Elections have consequences.

The Eagle Creek Park Pistol Range, oft referred to on these pages as "Iggle Crick", is an anomaly in big-city 21st Century America: A publicly-owned shooting range right in the middle of town. (Well, a little north and west of the middle of town, but still inside the I-465 perimeter.)

Or I should say it was an anomaly, because the new Democrat mayor of the Circle City has decided to get in a few gratuitous shots of the "vae victus" sort. I'll let my friend, pro-RKBA lawyer and radio talk show host Guy Relford explain:

As a result, it came as quite a surprise when the city informed TFT just last week that Indy Parks was terminating its contract with TFT and that the city would not allow Eagle Creek Pistol Range to open to the public for the 2016 season. (The current contract runs until March 2017.)

The city did not provide any rational basis for its decision to terminate TFT's contract and close the range to the public, other than a vague reference to concerns over “liability” (despite TFT’s perfect safety record) and a concern about a possible “mass shooting” at the range. I have to say that I actually laughed at the “mass shooting” comment, because a public pistol range - with multiple armed and trained range safety officers along with several armed members of the public – is obviously the very antithesis of a “gun free zone” likely to be targeted by an active shooter.

The number of the Mayor's Action Center Hotline is (317) 327-4622 for any residents of Indianapolis who would like to call and politely inquire as to why the city decided to shut down one of the few venues where citizens of even limited means could go to safely practice their firearms handling under supervised conditions.
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Still Ticking

Fifty rounds of nasty steel-cased Wolf Polyformance 115gr FMJ and fifty of Remington's 147gr High Terminal Performance JHP loading went downrange via the Sig Sauer P320 this morning at Iggle Crick. First I've tried of the latter.

No malfunctions, although I again caught myself parking my thumb on the slide stop and preventing it from locking back on the empty mag twice. I've almost gotten shut of that issue, but it apparently still likes to crop up if I'm trying to run the gun fast.

The gun still has not been cleaned or lubricated in any way since I popped the latches on the box several months ago. The round count now stands at 1,150 with one dud primer (#903) and that weird failure-to-feed (#978). In just 850 more, the gun gets a bath...or at least some lubricant.
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It's supposed to rain some more this morning...

...but the firing line at Iggle Crick is covered and the rain keeps the crowds down. I've still got a punch left on this here ten-visit pass, so...
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Boom!

Range bag? Check.
Ammo can? Check.
Notebook? Check.
New range gizmo? Check.

Sunday morning mantra, "If you don't shoot weekly, you'll shoot weakly?" Check.

Alrighty, then. Breakfast with Shootin' Buddy and then off to Iggle Crick.
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Looks like the rain has mostly stopped...

...time for a tasty Broad Ripple brunch and then off to the range with Shootin' Buddy.

Because, as somebody said in the comments here or at Facebook, "if you don't shoot weekly, you'll shoot weakly." I'm making that my new mantra. Since it's a weekend, we'll be going to Iggle Crick.

Permanent steel targets in the pistol bays at Marion County Fish & Game

Of course, this year I've been trying to get my money's worth out of my membership at MCF&G on weekdays, too. I shudder to think of what it worked out to on a per-visit basis last year... Bonus: MCF&G now allows working from the holster in the pistol bays.

Considering that MCF&G is right in the shadow of I-465 and a stone's throw from the track, it's a surprisingly idyllic setting. Right after I snapped that picture and put my phone away, the other shooter in the bay told me to turn around. Lo and behold, there was Bambi's mom and sister, ambling across the clearing between the creek and the pond.

It's as though wildlife knows that a shootin' range is about the safest place for it. I'm told they occasionally had to pause matches to shoo deer off the rifle ranges at ORSA back in Tennessee...
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Gone Shootin'...

Because this is the year of being less sucky at shooting.

Off to Iggle Crick.
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AFK, BRB...

Saw this hanging up for sale at the Antique Mall. It's probably still there. Those guys make me itch.

David Gregory is about to start yammering about Fort Hood in the next room. Eff him right in the ear this morning. I'm headed to Iggle Crick.

Gone shooting for a bit. BRB.
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The season of dry-fire.

Winter temperatures have settled in over Hoosieropolis, and I have a confession to make: I haven't busted a cap in almost a month.

Holidays, cold weather (cold enough that I hear Iggle Crick didn't even open last weekend), one thing and another, and it's all been dry fire practice in the basement for fifteen or twenty minutes a day.

I could go freeze at MCF&G, or I could drive down to Beech Grove Firearms (is Pop Guns still open out on the east side?) This town is desperately short of indoor ranges. Don's doesn't count.

Modern turning target carriers. Neat!

