Firearms

When the shooting range where we have a membership refurbished the range, they replaced the conventional heavy target holders with a flimsy coat-hanger and Boston clip kluge. Last Sunday, our regular day to shoot, I forgot to bring the lightweight cardboard backing for the silhouette targets. As a result, I got a heavier duty cardboard target backing at the range.

When Damsel was shooting with her 20 gauge, I noticed that the target was ‘dancing’ less as a result. In the video, compare a lightweight target backing with the heavier one from this time. It makes me think that we need a heavier backing still to help stabilize the target.

It’s too bad that we have to compensate for the cheapness in the target holders, but we have little choice since this range is both convenient and (relatively) inexpensive. We plan to continue experimenting with this.

We traveled light today for target practice. We had another activity scheduled, so we chose not to bring a lot of stuff to the range. We brought only one handgun, the S&W 686 .357 magnum revolver. We also brought two shotguns, Damsel’s 20 gauge and our security 12 gauge – both Remington 870s.

We shot 100 rounds of .38 specials through the 686. At one point, it failed to fire one of the rounds. When Damsel put the failed round back in the cylinder, it detonated properly. The other 99 rounds fired without incident, however, so we’re not quite ready to replace the firing pins just yet. We did replace the pins in both 686s about two years ago.

In the video, that’s me enlarging the already gaping hole in the silhouette target taped to a cardboard backing. We found that the cardboard helps to stabilize the target when mounted on the flimsy coat hanger/Boston clip target-hanging kluge they have at our range.

On the ammo front, we were pleased to find that one of the re-load bins was chock full of .38 special wadcutter rounds. I bought 200 rounds for future target shooting.

We took our weekly trip to the shooting range for target practice. This week we took Damsel’s .357 S&W 686, her .45 Warthog and my Glock 30, also .45 caliber. Additionally we took Damsel’s Remington 870 20 gauge shotgun and our 12 gauge Remington 870 security shotgun. We had 100 rounds of .45 reloads for the semi-autos and a fifty round box of .38 special for the revolver. We also brought two 25 round boxes of shotgun shells, one 12 and one 20 gauge.

Image: Photo of Damsel’s Warthog misfeed – click on the image to enlarge.

Most everything went smoothly. There is one anecdotal misfeed event that Damsel had with her Warthog. She said that she flinched before squeezing the trigger and the case failed to eject. The next round in the magazine was holding the case in the barrel against the pressure of the slide spring.

Damsel went to clear the jam, but forgot to lock the slide back before ejecting the magazine. She was safely pointing the muzzle downrange when the slide snapped forward as she ejected the magazine. Coincidentally, when the slide snapped into place, the shooter in an adjacent booth discharged a round, which startled Damsel – she thought the discharge came from the Warthog. As it turned out, she had a bigger flinch than the original flinch that caused the jam.

Of course we quickly put the incident behind us in the category of lessons learned as we continued to enjoy shooting for the rest of the session.

Today was 9mm day at the range. We scored a couple of fifty round boxes of Remington UMC 115 grain 9×19 at Big 5 yesterday for about $16 a box. We figured that we have enough on hand to let us take the S&W 908 and the Glock 26 out for a shoot. We also took one of the two S&W 686 revolvers and some .38 special for that.

We shot fifty rounds of .38 and 100 rounds of 9mm – basically fifty rounds through each of the three handguns we brought. And, of course, we brought the shotguns – my full-sized Remington 870 12 gauge and Damsel’s Junior sized Remington 870 20 gauge. We shot 25 rounds through each of those.

In the video, Damsel demonstrates that she can handle her 20 gauge and the 12 gauge with equal ease. She says the 12 gauge is a bit heavier for her to lift and has a little more recoil, but as you can see, she deals with it.