New Shooter Report

My friend Teresa was complaining that she hadn’t been shooting in about a year, and that this state of affairs was intolerable. She also wanted to bring her boyfriend Chad, a stringer for a local news company (alas, I forget the details), who had never been shooting before. We decided on going to the range on Saturday, December 6th.
Rita, a fellow student of science and friend of Teresa and I, seems to have a long-running love affair with my M1 Garand, and so insisted on coming. BeMasher, a friend, co-worker, and amatuer photographer came as well. My girlfriend Sarah, also came to the range, but had various work from her students that she needed to grade, and so didn’t shoot. Everyone reviewed (or learned for the first time, in Chad’s case) the four basic safety rules prior to arriving at the range, and again before we started shooting.
Chad started out, as all new shooters who come with me do, with the suppressed Ruger 10/22. After getting the feel for it, he moved up to the Ruger MkIII .22 pistol, then the Sig Mosquito belonging to BeMasher’s brother, and then to the Glock 19. With the extended 33-round magazines, the Glock seemed to go over well with everyone.


Everyone else had a good deal of experience with the different guns I have, and so got started shooting the other guns I brought while I instructed Chad. He’s a quick learner, and rapidly got the hang of things.
Teresa really enjoyed the suppressed 10/22, and spent quite some time draining my subsonic .22LR supply.

The stock on the 10/22 seems to be a great compromise in size — people both large and small seem to be able to shoot it comfortably without any issues. The Trijicon Reflex II red dot sight is also excellent (“put the dot where you want to shoot, then pull the trigger”). The fact that it requires no batteries to illuminate the red dot is a major plus.
Even though BeMasher spent a lot of time photographing, we managed to steal the camera from him from time to time, and got a few pictures of him shooting.

Whenever there’s a group at the range, I seem to assume a sort of supervisory role, and don’t get to shoot much (terrible, I know!). Everyone insisted that I get some trigger time, so I did some shooting with my new DPMS 16″ M4gery.


As expected, it’s accurate and pleasant to shoot. The adjustable stock made shooting from the prone much more comfortable than a fixed stock, particularly for those of smaller stature.

Unfortunately, some of my reloads caused some problems (the bullets weren’t entirely round, a side effect of being pulled from de-milled military ammo), so I substituted my 20″ Bushmaster AR in while I was clearing the 16″. This worked out surprisingly well — at the relatively short (25-50 yards) distances we were shooting, the points of aim of both rifles were close enough to be indistinguishable.

Unsatisfied with the light recoil of the AR, Rita decided that she’d be satisfied only in shooting the M1.


For being such a tiny person (she’s only 5’2″), she handles the recoil of the M1 far better than many of the larger people I know. Shooting the M1 prone is a pain, as it seems to recoil directly into one’s collarbone, yet she was able to handle it extremely well. I suspect that if there was ever a zombie attack, one could give Rita an M1, a few bandoleers of ammo, and some high ground, and she’d take care of the problem.
I observed a rather amusing quirk to her shooting style: whenever she’d fire from the prone, her legs would flex rapidly at the knees, and her feet would jump about a foot in the air. This didn’t seem to affect her accuracy, but was quite amusing to watch.
Teresa also fired the M1, but preferred to shoot it standing.

Upon seeing his girlfriend shoot the M1 (and exclaiming that the muzzle blast was quite a bit louder than the ARs), Chad decided that he too would have to shoot it.

My lovely girlfriend was listening to her iPod headphones underneath a set of earmuffs, and so graded all her documents without being troubled by the gunshots occuring nearby. She had a secondary duty as Keeper of the Ammo, and frequently provided fresh AR magazines, M1 clips, and boxes of .22LR as needed. Between that and her love of tasty beer and football, I must be the luckiest guy in the world.

I bet her students have no idea what was going on while their papers were being graded.
Once again, a beautiful December day in Tucson, and a great day at the range. My record of “everyone leaves the range with a smile” continues unbroken.

The only problem I’m running into is that I don’t know many non-shooters, and so I’m not able to take more to the range.
If you’re a non-shooter (or know some) in the Tucson area and want to learn to shoot with a bunch of physicist-astronomer types, please don’t hesitate to contact me. I’d like to particulary encourage (in no particular order) women, minorities, journalists, and politicians to learn to shoot with us in a fun, safe, and encouraging environment.
Legal Stuff
All photos are copyright BeMasher and are available in their original form at his album. Photos are mirrored by me for consistent hosting, so as to avoid dead links and images in the future, and are displayed here in accordance with BeMasher’s licensing of the pictures under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license.