BGF has a wonderful, clean, modern, well-ventilated facility, but driving there from Broad Ripple is something of a pain; either navigate cratered surface streets straight south through the worst of the 'hood to emerge in Beech Grove, or take the freeway down through town and back around on 465; akin to driving from Indy to Nashville, TN by way of New Orleans.

I need to pencil out one day a week and make myself go shoot.

Day At The Range...

Breakfast at Good Morning Mama's with Shootin' Buddy and then off to Iggle Crick.

Got to the range and started off by running Dot Torture with my Glock 19. I don't like shooting Glocks much, but this one gets 50 rounds every range trip because it's being used to T&E something.

Glock 19 and M&P 9 FS.

After shooting my 22/45 for a bit, I pulled out the M&P 9 which is, nominally at least, my carry gun. (I say 'nominally' because I've been carrying the .357SIG gun since the Midnight 3 Gun Match. I wanted to hose out the 9 and disassemble and scrub out all its mags and I've totally been meaning to do that and move the Crimson Trace Lasergrip and Lightguard back onto it since I came back from Oregon but I just haven't gotten around to it yet.)

I hadn't shot the gun without the light or laser on it in a long time, as can be evinced by the pull to the right on the first dots. Then I settled down and was doing okay until I threw one of the strong-hand-only shots, followed by a week-hand-only one, and then it was time to egregiously drop a pair of shots on #9 and #10 so I could finish up shooting a 46, down two to my performance with the Glock. I'm cleaning the Smith and putting the beams back on it tonight.

"Hey, little buckaroo! Get your dad to take you down to the Ace Hardware so you can spend your lawn-mowing money on the same gun Cowboy Sam used to defend the stagecoach from Black Bart!"

Shootin' Buddy had recently run across a little Colt Stagecoach Carbine; a Colteer auto cut down to carbine size and tarted up with some Country 'n' Western flair to appeal to the young fans of the horse operas that were all over the TV back then. Shooting it was fun, although the kid-size controls could be a little hard to work with grownup-size hands. Speaking of kids and guns...

If this picture were to be any cuter, it would need a slow loris in there somehow.

As we were getting ready to leave, a father and his little daughter came in to get the next generation of shooters off to a good start.

Single-loading a round in the SR-22's magazines for her, he would then guide her hands through each step. But as you can see, the actual shot was all her. Because 'Merica. (This was obviously not her first rodeo.)

After we left the range we went to Bradis to check on the ammo situation and pick up this 'n' that, and from there it was back to Broad Ripple for a yummy lunch at Thr3e Wise Men, where I got a half-growler of their "Breaking Barn" Milk Stout to go.

As Sundays go, this one's been pretty tough to top...

Speaking of recoil control...

Saturday at the range we met up with someone Shootin' Buddy knows from work. She'd mentioned wanting to get some basic handgun familiarity since she was thinking about buying a pistol when they moved into their new home, and Shootin' Buddy isn't one to pass up a chance to do the Lord's Work, so she and her husband met us at Iggle Crick on Saturday morning.

After the initial safety briefing, I worked with her and Shootin' Buddy did likewise with her husband, running through basic safe manipulation and operation on an assortment of revolvers and self-loaders.

Unfortunately for when it came to explaining a good stance, the Best Visual Aid I've Ever Seen had left the range before the couple showed up...

A few lanes to my left when I arrived were three people I took to be a family group: Mom, dad, and adult son. Dad and son were both taller than me and dad was a big, buff dude where son had more of a swimmer's build.

They were taking turns shooting a full-size small frame Glock, either a 9 or .40. Junior would lean slightly into the gun, not in an exaggerated Magpul video crouch but with his weight definitely centered forward of his hips, and was shooting better than the run of the mill public range shooter.

Meanwhile, Senior was in the "Beginner's Lean": standing bolt upright and leaning back a bit at the waist. What would have made him such a valuable teaching aid was that, despite the fact that he was physically much bigger than the younger man, from the side you could plainly see the recoil rock his torso back slightly with each shot.

Basically, from the waist up he was slightly unstable due to his rearward lean; every time the gun went off, the few foot-pounds of recoil the Glock added to the system was enough to throw it out of balance. I wish I had the nerve to ask if I could video, because it was so textbook.

Home again, home again, jiggity-jig!

While I love visiting Tennessee, I get to missing my 'hood, too. Now I'm back and facing that SoBro dilemma: Saganaki and a gyro salad at Sam's, or some wings straight out of the smoker at Fat Dan's?

Decisions, decisions...

Got around to cleaning my Ruger MkIII 22/45 while I was down there. It had been over a year since I last had it apart and it was past due for a good scrubbing. (A conservative estimate would be 5,000 rounds, but it's probably closer to 10k, if not more. I don't really keep track of the rimfire.) Chunks of stuff came out with a dental pick, and that was after five minutes in the ultrasonic tank and a good hosing with brake cleaner.

