Category: Shooting

I think I can declare myself pretty intimately familiar now with my new Mk.III Hunter 22/45. The Mk.III isn’t the only Ruger pistol I own. I also have a Mk.II 50th Anniversary Edition. The Mk.II was my first pistol purchase, and my first experience with “Hey, what’s this extra form?”

The Ruger Mk.II has the safety features I would expect, which means it has a hammer locking manual safety. Great! When it comes to a target shooter, that’s all I want. But the Mk.III has every safety under the sun. Mag release safety, chamber loaded idiotcator, manual safety, child safety lock, and airbags. Seriously, I don’t want any of these things on the gun. Here are my problems with the Mk.III:

• Magazine doesn’t drop free. They switched to a manual thumb release, but you have to physically remove it. As long as I have to do that, I think the original magazine system was fine. If a gun has a thumb release, I expect the magazine to drop free.
• Chamber loaded idiotcater. These don’t belong on any firearms. It implies a firearm without the indicator showing is “safe”. All firearms are always treated as loaded. It also make the Mk.IIIs a nightmare to clean. The indicator can get gritty and stick. Early versions rested directly on the rim, meaning a hard blow (like form a drop) would fire a round. Ruger fixed this problem, when what they should have done is remove the feature, and tell people in the manual how to properly handle a firearm.
• Magazine drop safety. In a target gun, I don’t mind this so much, in a carry gun it’s totally unacceptable. But it is another safety feature that caters to fools, and needlessly complicates the mechanism on a gun that is already notoriously difficult to reassemble.
• Front sight issues. The front sight on the Mk.III likes to come loose after shooting it for a while. They should ship with lock-tite applied so this doesn’t happen.
• I prefer the grip angle of the 22/45, but the polymer frame doesn’t balance of the rest of the gun’s weight very well. On the 22/45, you can’t swap grip panels. It’s integrated into the frame. I use a Houge grip sleeve, which helps a lot.

I understand why Ruger is loading up their guns with safety features; they are popular among entry level shooters, because they work well and don’t cost a lot of money. Ruger doesn’t want to be sued because they could have made a gun with more safety features, which is a product liability tort in most states.

A firearm is an inherently dangerous object, and cannot be made safe in the hands of an ignorant user who hasn’t bothered to educate himself, or get training on safe gun handling. These new features, which are superfluous for experienced shooters, are going to drive experienced shooters away from the Ruger badge, and still will not protect an ignorant user from the device’s inherent hazards. Ruger needs to worry more about catering to new and experience shooters alike, rather than worrying about lawsuits.

I think I’ve done about as well as I’m going to do in this match. I went to shoot at my club tonight, with a mind to do some outdoor shooting at 100 yards with the 10/22. I arrived kind of late though, and only got about 15 rounds off before I decided it was getting a little too dark.

Switch to the indoor range. Tried out the E-Postal with the Glock a bit to see if could do any better. Had a really hard time hitting anything over the 8 with it. I probably could have worked my way up to hitting the 9, 10, and maybe 11, but I told myself I wouldn’t blow more than 50 rounds with the Glock. 9mm is just too expensive right now.

Switch to the Mk.III, and I seem to be doing better than I was last time. I managed to shoot a 65 two handed.

Hitting the 11 was a lucky shot! I figured if I can hit the 11, I can surely hit the 12. But no, I pulled that one way down, and to the right. I would have been better off going for the 1 circle, and getting an extra point. But these are the gambles you take with this target. Next I had to try one handed. Now, I’ve been practicing one handed, and I’m getting to the point where I don’t totally suck. I shot 55 one handed.

I discovered Ahab’s advice about taking your time to be quite useful. I instituted a rule of loading no more than one round at a time, which improved my shooting dramatically. I tend to practice more rapid shooting.  If I put 5 rounds in a magazine (club maximum), I rush my shooting, which was killing me in bullseye stance.

I think this is about as well as I’m going to shoot on this match. To be honest, I can’t see anything beyond the 10 circle well, and I can’t see the 12 and 13 circle at all. This was the hardest match so far, I think. Golf at least had color to aim at. This circles target was as much a test for eyesight and dealing with poor sight picture as it was for holding the gun steady and trigger technique. My advise for other shooters is to do the middle row first. Errant shots have a good chance of hitting the other circles! I had that happen at least twice.  Even hit the 13 by chance first time I tried the target, unfortunately the rest of the target sucked, and my single handed shooting was atrocious in that first session.

Good luck to everyone.  You have until Monday the 30st to get your entry in, if you want to participate.  But you should!  Go download the target from Conservative UAW Guy.

