No More Pretty Targets
November 6th, 2009Rapid Fire no Fun
I’ve had a weird morning.
Today I was supposed to go to the gun range with some guys from church. That’s not the weird part. The weird part is that my dad went. When he found out I was going to the range, he wanted to go, in spite of the fact that Christians would be there. How about that?
I wanted to go to Trail Glades, the outdoor county range I always go to, but John, the church volunteer leader who arranged the outing opted for an indoor range up north. This turned out to be a good thing. Trail Glades does not permit “rapid fire,” which means anything faster than once every five seconds. That means you can forget about three-shot drills. The range we went to is somewhat grubby and dark, but it has no speed limit.
I started out with the .45 and .38 Super, and I shot very nicely. Then I noticed that John was shooting faster, and I asked him about it. He said he was practicing shooting twice to the body and once to the head. We were using silhouette targets (another thing Trail Glades does not permit), so it was easy to see how the paper perp was faring.
I decided to try three-shot drills. It was pretty humiliating. Suddenly, I had to worry about target re-acquisition. I was using 5.5″ Caldwell Orange Peel targets over the heart and head of my victim, and when I switched to shooting three shots per burst, I started getting a lot of shots that were completely out of the black.
I noticed a few things. First, while my Glock 26 is great for slow-firing, it took longer to get on target when shooting fast. The results weren’t great. I tried John’s Glock 17, and the vast majority of my shots stayed in the black at about 25 feet. My .45 ACP 1911 also performed well. My 1911 .38 Super wasn’t that good, although it was the first gun I tried rapid shooting with, so it makes sense that I didn’t do well.
The other guy from church–his name is Joey–let me shoot a clip from his Springfield XD. I can see why people like them. The trigger pull is vastly superior to a Glock’s. And I shot it as well as the Glock 17. It was a short-barreled version in 9mm. Not sure which one.
My dad was shooting a bizarre 4-shot .357 he inherited. The brand name is “Cop.” He found that it didn’t always fire. No idea why. Good thing, I guess. Now he’ll know better than to rely on it. I let him shoot the Glock 26, and he really liked it.
On the way home, we dropped into a new gun store near me, and I priced a Glock 30. I think the thing to do is to get one, ditch the Glock 26, and practice rapid-fire drills. A laser now seems like a must. Why squint at tiny sights when you can look for a nice bright dot? Trying to use the sights is fun and challenging, but I don’t think challenge is a good thing when you’re ventilating an armed burglar.
This experience reaffirmed my faith in long guns. A pistol is way better than nothing, but a long gun with a green laser would be far superior to anything I shot today.
I think maybe I should give up on full-sized pistols. It seems like there isn’t much of a niche between compact pistols and 7.62mm carbines. A tiny Glock will do nearly anything a big Glock will do; if you need more oomph, you should probably reach for a folding carbine. That’s my guess.
After we shot, we hung around the front of the gun range clinging to our Bibles and bashing immigrants. Which didn’t go all that well, since one of us was born in Trinidad and another was Cuban. But we really tried. We felt we owed it to Janet Napolitano to prove how bigoted and ignorant Christians are.
Yeah, if there is one thing Yesterday’s events prove, it’s that Christians are the ones the government should be watching. I don’t know how we got a peace-loving Muslim to shoot up Fort Hood, but I’m sure Bill Maher could explain it.
November 6th, 2009 at 2:53 PM
In terms of getting good at speed shooting, and at the sake of sounding like Mr. Miyagi, try to develop a rhythm, a tempo. It makes it much more “automatic.” Don’t try to be too fast at first. Speed will come with being smooth and fluid. That will fall into place with a rhythm.
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Glad you found the XD to your liking.
November 6th, 2009 at 3:03 PM
According to the news reports the Muslim shooter guy had pre-post traumatic stress disorder, was sad because his fellow soldiers made fun of him for trying to convert him to Islam, had “compassion fatigue” (a real Fox-news headline) — which for most people just means they say “I gave at the office” when the UNICEF can gets passed around but for certain “special” people…
Oh, and the last stray was, the sleeve of his white robe brushed against a bag of pork rinds at the 7-11 that day. I mean, how much stress is a person supposed to take before he grabs a few rounds and shoots up an army base? I ask you.
