This is my little personal protection revolver. She’s a Smith and Wesson 442 .38 special J-frame revolver. The rosewood grips were added after I got the gun. I placed the five rounds of Speer Gold-Dot .38+P around the trigger guard to take this gun-pr0n image. Click image to enlarge.
These are three of Damsel’s handguns, which she calls ‘the girls’ – the fourth ‘girl gun,’ which was on her hip at the time she took this photo, is her S&W 442 .38 special. On the left is the S&W 908s 9mm, above is the Warthog .45ACP and below is the S&W 686 .357 revolver. All of them are about to be cleaned up, so some of the ‘range residue’ is still visible. You better believe she makes ’em sparkle when she’s done, though.
We had an excellent day today at the range. It’s late, so I won’t post all of the details, but it was fun. At the end of the shooting, however, there is always the teardown, inspection and cleanup. This is my end of the workbench showing my Glocks and the Remington 870 12 gauge all disassembled and ready for the cleanup drill. The muzzle end of Damsel’s 20 gauge 870 is also visible along with tools, cleaner and wipers. Click image for a closer look.
Cobbled together from some of the range videos over the past weekend . . .
We always get midweek shooting withdrawals, and this helps.
We had another good outing today. The range opens at 11AM on Sunday, and we were there a few minutes after 11. Inside the range, there were several booths occupied, but nobody had started fining yet. Just as we got our target sent out on the trolley, it seemed like everyone simultaneously started shooting as though the range master had called out “commence firing!” The range erupted with shots fired loud and not so much, ‘booms,’ ‘bangs,’ and ‘pops.’ It was kinda neat.
Looking around at the crowd in the range, we saw the usual regulars who we see every week. We make eye contact with them and nod ‘hello.’
Image: Damsel draws a bead on the target with her Para Warthog (Clickee Bigee)..
We saw a Dad giving his son a first lesson. I winced when I saw ‘sonny’ gripped his Dad’s Glock with his thumb on the rear of the slide. Dad quickly corrected sonny before he could dislocate his thumb.
There were several parties with women participants. There was a bunch who rented a shotgun and were amusing themselves with the recoil and large holes that the 12 gauge rounds left in the target – new people I guess.
On the way out, I bought ammo for next week. They were still out of 9mm reloads, but I still have some on hand in the safe at home. The guys at the range seem to think that the shortage of guns and ammo is going to relax soon.
The range is alive and well. I am comforted by the resurgent interest in the shooting hobby – no doubt as a result of the threats to the sport by the politicians that manipulated their way into power in this country. The more of us that understand guns and the second amendment, the better our chances to prevent the gun grabbers from their quest.
I started making some of the plans for our trip to the NRA Convention and the Second Amendment Blog Bash. Just the act of doing so induced a wave of nostalgic wanderlust. I dug out this picture that Damsel took along I-10 in December while we were on our winter cruise.
I still have to figure out where the dog will stay while we’re at the festivities. I’m looking into which kennels are in the area. We also still need to make the RV Park arrangements and finalize the RV rental.
We’re looking forward to it . . .
Sunday’s trip to the range went well for the most part. We had a couple of misfeeds with Damsel’s Warthog, but both happened when we used the ‘funky’ magazine – the one with the ‘pinkie extension.’ It’s not a stock Para magazine and the plastic cap on the bottom of the magazine does not fit very well. I think it’s time to get a stock Para Cap and re-spring that magazine. Damsel also was a bit critical of her grip when it had the stovepipe seen here. The other 98 rounds went through the Warthog without incident.
We also took my Glocks, the G26 9mm and the G30 .45 – 100 rounds went through each of those as well. I used the first silhouette target I put up at seven yards to do some “Mozambique” practice with the Glock 30 – two to the chest, one to the head, with the 10th round back to the chest. I did OK with that – the holes in the target are discernible in the accompanying image, but less than optimum – next time I will bring a sheet of yellow or green paper to put behind the target to improve visibility of the holes.
We also brought a couple of S&W guns with us – my 686 .357 revolver and my 908 9mm semi-automatic. We shot a little more than 50 rounds of .38 special through the revolver – since it’s a 7-round capacity cylinder, there is always a left-over round out of a box of 50 rounds.
The little ‘workhorse’ – the 908 9mm, saw about 50 rounds of ammo as well. The 908s are great little guns – they never complain as long as you replace the spring guide and recoil spring once in a while.
Finally, we took out the 12 and 20 gauge Remington 870s and shot up a couple more silhouette targets with 25 rounds of each gauge. I took some videos of Damsel shooting her 20 gauge and our 12 gauge, but I inadvertently had the little Canon A710 on a ‘color swap’ setting and the videos didn’t turn out well so they weren’t suitable to post.
The ammo report: last week I was unable to buy .45 reloads – this week they had them but no 9mm reloads. Fortunately, we had some on hand that we bought at a local sports emporium.
One thing that can be said about this session: Damn, it was a good time, satisfying and a lot of fun.