Honestly, this weekend I was going into “bullet withdrawal”. Over the past few weeks I’d skipped Friday Night Steel to go to a party, had my regular IDPA match canceled, had a Steel Challenge match canceled (protip: shooting outside in the winter in Indiana can be dangerous), and generally have not been shooting as much as I’d normally like. It’s always tough to get quality range time in the winter, so yesterday I rolled out to Popguns and their indoor range to play with some .40 S&W Minor loads that I have. The loads worked great, as a side note, and I’ll actually have a full review of them on Tuesday (and talk about them for the Gun Nuts Christmas Special).
I am glad to see that I apparently remembered how to shoot, after taking almost a month off from the shooting sports (through no fault of my own, mind you). Also, after bringing that target back, and looking over my other targets for the day, I realized that I could probably stand to adjust my sights so the bullet hits about an inch to the right.
One of the things that I always find interesting about going to indoor ranges is watching other people shoot. Tam had a similar experience this weekend, when someone didn’t understand that her range buddy was deliberately making his gun malfunction to practice failure drills. I’m there to practice – I may not be able to practice shooting multiple targets, or going from the holster, but I can certainly practice shooting hammers, controlled pairs, rapid reloads, and malf drills.
This weekend, I saw a real cross section of people. There was a woman there shooting rental guns because she’s considering her first CCW purchase, a father taking his young son shooting, an group of guys my age with a lot of enthusiasm and not a lot of accuracy – and by the time I left around noon, the gun store was packed, three deep at the counter.
The point of getting to the range, despite having fun and shooting some bullets, is to practice. Practice reloads, hammers, whatever – but if you’re going to carry a gun on a daily basis, it doesn’t do you a whole lot of good if you never shoot it.
