Sunday, March 28, 2010

Bring it on James...

"That's right," Cameron said. "I want to call those deniers out into the street at high noon and shoot it out with those boneheads."
Why is it that the most liberal anti-gun hippy jack@sses always go straight to violence?

The Women and High Caliber Recoil Fallacy

So I took some less experienced shooters out to the range today, and it was the first time ever handling pistols for a few of them.  One of the shooters was my coworker Trescha.  When planning for the trip her request was "something cool, that's not too big and is going to hurt me," so we started out with the little P22 to get down the basics.

(Note, if you wear glasses, it's pretty easy to forget eye pro for those that don't.  I'm just used to it always being on my face.  Need to make a checklist one of these days.  There were plenty of earplugs though.)

So we put a couple mags through, and she feels pretty good. So I ask if she wants to try something with a little more bang.  After getting her a good solid thumbs forward grip, and reassuring her that the slide's not gonna bite her with the nice wide beaver-tail grip safety, she proceeds to send big fat bullets downrange, and score some pretty good hits.  No limp wristing, no flinching, no problem depressing the grip safety, just mighty fine shooting for the first time ever shooting handguns, let alone a full-size Kimber 1911.



Notice the brass still hanging in the air, and the gun already back on target.




Case just exiting the chamber...


...and back on target before the brass hits the grass.

It never fails, somebody walks into a gun shop, or logs on to a gun forum, and asks what kind of gun would be good for their wife/girlfriend/daughter/mom, someone will always say that a small frame, small caliber, and probably pink gripped auto or revolver is what they want.  There's some misconception that girls can't handle the recoil of a large bore auto, or that there's just too much gun for them to handle.

It's not a miracle, and Trescha's not endowed with super human strength.  It's simply a case of nobody told her she couldn't.  I simply said it's going to buck a bit more than the Walther did, but it's not going to hurt her, and made sure she had a good grip with plenty of meat on the gun and good stance.  By the end of the day, the 1911 was easily her favorite gun out of the dozen or so we had out there, and was asking how much they go for.

Anyway, just a proud teacher rambling.