. . . then the “.30-06 is the Old Testament version” – aepilotJim, from a Vicious Circle podcast.
I laughed out loud at that one. The topic came up because Jim just got a Garand.
UPDATE: Staghounds expands on the idea.
Tag: recreational shooting
Hope for the Future
Last night I attended the 2010 annual meeting and banquet for the Arizona State Rifle and Pistol Association, which I joined last year at the annual NRA convention. The keynote speaker was Alan Gottlieb, who gave an interesting speech on the history of the Second Amendment Foundation and their history of fighting for the restoration of the Second Amendment through the courts. The SAF is the group behind the D.C. v Heller victory, and the McDonald v Chicago suit that was filed 15 minutes after the Heller decision was handed down, and was heard in the Supreme Court in March.
At a guess, I’d say about 120 people attended the meeting and dinner, among which were several state and federal politicians. The governor backed out, but among the attendees was J.D. Hayworth who is running for John McCain’s senate seat. I wish him a lot of luck. It’s past time for McCain to go. John McCain, needless to say, wasn’t present.
I sat at the table purchased by the Tucson Rifle Club, where I was introduced to someone special: Tyler Rico. Tyler is, I believe, just sixteen years old. He shot his first High-Power match at the age of eleven. He has won three Junior National High-Power titles, and in February at the Boulder Rifle and Pistol Club in Boulder CO, he beat the entire field with a 791-26X to take the Open class. He shoots for Team Remington and Lapua.
The kid’s been shooting since he was five. He wants to get a degree in aeronautical engineering, and shoot for the Army Marksmanship Unit. After all, he’s already competed against all of them, and beaten them.
It was a very interesting evening, all around.
Rio Salado Open House
Yesterday I drove up to Phoenix in order to have lunch with some Arizona bloggers and make a visit to the Usery Pass target range managed by the Rio Salado Sportsmen’s Club and Arizona Game & Fish. Attendance at the restaurant was slight, but I did meet the lovely Vox and her significant other, and Papa Todd, so my list of “bloggers I’ve met” has grown a little.
After lunch we visited the range. The facilities boast:
- Covered shooting benches with target holders from 25 to 300 yards
- A Practical Pistol range with 4 lighted bays from 25 to 50 yards
- A lighted, covered 40-position Smallbore Range to 100 meters
- Covered long range rifle and pistol silhouette ranges to 500 meters
- High power rifle range to 500 yards
- Sporting Clays Range – 12 stations, cart accessible, card based activation
- 5-Stand, Trap, Wobble Trap facility with lights and voice activation
- Indoor Air Rifle Range coordinated by our Junior Division
- Restrooms, Activity Center, and Training Classrooms
They had it all set up for visitors to try, most of them for free, and the turnout looked pretty good. This is something I think I’ll bring up at the next Tucson Rifle Club board meeting.
I took a few pictures and shot a little video, nothing worth posting unfortunately, except this sign:
I doubt seriously anyone was killed or injured at the range yesterday, or on any range in Arizona. Gun ban control SAFETY advocates so often complain about how dangerous guns are, and they can be. They are, after all, designed to hurl small metal projectiles at high velocity, but that sign says why, in the overwhelming majority, the several billion rounds fired recreationally in this country each year harm no one.
On the other hand, while driving the 120 miles back home, traffic on I-10 East slowed to a crawl at one point. After about ten minutes of creeping along at about 10-15 mph tops, there were several lumps of clothing scattered down the right shoulder:
That was just a couple. There were at least five or six like those. Then there was obvious evidence that someone had lost control, and gone from the right shoulder into the median, and shortly after that, the scene of the accident:
A couple of miles further down the road in a closed rest area were a couple of ambulances and a Life Flight helicopter spooling up to take off. I didn’t get a shot of that.
Hopefully no one got ejected from the vehicle, but those lumps of clothing that looked like the were spilled from luggage makes me wonder.
I’ve never felt unsafe on a target range, but driving in traffic at highway speeds? And people think GUNS are dangerous?
WANT!!!11!!