Busted!

 The firing pin return spring had lost a few coils. This was a replacement for the original which had failed in the same fashion. It did not seem to affect the operation of the gun. (The coils that broke were from the end down on the support.)

Took it to the range at Iggle Crick this morning. A lot fewer light strikes now that all the sludge is out of the works.

Still not using oil, which makes me happy.

Climbing out of Knoxville, a few miles north of the exit to Marko's old crib, the Subie passed the 200,000 mile mark.

To think that I saw it on Mulberry Street...

In a little bit of a rush this morning; I'm supposed to head out to breakfast and then Iggle Crick with Shootin' Buddy at 0800 and I grievously and heinously overslept, no doubt involved with me being up and doing the Facebookenings at 0lordy30 in the Ay Emm.

Here are some pickchers of a neat ride in the parking lot of the hamfest I went to with Bobbi in Peru yesterday in lieu of a real post. This car is pretty cool, but not really in my wheelhouse; best as I can make out, it's some sort of Model T racer? I'm assuming the rear-brakes-only thing is a dirt track artifact? Hopefully one of y'all can edjumacate me...

That exhaust sounded glorious...

Note stylish radiator cap...

The passenger accommodations were as austere as the dashboard.

...I didn't have to use my AK.

Which is a good thing, because Iggle Crick does not, at this time, allow centerfire rifle calibers. Also, I don't have an AK.

...and I was all like Pew! Pew! Pew! Pew! Pew!... 'Merica.

Sunday was almost perfect shootin' weather.
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Blech.

Stay away from the NOS in the green cans. It tastes like slightly-watered, lightly-carbonated Delsym cough suppressant, complete with the faintly gritty mouthfeel.

It'll get the heart going in the morning, though, especially if you slam a can of the stuff after watching a Chris Matthews show that included Dan Rather as a panelist. I swear, I thought those two were going to ask the ladies to leave the room so the two of them could engage in some mutual fapping to a picture of the president. The only other time I've seen that look on someone's face, it was a member of the JV chess club talking about a varsity cheerleader.

I know conservatives get a little misty-eyed when talking about Reagan, and liberals of a certain age talk about JFK like he was the greatest thing to happen to the office since Jefferson was in it, but the obsessive adulation some of the professional punditocracy have for the current Chief Executive would get them slapped with a restraining order if they directed it at a secretary. You get the feeling that Chris Matthews has a little shrine in a closet, with carefully-clipped pictures of Barry taped all over the wall, or that the Secret Service is going to find Rather skulking in the bushes around the White House one night with a roll of duct tape and a steak knife.

Woke up to a cell phone battery that was flatter than western Kansas, and Shootin' Buddy's supposed to be here at 0800 so we can do a Broad Ripple breakfast and then go freeze our asses off at Iggle Crick, which opens for the season this weekend. Shootin' Buddy has gotten back into reloading, and I reckon I should look at setting the press up myself. I really want something better than this little Lee turret press, though...

Tired.

Went to the range today with Shootin' Buddy and burned some powder.

Iggle Crick's December hours caused some grief. Normally they open at 0900, and so Shootin' Buddy would show up at Roseholme Cottage at 0800 and we'd go and have our choice of Broad Ripple weekend bruncheries before the hipsters had dragged themselves out of bed, and then head to the range.

With the new hours, we met at 10:30 and headed to Cafe Pretenchou. Throwing in the towel at the line-out-the-door-thirty-minute-wait there, we headed to Zest instead, where we faced only a twenty minute line for chow. (Creme brulee French toast for me. Yum!)

Then on to the range where I ran a bunch of deuce-deuce through my 22/45 and enough 9mm through the M&P9 to keep my hand in. It's probably time to clean the Ruger, given that the bolt is getting so sluggish that I can feel it cycle...

The shooting was as enjoyable as shooting always is. Although there was one young guy a couple lanes down who ran probably 200 rounds of buck and slugs through his shotgun, leaning backwards with the butt perched right on the ball of his shoulder, head straight up and thumb wrapped over the wrist of the stock. It hurt just to watch him shooting, as each BOOM! rocked him back on his heels, flinching, and I had to fight down the urge to go give him some pointers on his technique.

How come people are willing to spend scads of money on guns but won't spend a penny on learning how to work them?

A day in the life...

Shootin' Buddy showed up and we headed off to Zest for brekkie before heading off to Iggle Crick for some shooting, as well as to present a major award.

After the range we went down to check out Beech Grove Firearms' new facility, which was neat, clean, well-stocked, and jumpin' with customers.

On the way to drop me off back at Roseholme Cottage, we stopped at the new sushi bar in Broad Ripple, appropriately yclept "Sushi Bar".

