Category: Shooting

The Firearms Blog has some videos of guns blowing up.   My friend Jason had his eyes saved by glasses when his Calico M950 blew up on him, which if I recall was caused by a problem with the delayed blowback roller lock mechanism.

This article is fairly balanced for the Times reporting on a firearms issue, but I notice they fail to mention that DiNatale is a developer looking to develop property around the range.  My own ballistic analysis of Blue Trail a while ago revaled that DiNatale’s property was in the ballistic shadow of the mountain.  The only way bullets are hitting his house from that range is by rounds firing up into the air at a steep angle, which I find unlikely.

This month’s Practical Rifle match at Langhorne Rod and Gun Club was a three gun match.  We had about 40 shooters. Match was cut up into 5 stages.  First stage was at 50 yards.   Three magazines loaded with 10 round each.  Fire one standing, transition to kneeling and fire one, transition to prone and fire one, back to kneeling, and back to standing, repeating until you exhaust all your magazines.  Doesn’t sound too bad, but it gets your pulse rate up.  Lost 9 on the IDPA target — needed to aim higher and I would have only pulled one or two, but I was shooting lower than I would have figured.  Next stage was 25 yards, to 15 yards, to 7.  All done standing.  Ten shots each with rifle, then transition to pistol at 7 yards and engage head of target.  Got too punchy and pulled three of my shots low.  Didn’t do too bad overall.  Next stage was the car:

This stage stressed rapid target acquisition, and had one IDPA swinger, which was tough to hit.  Started out with pistol, then transitioned to rifle.

Then onto the shotgun. I had to run home to get the shotgun and more 9mm over break, because they didn’t publish the match requirements on the web site like they say they do. Stage one was four shots on steel, but with one catch. Running the shotgun prone, you could only use one hand, and had to single load each round. I had a pump, so I completed the stage with some difficulty. Stage five was also a shotgun stage, which was essentially 7 propped up clays which had to be shot on the run at 21 feet.

I was happy that I got a whole nice bag of brass from scavenging the range after everyone was done shooting, but I’m also happy for this:

Third place! Shoot off was the same as the first stage at a pie plate at 50 yards. First one finished calls a cease fire. I didn’t shoot as well as I could have, so I figured I didn’t place, but we had to break the tie for second because we both had 10 hits, but he had more on the center portion than I did, so he got second, and I got third. Came two hits away from first. Maybe next time!

Some of you might remember back in September that Olympic shotgun shooter and Gold Medalist Kim Rhode had her one-of-a-kind very expensive shotgun stolen from her car.  I think I was actually remiss in blogging about that here.  But I just got this from The Outdoor Wire:

The Riverside, California Sheriff’s Department has recovered four-time Olympic medalist Kim Rhode’s shotgun. Police officials say the gun was recovered during a routine parole check. According to Rhode, the gun is in “immaculate” shape, although the competition stickers she had collected during her shooting career had been removed. “I can’t believe it,” Rhode told The Outdoor Wire only minutes after the gun was returned. A complete report in tomorrow’s edition of The Outdoor Wire.

We’re very happy for Kim that she got her shotgun back.  That’s one of those things you almost don’t expect to ever see it again, and it breaks your heart.  Obviously that gun had to have meant a lot to her, and it’s good fortune that she is reunited with it.  Good work on the part of the Riverside Sheriff’s office.

I have to share SayUncle’s puzzlement over Federal Cartridge letting some workers idle.  I bought TD’s FAL not too long ago, and have yet to shoot it because I can’t find anyone who will sell me .308 at a reasonable price (other than the steel jacketed crap I can’t shoot at my club), and I’ve checked a few places online, and a gun show.  I say they need to hire those folks back and get loading.

The media wets itself over what it does not understand.  I’ve been thinking of getting a chrony for my air pistol so I can figure out what regulator setting gives me the trajectory that’s most ideal for air pistol silhouette.  You can’t figure crap like that out without doing the math, or having a computer doing the math.  It never occurs to these people that there are uses for ballistics charts other than shooting people.

Caleb and Breda did a pretty good interview last night with Tom Hughes, the Action Pistol coordinator for the National Rifle Association.  Action Pistol culminates every year with the Bianchi Cup.  Go have a listen.

Thanks to 2A Musing for finding this awesome guy:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ieWrWLjii0[/youtube]

Good thing he deosn’t live in New Jersey, or he’d be a criminal.

It’s your typical story.  Gun club in operation for nearly half century, new homes developed, outsiders move in, complain about gun range:

Tibbs – who maintains horses on his property directly across the street from the range – says that the gunfire spooks the animals causing dangerous situations. Both expressed concern for the range being near an area with 20 homes and 22 children. Tibbs also claims that the range does not meet National Rifle Association standards for safety of such ranges.

You don’t hate horses and children, do you?