2005-03-09: Range Run at unusual time

Considering that most of the regulars couldn't make it, it was just George and myself. What we didn't know was that Iron Sights is apparently really busy on Wednesdays, and we had about a half hour wait in the lobby. Furthermore, you can tell that I'm a regular by the fact that not only do I get recognized and greeted by name, but that when the employee is getting tired of trying to talk sense to a Desert Eagle owner, I get called in to re-educate him with a hands-on demonstration. Basically there was a customer who was convinced that, because his old (by old, I mean that I'm not even sure he had a Mark 7... it may have been a Mark 1) Desert Eagle's manual said "357/44 magnum", that he should should be able to fire both calibers from the barrel with no other modifications, just because the manual didn't say anything about buying an appropriate barrel. I was greatly amused, and showed him the difference between his pistol and my Mark 19. The guy sighed heavily, saw reason, and trudged homewards to look up Magnum Research's website to see if he could purchase a 357 barrel online. Having looked around a little, he's going to be disappointed; they don't stock barrels other than 44 magnum for their old guns, apparently. His best bet would be something like Gunbroker.

In other news, I ran across a guy who apparently interviewed for the same job I got at Kyocera. Apparently, I got it just by having a bit of Sun under my belt instead of being purely linux. The dude had a neat semi-auto German pistol from WW1, by Mauser. It's so common to hear about Mauser-action rifles, that it's easy to forget that Mauser was actually a company too.

Once the waiting was over, George and I wandered in and mostly fired the 45's. I recently learned that my Para Limited's adjustable sight was not actually properly adjusted, so we spent a good amount of time dialing it in. It's a lot easier to hit accurately with that thing now. Next up, George brought in some shotgun slugs and was happily putting them into the targets with his inherited shotgun. I used my M590A1 and erased a few targets myself. I've learned that I absolutely need to work on shell reloading techinques, as I'm spending far too much time fumbling for a shell in my carrier which should be spent with the finger on the trigger. The advantage of a tube-fed shotgun is that you can load a slug, chamber it, and then fire it and be back to regular buckshot or whatnot in short order. For one thing, I need to learn which hand ought to be reaching for the shell and which one should be staying on the shotgun. I'm sure there are numerous police tactical manuals on the subject, which I'll be looking for online. I'm also having thoughts of picking up a good number of 12ga snap caps (inert shells) for practice.

Also for the 'amusing' list, was the group of folks to my left. There were three of 'em, I'd estimate they were all around 5'8" at most, and one of them had rented out a Desert Eagle. The other had rented what I believe was a Glock 9mm. I have the distinct impression that most of their gun handling technique came from movies, however none of them were dumb enough to hold the gun sideways or point the weapons other than downrange. While a bit uninformed, they were indeed quite safe. Ended up educating one of 'em that live 50cal rounds do not go on the floor with the spent casings, they go into the red box marked "live round disposal". It seems that the round in question just wasn't feeding properly, so the guy tried loading it a second time, and when it failed, he told me I could take it or he'd toss it. It failed to feed with my own Desert Eagle, but racking the slide and notching it into the chamber on its own took care of the issue. I couldn't see much in the line of abberations, so I'm going to chalk it up to a very slight dent in the nose or something. To thank him for the round, I informed him he could watch as I "did something fun but stupid". Bear in mind - the guy was holding his rented DE two-handed while leaning back, shaking with fear, frequently dropping the muzzle an inch at trigger pull, nearly getting clonked in the head by the gun sometimes, and occasionally letting out a scared yelp when it went off. He did have a few rounds within the kill zone on the target, though. I one-handed my DE Agent Smith style, and put the round around the heart area. It was no real accomplishment at the second line, but it scored cool points with the group and I educated 'em on the main differences between good DE shooting and bad DE shooting. Namely:

1. Practice with ammo that has an ungodly kick to it, like Speer. I can only guess that Speer stuffs more powder into their rounds or uses heavier bullets than Magnum Research does. Then, you can sit back and enjoy the light stuff.
2. Get the Hogue rubber grips. They make the gun heavier and absorb some of the kick.
3. Work out the muscles on the back of your arm. Well-toned muscles there will do more to absorb recoil than anything else I've seen.

Firearm	Performance notes	Maintenance notes	Actions taken
Desert Eagle	Perfect.	Light cleaning; only 8rds fired.	Pending.
Para P-14	Perfect.	Clean.	Pending.
CZ-97B	Perfect	Clean.	Pending.
PAR-1	Not fired much, no issues	None required.	None required
Modded SKS	Ran fine; red dot misaligned.	Clean rifle, align red dot scope.	Pending.
M590A1	Normal performance.	Clean.	Pending.