Category: Shooting Sports

Shooting Bags & Contents

Shooting Sports, The Gun Thing

Via Insty, I saw this article (What to Bring to the Gun Range) and was immediately drawn to read it because guns.

Sheesh.  What a disappointment.  Hearing protection, eye protection and a couple other okay but sometimes silly suggestions.  In other words, duh.

So as it was time to tidy out my own range bag, I thought I’d share what it carries, more or less permanently (with some other stuff that I’ll get into in a moment).

Here’s the bag:

Alert Readers will spot that it’s not yer typical 5.11 tacticool range bag, but a humble tool bag available from any hardware store.  Reasons:  I want tough, and tool bags are tougher than they need to be;  and cheap:  this one cost about $15, compared to the typical range bag’s $50 (or more).  You can use a cheaper tote bag (I have), but they wear out pretty quickly.  Also, the Husky bags come in all sizes.  This one is a medium — I could have gone smaller, but I’ll give the reasons for that decision anon.  Also, note that little outside pocket, because its contents come next.

Now for the permanent contents.  In that outside pocket:

1 – Band-Aids, 2 – blood coagulant, 3 – eye drops, 4 – lens wipes, 5 – spare batteries for scopes, 6 – pen and marker, 7 – ear plugs, 8 – aspirin (for minor pains or those sudden heart issues), and 9 – Swiss Army Champ.

It’s by no means a comprehensive collection, but anything requiring more than that means a different set of circumstances.  (The coagulant, by the way, is for minor scrapes and scratches, because nothing screws up good bluing like blood.  Ask me how I know this.)

Now for the main body of the bag — and let me remind you that these are just the permanent contents:

1 – tape (for targets); 2 – Wheeler gunsmith’s screwdrivers, 3 – ratcheting screwdriver set, 4 – borelight tube, 5 – Loc-Tite, 6 – adhesive targets (familiar to those who’ve seen my ammo/accuracy tests), 7 – spare .45 ACP ammo, 8 – eye pro which fits over my glasses, 9 – hearing pro with volume control, 10 – cleaning rags, 11 – shooting gloves.

Okay, a few explanations:  the .45 ammo is in case the other guns I’m taking that day have a problem, in which case I can always just pull out the 1911 (which as you all know never leaves my side).  I generally don’t use the shooting gloves unless I’m doing shotguns and need a little heat insulation.  Finally, I don’t take any cleaning gear to the range because I do my cleaning at home.

All that, however, could fit into a smaller range bag.  Now here’s the reason why I got the bigger one:  regardless of what guns I’ll be shooting that day, I like to take a .22 (pistol or revolver) plus a bag of ammo with me every time I go, so I’ll just drop those in the bag.  That’s just in case I have something go badly wrong with the other guns, I’ll always have something else to shoot.  Obviously, those other guns will have their own case, and if for example I’m playing with the Frankenpoodleshooter, I’ll drop the spare mags into the Husky.  Also, I always add a can of Ballistol to the bag (it wasn’t pictured because I’d just finished cleaning my guns when I wrote this).

By the time I get to the range, that Husky is plenty full, as you can imagine.

Anyway, that’s my range bag.  Feel free to comment and add criticism or suggestions, as always.

Tempting Offer

Shooting Sports, The Gun Thing

Ooooh, something from my local range, Texas Legends of Allen:

If anyone’s interested in joining me, send an email with your preferred date(s).  It’s been a long time since I did anything like this, and it’s about time I did.   Now, if I can just drag the Son&Heir away from his treadmill at GlobalMegaBank Inc…

Shooting Them Down

Self-Defense, Shooting Sports, Wars & Other Fun Games

Interesting stuff, this (via Insty):

I Have Seen the Future of Anti-Drone Warfare, and It’s Dirt-Cheap

I vaguely remembered reading something about the Sting a year or more ago, but I just learned today that they’re both dirt-cheap and extremely effective — mostly at shooting down Russia’s Geran-2 one-way attack drones, which are licensed copies of Iran’s Shahed that have caused us considerable trouble in Operation Epic Fury.

Ukraine needs tons of these things, because Geran is essentially a terror weapon aimed in large numbers — currently 100 to 200 per attack — at Ukraine’s cities and infrastructure. Larger attack waves include anything from 300 up to just over 800 Geran-2s in one night.

So the concept behind Sting is simply enough: Make something cheap and fast to build, easy to use, yet still capable of knocking a Geran-2 out of the sky far enough out from its target for some degree of safety.

And the Ukrainians did just that.