November 6th, 2009 at 3:04 PM
I mean “for trying to convert them to Islam.” My excuse is I was typing over my cat, who likes to lie in between me and my keyboard.
November 6th, 2009 at 3:10 PM
Odd… Pork rinds have a calming effect on me.
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But then again, my faith demands more of me than primal acts of rage and violence.
November 6th, 2009 at 3:49 PM
Yeah religion of peace-my aunt Fanny!!!
You know you don’t see Baptists and Pentecostals running around killing for their religion.
Glad your dad was able to make the trip!
November 6th, 2009 at 3:53 PM
As we accelerate toward emulating Europe and joining the caliphate as nice folk make fruit jello and watch their NASCAR instead of getting angry and taking action… Don’t. Get. Me. Started.
Converts to Islam and Muslim “born agains” are theologically incapable of coexisting with non-Muslims in Dar al Harb without conflict. Islam has never made an adherent kinder to those they consider dhimmis unless that dhimmi was a candidate for conversion. Exceptions are statistical anomalies and not representative of the group.
Hey… let’s be even MORE quiet about how Wahhabist Islam is the ONLY kind taught in US prison.
It’s increasingly tiring to deal with those who actively choose to be deaf to the pitch of miner’s canaries.
November 6th, 2009 at 5:56 PM
Good to see you shooting some, I had a business trip to Atlanta last may and my coworker wanted to shoot some so we carried some guns and ammo down with us. It seems every corner has an indoor range where we were staying (N/W Atlanta? I did not drive) so we picked one and had a ball. I had not shot anything in months and could really see that regular practice with your carry weapon is very important. I also found that I had to see the eye doctor soon, could not see the front sight with any clarity at all.
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I have no constructive words for what happened at Fort Hood. The religion of peace strikes again.
November 6th, 2009 at 6:18 PM
Maybe he should have tried some Yoga first?
November 7th, 2009 at 7:18 AM
I used to shoot in an Indoor League at a range outside Atlanta and we had a “pin shoot night” where they set up five old bowling pins on a steel table downrange (google the rules.)
Five pins equally spaced and six rounds in the clip…allowing one miss.
The range record was held by my best friend at a little under 1.7 seconds and within three months I was shooting under 3.5 seconds…we both used SW model 41’s (.22) with red dot scopes and found them to be easier to get a sight picture when compared to the laser.
The red dot gives your eyes a point to focus on near the top of the gun similar to iron sights with the target in the background. With the projected laser sight I tended to look downrange and ended up waving the end of the barrel around and overcompensating side to side and in elevation.
Just a thought…
November 7th, 2009 at 9:06 AM
First the appropriate quote:
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“Fast is fine. Accuracy is final. You need to learn to shoot slow, real fast.”–Wyatt Earp.
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Now I know it has been some time since we have discussed this sort of thing, but the principal here is the same as it was with the rifle. Practice first with the sights on the weapon, later, when you have a degree of proficiency unaided by gadgets, start using laser sights or whatever you want. The first thing though is to gain a degree of proficiency and confidence with the pistol alone. If you do that, you’ll find that when the moment comes that you have to rely on your shooting ability to survive, you will have greatly increased your chances. Though at the moment of truth you may be using laser sights, the fact that you are very proficient with the pistol to start with will help steady your nerves and your hand. The look-breathe-sight-shoot cycle will be automatic and you won’t be able to miss if you wanted too. Especially important if there is more then one target.
November 7th, 2009 at 6:45 PM
I’ll make a suggestion for speed: start off with a .22, and start slow. You can shoot a lot with .22’s for little money, and the practice does carry over to the bigger stuff.
Start slow on two fast shots/one followup, and work up for speed over time. Dry fire practice will help too, if need be use a revolver and snap caps instead of the semi-auto.
November 9th, 2009 at 9:17 AM
Snipers have a saying that “Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.”
Which I think means get the mechanics down first, get good at them, and then work on doing the right things more quickly.
November 9th, 2009 at 8:56 PM
Tell your dad to get rid of that C.O.P POS. Inaccurate, unreliable, lousy trigger pull and quality control that makes shooting an adventure. Get him a J-frame Smith if he wants a revolver or any compact nine.
He’s not even getting a .357’s worth of energy out of it for all the hassle; it’s all wasted on muzzle flash and recoil.