Monday, March 26, 2012

At Long Last - A Trip To The Range With Some Pistols

It had been way too long since I had been to the range to shoot my pistols. Being that I retired in November and they were locked up at my old office until I got my pistol permit, I did not have the chance to shoot them from November through March 15th, the day the license was issued. I finally went to the local indoor range yesterday afternoon.

I only wanted to bring 2 or 3 and limited myself to that out of my 8 handguns. So with 8 to choose from - 3 of which are Beretta 92 series pistols, I gave it a bit of thought and decided on a Beretta 92FS, the Glock 26 and my Ruger Mark II. I don't think I could have made a better selection. I wanted to bring the Glock because it will probably wind up as my regular carry piece. As for the Beretta 92FS, the Glock has to be sent in for a replacement of the sights so I am going to need an alternate carry piece while the Glock is absent. I currently have Tritium night sights on the Glock 26 but the front sight has lost its mojo. All of a sudden at the NRA training class I was at last spring, the front sight got very dim. Glock said to send it in for repair but then I got hit with the big C and forgot all about it. I'll contact Glock, probably this afternoon, about making arrangements to send it to them for repair. I think, I'll have regular sights put on as replacements for the night sights. As for the third gun I brought along, I figured something in .22LR would be nice in the event the 9mm gave me to much of a jarring from the recoil.

It turned out I was pretty much right on thinking I should bring a  pistol in .22LR with me. After shooting about 120 rounds of 9mm through the Glock and then about 150 rounds through the Beretta, I needed a break from the NATO pea shooter round because the recoil did pain me some.  Please don't laugh, I know it sounds funny, saying that NATO Pea Shooter 9mm round had that much recoil but after 7 weeks of cancer treatments, followed by about another 3 1/2 months of doing virtually no exercise at all combined with arthritis/bursitis and all I can say is I took a pounding from that measly round.   So I switched to firing the Ruger. I shot around 50 rounds out of the Ruger, then another 50 rounds out of it while alternating between the Ruger and the Beretta out of which I fired another 6 full magazines in with about another 90 rounds. In all, I shot up about 470 rounds of ammo, 370 of that being 9mm and 100 being .22LR. It was a fun hour.

As for my shooting, I did fairly well  but need some practice with an eye toward improvement. It wasn't really bad but not really good either but I haven't shot since October and had all that shit in between so I am still satisfied with how I shot. I used the blank side of an NRA 50', slowfire, pistol target.  At 7 yards I did okay with about a group that was spread 5 3/4" vertically and 3 1/2" horizontally, at 10 yards my widest spread was 6 3/8",  at 15 yards it was 7 1/2", and at 25 yards it was 9 3/4. Yep, I sure can use some improvement but at least I had them all on a chest sized piece of paper and I am quite happy with that for my first pistol shoot after way too long of feeling way too crappy to shoot.

I don't know if it made a difference but I was shooting 2 or 3 different brands of 9mm ammo. I suppose that could have caused my groups to open up a bit more than if it had all been one type of ammo. I truly don't think it made that much of a difference and as I said, I think more practice is needed with an eye toward improving group sizes and toward just having fun. I will point out, if I had shot like that for a qualification course when I was still a LEO, I at least would have shot 245 out of 250 and maybe just would have been in there enough to have scored a perfect score of 250. It certainly would have been more than good enough for qualification by far, it is just I would like it to be better.

Speaking about law enforcement, I met another retired federal worked, Bill, at the range while shooting. He was on the point next to mine. He used to work for the USPS. Seemed like a nice gentleman. We talked just a bit and it wound up getting to politics. After talking to him, I think there is hope that November will bring change.

All the best,
Glenn B

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