Category: Guns

On Saturday, September 24, me and a couple of friends put on our annual “New Shooter Day.” Every year, Oddball and I like to take newbies out and let them get some good exposure to the awesomeness that is shooting. This year I think we had two that had never fired a gun before and three who had extremely limited experience. In total we had ten people, including my last new shooter.

Our goal with these events is to teach proper handling and safety with little emphasis on accuracy. We just want them to have fun without getting frustrated. We also want them to get trigger time on lots of different kinds of guns.

We started off with a safety briefing that went over the basic rules and the range rules. After we moved the group onto the firing line, I demonstrated a few of the firearms so the newbies could get an idea of the amount of noise and recoil they should expect. I learned a very valuable lesson here: try out your new guns before taking new shooters. Both the M&P15-22 and the Stevens 95 had embarrassing problems. The Stevens either has a problem with the extractor or a problem with the operator. The M&P15-22 was having an issue where sometimes the trigger didn’t reset properly–I had to physically push the trigger forward for it to reset. After about 15 rounds and a generous helping of lubricant that problem was resolved. I suspect that after a few hundred rounds the trigger will smooth out.

After the demonstration, we let the newbies start off shooting .22 pistols. I have a Walther P-22 that was having slight issues with the Remington High Velocity Golden Bullets but after we figured out the ammo was the culprit it worked pretty well.

I met Chase a week before New Shooter Day. I stopped by The Hacker Consortium for a bit and started talking to him. He mentioned that he’d never shot a gun before, so I invited him along. He’s from Illinois and was pretty disappointed when I told him about what his state would require if he wanted to buy a firearm.

Our friend Critch came along and brought his Ruger .22 to play with.

Oddball calls Cassondra his greatest success. She went from terrified of guns to gun owner in one range session a while ago. She now owns a .22 rifle but wanted to learn about pistols, so that’s what she worked on.

After everyone got a chance to shoot the .22’s, we moved on to carbines. I broke out the M4gery and gave a recoil demonstration where I put the butt of the stock in my crotch and fired a few rounds. I saw this done when I was in basic training and it always stuck with me, so I figured I’d use it to show the newbies that .223 is nothing to be scared of. I got a lot of laughs 😀

Here I am showing Sarah how the EOTech works:

People love the EOTech.

Here she is shooting it. Notice the brass in the air:

While I was teaching Sarah about the AR15 system, Oddball was on the 50 yard range letting Chase and his girlfriend Kim play with the .40cal Beretta carbine:

All in all, it was a good day. The newbies also got to shoot some battle rifles like the AK, Nagant, M1 Carbine, and an Enfield in .308. Sorry, no pictures for that. I would like to thank Patrick for having the foresight to actually bring a camera since I was too busy teaching to break out my phone. He did a lot better than I would have.

Oh, and we didn’t have to use the target stands.

That’s how long since I ordered my suppressor from Gemtech. Just got a voice mail from my dealer saying that it has been delivered to their shop.

Now I get to fill out the paperwork. Saturday will be the earliest that I can get there with my trust paperwork, and it will be 4-12 weeks after that before I can take it home with me.

All for a safety device.

Especially if you are a convicted sex offender who kidnaps an 18 year old girl and drives her to Mississippi to rape her:

Cronk was in Aberdeen following an alleged kidnapping that began last Wednesday at the Kangaroo Express gas station on Lebanon Road.

Police said Cronk revealed a handgun and forced the teenage victim into his vehicle.

He then drove four and a half hours to Aberdeen where he rented a hotel room and forced the victim to perform sexual acts at gunpoint.

The victim told police when Cronk wasn’t looking she took his gun and shot him in the stomach.

Cronk left the hotel, and the female victim locked herself inside the room and called 911 for help.

Cronk, 58, was found deceased inside his vehicle parked at a Shell gas station in nearby Hamilton, Mississippi Friday morning.

That’s a nightmare scenario, isn’t it? It’s awful that she went through that, but maybe it will help with her recovery knowing that she stopped him from doing that to anyone else ever again.

When restaurant carry was passed in Tennessee, The Beale Street Merchants Association banned guns from Beale Street:

Later this month, Beale Street will break out the hand-held metal detectors at the entrance points and use other security measures to keep guns out of the three-block area day and night.

And the fruit of that labor? Six people shot behind one of their clubs.

No word on whether they stopped frisking everyone who entered the area, but either way the Beale Street Merchants Association is headed for a lawsuit. A big one.

M&P15-22.

I picked it up last week. It’s going to be great at New Shooter Range Day.

About once a year, my friend Oddball and I like to do a “New Shooter Day” at one of the local ranges. The last time we went, though, the target stands for the pistol berm were….missing. The time before they were pretty well destroyed to the point of uselessness.

When I was at the LuckyGunner Blogger Shoot, Tom Givens brought some target stands with him that were made out of PVC pipe. I thought that was ingenious, and took note so Oddball and I could make some.

New Shooter Day is this coming Saturday, so last weekend we made 3 target stands, following the instructions at The Box O’ Truth:

A couple of notes:

1. Use a Wire PVC Saw. Things go much faster, and you can shorten the pipes in the parking lot if they won’t fit in your Jeep 😀
2. Following the instructions, you end up with a 22″ length of pipe at the end. Don’t worry about cutting it down to 16″ unless you really really want to.
3. You don’t have to use PVC cement if you get fittings that are “slip” fittings. Those type fittings have enough of a lip that they’ll stay on the pipe without cement. The other kind (the name of which escapes me) tend to not stay on as well, and are cheaper than the slip fittings. Our T’s are slip, the elbows are not.
4. The 1x2x8 stakes are about 80 cents locally. The entire cost is about $10 per target stand, but the consumable stakes are really cheap.
5. It took about 45 minutes to make all three, including me using a hand saw on the stakes.

An added bonus to not having to use PVC cement is that the targets break down into smaller components. Right now these are broken down and sitting in my garage.

One last thing: Box O’ Truth uses IPSC targets, but we’re just going to use old Amazon boxes or poster board*.

*If you use brightly colored poster board, it acts just like those Shoot-N-C targets, only in reverse and a whole lot cheaper. It’s really easy to see the holes from 50 or 100 yards out. I usually go for the green stuff as it’s easier to see a red dot.

SBR AR-15 with a TAC2 barrel system. This system allows for a quick change of standard AR15 barrels. It takes about 30 seconds to switch from one barrel to another. This belongs to commenter Tac. Click to embiggen.

All the goodies.

Short handguard installed. Note the acme threaded flash hider just barely protruding.

Rifle Length free float with offset rails. Suppressor is attached in this picture.

BUIS offset on the 45 degree rail.

Stevens Model 94 M
My grandparents are cleaning out their house and this is one of the things they gave me.