They All Went Bang ...

...and that is what I like to hear (while wearing ear protection) when I take recently acquired guns to the range for test firing. 

 

Yesterday, I drove to a local, more or less, firearms range. When I arrived, there was one other person there policing brass. I asked her if she had ear protection and she said she did not but I could go ahead and start shooting. Since she had no ears, I decided to wait until she left. That wound up being only a few minutes later.

 

I set up on a bench but did not set up any targets. I was there only to test fire several new to me pistols & revolvers. They were:

Charter Arms Pathfinder in .22 LR, Charter Arms Undercover in .38 SPL, Norinco 54-1 in 7.62X25mm Tokarev, Ruger Mark I in .22 LR, and TEC-9 (Mini) in 9mm.

 

As I said, they all went bang. The Pathfinder misfired once, pretty sure that was not due to the revolver but to the ammo. I fired it several more times and it went bang8 all those other times. 

 

The  Undercover fired flawlessly. I fired two full cylinders through it, 12 rounds total. Remember, I was not target shooting nor attempting to break in any of these handguns. Just trying to see if they all functioned properly.

 

The Norinco fired well but it failed to feed twice requiring a tap to load the stuck round. I attribute that to said pistol evidently not having been fired before as best I could tell. It looked pristine when I got it even though it was evidently first sold circa 1992 according to a receipt that came with it. All steel guns often require a break-in period consisting of 250 to 500 rounds being fired through them to assure they functione flawlessly or not. I put 16 rounds through it. I will break it in at an indoor range, where it will be much cooler than yesterday's 95 degrees or today's forecast 97. Wile I was not target shooting, I did shoot at a certain point on the berm. The Norinco came in right where I was aiming laterally and a bit low vertically, as would be expected for a pistol at 100 yards. I imagine it will do well at an indoor range whenever I get myself to one with it.

 

 The Ruger Mark I fed, fired, extracted,  and ejected flawlessly.

 

The TEC-9 had some hiccups but I think they were caused by user error except one failure to feed properly. The other couple were caused by me and were both due to not inserting the mags completely. I had thought they were in all the way (as I told her years ago but she said I was wrong then too) but they had to really be pushed in very hard to get them to fully in (just like way back then). I only loaded one of the 30 round mags to 20 rounds and the other three mags to 10 or so rounds in each. The mag springs were very strong, hardly used by my guess, due to lack of visible wear. With my arthritis being a bit bothersome, that was enough loading the mags for me. I bought the mags independently from the TEC-9 which did not have any magazines when I bought it. 

 

The thing I was happiest about with the TEC-9 was that it went bang, bang, bang or one bang with each successive trigger pull. Very happy indeed was I because it  did not go banngbangbangbangbang until out of ammo with only a single trigger pull. These pistols, in their early years were notorious for being very easily modified to go full auto.

 

That was it for shooting those latest additions to my  aggregate of firearms. Once again I am a happy shootists because my new boomers all went bang.

 

All the best,

Glenn B