Well, maybe not ever, but as long as I’ve been doing them. I went to the range tonight to see what I could produce. The answer was crap. I think what frustrates me the most about this match is I just have a hard time seeing the target. I posted a 1.5 inch ring target, and I can hit that consistently, but put me on the shrinking circles, and I feel lucky to hit the 8, which is the same size.

I think the difficulty is just having a really weak point of aim. The numbers in the circles are a little distracting. They are difficult to see. I think Conservative UAW guy has done a good job here. He’s managed to frustrate me more than the Golf match! At least there I could aim at color!

Anyway, results, rimfire iron, were:

Two handed, weaver stance, 25ft – 52 points out of 91
One handed, bullseye stance, 25ft – 36 points out of 91
88 points total.

I’ll see if I can return to the range before the end of the month to beat this score. I might not have time though. If I do return, I might give it a shot with the Glock. The Glock certainly isn’t a precision shooter, but I’m comfortable with it, and I want to see if maybe that counts for something. The larger caliber could also help turn some of those near hits into hits :)

I’m assuming this was shot using optics, because I can’t even see a bullseye that small at 200 yards with iron sights, let alone 5x that distance.  That’s about as well as I shoot at 100 yards with optics.  That’s really impressive.  I’ve never even had the opportunity to shoot at ranges that far out, let alone get really good at it.

Got back from the NRA range.  It is quite impressive.   I like being able to shoot at 50 yards indoor.  I love the electronic controls that let you put the target out with accuracy down to the foot as well.  They allow you to shoot from holster, and the tables move out the way to accommodate sitting or prone positions.

I wasn’t shooting too well, but I found out at least that my SKS works.  That is, after I figured out why the action wouldn’t cycle to load the next round.  The knob on the front of the gas block has to go sideways.  I’m guessing for grenade launching, you don’t want the gases escaping, so the knob can turn off the gas system.   The SKS shoots great though once I got into it.

I did a little practice for the e-postal match.  Only did a paltry 28 out of 91 with the Glock, and 46 out of 91 with the Mk.III.  Still need work.  The good news is I don’t suck as much as one handed shooting as I remember, at least with the Glock.

The only downside to the NRA range is that it’s crowded.  I don’t shoot as well when I’m surrounded by distractions.  The guy next to me had his M1 Garand malfunction and started doing double and triple shots.  I’m getting too spoiled shooting on my private club range, where I usually have it to myself.  But the NRA has much much better facilities than anywhere else I’ve been.  I will definitely have to come back.

I’m heading to the NRA range tomorrow in Fairfax, probably in the morning when they open at 10AM.   I’ve never shot there, so figured I’d check it out.  I need to work on my single handed shooting anyway.

I went to the range tonight to try out the latest e-postal match. It’s another one for people who have great eyesight! I can’t even really see the last few targets. When I first got to the range, I was wondering why my shots were floating left and right so much. I can suck some nights, but I was really pulling the shots all over. Turns out my front sight was loose, and moving all over the place. I’ll have to keep an eye on that in the future.

Another thing I need to look into getting is some decent grips for my Mk.III Hunter. I have large hands. That’s one reason I like shooting double stack pistols. The single stack grip on the Mk.III just doesn’t have a pleasing grip for me, and I think I need something thicker in order to improve my shooting with it.

I’ve decided since I can’t see the smaller targets, it’s worth it for me to use the last two or three shots to make multiple shots at the other high value bullseyes.  I got 49/91 shooting two handed weaver stance once I tightened the front sight back up. I missed the six. Didn’t hit 11, 12 or 13. Bummer. Maybe I can do better. But this is just two handed. I will suck up the page shooting one handed when I try that.

Conservative UAW guy has this month’s e-postal match up.   Looks pretty good to me!  I suck at one handed shooting, so we’ll have to see how I do.  Everyone should submit an entry.

Sailorcurt has the e-postal results up.  Looks like I managed to beat Ahab.  I forgot about tie breaking rules!   I am quite happy with my placement.   This is the kind of shooting I practice most often, so when we return to precision shooting, I’ll probably fall back down in the ranking again.

The cool thing about these e-postal matches is that they cover such a wide array of shooting disciplines.  You might suck up the page on one match, and dominate the field on another.   Try the next one out.  It doesn’t matter how good or bad you are, because you’ll get better.  I’m finding it’s getting me to the range a lot more, which is improving my shooting quite a bit over what it was four months ago.

Hopefully the next one will allow me to go back to .22LR, because I blew through a few hundred rounds of 9mm (not cheap these days) practicing up on double taps before heading to the range this Monday to shoot the submitted targets.