Tuesday, January 12, 2016

Proof of concept...

So, a woman came in to take our basic two-hour "Intro to Handguns" course last Thursday. The class is $89.95 and is taught by Zach Rogers, who is something of a Padawan of Denny Reichard up at Sand Burr Gun Ranch. Zach's a great instructor with total beginners, and after an hour in the classroom and an hour on the range, most students end up shooting well enough to pass the typical "qual" course.

Anyhow, this particular student showed up and she was a small woman, probably in her late 60s, and she had issues with having enough grip strength to work the slide of a self-loading pistol (yes, even when shown all the tricks) and also had problems working the double-action trigger on a J-frame revolver.

"Ooh, wait!" says I, and ran to the trunk of my car in the parking lot, and fetched the little P250. I'd been touting this thing as an ideal "Grandma Gun", and here was my chance to find out if it was true.

Indeed, she had no problem running the slide on the compact .380, and could work the slide release lever and run the 7.25# DAO trigger with no issues.

"Go 'head and use this gun for the class, then," I offered, and she did.

Unfortunately, the noise and commotion of even the .380 was a bit much for her and she wound up only firing six rounds before deciding she needed to go home and steel her nerves before making another attempt at a firearms class.

That was 1126 rounds through the gun, total.

The next day, after work, I stepped out on the range and fired off another hundred rounds of Lucky Gunner's Fiocchi 95gr FMJ. The gun continued to chug along just fine.

That's 1226 rounds fired since the gun was last cleaned or lubricated, with one failure to go completely into battery (#447). 774 rounds to go.
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