Year End New Shooter

The surprise new shooter of the end of 2012 is...

The Missus.

Well, it surprised me.

So we rented a Ruger 22/45 to start on for basic skills and familiarization, then we tried out what I had in the bag, a couple .45s.  At the rifle range, a .22 LR rifle, instructed by Miss Tacticute, followed by something with more oomph, as much as she had tolerance for.  As the Cornered Cat recommends, offer things to try, and quit when you're ahead.


All, in all, this was a very good day.

'Tis the Season to be Quiet, Fa la la la la, la la, la la

It's taken quite some time to get all the paperwork fixed, gunsmithing done, and find some time to get out to the range.  Fortunately (for high-sigma values of 'fortunately'), I felt like death warmed over this morning when it was time to get up to go to work.  Out of an abundance of caution, I called in sick.  A few more hours sleep, then shanghai'ed into taking the kids to school, and a few more hours sleep, and I felt much better.  I had a few hours left to go before my usual school pick-up routine, so I used it productively.

The new Trijicon RX06 sight is an amazing improvement.  Using the top point of the triangle as the aiming point, I was able to put .22LR rounds within an inch of each other.  Miss Tacticute will be thrilled.

I know when I'll be shooting next.  After all the sturm und drang over the shooting in Connecticut by a high disturbed young man, whose mother was trying to have committed, the end result of my discussions with my wife is that she (out of the blue) told me she wanted to get familiar with firearms.  After eleven years of marriage, and tens years of being pretty clear she wasn't interested, this surprised me a little.  But I kept her out of the guns stuff when she wanted to be out, and I'll certainly support her now that she wants to know.  In typical fashion, this has ballooned into a fully planned pistols in the morning, long guns in the afternoon extravaganza.  I guess I'll just have to keep up with the agenda.

Friday Night Rifle League

On occasions when Mrs Tirno does not have a Friday engagement, or in this case when her sister is in town and we have en-suite babysitting, I can get out to West Coast Armory for a little rifle league. My first run with the lights on went very well, except that I forgot to set the camera to record. All good hits, no misses, no hits on the no-shoots. My second run, with the lights out didn't go quite as well. One no-shoot winged and some misses.

 Here's video:

 

Of interest:

• Despite only my bare legs being visible in the video, I am not shooting this video in the altogether. I'm totally rocking the anti-tacticool, Dad-in-shorts-and-sandals look.
• The long pause between setting my rifle on the barel and starting to shoot with the pistol was me trying to activate the Viridian laser/light module. Between my first run and the second run, the battery went dead.
• The 'aw, man' you hear at the end is me realizing I winged a no-shoot with my M&P 45C.

Note to Viridian: I seem to be replacing the batteries on that thing every time I turn around. I'm still running on the batteries that came with the Streamlight on my rifle, after more than a year. In the first run, the light and laser were nice and bright, and then I turned it off and put it away. Second run about an hour later, totally dead. Based on performance to date, I completely expect it not to work unless I have just replaced the battery. That is not the reputation you want in a bit of gear that is supposed to have tactical value.

Newest Shooters

We've been planning this for a long time, but Mr and Mrs Neighbor have finally been able to join us at the range.

 

We spent a lot of time discussing general gun safety and range rules on the drive over. I field stripped the weapons to show the mechanics of how they worked, and talked them through aiming (three different types of optics), holding, loading, chambering and firing three rifles, starting with Miss Tacticute's pink.22LR AR-15.

 I also got to try out my new Contour camera with mounts on each rifle.

Boomershoot 2013

It'll be a long several months waiting for this, but I have position 21 on the main range at Boomershoot next year, April 26th to the 28th.

There will be stuff to get ahead of that, plus practice with that stuff, but mostly I need a lot of match grade 7.62 NATO rounds, some sight in time to get my scope totally dialed in with those rounds, and some practice shooting from the prone position.

This is the sound of silence

Today was a good day at the range.

After carefully arranging the arrival time to be after the scheduled competition, we set up targets and made ready.

