Making the switch (continued)
I avoid public ranges. However, the weather wasn’t cooperating all week and I had to go shoot the Zev. The range was replete with all the stereotypes. To my right, two older fellas sharing a lane and their groups with their 1911s looked like someone was patterning a shot gun. To my left, some guy who had the tactical look was teaching a young lady how to shoot and encouraging her to get the 1911 instead of a black plastic people popper. Sadly, I left my phone in the truck so no pictures. But after my first mag, the lady to the left said “he can shoot”. Seems its a rare tack that a group looks like one hole (though I had a few flyers).
As to the gun, I purchased an additional frame sized like a G19 for carry. Put it on the gun and went shooting:
The gun shoots better than I do, to be sure. I was consistently low by about an inch but the groups were nice. In total, I shot 177 rounds with various ammo that I dumped out of a host of M&P9 mags. So, the ammo was not consistent. In the second to last magazine (a 27 round PMag), I had a failure to eject. This was with rather questionable steel cased ammo and I was intentionally limp-wristing just to see what would happen so I don’t blame the gun.
It’s a fun gun to run.
December 4th, 2019 at 4:43 pm
Geezers and Tactiblack types can be irritating but not (usually) dangerous. It’s the literal whack jobs that put everybody in the place as well as the business itself in jeopardy. And it happens everywhere.
Couple weeks ago in my little central Fla town a 40’s guy walks into the mom and pop range/retail shop where I get my 4473’s done (quick and cheap). Rents a 9, runs half a box, returns it to the counter and said “That was fun!”, went to his truck and smoked a cig, and came back in to try a .45. Couple rounds down range and the next into his temple. Luckily he only harmed himself at least physically but how’d you have liked to be in the next stall shooting or like the tactical dude trying to get a newbie comfortable with shooting and something like that happens; even if the bullet or frags don’t scatter into anybody else, that’s a pretty major shock to anybody, and especially for somebody new or unaware that such things are actually fairly common.
Which is part of why I don’t use any range if I can help it; the acreage next to my neighborhood is open land and there are a couple of good berm areas that I go to now and then. Of course you can always catch a flyer even there, but it’s fairly heavily wooded in big pines and I avoid anywhere there is activity.
I find it pretty much impossible to gin up much sympathy for guys like this…his family of course of course is deserving of it. But if you have just got to off yourself there are ways and places where you don’t put innocents at risk of injury, death, or mental anguish, or having their business plastered on the news which is what happened here, but the owner did a good job in a short quote of showing some empathy and downplaying the likelihood…and this is the first time I know of that it’s happened at that place which has been there about thirty years. Although the sharp young girl at the counter that ran my paperwork for the bargain G19 I mentioned here the other day, did tell me that since the suicide they had an eighty-something guy shoot part of his finger off, still very dangerous for others on the line. Yeah, he’s barred now but in this retirement area there are plenty of q-tip shooters (hell I am one now!) so chances are that kind of ND is more likely to happen again sooner than the suicide thing.
Unlikely to harm or involve me though as I will bend over backwards to avoid that range or any other one. Not that something random in public can’t/won’t happen but you can’t control that completely although a strong situational awareness policy and some dumb luck has avoided that so far, hopefully that streak will continue.