Of course, that’s all well and good in a military context, and our own .dotmil needs to hop onto this with all due dispatch, if they haven’t done so already.  (I assume they have, but whatever.)

What interests me as a civilian, however, is a solution closer to home [sic], in that these little airborne nuisances can also be used by anti-social elements to both spy on people and, in the worst case, to kamikaze themselves into a target — such as, for instance, your home or similar.  Why go to all the trouble of kitting yourself up with a suicide explosive vest or a rifle in order to inflict death and damage on (say) a church or synagogue, when you can essentially outsource the suicide bit to something you hand-built in your garage?

And in the above scenario, how would ordinary people — say, adherents of the Second Amendment — defend themselves or their communities against such nefarious electro-mechanical mosquitoes?

I’m thinking of something like this, of course:

That’s the semi-auto 12ga Browning Silver Hunter (and of course there are less-expensive options because America).  This differs from your standard home defense shotgun, say a 12ga Mossberg Maverick 88:

…in that the Hunter is not a pump action device but semi-auto (ergo  a higher rate of fire) and it has a much longer barrel (ergo  much greater accuracy at distance, ask any bird shooter).

I’m interested in this concept because it raises a couple of practical issues such as the type of ammo that would work best to bring down a drone (00 buck, or perhaps something lighter?).  Obviously, a 12ga slug would end the flight path of a drone with spectacular effect, but it has to be accurate:  far easier to spread the terminal effect with shot… but which shot?  00 buckshot is excellent, but it also kicks like hell — and getting followup blasts off quickly with said semi-auto action means a quicker target re-acquisition time is necessary.  Would 7/8 birdshot do the trick as well?  For that matter, would a 20ga shotgun be as effective as a 12ga under such circumstances?  (Almost all semi-auto shotguns are offered in both chamberings.)

I’ve owned a 20ga semi-auto shotgun in the past, and I have to say that the effect downrange is almost as effective as a 12ga (if those watermelons and milk jugs are at all indicative), but the recoil was far less problematic.

Of course I think that the Silver Hunter is just dreamy, in so many ways:

…and yes, the addition of a red-dot sighting device may certainly be of assistance (even though I think it spoils the look of the gun).

Feel free to discuss this topic in Comments, of course.

Game

Shooting Sports, The Gun Thing

Is anyone else sick to death of all the fuss surrounding the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts?

I have an idea.

Let’s re-purpose the Kennedy Center.  Never mind all that artsy-fartsy stuff;  let’s turn it into a massive indoor shooting range, with all the 100-yard rifle- and 25-yard pistol ranges that the place can hold, open from 6am till 9pm, 7 days a week.  And so that it can’t be hijacked by the hoplophobes and politicians, we’ll hand over its management in perpetuity to, say, Gun Owners of America.

Now for all sorts of reasons, we’ll have to rename the place, because let’s be honest, J.F. Kennedy and shooting do have somewhat of an unpleasant association.

And I’m against naming pretty much anything after a politician, because they get enough name recognition already, the lousy poltroons.

So let’s name it after a renowned and respected American ordinary citizen, and to make it even more non-political, let’s stipulate that he’s no longer alive.  Without trying to prejudice the thing, and just to help the thought process, let me give just a few examples:  Elmer Keith, Wyatt Earp, Audie Murphy, Samuel Colt, Oliver Winchester, John Moses Browning… I think you can all see where I’m going with this one.

Pick one, and one name only, and put it in Comments / email.  You don’t need to give any reasons because I’m pretty sure it’s self-explanatory.  I’ll tally up the votes and give the people’s choice later in the week.

Oh, and you only get one vote each.  We are not Democrats.

Jonny Screws Up, Then Tries Again

Shooting Sports, The Gun Thing

…in which Our Hero from TGS Outdoor tried his hand at skeet shooting for the first time last year and fell in love with the sport.

So much so that he came back this year and tried again.

There’s two wonderful, relaxing hours of viewing in the above two links, so have at it.

I’ve watched each one twice.

In passing, what I really enjoy about watching Jonny Carter is that he’s a remarkable shot — that part is undeniable — but he’s also appallingly humble.  Note in the first video his unselfconscious attitude towards admitting he’s a newbie at skeet shooting, his willingness to listen to advice from the pros, and his absolute refusal to blame his performance on his borrowed, unfamiliar gear.

He’s fallen in love not just with skeet shooting, but with the entire skeet shooting family;  and I bet they love this gangling Brit with his quiet, self-effacing humor just as much.