Off To the Range!

A couple weeks ago I picked up my first pistol from a local gun store. After passing the IQ test disguised as a background questionierre ("Are you a wanted felon?", "Are you an illegal alien?", "Have you been convicted of domestic violence?" Has anyone ever actually answered "yes" to any of these?) I was able to bring home a gun that hopefully will serve me well in eventual IDPA competition and as a carry piece.

Ruger SR9. 9mm, 4.25" barrel, 17 rounds per mag*

A week later I headed out to the range for the first time. Thanks to my gun gamer sibling, I had four Blackhawk double stack mag holders, and and four extra mags to put in them. Strapping 68 rounds to my right side, plus the loaded SR9 on my left immediately taught me one thing: I need a new belt. The black-leather Wal-mart belt that's reliably held up my pants for years just doesn't quite cut it with the extra weight. Saggy belt issue notwithstanding, I headed out to the range with a friend who hadn't been shooting for about 30 years.

I'm happy to say that the Ruger shoots well, and unsurprisingly, is a lot more accurate than I am. I'll have to work on that. But in the hour or so I was shooting, it happily digested the 100 rounds of cheap 115 grain practice ammo, and 50 rounds of 147 grain hollow-points with nary a hiccup.

Honestly though, the flawless performance of my new gun was a distant second in enjoyment to the smile on my friend's face when he put his first magazine of .22 into a target. I think I got a new shooting buddy, and on the drive home he was talking about buying a .22 of his own. He started off with a Ruger Mk.III, then switched to the more tactical looking Sig Sauer Mosquito, and shot holes in a variety of bad movie posters.

Now I just have to figure out what the best way to work on my accuracy is. I can keep 17 rounds on an 8 1/2 x 11" paper target at 10 yards, but only about half at 25 yards. Given the price of 9mm versus .22, I'm thinking that buying a used .22 and practicing until I can shoot a decent group at 25 yards, then transitioning back to the 9mm might be a good idea. Stay tuned.

*Except in California and Massachusetts. Sorry.

A Winner is Chosen

I've been priveledged to have had the chance to take the past two weeks off from work. In addition to the opportunity to see the wife and kids that I am too often a stranger to, I also had the chance to see how much rust a sixteen year old water heater contains when it fails, and test the capabilities of a friend's Hoover Steam-Vac against rust in carpet.

I also went to the range. After water heater day, I needed it, and I had planned to use this break to figure out what kind of carry gun I wanted to buy. I'd already settled on 9mm for a caliber, partially on the recommendation of my more famous brother, partly because 9mm is cheaper than .45, and largely because I'm not a particularly good marksman, and I'd like to get good with small bullets before I try getting good with bigger calibers. With that in mind, here was my short list of possible purchase options:
1. Glock 19
2. Sig Sauer P250
3. Stoegar Cougar
4. Ruger SR-9
5. Springfield XD-9
6. Smith & Wesson M & P.

All were guns within my roughly $600 price range, had decent reps for reliability, and were available for rental at my local range. I took them out, shot each one in right- and left-handed modified Weaver stances and single handed from both sides. (I should note here that like my brother, I'm cross-dominant, meaning that my dominant eye is on the weak hand side. This means I'll probably be training to shoot primarily left-handed.) In the end, I successfully found a gun I really liked. The Glock was too uncomfortable, the Sig had too long a trigger, the Stoegar was just a little too weird, but the Ruger was just right.

An SR-9 for me it is then. In the silver/black two-tone, because I don't care to pay the $30 Tactical Surcharge for the black on black version. It's good timing too, because my CCW permit arrived in the mail precisely on schedule, making me legal. So soon, once my tax return comes in, or my bonus shows up, I can start spending money like a drunken democrat congessman: I'll need the gun, spare mags for IDPA, cleaning kit, holsters, lots of ammo to feed through, probably a small gun safe, ammo, and did I forget ammo?

It's going to be an interesting year.

Until next time,
For those with wings, fly to your dreams.

Shoot Him In The Gun!

I'm a little surprised none of the gunbloggers I read seem to have covered this yet, but the most recent Mythbusters covered the popular "disarm the poor bad guy by shooting his gun" myth that's popular both in the movies and with anti-gun advocates who've gained their gun knowledge from movies.

Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of videos up on Discovery.com, but here's a summary and some of my own observations.

1. Even under lab conditions, you can't knock the gun out of someone's hands 100%. The first test they guys ran was to make a mechanical analogue with the same grip strength as a human hand, and try to shoot the gun out of it. Even with perfect alignment, they couldn't successfully shoot the gun out of the hand when it was pointed forward in firing position.

2. Lead Bullets + Steel Guns = Flying Fragments. The tests referenced above also revealed what happens when a lead bullet strikes a gun: the bullet fragments, providing fast-moving chunks of lead that go in multiple, unpredictable directions. Take a look at the start of this video. In the full episode, they show that a number of the bullet fragments hit the guy holding the gun, and had the gun been next to the head of a hostage, it's entirely possible some of the fragments could have hit the hostage too. Lead fragments and unarmored human tissue aren't a happy mix.

3. You can't predict the human element. To test variations in human reactions, they worked up a way to have the user hold a gun that fired in a different direction, simulating the shock of a bullet hit, and remote fired the gun when the holder wasn't expecting it. Here's a video explaining the design, and the physics that make it work. Jaime dropped the gun two out of three times. Adam never dropped it. Had Adam been an actual target, he could potentially have gotten his gun up and a center of mass shot off even after his gun was hit.

Admittedly, the show wasn't perfect. I would have liked to see the show take the experiments farther, testing different calibers and bouncing a few rounds of a Glock or another wonder-nine, but this did have some great visuals and proof.

What did the episode teach, really? For people who actually make the "well, the cops are trained marksmen, they should just shoot the bad guys in the arms, legs, or gun", this should provide some solid visual and scientific proof for why shooting someone's gun is a bad idea. People will still get hurt, and it's not reliable.