Can’t have! (Didn’t win the lottery. Some schmuck in Missouri did.) I’ve got the money to pay off my still-indeterminate delivery M14, but not for this:
US model M1903A4 Springfield bolt action 30.06 Rifles. These Rifles are built using original Remington-made World War II M1903A3 actions and turned-down bolts. These fine Rifles feature newly manufactured 4-groove barrels identical to the originals. Each receiver is carefully drilled and tapped using replicas of the original “Redfield” rings and mounts and an exact copy of the M73B1 scope, used on the 1st model M1903A4’s. Each barreled action has the original military parkerized finish
Price? A grand.
Damn.
I Thought the Goldwater Institute was a THINK Tank
My friend and (former) fearless leader Primeval Papa has had a rather involved discussion with a member of said Institute on the topic of one of their recent commercials. Arizona is attempting to pass by referendum a sales tax increase to recover the loss in revenue due to the economic downturn. The Goldwater Institute commercial picks out several budget items that it calls “waste” available to cut.
The first “waste” item is Arizona Game & Fish planned spending for shooting range maintenance – $800,000 this year.
First picked up by Arizona Bloggers Great Satan, Inc., Primeval Papa went them one better: he has had an extended email exchange with a representative of AuH2O.
Please, go read. That’s MY money, and it’s going where it’s going by law. “Waste” my aching sphincter.
They obviously didn’t think too hard about this one.
Bowling Pin Shoot – Tucson, Sunday, April 11
OK, I’m going to do a “dry run” of the bowling pin match on Sunday, April 11 at the Tucson Rifle Club. The plan is to try to have the first rounds downrange by 8:00AM. I’m not charging entry fees for this one, other than the daily range fees if you are not already a member.
The plan is thus: Each shooter will shoot five tables of five pins, each run timed on a shot timer. Longest time gets thrown out, the remaining four are averaged. Once everyone’s been through, shooters will be paired off by time to compete against each other, best two runs out of three. Winners from the first match-ups will be paired off, losers will be paired off. Lose twice, and you’re done for the day, but you’ll have shot at least nine tables, four in competition against another shooter. We keep going until only one shooter is left who hasn’t lost twice.
Any repeating handgun in .38 Special / 9x19mm or higher caliber. Hollow-point, soft-point and flat-point bullets are far superior to round-nose “hardball” ammo. The more power, the better, BUT:
“Major” loads (.40 S&W and larger) will have the pins located 12″ back from the FRONT edge of the table.
“Minor” loads (smaller than .40 S&W) will have the pins located 16″ off the BACK edge of the table.
The front edge of the table will be 25 feet from the firing line.
Bear in mind, this is a PRACTICE RUN to see how all of this works out. If it goes well, I plan to run a match each second Sunday of the month.
We’ll see how it goes. Hope you can make it.
And What Do The Anti-gun Groups Have
This was a topic of discussion at both the Para-USA weekend and the last 2nd Amendment Blog Bash: What do the anti-gun groups have to offer their supporters? Anti-gun ranges? Anti-gunshows?
I was just made aware of this very good idea, the April 24 Rio Salado Open House:
Open House and Swap Meet
Rio Salado Sportsman’s Club in Mesa
Saturday, April 24, 2010 9:00am – 4:00pm
Yes, it’s time to enjoy a FREE day of fun and activities for the entire family at one of the best outdoor shooting ranges in the country.Open House at Rio Salado Sportsman’s Club is a day to invite the shooting and non-shooting public to an enjoyable, educational, hands-on day exploring the many shooting activities available at Rio Salado Sportsman’s Club. This is your chance to discover one of the best shooting ranges in Arizona where you can bring your entire family for a safe, fun experience and improve your marksmanship skills.
Experience the fast paced, run and gun of USPSA Action Pistol, or the very family-friendly, Tuesday Night Steel. Go back to the 1880’s with the Cowboy Posse dressed in period clothing and shoot a Western SixGun, or get your adrenaline pumping with some fully automatic machine gun fire with our Full Auto Division. Slow it down a bit and learn how to load a black-powder rifle or pistol and try your hand at throwing the hawk and knife. Maybe a .22 will be easier but those targets are mighty small! The Sporting Clays Range has fast become one of the best in Arizona, and the recent addition of a 5-Stand allows you to shoot flying clays.
