My friend's first gun experience

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I have a friend who used to live in MA, and currently lives in San Fransisco that I have been talking to about shooting. He has always been interested by guns but hasn't shot anything other then a 22 rifle as a child. Here is his story about going to a gun range in CA that I thought was amusing:

My friend Conor has been to a range in South San Francisco a couple of times, as I learned after seeing one of his targets hung up in the hallway at his house. Since then I've always thought it would be fun to go, but we haven't been able to get our act together. Apparently during Supper Club (our weekly-ish host-rotating dinner parties) at my house, while I was cooking, Nick and Conor hatched a plan to combine muscle cars (Nick's Camaro), guns (a shooting range), and meat (someplace where we can get steaks) to create an afternoon's all-American entertainment.

After some discussion via email, we agreed on a Saturday morning and picked a shooting range in San Rafael. Nick drove, so there were lots of burnouts along the way. Conor's friend Richard came with us. Everyone else had shot handguns before but me; I've shot a .22 rifle a few times, but it was when I was a kid so I wasn't any good. Droid, who is into guns, told me I should try an M1911 if I could. The range has a Sig variant of that, so when the guy asked us, "What do you want to shoot?" everyone looked at me first. I was like, "Well uh... Droid said I should try the M1911, but maybe I should start with something smaller." The guy takes the gun out and puts it on the counter. "This is America. Go big or go home." OK then! So we started out with this (.45 caliber) and a Beretta 9mm. There was a lot of discussion about what guns we wanted to try, and the guy said, "Look just start with these two and then come back and we'll swap them for something else!" Oh right. No big deal... He asked us what kind of targets we wanted. "We got little bullseyes, big bullseyes, your standard human outline, two kinds of terrorists, and zombies." Zombies?! "We're the only shooting range in California with zombie targets." And what do you shoot zombies with? "A shotgun, of course. I don't know about you guys, but I'm ready for the zombie uprising," he said, pointing to the shotguns in easy reach behind the counter. Nice. Richard said, "OK, maybe we'll finish up with a shotgun and some zombie targets." He asked if we could take pictures. "Well... it's OK with me, but you need to make SURE that you do not include the faces of other customers. People are sensitive about that. And then it all ends up on Youtube, and we're surrounded by f***ing liberals up here. They'd be picketing outside the door." We all sort of went, "Er, heh heh. Yeah. Death to liberals! Ha ha!"

Anyway, to the shooting! I was a better shot than I thought I would be. Nick gave me some pointers and I got the hang of it. It was about as fun as I thought it would be, which is to say, a lot : ) After we got bored of the first two guns, we switched them out for a Smith & Wesson .357 revolver and a Ruger .22 target pistol. Then we finished up with a Springfield 9mm and some kind of pump-action shotgun (and the zombie targets). We had been sharing targets all morning, but I wanted one to take home that was just my shooting, so I put 16 rounds from the 9mm into a bullseye target. My first grouping was really good, I got three inner bullseyes and two outer. My second wasn't as good, I guess my arms were tired.

They gave us a pretty good deal on the range time because we were shooting a lot, so in the end for around two hours, we paid $184 total. Pretty sweet. I definitely want to go back and do that again.

Heh, I am glad I recommended the 1911 to him! [smile]

~Droid
 
I have to say, though, I don't like the "go big or go home" comment. I think it's best for a new shooter to start on a .22.

I can understand where you are coming from, but I also think it depends on who it is and what they are trying to do. What got me back into shooting was a trip to the range with some co-workers, we shot everything from a Ruger Mk II to a Desert Eagle! Then once I decided to get serious and learn how to shoot properly I took a class that was 6 weeks of shooting 22's, and then the opertunity to shoot other types of pistols in the last class.

Very different experiences for very different purposes.

~Droid
 
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