Category: Shooting

Caleb says he finally understands point shooting. It has to do with the sights on old guns being horrid. I only really carry two guns anymore, and that’s the Glock and the Kel-Tec. The Kel-Tec sights are pretty rudimentary, but I don’t have too much difficulty acquiring them. The Makarov, which I’ve carried on the rare occasion, has front sights that are damned near impossible to acquire quickly. I’ve pained the front sight on mine with white out just to make it visible, but it’s still tough to acquire. I don’t really have any old pistols, but if they are anything like the Mak, I can understand.

Great find by the Firearms Blog:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfDoQwIAaXg[/youtube]

Toward the end, about 9 minutes in, you see in slow motion what happens at my club every Thursday.  Well, not the part where they shoot shot at the animals, but very cool regardless.

This Thursday at Silhouette I dropped my electronic ear muffs on the pavement while trying to open the door to the range. It killed one ear. So looking for a new pair on Midway, I notice there’s quite a lot that’s backordered. That’s what I would expect if a lot of people were just getting into shooting. But, you know, the anti-gun groups were busy telling us it was just paranoid us loons that were buying guns, not first time gun owners. I can’t believe we’re all busting electronic muffs on the pavement.

Reno dealers are reporting that the ammunition shortage appears to be easing. I guess we did more shooting at GBR than I thought :)

GruntDoc is a blog by an emergency room physician in Texas. He e-mailed me a few days ago, indicating apprehension that his regular audience might not enjoy his blogging about his hobby.  Judging from the comments, I would say he’s got not much to worry about. Look at this comment:

Outstanding. I’m a .308 guy myself, but there’s nothing wrong with the 300 mag.  Shooting as a sport is as American as mom and apple pie. Anybody who’s going to be sickened and horrified that you own a bullet-launching device needs their head examined.[…]

Shooters are everywhere, and in places you’d never expect. It’s one of the few sports where you can be on the line with a carpenter on one side of you, and a college professor on the other side. In fact, you can find that at my club any given Thursday.  I decided 7 years ago not to keep my hobby a secret, and I’ve never found anyone particularly offended by the idea.

I think it’s important for shooters to be open with people about their hobby, because knowing someone who shoots is going to be a big factor in putting things into perspective for the non-gun owning public, and you’ll probably be surprised just how many people actually share your hobby.

During the Gun Blogger Steel Challenge match in Reno over the weekend, I got badly beaten by a thirteen year old girl.  Her name is Molly Smith:

Molly is the one in the middle, with Keewee and Bea, our other two female shooters, on either side. Of course, she’s not just any 13 year old girl.  She happens to be a junior world champion at Steel Challenge and sponsored by Smith & Wesson. So I can’t say I feel bad about losing to her, and really, I was happy to come even within a country mile of what she can shoot.  Here’s a video shamelessly stolen from The Packing Rat of her shooting with us. She is fast:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0bsWRSV2bU[/youtube]

Molly is also a gun blogger, who blogs about her competition.  I think what Molly does is great, and I appreciate that she and her family are still fighting the good fight in California. I asked her dad how much California’s restrictive gun laws interfere with being able to remain competitive in a sport like Steel Challenge, and his answer was that they interfere a lot. Someone of Molly’s skill and potential deserves better than the State of California is giving her. I want to thank her for coming out to Reno, and reminding me why I continue to dedicate so much time and energy to this issue.

This is the last thing we need with ammo supplies just starting to recover.  Last time I got PP ammo though, the cases showed signs of being over pressured.

We’ve followed the saga of the Blue Trail Shooting Range up in Connecticut for a while now.  It seems there’s a new twist in this sorry story that’s very strange.  It would seem our villain this story, Pat DiNatale, who argued that the reservoir adjacent to the Blue Trail range was contaminated with lead, is taking about $450,000 of said “contaminated” soil from a dredging project on the reservoir to use as topsoil for a grazing field for his cows.  See stories here and here.  I guess if he’s willing to use it for grazing purposes, he can’t think it’s very contaminated then can he?  The soil apparently tests out fine.

There’s always been something very shady with this whole thing.

I went back to air pistol silhouette with Sebastian last night, the first time I touched the gun in a couple of weeks. But I wasn’t in the greatest mood for a number of reasons. About an hour before I left, I became insanely tired – like worried I’d fall asleep and not get Sebastian’s gun to him tired. When I got out there, the humidity was a bit of an issue. While it wasn’t icky sticky humidity, it was just enough that my clothes were sticking to me and making me itch a little.

In theory, you always want to do well. In reality, sometimes your give a damn is just busted. That was me last night. I started out the day wanting to go shoot, but in that last hour before we hit the range, things just kind of fell apart, and I wasn’t really there. Because of this attitude, I didn’t bother telling Sebastian about my trouble with the sight on the gun until I was on the last two banks of chickens – more than 3/4 of the way through the 60-shot match. It appeared as though there was crap in my sight, but I assumed it was something to do with my eye. My allergies have been driving me nuts the last few days, most notably with my eyes. So I assumed it was just one more physical reason I shouldn’t be out there. (They were joking with me that I was yawning too much since I was doing so every couple of minutes.)

Turns out that others agreed, my sights were in need of adjustment. So Sebastian came over and took care of it for me. (It’s still his gun, so I don’t change anything on it other than the CO2 and pellets.) Lesson learned. Even if I’m grumpy, if something seems off, I shouldn’t assume it’s just me. It might be my allergies, it might be my crappy eyesight, but there’s also a small chance that it might be the gun.