Yep. Never been to one. I don't think we have any back home. I mean if you don't have any land you drive out the town limits and find a gully beside the road. Well, being this is Seattle, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised by the gay couple in the lane beside us, but still it's not exactly what I expected. Nor did I expect half the males to be in suits. In my jeans and tan t, I felt a little underdressed! More importantly, I will never go on any other day except Tuesday. Half price lanes and free rentals for the ladies... ah ladies night! The chick beside us was smoking! Straight up fucking georgious. How she shot with 4" fuck me boots on I don't know, but she pulled it off quite well. Douche bag looking emo dude for a bf though. The sorority chicks on their other side weren't too shabby either. Had some problems with light strikes at first, but one of the staff explained that loosening the hammer is a used car trick for having a 'sweet' trigger squeeze. Took off the grip and one half turn and never had a problem after that. As for grouping... eh. I've never been a big pistol guy, and it shows. I mean I'm not terrible, and if your within 15 meters you're gonna get all 6 to the center mass, but considering two of my buddies I went with compete... Lets just say it wasn't pretty. They were helping me out, so I got better. And I'm sure weekly shooting sessions will help. Now to just get Anne in on it (as this is actually going to be her gun, I want a 1911). All in all quite a pleasant experience.
Nice. The only babe I've seen at my range actually works there- leggy brunette girl, nice disposition as well, and a southpaw like me; she wears a big old hogleg on her hip all day long.
A couple tricks for pistol shooting: 1) Lay a quarter on top of the gun and dry fire it. If you can't pull the trigger without the quarter falling off, you're jerking the trigger. 2) Another way to check this is to load dummy rounds into the gun. If you've got a semi-auto you need to get someone to load a clip for you, but with a revolver you could just play "Russian Roulette" and spin the cylinder after loading it. So you're shooting away--*BANG! BANG!* Suddenly you go *click*--and the muzzle drops about an inch. You're flinching. 3) Finally, another trick you can do is to visualize the front sight post as being attached to the trigger. As you pull the trigger, you try to "pull" the front sight through the rear sight notch. This does a couple things--it forces you to focus on maintaining proper sight alignment and it takes your mind off anticipating the trigger break. There are some caveats to this as far as some bad habits you can develop, but I don't remember them and the technique has generally worked for me for shooting.
I've never been one either, like you it has never been necessary. I'm sure I'd be a fish out of water while getting a hold on proper decorum.
The other thing you can do is hold the gun sideways, with a bent arm, at about forhead level, and shout "GAT! GAT!" as you pull the trigger.
Glad you had a great time. As for women at the ranges...I get jealous of my wife at times. She goes and she doesn't pay range fees, never pays for her targets, and always has a few employees right at her side critiquing her technique and offering tips and such. Hell she probably could get away with free range ammo if she shook her ass a little bit. Some times it pays to be a chick.
I fucked up my first time at a freind's outdoor club range. See, I'm used to the indoor range protocol I learned. You get there, get in your lane, take your pistol out and lock the slide open, and set it down while you load your mags. So that's what I did at the outdoor range. Then some guy comes walking in from setting up a target downrange and gives me a stern talking to about rule violations. Nobody likes to be at the business end of a shooting range setting up a target, and hear "Clack!" Live and learn.
Most outdoor rangers had a line a couple of feet from the bench. When the range is cold (cease fire), no one is allowed at the bench. For anything. At an indoor range, this isn't necessary as you can push a button and the target comes to you. At an outdoor range, shooters walk downrange to retrieve/put up their targets. Shooters being behind the line allows for the utmost safety when there are people downrange. Violation of this rule usually means the range officer belittles you in front of your girl and everyone else on the loudspeaker.
What Ramen said. Plus, the guy standing in front of the targets heard someone back at the firing line rack his slide (me). If you're the guy down range, you don't know if that means somebody just loaded a gun and is now pointing at you without noticing you're there. It's a momentary sphincter factor of about 2.
When I was in my early twenties, a friend and I took our .22s to the local rifle range. The targets were mounted on 2x4s that slid into either horizontal end of a t-shaped metal collar driven into the ground. The collars were protected from bullet strikes by a stack of sand-filled tires. However, the 2x4s remained exposed. Over the course of an hour, my friend and I systematically cut through each of our target's 2x4s. Do you know how many .22s it takes to completely sever a 2x4? A lot. About 100-150. My friend brought his down first. He told me that, through his scope, he could see the 2x4 was this close to breaking, and, as he lined up for his shot, it collapsed. He was laughing so hard he couldn't breathe. Another few shots and mine collapsed, too. Then we bid a hasty retreat. We probably would've been banned from the place had anyone noticed.
It always makes me nervous when I'm in a lane next to a couple shooting. First off, the guy's almost always gonna be showing off for the girl, which leads to ignoring safety rules (I saw a guy "twirl" his loaded Glock, cowboy style once), and I've been swept on three different occasions by a girl firing her first round ever...usually dead ballz accurate...and then turning her whole body around, gun still outstretched, and finger still on the trigger to ask the bf how she did.
I was at an indoor bowling pin match once when this guy ran dry without clearing the last pin. He turned around, looked at the range master, and waved both hands - including the one with the supposedly empty gun in it - in a "that's it!" gesture. Twenty guys hit the deck as one.
We had something similar happen at my buddy Dave's backyard range... It was like a reverse Wave as she swept us with that .22....
We were watching from the gallery behind windows. Nobody was rude enough to break the range's nice expensive glass.
Way back when (maybe they still do this) in the Air Force all the M-16 range instructors were armed with .38 pistols in case anyone ever "flipped out" and tried to kill anyone. Yes, I did the math on this and the instructors would have been screwed on this deal. Scariest range I ever went to - in Korea they had a range with several functions (live grenades, pistols, rifles, rocket launchers) going on at the same time. Nothing like trying to focus with a clueless KATUSA (Korean soldier temporarily serving with the US Army) throwing a live grenade in Lord knows what direction. I was a safety at a SAW (machine gun shooting M-16 rounds) range once and their limited grasp of English (or lack of concern with safety) had them jumping in front of live weapons all day - you really had to watch them like a hawk!
Years ago, Shelby County had a really nice, outdoor range out on Shelby Farms. It's still there, but it's no longer open to the public. Get this. Almost all of the range personel...even the safety officers...were inmates at the nearby correctional institute. So when the range is cold, and you're downrange setting up or taking down your target, there's a bunch of inmates, all by themselves there at the line to make sure no one does anything unsafe with all the various guns and ammunition. I only went there once.
Years ago, Shelby County had a really nice, outdoor range out on Shelby Farms. It's still there, but it's no longer open to the public. Get this. Almost all of the range personel...even the safety officers...were inmates at the nearby correctional institute. So when the range is cold, and you're downrange setting up or taking down your target, there's a bunch of inmates, all by themselves there at the line to make sure no one does anything unsafe with all the various guns and ammunition. I only went there once.
Who are the ad wizards that green-lighted this idea? Did they run out of trash to pick up on the side of the road or what?
Shelby farms was originally a farm where they grew all their own food. Since pretty much ALL the inmates are black, it looked too much like a plantation so they stopped that.
Yeah, you don't want to have people outside being productive and getting exercise. Better to keep prisiners cooped up like sardines, buggering and killing each other.
