Recreational Shooting 1/19/14

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After writing my post on Understanding Your Rifle Through Trials and Tribulations, I decided that it was time to get out and do some shooting. After all, it's no fun to stock up on ammo and not shoot it all up, right?

While shooting is fun, I did have some real reasons that I wanted to shoot. First and foremost was to finally try out my new AR15 that I just recently completed. After all, a gun isn't much good if it doesn't work. And considering who it was (me) that built it...ANYTHING was possible. It may work great. It may not work at all. It just might blow up in my hands. Not to give anything away, but the fact that I am typing should tell you that the latter didn't happen. (Whew! I am as surprised as you are, believe me).

One of the other things that I wanted to do was to acclimate the two older kids to shooting. Griffin has never been scared of guns or shooting them. Just like me, Aubree is terrified of loud noises. Heck, I still can't stand to be the person who isn't shooting. Not only do I want her to get over her fear of the sound of guns, I want her to learn about them for safety reasons. How to use them, how to treat them, etc. Fact is, we hear of heartbreaking accidents between kids and guns all the time. I'd venture that 90% of them are because children either don't understand the danger of the gun, don't understand how to safely handle them, or a combination of both. I look at my childhood, for example. I understood what a gun could do to a person because I saw the  results on animals all the time. Additionally, I was brought up to respect firearms. So, by the time I was 10, I knew where the firearms were. I knew how to use them, but I respected them such that I never once took one out without a parent around. By the time I was 13, my parents trusted me enough to hunt whenever I wanted to without supervision. Believe it or not, I look back and realize that they were completely right in the way they taught me.

First things first. To learn and understand, you must at least be around firearms as they are being shot. So, I busted out the new Ruger 10/22 that I put together. I started by simply firing the gun with her next to me, which naturally terrified her. But, we told her it wasn't loud and we provided ear plugs and ear muffs.  After she was acclimated to the sound, I took the ear protection off of her and showed her the holes it made and how the gun worked.

After this, I figured the closest we would get to her shooting the gun was for her to hold it as I pulled the trigger. Luckily, my wife holds the same beliefs that I do about gun safety and where I was willing for Aubree to be done, Alyse was not. She forced Aubree to shoot the gun for the first time. And then something I never expected to happen DID happen. Aubree shot it. By herself. Then she looked up and me and asked if she could shoot it more. We got it on video!

Soon after, my friend Neil from Metalloid came by. You may recall that he is my supplier for Metcore 57 and Gun Green Oil. These are fantastic cleaners and protectors for your firearms. Anyway, he and his friend Jen wanted to do some shooting. So, we lined up some targets and laid out the firearms that we wanted to shoot.

Like I said earlier, I wanted to try out my new AR. It's a good thing too, for several reasons. Well, let me back up. I have recently finished the first AR and I am halfway through the second, after assembling my 2nd lower. After I was done with the second, I noticed a spare spring. That's never a good thing, when you have spare parts. Try as I might, I couldn't figure out WHY it was there. The trigger and hammer seemed to operate fine when separated from the upper assembly, so I assumed it was a spare part I was shipped by accident. Well, I put that lower on my new PSA upper and it fired just fine. But, it didn't eject the old round. I soon figured out where the spring went.....but I digress. Again, at least it didn't blow up in my hands.

I put the upper on the other lower and it fired, but also with problems. It didn't like the PSA bolt and carrier group. It would shoot and jam. Still not sure why, as the upper came assembled from PSA with the bolt and carrier group. I took my DPMS AR15 apart and swapped the BCGs between the two guns. Both fired and did so extremely well. Still don't know why the new gun didn't like the new BCG. I plan on doing a little work on it to see what the deal is.

So Neil brought his new Mosin (ok, it isn't new since it was made in the 40s). But, he had never fired it. I shot one a few years ago down in Auburn. Ah...that was THIS day.


Anyway, here is Neil shooting his gun for the first time!

So, we shot and shot and shot some more! Here were the results, though we didn't find nearly all of them. And, of course, we cleaned our guns after use!