Range Report

Turns out it was only The Reservist who joined me today, which was fine because shooting isn't new to him, so he doesn't have any bad habits to get rid of (or has already gotten rid of them). Curse the traffic, though! 40 minutes to drive what should've only been a 15 minute hop.

Anyways, we got to the range, he took the safety test, and then got in line for a lane. When we got out on the range, I went over how the 92FS works (it's pretty much like his M16--shoot, the action cycles, and shoot again). Sent out the target to 15 feet, and he was keeping tight groups easy with it. I heard the guys next to us commenting on my 92FS, noting the wood grip panels (bling!). I looked over and saw a '92 as well, but couldn't figure out what it was, so I asked: it was a 92S, which was actually blued (and not Bruniton-coated like the newer 92FS model), had a straight front-strap (the 92FS has a slightly contoured front-strap), and adjustable sights. Nice! So The Reservist got to learn the intricacies of loading pistol magazines--he commented that it wasn't like the M16 magazines, where all you have to do to load it is to press the round in from the top. Not so with pistols: you've gotta basically unload them in reverse--when you shoot a pistol, the recoil will operate the slide, which will extract and eject the spent casing from the chamber and then strip a round off the magazine and load it into the chamber, while the magazine spring will push the next round up into place to be stripped by the recoiling slide. To load the magazine, you've gotta compress the spring and slide in the round from the front--not the easiest operation in the world, and it takes practice to do it quickly (for instance, I could load 5 rounds in the same time it took him to load one).

When we had shot 150 rounds from the 92, we moved onto my friend's Glock, which is still in its "function testing" phase. I'm pleased to report that it didn't have a single failure of any kind that wasn't caused by the operator. It has an extended slide-release installed on it, and my usual thumbs-forward grip finds my right thumb resting on it, which inhibits slide-lock. My friend could get away with it because he gripped it using his left thumb to lock his right, well away from the slide release. I dunno...if I were to buy it from my friend, I'd put the original slide release back into it...but then I'm not all that interested in Plastic Pistols anyways. Don't get me wrong, though--if I could only have one pistol, I'd have a Glock because they're damned near indestructable.

Anyways, 100 rounds later, and The Reservist was still a good shot, although he noted that the '21 had considerably more recoil than the '92. We could've shot more, but it was getting late (he does have a wife, after all) so we packed it up, gathered a few handfuls of .45 brass, and cleaned up and left. Afterwards, he said that he had fun, which is good =)

Time for more cleaning...