Yard work has been kicking my butt (although I guess I’m not the only one so kicked), else I would be blogging up a storm, you betcha.

Oh what the heck; it’s just typing. Here we go.

Saturday one of my shootin’ buddies and I went to the range. I wanted to try out the 30-round M1 carbine magazine I had picked up for cheap at the last gun show; I had heard they weren’t no good but I wanted to find out just how not-good they were. My buddy wanted to put a lot of rounds through his Ruger P89.

The 30-round magazine turned out to be more-or-less OK, but the last round didn’t feed properly because the “bump” on the magazine follower is designed hold the bolt open when the magazine is empty, unlike the 15-round magazines.

Les Jones reviewed the Ruger P95, which is probably similar enough to my friend’s (except the one I fired had a manual safety). I think I agree with most of what he said, except that I didn’t quite get the hang of the magazine catch.

Also, I think the pistol seems kind of bulky-feeling. I’m pretty sure I have larger-than-average hands, and while I didn’t have any problems getting a good grip while firing, I did find it awkward to work the slide release and safety with the thumb of my strong hand, especially compared to some other semi-autos I’ve fired. I also don’t think it would be very easy to carry concealed.

It may be that I just needed more time to get used to it, plus the fact that I’m more familiar with revolvers. I did like the sights, and I did like the controllability—recoil was hardly noticeable, although that could be due to the “wussy Europellet” as some people call it. All in all, I’d say it would be a great home-defense handgun.

And then, after we’d fired over 300 rounds, we capped off the testosterone-laden afternoon by taking in a matinee showing of The Punisher. Hoo boy! As my buddy said afterwards, “It was a pretty decent action movie, even though there wasn’t a single thing in it that could have possibly happened in real life.”

But then I had to do yard work the rest of the weekend. At least the weather was pretty!

Posted in uncategorized on April 18th, 2004 by Thibodeaux | RSS 2.0 |