Each of our competition divisions will be available for you to experience the many competition opportunities the club offers. For each event, we will provide equipment and orientation, or you can use your own. Here is your chance to try something new!
We will have a number of exhibition events to demonstrate various shooting techniques by some of our own members who have become National and World Champions. They make it look easy but it takes years of practice and thousands of rounds to get there. We will also have a number of community organizations putting on demonstrations, so stay tuned for details as we fill in the schedule!
This year is going to be even bigger since there will be tables where you can buy, sell, or swap that excess stuff from the back of your safe!
If you are interested, please email Scott Durkin at [email protected] for more details.
The Rio Salado Sportsman’s Club Open House is FREE to the public. Eye and Ear protection is required for everyone. Bring your own or we will have them for a small charge. There will be activities and information for the entire family. Bring your friends, work associates, and anyone you can think of that might want to see what this shooting thing is all about. Food and drinks will be available.
Come spend A Day at the Range!
Sounds like fun!
Guns. Is There ANYTHING They Can’t Do?
– there we all were, an amputee librarian, a gay man from the Northwest, a retired globehopping Navy guy, a Lear jet pilot, a Texan in a kilt, a couple of Nerds from New Mexico, and a young woman who castrates calves – all brought together by the most unlikely of things, an apparatus designed to hurl little lumps of lead at high speeds. – Breda, community
Oh, and blogging.
OK, THAT’S Done
I sat down this afternoon, put the latest issue of Vicious Circle on WinAmp, and plowed through the last of my .30 Carbine components. I ran out powder with 50 cases left to load. So now I’ve got the better part of 920 rounds of 110 grain .30 Carbine softpoints (950 total minus the thirty or so test rounds I fired) either loaded in magazines, or loose in a cardboard-lined .30 caliber ammo can.
A heavy .30 caliber ammo can.
I’ve got 1,000 155 grain Lapua Scenar .30 caliber bullets coming from Graf & Sons, and 500 M118 LR 7.62 cases waiting for half of ’em. I may be picking up another 500 cases from GI Brass if he still has those in stock next month. These go along with the 300 155 Scenar bullets and 300 Lapua .308 cases I already have, plus I’ve got a couple hundred 175 SMK’s. I managed to score about 10 lbs. of Reloder 15 a while back, and I’ve got a couple thousand CCI Large Rifle Benchrest primers, so I’m set there.
I’ve got 1250 .45ACP cases, and I’m planning on ordering a couple thousand Ranier Ballistic 200 grain .45 caliber hollowpoints from Midway next month, too. Primers I’ve got, but now I need to find an 8lb. jug of Unique. I’ve got maybe a pound left, which is about enough for 1,000 rounds, but then I’m out.
I’m short of .223 brass, but I’ve got 1,200 75 grain Hornady HPBT Match bullets, plenty of Varget, and a couple thousand CCI #41 military small rifle primers. I’ve got about 600 loaded rounds, so fresh brass can wait until April, I think. Scharch is carrying Lake City, new unprimed and uncrimped brass for $200/1000 which is a helluva deal. I may not be able to wait.
I haven’t played with my .38 Super much since I got it, but I have 200 147 grain Gold Dots, and I think I may pick up 500 Ranier Ballistics 147 grainers when they become available. Brass is available locally, and I’ve got a couple hundred already. Don’t know about powder for this one yet, and from what I’ve read, small rifle primers are advised.
In short, I have a LOT of reloading to do, and then I need to take some trips to the range. I think I’m almost set for the rest of the year, anyway.
Damn it’s nice to be working again.
I’m Going to the Range
I’m Going to the Range
And run a few rounds through the Power Tool™. I think I’ll go to the Tucson Rifle Club and use their 500 meter range, too.
I really like getting off early on Fridays! (Even though I worked 53 hours this week.)