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In a previous post, I mentioned that I voted for Obama, then went out and bought a handgun. First handgun that is mine, not my husband’s. Yesterday, I went shooting for the first time in approximately 12 years, and shot a handgun for the first time in at least 15. Took me a while to go to the range, because when you buy a handgun, sooner or later you expect to have the serious intention of putting metal into a human body, and (along with sex) that’s as about as morally serious as you can get.
I’d spent some time dry firing, or what the Marine Corps calls snapping in. This means that with an unloaded weapon, you get used to the sight picture (which I didn’t mess with, just put the front sight blade level in the rear sight aperture), trigger pull, how the weapon feels in your hand or hands, how far you want your arms extended, and so on and so forth. I also spent some time just holding (i.e., not dry-firing) my pistol with a loaded magazine in it—safety on, no round chambered—so I had a sense of the weight. This way, before I actually fired live ammunition, I had some sense of what that weapon would do and how it really felt in my hands.
The last time I fired a pistol (again, more than 15 years ago), I doubt I could have hit the broad side of the barn with it, unless perhaps I was in the barn. When I bought this pistol, my riding partner asked me how my aim was, and I told her I believed I could throw it more accurately than I could shoot it. In fact, I joked, it would make a handy club if I had to beat someone to death.
Wrong.
I fired 4 magazines of 5 rounds each. (Magazine holds more but I simply didn’t want to spend that much time fighting stiff magazine springs.) I fired the first magazine of 5 just to get used to the recoil and the flash of the propellant. Shot group wasn’t bad: all my rounds were in the target itself. I was not surprised to find the time I’d spent lifting weights paying off: the pistol wasn’t heavy at all. What did surprise me was that within the first few rounds, I felt my body trying to put me in a position that in the saddle is very strong and stable: heels, hips, shoulders and ears aligned, sitting on my pockets with my pelvis tucked underneath me, legs long, body tall, shoulders back so my chest is open, even if I was holding my pistol in both hands, my elbows flexed and close to my chest. In my case, I know my riding position is right when my shoulders and head feel a little behind the vertical, and I felt that way when I was shooting.
From that position, I fired the next three magazines. I fired the second magazine of five rounds, slow, about (but no more than) 10 seconds between rounds. At about 15-20 feet, I put the first four rounds into the center ring and one in the 9 ring. I then fired the third and fourth magazines fairly fast, about 5 seconds between each shot, and put all but 3 rounds in the black. Four of the rounds impacted so close together they form an arched tear.
And then I stopped because I believe you should always end on a positive note.
To say I liked shooting is an understatement. I like shooting the way I like knitting, and for the same reason: they both
