New Career Direction or Temporary Insanity?

Hold onto your chairs and plant both feet firmly on the floor. I have shocking news. I have an urge…to buy a gun.

No, I’m serious. I really do. I know it sounds crazy.

I feel like my shooting has improved to the point where a more accurate gun would make a noticeable difference. The holes I’m shooting in my targets haven’t gotten much smaller, but they’re a little smaller, and sometimes they reflect 50 shots instead of the 25 I used to shoot. When you shoot 50 rounds instead of 25, your groups should get bigger, not smaller.

It’s hard to know how accurate guns are from reading reviews. If I were to believe reviews, I would guess that my 1911s will shoot about a 3″ group at 75 feet. That’s more or less what the SW1911 does in reviews, and the Colt shoots as well as the SW1911. BUT…gun writers are not great with science. I believe they’re talking about “best groups” when they publish these figures, and they only include three shots. I have a feeling that 50 shots would paint a different and less flattering picture. I suspect that the real figure is something like twice 3″. Discounting bad groups is bad science.

With either 1911 and a full clip, I can probably wound you reliably at a hundred yards. If you’re pretty fat and you don’t move. I extrapolate from my short-range results. That’s really good effectiveness, for a pistol. At least in my opinion. But at any range above 25 yards, all I can count on is hitting a person somewhere on his upper body. A more accurate gun would presumably be more effective, at long range.

Let me stress that I have absolutely no interest in shooting people. But I have a lot of interest in being able to shoot people, so I have some say in whether I or another innocent crime victim gets to live or die. So it makes sense to use the human body as a model when I talk about accuracy.

You can get a Les Baer 1911 guaranteed to have 1 1/2″ accuracy at 50 yards, with certain ammunition. I suppose if the gun is inherently that accurate, there is no way I would ever get good enough to have the size of my groups significantly affected by the failings of the gun. It would not be cheap. But I should never need to buy another 1911 for target purposes. Barring weird race guns.

Smith and Wesson makes a couple of Performance Center guns that are very nice, and Colt makes Special Combat models and other highly accurate pistols. I don’t know if I’d trust Colt, but my SW1911 and my 686 are the loves of my life. Seems like these and the Baer guns are the best choices below a certain price. Although you have to pay Baer extra money to get the 1 1/2″ guarantee. I’m inclined to think the Smith is the best choice.

I have learned to read between the lines when I read gun articles, and I’ve also learned to pay no attention to accuracy claims made by people whose targets I haven’t seen. About 3% of shooters shoot well. The rest don’t actually know whether their guns are accurate. To a person who shoots pie-size groups at 7 yards, a change to softball-size groups may seem like great accuracy. But it doesn’t tell you anything about the gun. I think you have to put a gun in a clamp or turn it over to a very fine shooter in order to learn anything about its accuracy.

Whatever I get, I can tell you this. It probably won’t be a .38 Super. I love my Colt, but with a .45 you get free brass for life. And I can’t tell any difference in accuracy or ease of shooting.

I’ll see what they have at the show. Maybe I can get a deal. On the other hand, maybe I should buy a Ransom rest instead. Maybe my guns are already super-accurate, and I don’t know it.

Hmm…Caldwell makes a machine rest I can get for $125. That sounds smarter than blowing $1500+ on a gun, on the mere suspicion that it will help.

People are congratulating me on not maiming myself with the cheesy round that failed to exit the SW1911 yesterday. I still can’t explain it. I had great confidence in the charges. The Lock-N-Load AP is designed so the filled cartridge rotates into your line of vision before you seat the bullet, and you can look into each cartridge. I am sure I did that, but I was more worried about overcharges than undercharges, so maybe I passed a round or two that clearly weren’t overfilled, yet weren’t right.

Somebody in the comments expressed surprise that I wouldn’t notice the difference in the feel of the round going off. Hey, that’s ADD for you. It doesn’t mean you can’t concentrate. People with ADD often have super-fantastic concentration. The difficulty is in deciding what to concentrate ON. So it makes sense that I would forget the noise and recoil while thinking about grip, sight picture, stance, trigger pull, follow-through, and so on.

When I was a kid, I used to exasperate my mother because I could never hear her when I was reading.

Maybe a powder checker is a good idea after all. I’m pretty sure overcharges will never be a problem for me, but undercharges appear to be a threat.

I keep thinking I would like to get into gun writing. I am not the world’s greatest gun authority, but I have a few other assets. As a lawyer, I can write with some intelligence regarding second amendment issues. As a former scientist, I have some hope of understanding ballistics. And maybe I can sell myself as a humorist. If I could just figure out where to look for opportunities. I’ll be working on that.