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.