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

More Information on the Trayvon Martin Case

An interesting read about Trayvon Martin and the incident leading up to his death.

http://dumbolddad.blogspot.com/2012/03/since-our-entire-country-is-about-to.html

I figured there might be some additional information coming out soon and it is at the above link. If it is all true then it appears to be a very different story than portrayed by the media and by Mr. Martin's supporters. The 911 tape sounds pretty real to me, and if unaltered, I owe an apology to Mr. Zimmerman for saying I thought he was an asshole. On the tape it becomes quite obvious that he stopped following Mr. Martin almost immediately after the 911 operator told him that they did not need him to follow Mr. Martin. There is other info at the link besides a link to the 911 tape, such as photos of the guy who has been made out to have been an 'angel'. He seems far from that.

It seems this may be another Tawana Brawley case or another Duke University case (remember the Lacrosse team). It comes as no real surprise if so, not with how the media handles such cases nor with how the African-American community seems to invariably demonize the European-American community when such things happen. It does appear that Mr. Zimmerman may indeed have been in fear of threat of imminent serious bodily harm to himself or that he was about to lose his life.

Hat tip to the Feral Irishman for making me aware of the above link.

All the best,
Glenn B