Things were going fine until our ex-range officer showed up. He's old, cynical and doesn't know when to shut up. No one should shoot anything other than cowboy guns in his, or any other world. His favorite line? "You can always tell the 45 shooters. They're the ones looking for their brass."
Don't you hate the people who feel compelled to come up and offer unsolicited aphorisms while you're trying to shoot? I mean, that's not even advice.
Dinosaur snark? Or, attempted snark?
ReplyDeleteShootin' Buddy
Old guy? Lordy! I'm 75, and for all that I like single-actions it wouldn't occur to me to bum-rap the auto crowd. After all, I've only been shooting Ol' Slabsides since around 1949...
ReplyDeleteSounds like an ossified youngun who was raised on Roy Rogers re-runs.
Art
Heh.
ReplyDeleteDinosaur is a state of mind. ;)
I was confused for a bit: "Why would they be looking for their brass any more than .38 shooters? Are .45LC shooters just dumb?"
ReplyDeleteOdd, whenever I go shooting at my range I always come home with more .45 Brass than when I left, and I'm sure there are some of my own brass that have dug themselves into a cranny I don't feel like looking into.
ReplyDeleteMore like "You can always tell a reloader if..."
I'm digging in the brass buckets for .38 Special too, and I always find some, and usually a few .357 Mag.
Meanwhile I once found about 50 .38 super cases that I saved just because I know I'll bump into somebody who'll be more interested in them than the club guys who sell the brass off for scrap at the end of the week.
Obviously the dude with the .38 super wasn't a handloader otherwise he would have brought his brass home with him rather than dump it in the bucked when he cleaned up the firing line before he left.
:) "Ex-range officer" is the best part of the story. :) Combat/3 gunners are paying the freight at the club these days, not the cowboys.
ReplyDeleteGo along, get along or get out of the way.
I have nothing agin' the Cowboy action shooters. The guns are cool.
So are mine.
Thanks Tam!
us reloaders are always looking for once fired brass! Is this the reason i always have lots of ammo around? I hope every one else doesn't reload then i get more brass!
ReplyDeleteI like your random drill Tam, I do the same for "Flinch Re-training". I load my .357 up with an odd number of light load .38's and full house .357's and then spin the Wheel of Fortune, and then take very careful aim and pop or BANG, I never know which.
ReplyDeleteIt is probably a good thing to have folks like the ex-range officer there. It makes the range more like every other place inhabited by humans. Anyway, with ammo cost up and free time up for many of us feeling the effects of the economic downturn, he is just helping us match available ammo to available range time. After all, we are either at the range as a hobby, or someone is paying us to be there. When I was being paid to be there, I would have loved to have the drill sargeants droning on about single action shooting or some such thing.
ReplyDeleteI do have a .45LC, though, and she sure doesn't throw her brass very far.
Awww, Festus! How awfully cute and avulcular! I bet he hitches up his britches at the same time while chewing a piece o' grass or spittin' a hunk of chaw and whittlin' on a stick! You should pat him on his little fuzzy head and ask him to twirl his mustache (or rascally eyebrows).
ReplyDeleteBesides which, that test really doesn't work when 10mm shooters are around.
ReplyDeleteThose little bastards are $0.25 a piece fer chrissakes.
Chris, I promise to save for you every spent 10mm case EJECTED from my S&W 610. (I'm keeping the EXTRACTED brass for myself, of course.)
ReplyDeleteHuh, all I got yesterday besides the range officer criticizing my stance, telling me that I needed to shoot a larger gun than my .22 for defense, and coming by later to tell me that I shouldn't be shooting left-handed, as I needed to pick a hand and stick with it was "the first time someone tries to rape you when you're armed, all this practice will be worth it."
ReplyDeleteShould I demand stupider aphorisms with his unsolicited advice, so I can hang out with the cool kids?
Chris: and the gasoline you use to go pick them up from the next county isn't cheap either.
ReplyDeleteWing & Whim,
ReplyDeleteWhen some ol' clueless fart like the guy who was pestering you, starts with his moronic verities, it just verifies my observation that there aren't more women shooters today, because of all the men who tried to teach a woman how to shoot. Once.
A woman [or any prior non-shooter] who is brought into the process slowly, gradually, in stages -- just like any GOOD marksmanship program will do -- progress well and confidently from stage to stage.
The last stage my novice pupils get is pure fixed-distance off-hand, unsupported bullseye shooting. Which practice is done with with a .22, or .32 long, or .38 wadcutter, depending upon their comfort level with recoil and gun weight.
All the pure-dee guy-range stuff can wait, until the student is gun-safe, can place shots on a chest-sized black square over sandbags at 21', then can two-handed place shots from arm's length increasing out to 21' on same square, can reload a weapon on their feet, and has done some bit of point-blank shooting, from their waist level to fully raised positions, as the distance increases.
All at their own pace, with little damn nagging from the instructor -- WHILE they are actually trying to shoot.