Miss Tacticute shot first with her AR-15/22.

Next was my turn.



That was certainly good fun, so Miss Tacticute wanted a turn. Not surprising, since my M-14 was now about as loud as her .22. The recoil was significantly less, so I calculated that she would be pushed around, but was unlikely to come to any harm or result in an unsafe situation.



Excellent results all around. Miss Tacticute put 75 rounds of .22LR into her targets at 25 yards. The larger holes were sight-in shots after adding the suppressor to the M-14.

After getting the scope sighted in so I was 3" high at 100 yards, I started taking shots at the 200 yard targets that had been waiting so patiently to be ventilated. The middle squares are my targets, and almost all the rounds are on the 8"x8" targets. This is pretty good, considering that I wasn't taking my time with the shots, and the backblast from the action was making my eyes water.

Next purchase priority: airtight shooting goggles to keep the gas out of my eyes.

Buy-A-Gun 2012

Well, not the gun, per se, but what is now attached to it.



Suppressor paid for: July 2011
Time Paperwork sent to BATFE: Early August 2011
Time Tax Stamp Finalized: Early March 2012
Arrived at Dealer: Late March 2012
BATFE Inspector: Sandra J Snook

I left the rifle with the dealer to have the Gem-tech QD mount put on, which necessitated removing the standard M-14 flash hider. Of course, this took the standard front sight with it, so the front of the gas block was replaced with a part that has a hooded front sight built into it.

Lamentably, the range I normally shoot at has a competition occupying the main range for the entire weekend, so I can't go shoot it until the next weekend. I'm sure the suburbia that has sprung up around my range will appreciate me changing the BANG! to a more sedate gun raspberry.

It was a cold and rainy day

Apparently, President's Day is a good day to go shooting... indoors. When Miss Tacticute and I arrived at the indoor range, the waiting time was two hours.

Well, no way, we wanna shoot something now.

In the rush to get out the door, Miss Tacticute's own coat was left behind. Had we been shooting indoors, this would be no concern, but now it was cold and rainy and we were outdoors.

Well, a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. Miss Tacticute got my jacket, with sleeves well rolled up.

Here she is on the beginning of 125 rounds of .22LR:



She had been making some complaint about being cold, and the report of nearby shooters bothering her, but as soon as she settled down to shoot, all of that went away.

I did 75 rounds of .22LR and about 41 rounds of .45 ACP myself later. I didn't bring my own larger caliber rifles because we had intended to shoot indoors at a range that doesn't permit rifle calibers.

On the NFA front, I'm looking forward to getting my tax stamp for my 7.62 Gemtech suppressor any day now. The .22LR suppressor will be some time behind it, but the 5.56 suppressor is delayed due to USPS buffoonery. Apparently, the package I sent through the mail was thick enough to jam their machines and got shredded. They mailed back the parts that had my address on them, which was just the check. Other paperwork they mailed back to the dealer. The Form 4s were nowhere to be found. I had my dealer make new Form 4s, and now I'm going to scan those suckers in so I have my own copies. I forgot to do that this time, although I scanned other things.

And then he lightly tapped my scrotum

I'm flying to Israel on business, and since I'm not travelling with my family as I was a couple weeks ago, I had the opportunity to opt-out of the backscatter X-ray. No fuss, the opt-out was handled without a raised eyebrow, and the TSA agent accomplished the invasion of my privacy with as much professionalism as could be wanted under the circumstances.

Some updates of recent history, since I have time to kill in this terminal:

The week before flying to England, I attended rifle league at West Coast Armory. Checking the score sheet before I left, I saw that I was the only one that had perfect 26/26 hits on both runs. My times were about double the front-runners, and this is not surprising. At my regular range, rapid fire is not permitted, so I don't get much opportunity to practice double taps or recoil management. Still, it's good to hit what I want to hit and not hit what shouldn't be hit.

My Form 4 for my 7.62 suppressor still hasn't cleared the ATF, but my dealer finally got the .22 suppressor transferred to him, so I got to send off the Form 4 for that yesterday.