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Big Plans Next weekend

spectre7spectre7 Member Posts: 965 ✭✭✭✭
Normally this is the sort of thing I would put in general discussion, but it does have a direct affect on my very small portion of the fight to secure our basic rights. Besides, you're all right; this forum doesn't get enough traffic.

Next week I'm taking Friday and Saturday off so that I can accompany a group of six for a hike and some recreational shooting. The group will meet up with two old friends of mine, who are both avid shooters and hunters.

The group is comprised of six individuals, four of them women, who have never had the pleasure of utilizing a firearm. Like me, they tend to have a number of what could be considered liberal leanings, but unlike me, they have never had the spark of interest in firearms to prompt exploring the world of shooting and the frequently foolish regulations which guide it.

Hopefully, at least a few of them will find they really enjoy shooting, or at the very least they'll enjoy their time away from the University traffic and the hordes of people. I like to think that the trip is pretty well planned out. I'm not an expert when it comes to firearms or firearms training, but we're not seeking to act as instructors; merely introduce them in a safe and pleasant environment to shooting. However, if any of you have some suggestions or general advice; by all means post it. This is the first time I've taken out an inexperienced group and only the third time I've introduced someone to shooting.

Right now we're taking

Four shotguns; two 12 gauges, a 16 gauge and a 20 gauge

Four pistols: a glock in .357 sig, a Witness in .45, a Sig in .380, and a Rossi revolver in .357 magnum

Five rifles: an Anshultz *sp*22 mag , a k98, a 243,a 270, and of course a Ruger 10/22


We've got a bunch of ear-plugs and the muffs; as well as shooting glasses, and a pair of jeep cherokees to truck it all down there in. Hopefully it'll be a great experience.


Typos and profanity, oh my! http://www.funky-town.org

Comments

  • trooperchintrooperchin Member Posts: 2,632 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    Good luck, hope everything goes well. How about an update?

    d852d797.jpg

    Go Army Beat Navy
    IF you wanna have fun join the cavalry
  • tr foxtr fox Member Posts: 13,856
    edited November -1
    Spectre7: thanks for thinking of the gun rights forum. Hope thing went well and as trooperchin said How about an update? Oh, and thank you for introducing new people to guns. They may not learn to love them, but they may learn not to hate and fear guns AND GUN OWNERS. On Sat. we mailed a letter from my 21 year old daughter to a middleaged woman who is an editorial writer for the K.C. Star. This woman frequetly, and recently, writes anti-gun articles for the newspaper. My daughter finally got sick of reading her articles so my daughter sent a friendly letter to this woman offering to pay all costs and provide all equipment and to donate $25.00 to this ladies favorite charity if she will go to the gun range with my daughter and do some friendly competive shooting.

    When guns were invented everything changed. For the first time in the history of the world a frail woman had a chance to sucessfully defend herself and home. My dream is that one of the anti-gun nuts will need a gun for defense and be unable to have one because of their own actions.
  • pickenuppickenup Member Posts: 22,844 ✭✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    Sounds like a good thing you are doing.
    It is unanimous, post an update.

    Besides the usual, all guns are loaded all the time, only point guns in the right direction, etc.
    Make sure you have some "fun" targets. Balloons (on a piece of string?) work well, they are light to carry, and fun to shoot. Punching holes in paper can get old quick, to new (or even experienced) shooters. If you are the only one with any shooting experience, do not let everyone have a gun at the same time. Too many guns, not enough eyes. If everyone has a gun, you might not be able to keep them all safe. It probably goes without saying but, carry out anything you shoot up. Teach them to have the responsibility of cleaning up after themselves, Brass included. Hope you have a GREAT, FUN and (especially) SAFE time.


    The gene pool needs chlorine.
  • tr foxtr fox Member Posts: 13,856
    edited November -1
    pickenup: now that you mention it maybe you can give me some advice. I belong to an outdoor gun club and one Sunday my buddy and I went shooting on the outdoor rifle range. It is kind of crude as it is just a long, open field with a big and high berm to shoot against. It has grass which is always mowed short. My buddy and I must think we are rambos because we shoot up a bunch of AR-a5 and Ak_47 ammo and we tried to pickup most of the spent brass and put it in a big barrell which we tought must be the trash. But there was no way we could have gotten all the brass. Did we not do the right thing?

