Category: Shooting

Gun Nuts Media is reporting that ammunition is starting to fill up in the supply chain again after everyone was stripped bare for a while.  He offers photographic proof.  Prices have gone up, but that’s to be expected if demand is outstripping supply.

If you’ve been following either my Twitter feed or Sebastian’s, you’ll know that I’ve recently taken up air pistol silhouette with him.  I have to admit, it’s fun.  I’m concentrating more on the fundamentals than I have with other types of shooting, and that’s always a good thing.  The fact is that the targets are so small, there’s really no room for error.  And boy, do I ever make errors.  (That is, I miss a lot. But even long time competitors miss quite a few, so I’m not too far behind.)

At one of the competitions, a fellow shooter who could probably shoot a pea at 50 feet mentioned the idea of breaking records.  How could I, as a new shooter in this sport who was just recently ranked as AA, break a record?  Easy, the women’s records are really low.  (Now I see the benefit in shooting having been traditionally a male sport! Makes me wonder if I really should have spent those years introducing women to shooting. They might be my competition now.  I kid.)

For example, in long run records, the women’s open sight record for turkeys is only 10.  Granted, I can’t fathom shooting 10 of them right now, but I hope to one day.  Then I just need to hit 1 more to break a record that was only fairly recently set (2008).  For pigs, the record is just 13 (also set in 2008).  While in chickens and rams the numbers are 15 and 17, respectively (set in 1993 and 1994).  Compare those to the non-senior men’s titles: turkeys 45 (set in 2007 by @slowstdy who we shoot with), pigs 45 (also set in 2007 by @slowstdy), chickens 29 (set in 1993), and rams 29 (another by @slowstdy in in 2008).

Sebastian’s club has multiple national record holders, and maybe I can help add to that if I actually give this a serious try.  (As in, I don’t wuss out on a competition opportunity just because it’s 90+ degrees with humidity to match after helping someone move big furniture the day before…)

Robert has some good ones.  His coverage of Camp Perry has been excellent, so head on over and just keep scrolling.

I have a guy at the club looking to sell an M1903-A3 Springfield, manufactured by Remington.  The furniture on it looks to be pristine, and it looks like it’s in really good shape.  Asking price is $675.  Good price for an M1903-A3 in good condition?

You could say I was on fire this match.  It sure felt that way with the 92 degree temperatures, with humidity to match.  After a really rocky start in the morning, which I will blame on the wonderful smell of Larry’s bratwursts on the grill distracting me, I shot a master score open sights.  35 out of 40.  Going into rams, I only dropped three animals, then dropped two rams.  That’s my third master score this year, which means I move from AAA to Master in open sight air pistol silhouette.

Any sights scores are still trailing.  27 out of 40 with the Mata Gallina.  On my open sight pistol, I have the trigger to the point where it’s decent.  I polished up all the surfaces on the .22, and cut the spring a little, but it’s still too damned heavy and creepy.  Crosman triggers are awful from the factory, but they improve with use even if you don’t do anything to them.  If you experiment a bit, you can generally get the trigger’s on them at least halfway nice.  As good as you can expect from a pistol which costs 150 bucks.

Larry’s brats were fantastic this match.  He got them from Rieker’s German Butcher in the Northeast part of Philadelphia.  I am definitely heading there next time Bitter and I have a cookout.

For the past few months I’ve been filling in for Jim, our club’s Recording Secretary, who was on an extended summer vacation.  Jim was elected to the job at the beginning of the year, but I think decided it wasn’t the job for him.  A few weeks ago he came back, and apparently thought I had done such a good job, that he resigned, and recommended the Board of Trustees appoint me to fill the remainder of his term.  Last night they did.  But that’s not really the point of this post.  What I mean to talk about are shooting clubs in general, and why I think they are worthwhile to become involved in.

I see often in forums and elsewhere, people saying “I won’t joint his club or that club, because this club has some stupid rule I don’t like, and that club doesn’t run any matches that look interesting, or their facilities are in bad shape.”  I’m sympathetic to these statements, because it’s not like our club doesn’t have things I’d like to see changed, but I think clubs are too valuable to the community as a whole to eschew involvement in them because certain things aren’t to your liking, and you’d be really surprised how easy it is to change things.   More often than not, the people in leadership positions at shooting clubs are happy to have people willing to be involved and help out.  Demonstrate you’re one of these people, and you’ll have input.  You might not be running the place, you might not always get your way, but at least you’ll have a seat at the table, and have a voice.

Clubs are an important component to the shooting community, and while mine is relatively healthy membership wise, that’s not universally true across the board.  Some of them are desperate for people, and those that aren’t are still desperate for people willing to help out.  Especially younger people.   Yes, along with most other civic organizations, shooting clubs are getting older, and some are having a difficult time attracting new, younger members.

A lot of the blame can be placed at a lot of the older clubs running matches in shooting sports that younger people aren’t participating in.  This is a problem, but it also illustrates why I think clubs are important, and why younger people should be seeking involvement with them.  Because it’s not all that difficult to convince a club to run new matches.  To convince a commercial range that you want to run a match, you have to convince them they will make money on it, or at the least appeal to their sense of supporting a shooting community (who they can then get money from in other ways).  But ultimately a commercial range is in the business to make money, and that’s going to change their calculus when it comes to running matches.  With clubs it’s a much easier sell, because a club isn’t putting as much as risk by approving a match.  There’s not as much opportunity cost for turning a range over to a match for an afternoon.  That’s why I think clubs are important to the shooting sports, and for the continuing survival of the Second Amendment.  It would be a shame if many of these clubs die off because younger people aren’t joining.  Once a club is gone, it’s gone forever.  It’s a resource the community will never get back, and I think that will make us all worse off in the long run.

Tam details a malfunction with a .22 rifle, and notes:

Of course everybody was wearing eye protection, and nothing bad happened to the gun, but be careful when saying “Oh, it’s just a .22.” While its powder charge may be small, the modern high velocity .22LR chamberings operate at higher chamber pressures than .38 Special or .45ACP. SAAMI maximum allowable pressure specification for the .22 Long Rifle is 2,500 PSI more than .380, and 3,000 psi more than .32 H&R Magnum.

Be careful out there.

This range is the one we shoot at for GBR.  It’s a great facility.  Shooting out to 1000 yards from a covered firing line.  It would be a shame if Washoe County made any major changes to it, because it’s the best public shooting range I’ve ever been to.

UPDATE: Gun Blogger Rendezvous information can be found here.

Looks like the National Rifle Association of India had had a swine flu outbreak at their equivalent of the Camp Perry.  The shooting camp is meant to train for the upcoming Commonwealth Games.

Winchester has developed a new external ballistics web app.  You can find it here. First impression is that it’s written in Microsoft Silverlight, which is essentially Microsoft’s answer to Flash.  This means I needed to download a plug-in in order to see it.  Flash is the standard for this kind of thing.  Why did they choose Silverlight?

Once I got the plugin issue squared away, looks like this one only does ballsitics for Winchester cartridges, and is very simple.  Far from sophisticated enough to use for reloading or serious shooting, which Winchester also makes components for.  Basically it would appear to be a marketing gimmick, rather than something genuinely useful for serious shooters.  If you’re looking for something that does useful ballistics, I’d suggest Joe Huffman’s Modern Ballistics.  I’ve also had luck with the iPhone app Ballistic.