Firearms

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.

Today, we took our .45 caliber pistols – Damsel’s Warthog and my Glock 30. We shot both guns last weekend at the Gun Blogger Rendezvous, but didn’t clean them afterward. We also only shot just a few rounds then since we were having fun going from place to place checking out the other interesting guns.

So, today, we brought our allotment of rounds we didn’t shoot last week and another 50 rounds of .45. We also brought Damsel’s S&W686 revolver and put 50 rounds of .38 special through that.

As usual, we brought shotguns and 25 rounds (each) of 12 and 20 gauge shells. The video shows some teamwork in chopping a silhouette target in half. Prior to the video, we teamed up to slice it down the middle and then Damsel took off the right side of the target. I then took off the left side. I’m sure this drill has no practical value, but it is fun and makes us laugh.

We only took four firearms to the range today: Damsel’s Para Ordinance Warthog .45ACP, my Glock 30 .45ACP, Damsel’s Remington 870 “Junior” 20 gauge shotgun and our Remington 870 Express Magnum Security 12 gauge shotgun. We left the .357 magnum guns at home since we did not have as much reserve .38 special or .357 ammo as we did .45. So, we grabbed a hundred rounds of .45ACP plus 25 rounds each of 12 and 20 gauge sport loads and headed to the range.

This video shows Damsel doing what she loves to do. The four clips in the video show her shooting, in turn, all of the firearms we brought today – the Warthog, the Glock 30, the 20 gauge Junior and the 12 gauge Security gun.

I got an inquiry from reader drjim, about how I record and publish the videos on our site. I use a Canon A710IS in the movie mode. It produces an AVI file which I then edit with Windows Movie Maker to crop and to add titles. Then, I use a flash tool to convert to the Flash® format. It’s a little work but produces a video compatible with most browsers. It’s all home grown and does not use You Tube or any other social networking parasites. I like it that way. What you see here generally comes from here. Once in a great while, we will link to one of those sites, but only if it’s *very* important and as a last resort.