    When guns were invented everything changed. For the first time in the history of the world a frail woman had a chance to sucessfully defend herself and home. My dream is that one of the anti-gun nuts will need a gun for defense and be unable to have one because of their own actions.
  • pickenuppickenup Member Posts: 22,844 ✭✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    tr;
    When I go alone or with just one other person to the range, for a quicky, I "they" just pick it up. (price they pay for taking them to the range) No grass, just hard packed dirt.

    But when I take a group, or go into unfamiliar territory, or we/I plan on a long day of shooting, I take a big tarp with me. One of those blue or green "plastic?" ones. They are relatively cheep and makes it REAL easy to gather almost all of the brass. Sometimes we use a number of tarps, if we are going to be shooting from a few different locations. Rocks on the edge, hold down the tarp, if it is windy. Makes for quick cleanup. Just pick up the corners, and pour the brass into a bucket. Old blankets might work, never tried it. If you happen to drop parts or pieces off your guns, or other stuff, it makes it easy to find those also.

    (hint) standing kind of on the front left "edge" of the tarp works better than standing in the middle of it. Especially if it is not a large tarp. The shells eject, more or less, onto the center of the tarp, not off of the other side. A little experimenting on where to stand, and you save a lot of bending over at the end of a GREAT day shooting. After using this method a couple of time, you naturally "know" where to stand. I do not think I have ever gotten 100% of the brass I have shot, using any method, but I try.


    The gene pool needs chlorine.
  • tr foxtr fox Member Posts: 13,856
    edited November -1
    pickenup: thanks for the response. Since our brass was fallling into the short grass about half of it was hidden from view so we didn't feel tooguilty for not picking up just what we could see (probably about half of the total). I guess if everytime someone shot there and if they left all the brass over time the field would be covered with a layer of brass which would make it hard to walk? Or would it, maybe just like a layer of gravel. I had never really thought that much about it. Comment?

    When guns were invented everything changed. For the first time in the history of the world a frail woman had a chance to sucessfully defend herself and home. My dream is that one of the anti-gun nuts will need a gun for defense and be unable to have one because of their own actions.
  • pickenuppickenup Member Posts: 22,844 ✭✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    "We did not feel too guilty about leaving half our TRASH in the field"
    No, I have no further comment.


    The gene pool needs chlorine.
  • spectre7spectre7 Member Posts: 965 ✭✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    The trip turned out very well actually, and if I can manage to both get some of the pictures developed and obtain the permission of the participants I'll be posting them at some point.

    The girls were a bit intimidated by the long-guns, especially the shotguns; I think it was the noise and size more than anything else. They took to the pistols pretty well though, and one of them named Laura put us all to shame with the little Sig. At thirty feet she hit every circle, some of them near the center, on an NRA 50 ft. rifle target. Talk about being impressed; I decided not to offer any 'pointers' for fear of screwing up what she was obviosly doing correctly.

    To give you an idea of the company I was in; one of the guys pulled up in a Jeep with a sticker reading "Don't blame me I voted with the majority" which I admittedly thought was funny, and the other arrived in a little black Jetta with a sticker proclaiming "Army of NONE; peace through non-violence"; not exactly a philosophy I agree with, but the day wasn't about politics.

    Needless to say; their contact with firearms had been virtually nonexistant, but oh man did they have a blast splattering everyone with yellowish ichor when they sent a slug or round of buck into the pumpkins. We ended up going through about two dozen pumpkins and a pack of fifty NRA targets.

    All in all, Chris, Will (those are the two afore-mentioned hunter-friends) and myslef brought along around 1500 rounds of assorted ammo and it wasn't nearly enough. Even after the novelty of emptying the clip in a few seconds wore off *A woman named Rhiannon was the first to do this and it prompted a mass of firing*; they couldn't seem to get enough of it. Really, we spent most of the trip loading magazines and shotgun tubes for our guests.

    After we finished with the fireworks, we went hiking and to my delight they were talking about guns. I've never seen young women or my rather liberal friends talking so excitedly about firearms, and it really pleased the heck out of me. We talked a little about gun laws on our way back to the vehicles and for the most part they thought backgrounds checks and restrictions were very important, but to my pleasure one of the young ladies asked me alot of questions about geting a concealed permit and where to take classes on handgun training.

