OT: Day at the Range

When I visit the local range, I watch for a while to see that the shooters are safe to be around. Every once in a while I see questionable habits and inattention to muzzle or finger awareness. The range master is on the ball and quickly offers advice without being arrogant and preachy...he's obviously not a liberal. My favorite is to watch girls when it's obviously their first time with a sidearm. Often, the lady getting instructions from their man will do very well to the chagrin of the guy. The shattered egos just pile-up on the floor with the empty shells. I think women are naturally better marksmen.

Wes wrote in news:HfmLm.222344$ snipped-for-privacy@en-nntp-02.dc.easynews.com:

The club I belonged to years ago in Sunnyvale required members to serve periodically as range officers on their outdoor range, which is open to the public. It was always an interesting experience. Most of the folks were safe, but a lot of them couldn't shoot worth a darn, even with long guns.

There were two guys who showed up one day with an old .22 rimfire rifle. They were all over the place at 50 yards, shooting off the bench. They were shooting with open sights, and I suspect they were watching the target, and/or jerking the trigger. They were muttering about it being shot out & worthless. It appeared to be in good shape, and I expressed some doubts that it was all that far gone, and they asked me to try it. I put three shots into the black nearly touching each other and left them to ponder their marksmanship skills to go help someone else. Before I could get back to offer some sugestions, they had packed up & left. I'm afraid their egos were a bit bruised.

Another time was right after Christmas, and a fellow showed up with a new stainless steel .44 Ruger cap & ball revolver. He'd never shot black powder before, so he took his time getting it loaded up. This guy knew what he was doing, and fired about a 1" group at 25 yards one-handed. It was chilly that day & there weren't too many other shooters, so he had quite a crowd of range officers watching the fun. The Rugers always looked pretty cool, but I'd never seen one shoot before and was quite impressed.

Doug White

I'm not sure about being a better shot, but certainly women follow instructions better then men. You tell 'em "watch the sights and keep them aligned and just squeeze the trigger - don't worry about the target" and they will - which eliminates nearly all the flyers and pulled shots.

Cheers,

John B. (johnbslocomatgmaildotcom)

I think that may be true. My wife and I deer-hunt together; she's only fired a total of maybe six or seven shots while hunting, and has three dead deer to show for it. Her second one was a neck shot (!) at ninety yards, with a shotgun. As I helped field dress it, I said "jerked the trigger a bit, did you?" She said that's right where she meant to shoot it. "Whattaya doing?? Don't you know that's a low-percentage shot?" She says "It's *dead*, isn't it?" Seems the deer's chest was behind a tree, and the neck was the only part she could target. Broke the spine, about three vertebrae below the skull, and it dropped where it stood and died. Gotta love those, where you don't have to waste any time tracking them.

My experience has also been that women seem to be "naturals". I've not seen the shattered ego thing, though. Don't know why a guy who endeavors to instruct would be upset when his student surprises him with how successful she is.

I thoroughly enjoyed the day Mary, a grandmother, did her CCW class and range qual test. She was the only trainee to show up for that evening's class. The instructor told her he usually has females do the range qual test first, so if they're unable to pass then they don't waste a lot of time on the classroom stuff. She said nothing, just smiled. Me too. I thought, "this could be interesting". I asked if I could observe. He said sure, that would be OK. Thence to the range.

Firing at a rate of about 1 round per second or so, she proceeded to put 50 holes in the max score region of the silhouette target. The instructor had told me it would be OK if I stuffed magazines for her since she clearly was able to do it herself. So she was putting rounds downrange like a dang metronome while I was stuffing the other mag. When her slide locked open she popped out the MT and set it down, slapped in the full one, the slide slammed shut and she resumed fire without breaking her rhythm. She barely lost her sight picture while reloading.

She maxed the test. It looked like he'd never seen anyone do that before. The expression on that instructor's face was well worth the price of admission.

Bravo!!! Well done! Pass it along the lady if you would be so kind.

Gunner

"Aren't cats Libertarian? They just want to be left alone. I think our dog is a Democrat, as he is always looking for a handout" Unknown Usnet Poster

Heh, heh, I'm pretty sure my dog is a liberal - he has no balls. Keyton

Doug Miller wrote: [about deer-hunting ] snip

Good for the meat, to. No time for those flavor-altering stress hormones to be circulating. 'Atta girl. Bob