chambered. The bolt was in battery, the hammer cocked, and the safety was in the Total Devastation position. But I thought better of dropping the hammer. Well I didn’t think so much as feel that for some non-specific reason it might be a good idea to get out of my ready-to-shoot position and open the action.
I had fired hundreds of these cast bullet loads for a Win ’94 carbine and was having quite a good time shooting, using the new tang aperture sight after getting the sights dialed in. The 311291 mold puts out a “bore rider” bullet, meaning the shank of the bullet ahead of the drive bands kisses the rifling as it’s chambered. It’s supposed to make for better accuracy, and so far these have been pretty good in that department. But my mold produces bullets that more than kiss the rifling– they have to be jammed in with just a tad bit more force than optimum. I’ve chambered and un-chambered lots of them before without observing any sort of problem.
Yesterday, I don’t remember why, I decided to check the status of the rifle before taking a shot. It was harder than usual to extract, so when it came loose, the bolt came back rapidly, expelling an empty case. “Odd” I thought, “I’m pretty sure there was a loaded round in there. Oh well.” (first red flag). So I rammed the lever home to chamber another round. It took more than the usual amount of force to chamber (second red flag). But it chambered.
I actually had the rifle up to fire, and then…”Naw…I’ll be needin’ to see that cartridge.” Again it was harder than usual to extract, and this time I could see fine ball powder all over the action and my hand. “OK then, I’m done with the Winchester for the day.”
That first hard extraction had pulled the bullet from the case, but I didn’t notice the spilled powder because I had my long-range shades on (can’t see close-up very well) and the low, direct sun made for so much contrast that anything in shadow was much harder to see. I didn’t notice the little detail of the still un-dented primer. The next round was harder to chamber because I was forcing the first bullet deeper into the bore in front of the fresh cartridge. The new brass was maybe a little soft, and maybe that bullet was on the large side of the size variation range, and maybe the case was on the short side of the narrow length range I had allowed, the crimp design is very good at preventing bullet set-back (which is the concern with tubular magazines) but poor at preventing bullet pull-out, so anyway the bullet pulled free and stayed behind when I extracted the case. Never heard of such a thing, which is why I bring it up here. Maybe I should get another bullet mold.
You know they say that for a single shot action, you don’t need any crimp at all. After yesterday, with any bore rider design I would recommend a crimp no matter what.
Shooting alone is a real pleasure for me. I love taking other people along and having a good time that way, sure. Some of my best shooting memories come from having other people along. I have to get out alone once in a while though, especially with rifles, and I highly recommend it for everyone. It allows focus, and the contrast between the fire and the total silence during breaks does the heart good somehow. On the issue of focus; I believe that the chances of my pulling that trigger on that double bullet load were fairly high, had there been company along.
Edited to add; Below is the bullet in question. You can just see the engraving from the rifling. That individual bullet fit pretty well, but others are a bit tighter (random variations in casting). I should have posted this photo earlier to avoid some of the confusion. “Regular” bullets begin to taper off right in front of the case mouth, but this one is designed to enter the bore in front of the throat, touching the lands. The design helps align the bullet right from the get go. For actual use, the front drive band at the case mouth (and those behind it) is sized to .309″ to tightly engage the .308″ barrel groove diameter and produce a good seal. Also notice the ring around the back of the short ogive, from the seating plug that was designed for longer ogive bullets. This photo was taken over a year ago, before I fired any of these rounds, and you’ll see that the case is either crimped very lightly or not at all. This was a test seating. You also see that the chamber throat is super short (the rifling comes very close to the case mouth, but it’s a largely non-issue here). That’s not a problem with most modern full-copper-patched bullets either, but it does limit the styles I can use. This #2 alloy cast 170 grain gas checked bullet load reaches 2,000 fps from a 16″ barrel, using White Label Carnauba Red lube and 33.5 gr of Win 748 with a WRLM primer. The powder charge and primer are from the Speer manual as a jacketed load. After 50 shots, the bore looks like a polished mirror (the powder burns clean and the bullets don’t leave lead behind).
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.
I’m in the process of registering and making my hotel reservations for GBR VII.
It is a great event with opportunities to meet great people outside of the blogosphere in addition to all the gun bloggers. I always have a good time and I’m looking forward to attending again.
This happens a lot. A customer calls about a problem, and it’s the customer’s gunsmith who says “X” yet the “gunsmith” is totally wrong. The “gunsmith” is the source of the problem, or the source of the misunderstanding of the problem. Yesterday, a rep from Big Household Word High-End Optics Company came in with a Yugo M70. The wooden buttstock’s comb was too high for him, plus he had a Galil missing a detent ball for the rear sight.
Solid wooden stock with a bolt through the middle. So shave down the comb. Fit and try. Ten minutes, plus some finish sanding and some linseed oil. Nope. “Gunsmith” decided it would be a better idea to bubba some lump of weld under the rear sight leaf, to raise the sight instead, thus negating the elevation slide function entirely, and crank up the front to match.
“Gunsmith told him that a detent ball for the Galil was “hard to find”. It took google less than a second to find several sources of loose steel balls, and yet you don’t need a ball per se. It could be a short piece of rod. All it really needs to do is fit in the hole with the spring and be sort of roundish on one end.