Long winded, I know, but I get so DAMN tired of seeing bull-headed, over-bearing, bossy-ass herd bull types ruining any chance that a woman will ever even try to shoot a gun again. And BTW, that type of mentality is non-discriminatory, being available on all ranges for all types of shooting sports.
After I returned to active shooting, for some while I thot it was just short fat guys, with moon faces, pig eyes, bad teeth, greasy dandruff and a soggy cigar stub stuffed in corner of their mouth that liked to dominate and impress newbies. Women were just a plus to them, since it was likely they didn't get to talk to many, unless the female was in a captive social-situation.
However, so it goes. Fortunately today, the younger ladies perhaps more independent and pretty adept at handling such bozo's [did I mention really profuse ear hair, too?]
Anyway, I'da 'druther teach a woman to shoot than a newbie guy, any day of the week. They learn quicker, don't go off on tangents about "Paladin" or "Gunsmoke" or etc., and are much more realistic about WHY they are learning to shoot.
That I can make it an enjoyable process, from which they emerge with the possibility of pursuing more shooting just because it's fun, is the best real reward I get.
Several somebodies taught me to shoot and hunt over a period of a decade, from seven to seventeen. There was I reason I, and every one of us continued it.
And weren't because some idjit damn near ran us off the range with bullying over-bearance.
Verify: "Untenate" the range, you blathering douchebag!!!
John, the Red
Pick a hand and stick with it? What if your dominant wrist has a tendency to go tricky if it twists the wrong way? Swear to God, if someone tries that line on me, they'll regret it.
ReplyDeleteAsk idiot-child if he sees a safety violation. Ask him if he has any instructor training certification.
ReplyDeleteIf he says no, then tell him to shut the fuck up and mind his own business.
Literally.
Don't be polite to these turds. They are too socially retraded to pick up any kind of hint. You need to go straight for the clue-by-four.
I might do it a bit more politely, but basically Kristopher nails it, for me.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, I don't see a huge problem, during a lull, offering another shooter to share my advice if I see an obvious problem that could be solved. But the way I begin that conversation is: "Neighbor, would you be interested in a suggestion that I may have?" If the answer is "No," or at all hesitant, I'll let it go.
Most shooters are friendly. It's the pushy, didactic, and "omniscient" that give us a bad name.
And this makes me that much more happy that I shoot on a private range.
On A Wing & A Whim,
ReplyDelete"Should I demand stupider aphorisms with his unsolicited advice, so I can hang out with the cool kids?"
No, you should be thankful for your polite and helpful non-meddling fellow shooters. :)
Same here, matt. Idjits aren't tolerated long at Clark Rifles.
ReplyDeleteWe allow the public to pay to shoot on Sundays only, since the folks operating the public range couldn't afford the insurance, and dropped to local cops only.
How funny. Just today I was chatting with a friend about taking her shooting. She told me that her Bubba ex-husband took her shooting. Started with a .22 (right) ended with a 12 guage (WRONG). She hasn't been shooting since. I told her we would start with a .22 and stay there as long as she wanted. I might move her to the GP100 with light .38's if she felt up to it. The only rifle I would consider taking with us would be my little bolt-action Winchester--in gee, .22. I told her if she pays for what she shoots, I would take her any time. I'll let you know how it goes.
ReplyDeleteNo surprises. The most anti-gun people are usually found in gun clubs. The know enough to know what they hate. There's a group that hates getting hit by hot poodle-shooter brass; one that hates loud big bores; one that hates machine rest shooters who take one shot every six years and get annoyed when other people want to change targets; and those who hate big white sulfurous clouds produced by smoke pole shooters. (Not that I belong to any of these groups, mind you.)
ReplyDeleteEvery one of these sub-groups can't stand each other. But thanks to the morons such as those at the Brady Campaign, when they're all painted with the same brush along with Islamic homicide bombers and Mexican smuggling cartels, they all put aside their differences and fight back as one cohesive political action group. Thanks, Brady Campaign!
Tam,
ReplyDeleteGiven every handgun I've shot before this one has hurt badly, I don't know if I've reached thankful yet. Willing to trust enough to keep the P22 in the house, and even enough to take it to the range of my own volition and try to become familiar enough with it to overcome my pain-reinforced distrust and disgust of handguns.
Y'all are good daily doses of enough snark and sanity to convince me the gun society is worth joining, and I shouldn't declare it'll be a cold day in hell before I go back to the range again with a pistol.
On a Wing and a Whim:
ReplyDeleteMight want to try a full sized .357 revolver with .38 special rounds once you get confident with the .22.
Heavy pistol + light rounds = little recoil.
( a light aluminum framed revolver is absolutely NOT a beginner's gun )
Or not ... a magazine of .22lr in the lungs makes a lunatic easy to outrun.
Do what works for you first.
Hell, this .45 shooter is always looking for his brass, too. My fumble fingers usually drop it somewhere between extracting it from the breech of my Sharps, and plunking it into the gallon milk jug of soapy water. Now that I have a Martini-Henry, I can do it twice as often.
ReplyDelete