I was having conversation with friends about how busy our personal lives were getting — kids getting out of school, vacation planning, camping trips, concerts, plays, etc.
My contribution: “Yeah, I’ve been dying to get out to the gun range all month and just can’t find the time!”
Judging from the sudden absence of people that wanted to talk with me, I suppose I should have complained about missing the “24″ season finale instead.
Welcome back, Joe Goodwin, to the world of competitive shooting. Don’t quit your day job.
It’s been roughly 15 years since my last competitive shooting match, mainly because I didn’t actually own a handgun during many of those 15 years. I’ve been to the range about five times in the last two months, but I can get only so many thrills out of shooting one B-5 target after another. So why not enter a competition and get my butt thoroughly kicked?
It just so happened that Mr. Completely had just the ticket - the E-Postal Handgun/Airgun match. Alarmist types, please note: the term “postal” refers to the process of mailing in one’s targets, not the process of targeting mailers. Thank you for not reporting me to the media.
This month’s target was called “Killiards” and depicted an attractive rack of billiard balls. The target was set on a standard-size sheet of paper posted at 10 yards. That doesn’t seem like a lot of distance until you see it through the gunsights. Yee-argh, my aching eyeballs!
I shot the contest in two caliber classifications — .22 and 9mm. Double the shooting, double the fun, double the humiliation!
My scores aren’t anything to write home about (which means they’re perfectly suited to write here about). There was a time in my life when a target like this would have been child’s play. Now, with my lack of practice and 15 additional years of eyesight degradation, it’s not so much “child’s play” as “child at play”. I suspect I could have improved my score simply by closing my eyes and spraying the entire magazine rapidfire in the general direction of the target.
I had two chances at each target, one in a freehand stance and the other resting the gun on a bench. I did remarkably better on the second set. I suppose this means I can still aim; I just can’t hold. More specifically, I need to work on my trigger technique and follow-through. On the 9mm, I was flinching so badly that most of my hits went several inches below my point of aim.
All humility (and humiliation) aside, this was a heck of a lot of fun to shoot. Friendly competition is always fun, even if your competitors aren’t in the same room. Even more, I enjoyed testing myself with more than just a black bullseye at the end of the wire. I think I’ll be doing more of these.
My targets are detailed below, for the morbidly curious:
I bought another gun yesterday. This now makes a total of four (yes, four) firearms purchases within a two month time frame. I’m waiting for my phone call from UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to discuss the terms of my disarmament treaty.
However, this gun purchase was a little different from the others for two reasons:
The picture at left is a Ruger Mark II pistol, .22 LR caliber, 5.5 inch bull barrel, stainless steel finish. I purchased it 16 years ago and modified it with a custom trigger job, an extended magazine release, Volthane ergonomic grips, and a Volquartsen compensator. It may look like something out of Star Wars, but I assure you that it is a very real firearm with very real accuracy.
My wife and I were avid shooters up until my son was born 13 years ago. We had to decide between bullets and burp rags, and the burps won out. In addition, we went through a period of unreasoning paranoia where everyone we knew said things like, “You have guns in a house with a child? What are you, nuts?” Regrettably, those voices joined with some financial difficulties, and we sold off our entire collection except for a Browning A-5 shotgun that was gifted to us by Stacey’s grandfather.
I sold my steel baby to a good friend of mine (as I remember, I gave him a very good deal) and got on with my life. It wasn’t until recently that I began to think that the sell-off was a mistake. Two specific events motivated this change of heart — watching the city of New Orleans completely crater under the onslaught of Mother Nature and government inefficiency, and being held up at gunpoint at a local convenience store.
We therefore decided it was time to once again take up that grand sport of target shooting. In short order, we acquired a Beretta NEOS .22 target pistol, a Taurus PT99 9mm, and a Marlin Model 60 .22 rifle.
I was pretty much done at this point (and my discretionary spending money was kaput). Or at least, I thought I was done. My good friend knew about my resumed activity in the sport and offered to sell “my baby” back to me at the same price he had paid seven years ago. He had fired less than 100 rounds during that entire time, and the Mark II was “out of production”, so he was offering me an incredibly good deal. It didn’t take me long to say “yes.” In fact, it took longer just to get the cash out of the ATM.
Why such an emotional attachment to a handgun? Back when I was an avid shooter, my baby and I signed up for the Sooner State Games and managed, somehow, to win the gold medal in .22 bullseye pistol shooting. Nobody was more surprised than me. Unfortunately, this was just a fluke — the following year, I placed 14th in a field of 14, so I wasn’t about to quit my day job and become the next Rob Leatham. But it still makes me grin to remember it. I’m not sure if Bruce Jenner has any emotional attachment to the javelins he threw in the decathalon, but for me this pistol is worth far more than what I paid for it.
So here’s to good friends, amicable wives, and cheap ammunition at the local Wal-Mart. And at this point, I’m really, really, really finished buying lethal weapons for quite a while. Please be sure to repeat this to any ATF agents that come around to ask about me.
Taurus PT-99 9mm double-stack pistol with Hogue rubber grips. Cost: $358.00
17 rounds of Federal-brand 124 grain Hydra-Shok JHPs. Cost: $19.99
The look on your sweetheart’s face when you present her with her very-own semiautomatic pistol: Priceless
Okay, maybe a pistol isn’t every gal’s dream anniversary gift, but if that picture is any indication, I hit a home run this time.
Even though I plan to shoot it from time to time, let it be said for one and all that this is her pistol. Bad guys may infer whatever they wish from that statement, but let me add that she shot a five-inch group at 25 feet on her first magazine. You have been warned.
Last Sunday, my wife became the proud owner of a Beretta Neos DLX 6-inch .22 target pistol. It’s the ray-gun looking thing on the left. The following day, she took it to the gun range and demonstrated her ability to shoot two-inch groups while rapid-firing at 25 feet. Her grin was terrible to behold.
The Beretta Queen rides again!
Joe Goodwin is not a real IT project supervisor, Scoutmaster, husband, father, Christian, or Oklahoman, but he plays one on TV.
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I am not a vegetarian because I love animals. I am a vegetarian because I hate plants. —A Whitney Brown
Content is ©2006 by Joseph Goodwin. So there.
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