Abracadabrah

I create as I speak

Living the Red State Life

So, after a few months of dithering and not quite getting around it, I finally went on my first shooting expedition at the shooting range on West 20th Street.

I went with Mary who wrote up her experiences already at Exit Zero and another friend, Steven, also from the Liberal Hawks list.

First they make you sit down to a class to learn about the mechanisms of the rifles. At that level, they are pretty basic. They teach you about the safety lock, how to clear your rifle if it jams, etc. Then they show you how to load your ammunition into the clips. And then they take you inside the range to shoot. You start with the target at twenty feet, which is really easy, and then, at will, you can move your target back as far as fifty feet. The targets are on the pulley system, so periodically, once the targets are far enough away so that you can't see where your shots are hitting, you pull them forward to see what you have done.

The only problem with this system is that since at that distance, it is demned hard to see where you are hitting, and it is so much fun to shoot off rounds, you don't pull the target in often enough to correct your mistakes.

This is my target at 50 ft.



Not terrible. Not great. My shots were hitting right, due to an overcorrection of the fact that earlier they were hitting left. But, as I said, at that distance I couldn't tell and automatically correct. Clearly I need to practice, which I intend to get.

Mary and I both stayed to shoot off 100 rounds.

I could have easily done another hundred.

Then we went out to dinner at Punch and talked about blogging experiences. Good thing Mary remembered the name of the restaurant, because I hadn't. It was a tasty, light dinner for a summer night.

Can't wait to go again.

posted by Alcibiades @ 11:45 AM