    Will I do it again? Absolutely; as soon as my wallet recovers anyway [;)]

    Oh, btw, the tarp idea was a life-saver. There were SO many ammo boxes and casings to pick up it kept us from having to spend hours searching the ground.

    Typos and profanity, oh my! http://www.funky-town.org
  • tr foxtr fox Member Posts: 13,856
    edited November -1
    spectre7: glad you had a good time and maybe converted some people to our view.

    When guns were invented everything changed. For the first time in the history of the world a frail woman had a chance to sucessfully defend herself and home. My dream is that one of the anti-gun nuts will need a gun for defense and be unable to have one because of their own actions.
  • tr foxtr fox Member Posts: 13,856
    edited November -1
    pickenup: I don't know if you went to school or not, but if you are going to use quotation marks someone needs to tell you that they mean you are actually quoting someone verbatim, not adding your own words.

    When guns were invented everything changed. For the first time in the history of the world a frail woman had a chance to sucessfully defend herself and home. My dream is that one of the anti-gun nuts will need a gun for defense and be unable to have one because of their own actions.
  • pickenuppickenup Member Posts: 22,844 ✭✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    spectre7.
    Sounds like you had a heck of a good time. Maybe even converted some. I have always enjoyed doing both. Keep up the good work. [:D]


    The gene pool needs chlorine.
  • pickenuppickenup Member Posts: 22,844 ✭✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    tr fox.
    You came into this forum with a flash bang. Accusing everyone of not doing anything for our gun rights. I think you have since found out, that there are "some" here, who have done more than you (or I) will ever do. (in my opinion, there are some that make me look like I have done nothing at all) After you settled down a little, it seemed that you were an OK guy. Now, because I called you on doing something irresponsible, environmentally unfriendly, and puts all shooters into a bad light, you have to question my education???

    I do not care for people who do not have enough integrity, to be able to stand up and say, that they might have been wrong. You would rather find some way to attack that person. What a shame. Quotation marks "can" be used to add emphasis to the written word.

    There is a very VERY short list of people on this forum that I will not bother to read and/or respond to their posts. You sir, have been added to that list. Maybe some day if you mature to the point where you are able to accept the responsibilities (and repercussions) for your own actions, instead of feeling the need to attack???


    The gene pool needs chlorine.
  • tr foxtr fox Member Posts: 13,856
    edited November -1
    well...gee...pickenup..I kind of forgot how "bad" it makes me feel to be lectured in length and criticized in great detail by WORDS ON A COMPUTER SCREEN written by someone hundreds of miles away WHOM I DON'T EVEN KNOW! Yeah, it really gets to me and sure ruins my day that a perfect fellow like your self thinks badly of me. I don't know, somehow, some way I got the idea that it was acceptable to rudely criticize your fellow GB member during a friendly exchange. I can't imagine where I got that idea UNLESS IT WAS YOUR POST OF 10-14-03 21:58.

    And in regards to your gross exaggeration about me first joining this forum and accusing EVERYONE of not DOING ANYTHING for gun rights, for your benefit I will state that opinion again for you. Maybe you will understand what I am saying and react appropriately this time. My paraphrased position was this: While I appreciated those here who work for gun rights, from knowing people, I know that some of the people here are trying to get a free ride and don't want us to know that they DO LITTLE OR NOTHING for gun rights. It was those do-nothing people I was trying to criticize into action. I had only appreciation for those people here who were already doing something to help gun rights. Now let's walk through this. I came on board with an attitude. When expressing my attitude I described how I knew there were two groups here. One group who was the "working" group and the other group, the ONLY group I had a problem with, was the "do-nothing" group. Now you would think that with this said that the only flak I would get would be from those from the "do-nothing" group. Why would anyone from the "working" group even bother to throw any negative comments at me (I got a bunch from them)? Did they feel a need to "protect" the do-nothing group? If so, why? Is it that the complainers really secretly belong in the "do-nothing" group? Which makes me wonder why you have so much resentment for me critizing the "do-nothing " group.

    When guns were invented everything changed. For the first time in the history of the world a frail woman had a chance to sucessfully defend herself and home. My dream is that one of the anti-gun nuts will need a gun for defense and be unable to have one because of their own actions.
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