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This section discusses and illustrates some of the fun things I do with my guns. Most recent antics are towards the top.
13 March 2001 On this date, I accompanied a couple of fellow gun nuts down to a crusty old range in Temecula. If I had more presence of mind, I might have taken a few pictures of the range facilities themselves, but on second thoughts I guess I'm glad I didn't. It's a very nice quiet range and, no offense intended, I don't see any more need to publicize it.
 There are those who might suggest I have a gun problem, and upon reflection I have decided this is true. I do indeed have a gun problem. My problem is I don't have enough space on the bench for all my guns. You can see the nifty bench rest I fabricated in my garage the day before the shoot. The sophisticated grade-8 hex bolt suspension system was vastly improved by setting the entire unit atop a camouflage-colored sandbag. This bench rest was extremely handy for zeroing in the adjustable sights on the revolvers. If I get enough requests, I might think about publishing detailed plans and bill of materials. In the photo below, I am limp-wristing the staple gun while setting up targets. I xerox my targets at Kinko's, from a pattern I downloaded from the Web somewhere.
 Some gun nuts I know think those of us gun nuts who live in California are crazy. They insist California is not friendly to gun nuts. They often dramatize their point by spelling California with a K, like this: Kalifornia (the way, I guess, a Communist would spell California, even though Communist is spelled with a C). Ha ha! That was pretty funny, the first 800 times someone did that. Personally, I can't think of a friendlier way to be to a gun nut than to provide him a place to shoot his guns while wearing a tee-shirt in 75-degree sunshine in the second week of March. I suspect those other gun nuts pick on us Californian gun nuts because New York and New Jersey don't have any Cs in their names which they can humorously change to Ks.
  Here I've got that Model 629 zeroed in and I'm blasting away freehand, practicing the grip, if not the stance, I learned during Bianchi competition. My associates relax by hunting squirrels in Northern California, so they were eager to set up their high-tech squirrel-hunting rigs to test their accuracy. This is a little Ruger 10/22 .22LR in an Outers rifle rest.
  This rifle shot high at 50 yards, but we reckoned it would be right on at 100 yards, where all the squirrels are. I made a 1" group with 10 rounds at 50 yards the first time I sat down behind this get-up. Not bad for a $200 rifle (plus scope and rest, of course). My other associate was at the big rifle range with a Winchester Model 70 Classic Featherweight in .22-250 Remington (an evil-looking cartridge) shooting at 1" stickers 100 yards away. I was able to use the Winchester Model 70 Classic Featherweight to teach those stickers a lesson after my associate softened them up with a lot of near misses. I am still thinking about long guns I would like to have, but I am not as enthusiastic about them as I am about handguns. Paradoxically, I find them too accurate. When some rube who has never shot a rifle before (that would be me) sits down and makes 1" groups at 50 yards, or shoots 1" stickers at 100 yards, you wonder where do you go from there? 26 October 2001 I was out camping in the Piñon Pines area north of LA, and a buddy and I decided to go do some shooting at this nice 200-yard range someone dug into the side of a hill. We were all by ourselves, so we could pretty much do whatever we wanted, as long as we were safe. At one point I had left my paper targets and stapler near the block of wood to which I was affixing targets, so I didn't have to keep carrying them back and forth. After spending some time plinking at beer cans, I decided to attempt some rapid-fire shooting with my Glock 22C. You don't get a lot of chances to do this at a normal range. Well, anyone who has ever done this can tell you you probably won't hit much. In fact, from 25 yards I missed the target completely with all of ten shots. However, I did manage to hit the stapler:
 After this we had to set up more cans since there was no way to staple the paper targets any more. |
| This page last changed 2 January 2002 at 16:05. magnum@employees.org |