The sushi is better than Naked Tchopstix, and it has an advantage over Broad Ripple's other sushi bar, H2O, in that it's open more frequently than alternate Tuesdays after 5:37PM. I tried a "dinosaur roll", which was alternating unagi and smoked salmon on the outside and a tasty core of tempura scallops. Perfect combination of flavors.

Walking back to Shootin' Buddy's truck, a little MG TD came blatting up to the stop light. It added a certain Broad Riparian flavor to the day...

Export versions had their compression ratios bumped up to 8.0:1 since they didn't have to burn crappy low-octane leftover wartime British petrol. Thus fortified, they thumped out almost sixty horsepower (SAE gross) and could accelerate to sixty mph in less than a fortnight. (And sometimes beyond it, too!)

...but not so much as when, 200 yards down the road, a little BRG-with-gold-stripes MGB went zipping into the Kroger's parking lot as we were preparing to depart.

The charmingly eccentric MGB retained the undersquare all-stone peat-burning inline four of its ancestors and archaic "knee"-type dampers (or, as the Brits call them, "spanners",) but added shocking luxuries like wind-up windows. Later versions were saddled with the new US emissions controls and hideous 5-mph safety bumpers that each weighed about as much as a WWII Matilda tank of Monty's army. Never has such a painfully bog-slow automobile still been somehow miraculously fun to drive. You've got to hand it to the Limeys for that.

Weekend Two...

 Rolled out of bed and went to breakfast at Zest with Shootin' Buddy before heading out to Iggle Crick. Pulling into the parking lot at Zest, we noticed an interesting vehicle...

Yup, the people at the next table over were taking in a cool summer morning in their Model T.

Ford's Model T is one of the only cars of this vintage common enough to drive regularly, since the aftermarket spares market is so vast.

Shootin' Buddy tried a Danny's Throw Down Breakfast and I had a Downhome omelet. The double sausage-sausage gravy was incredible, as always.We split a Bowl Of Beautiful Fruit, too, because... well... do strawberries, pineapples, raspberries, and blueberries really need an excuse? Yum!

First we were, like, "D'oh!", then we were like "Yum!"

Rolled out of bed and out the door early to meet Brigid, Bayou Renaissance Man, and Miss D at the range. Roomie begged off the trip, being laid low with a headache of epic proportions thanks to the wild barometric gyrations going on around here.

As I was going through the Mickey D's drive-thru for some emergency stomach ballast, my phone started ringing. It was Brigid, telling me that Iggle Crick was closed for the GSSF match. Having but a single Glock amongst the four of us, we decided to fall back and punt. (Although I was sorely tempted: Given the number of cars there, the odds of a free Glock were probably pretty decent.)

Brigid pondered aloud on the idea of going to one of Broad Ripple's famous breakfast joints. I McThrew the rest of my McBiscuit in the McTrash and off we went to Zest.


(By way of response to docjim505's comment here "Some of our sales force describe the culinary horizons of Indianapolis as being somewhat... limited. As in, "You CAN get a good meal there; they have an Applebee's."", photos of yesterday's grub at Brugge are available here, and Brigid's camera was whirring at the table this morning, so there will probably breakfast-chow-type food porn along shortly. Your sales force will thank you. :) )

A day in the life...

This morning I met commenter Global Village Idiot at Iggle Crick so that one of his squaddies could get some time cramming for marksmanship quals with my M&P15-22. His daughter was along for the ride and had a blast with the deuce-deuce M&P carbine and my Mk III 22/45. What can I say? I'm an enabler...

Then I met Brigid and PA State Cop for a sort of micro-blogmeet lunch out on the west side at Claddagh Pub in Plainfield. As a result, I horse-traded into the first Glock I've owned since 2004.

Got home, puttered around the house, and read a few more chapters in Voodoo Histories.

And now I am going to give in to the pillow's siren song...

Took some time to celebrate, just one day out of life

Shootin' Buddy showed up at 0745 and we headed to LePeep for breakfast and thence to Iggle Crick.

Much powder was burned, as he has a class coming up in February and I'll be getting schooled by ToddG later this month, and a little bit of cramming to avoid coming down with That Guyitis never hurt anybody.


After shooting, we dropped off gear at Roseholme Cottage and took a field trip to the circle at the center of downtown Indy, dominated by the 284'-tall Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument, currently undergoing refurbishment. There was a crane looming over the circle, and the 38-foot Lady Victory, fresh back from a visit to the day spa for a facial, a mani-pedi, and a resharpening of her seven-yard broadsword, was patiently waiting to be hoisted back up.


A leisurely stroll around downtown, lunch and a 71 Pale Ale at the Ram brewpub, and home for a bit of a Labor Day nap. I'll catch you kids in the evening...