I asked the rep; “What kind of a ‘gunsmith’ is this guy?” And this is the answer I get every time;
“Oh but he’s a really great guy. Really a great guy. Old School. He’s been at it for decades and really knows his stuff..” I have gotten that answer from a lot of people. That very same answer. In that very same kind of ‘I can’t believe what I’m hearing’ situation.
I’ve taken to using Tam’s definition of a gunsmith– one who can take an amorphous lump of steel and turn it into a fine firearm. Give the average farmer or junior high school shop teacher around here a bent, rusty nail, a hack saw, an old bastard file and a power drill, and he can make you a new detent pin for your Galil rear sight, without ever having heard of a Galil. Actually he could make do with just the file, the saw and the nail, and his bare hands, but that take a little longer. Same deal for adjusting the comb height, but you only need the file (or a pocket knife) and a chunk of sandpaper. But an “experienced gunsmith” was out of his element. It’s gotten so every time I hear the infamous words, “My gunsmith says…” I start rolling my eyes. I know there are good ones out there (some really, really good ones) but no one calls me or comes in with a problem if they have a really good gunsmith, do they? So my sample is heavily weighted. Or so I hope.
A big takeaway here is that a nice personality, I suppose, can overcome the greatest depths of incompetence, and keep you in business.
Lots of smiles with lots of guns with an attitude that will appeal to everyone except the anti-gun people. What can the anti-gun people do in response except engage in heavy drinking?
Joe and I spoke of this concept many years ago, but I didn’t know until today that it had actually been done. My version, though, would have been gas operated, but that technology wasn’t tested until some time after the end of the percussion era. Gas operation and black powder wouldn’t go very well together because BP is so dirty, but it certainly can be done. Energies are quite a bit lower, but you can throw a projectile of several hundred grains well into the super sonic, from a rifle. The pistols of the same period could only just make, or slightly exceed, the speed of sound with heavy charges. I’ve gotten 1130ish fps with a 180 grain pill from an 8″ bbl on an 1858 Remington New Model Army revolver replica, which is on par, energy wise, with the 40 S&W. The huge 1847 Colt’s Dragoon (Walker) revolver could do somewhat better, but the story goes; it was prone to blow up. Metalurgy has come a long way since then.
Hat Tip; castboolits.gunloads.com (I learned a lot about casting there, and I still hang out on the muzzleloading section now and then)
I brought my then youngest (who is now the middle) daughter to the range at 8-years old and she absolutely loved it. Safe gun handling was taught at least a week before we went. By the time we were at the range she knew what to do and had respect for the rifle. To this day she still asks me “when are we going to that range?” Check out her “straight and off the trigger” finger.
Here are pictures of Mike:
More pictures of Lily:
From looking at these pictures the thought occurs to me that if our opponents were smart enough they may actually have had a rational reason for banning rifles with “collapsible” (length adjustable) stocks. This makes it more difficult for the young to shoot. Even if they didn’t think it through it is a good argument against such restrictions. Hence our side could and should demand, “Think of the children!”
The differences between .223 Remington and 5.56mm NATO have been hashed out many times on the internet. Unfortunately, many of the “facts” that are often thrown around are simply what someone has heard from someone else, leading to a lot of misinformation being accepted as gospel.
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My findings, and the opinions of many experts in the industry who deal with the topic every day, were not exactly what some might expect. In fact, many of them had already discovered what I am reporting, although my research was conducted independently.
If something drastically wrong shows up in the software these times could change but I probably can manually recover without starting over or disrupting the schedule above.
There are some changes I would like to bring to your attention.
1) Clinic and Field Fire Registration is done on the web site as opposed to directly with Gene Econ as has been the case in the past.
2) There is a new Boomershoot event on Friday evening: Private fireballs. For $500 you may shoot a fireball of your own at (up to) “entertainingly close” range. We will supply the rifle, ammo, and a shooting table. This is an experience suitable for even novice shooters. There will be a 7″ square target at relatively close range with a red-dot optic on a .223 caliber rifle. This will be a low recoil, easy sighting, highly exothermic experience.
If you have any questions or experience bugs using the updated entry software please let me know (joeh@boomershoot.org).
For probably nearly 10 years I’ve been wearing a Blade-Tech Combo Magazine Pouch with the Tek-Lok belt attachment. Even if I’m not carrying a spare magazine for my STI Eagle I’m carrying my Sure-Fire flashlight. I always have it with me. On airplanes, in secure government installations, everywhere I’m wearing clothes I have it with me.
A few years ago I tipped over the ATV at Boomershoot and cracked the mag pouch (and did some pretty serious damage to my leg too). The crack gradually got worse and now it no longer reliably retains the magazine. I need a new one.
I went to the Blade-Tech website and tried to order one but the only STI option was for the STI LS (a single stack 1911 chambered in 9×19). I called Blade-Tech to find out if I could get one to accommodate a spare magazine for my double stack STI. The answer was a very friendly, “Yes! We can do that.” The lead time is about six weeks but I now have a replacement on order.
The bottom line is that just because you don’t see something on their website it doesn’t mean they can’t or won’t make one for you.
