Bangity

A friend of mine, after at least a decade of suggestion on my part, finally got her Connecticut state pistol permit. Her training class included shooting a Ruger Mk. III.

So she wanted to go shooting with me. Of my handguns, this is the one she wanted to shoot:

I don't have a small .22. I have heavier revolvers, but the weight of them bothered her. A snub-nosed revolver is probably the worst possible gun for a tyro, other than maybe a .500 magnum, but it is what it is. So a snubbie it was.

Last week, we went to a range near Hartford, CT. It was a nice range, well kept. It had two drawbacks, though. First, you have to buy their ammunition. That wasn't so bad, their prices were fair. Second, and more serious for beginners, their target range offers only three set distances: 25', 50' and 75'. To my way of thinking, that's bad. There is little feedback to be gained from a complete miss. She was hitting the target maybe two shots out of five.

But she wanted to try again, so we went to a different range. There, we could bring the targets closer. I had them at about 15'. Her first shots of each string were pretty close to the center of a reduced-size silhouette with a red center. After a few cylinders, I taped a 8" Dirty Bird target to the silhouette. She shot 49-2x on it and she was really pleased.

Then she shot my .45 USP Compact. The first shot was dead-on, the rest low. That made for a good short lesson in recoil anticipation. We shot until I saw that her groups were getting worse, when I asked if she was getting tired. She said that he was, so we wrapped it up.

It was a good day.