New Shooter Report

I mentioned last week that I had a run in with gun fearing wussy types that weren't so afraid of guns as they were of the stereotype of the gun owner.

Well, lets just say this weekend cleared things up right.

I took one of the (shaplier) students from my class, Amanda, to the range this weekend. I promise, there were no ulterior motives in my selecting her for the first spot. The invitation was issued to the class in general, but she was the only one to approach me about it later.

Anyways....

I took the usual variety of guns with me. I've used these same three guns to teach with before and I'm very sure that they are easy for new students to learn with. First is the ubiquitous Ruger Mark II. Anyone can shoot a MkII, and it's heavy enough to mitigate recoil and quiet enough that it doesn't scare anyone. I also packed up my Kahr P9 and Taurus PT92. Both are relatively tame recoiling 9mm's. The Taurus has had a trigger job and has adjustable sights, plus it's heavy enough not to recoil much, so its my favorite for newbies to centerfire pistol shooting. I didn't take any rifles or shotguns because, well, I didn't want to overwhelm her on her first time out.

Instruction was easy. We had discussed gun safety after class that night, and I emailed her some materials I wanted her to read over. I made her give me the four rules before I let her in my car Sunday morning, and then we took off to the range.

Lately, I like shooting Sunday mornings. For one thing, most of the other people are watching football and there is very little activity on the lanes. Other than that, the girl that works the counter sundays is really cute.

When I bought 200rds of .22 and 200rds of 9mm, I didn't think we would burn all of it off, but we did. She got comfortable with the .22 well before we finished the first box of Green Tag. Then she wanted to shoot the bigger guns, and put 100rds thru the Taurus in no time at all. Then she went beck to the .22 at a little longer range before the groups started opening up.

Finally, she started to shoot the Kahr when we ran out of .22....man, she fell in love with that gun. There are two things I like about it - it's small and concealable, and its accurate. For her smaller hands, it made for a much more enjoyable experience than the Taurus had, and I saw her actually get better with it than either of the other two. No noticable flinching, little muzzle jerk and good trigger control all started to develop.

We could have shot longer, but she didn't want to spend anymore of my money so I took her home and left her with an open invitation. If Amanda tells anyone else in the class, I may be going broke sometime in the near future.

But it'll be worth it.

And next time, I'll try to remember to put fresh batteries in my camera before I leave the house.