Monday, January 14, 2013

My AAR on the trip to the range yesterday

I had meant to take some over the shoulder pics yesterday, but we were having so much fun it just never happened. And boy did we burn through some ammo.
As Belle mentioned, we took a young couple with us to shoot pistols yesterday.
Belle noted that the young lady was a "natural", her hubby didn't do too bad either. He was either rev'ed up, or nervous, or both his first round on the firing line. He was shooting my 4.5" XDm and I could see his hands shaking a bit.  That filtered out after a while and after I explained to him that he didn't need to crush the grip.  (I remember when the muscle tone in my forearms looked like that....sigh.)  To demonstrate that the gun wasn't going to jump out of his hands, I shot 5 rounds, strong hand only. He relaxed more after that
It was his first time to shoot a handgun.  He shot my Ruger SR9c as well.  He liked the XDm better, being a longer and heavier pistol. I like shooting the XDm as well, but it's really bulky to conceal. The Ruger I'm still liking a lot, and very happy with my groups.
So I loaded mags for a while, then showed him how to do it.  He fumbled with it a bit at first, then once he got it down, he wanted to load them all. I showed him how to release the mags and reload.  My intention was not to make him a good shooter on his first outing, but to get him comfortable with the tool at hand.  Although, he did put some serious hurt on Mr. badguybluemantarget.
My approach to teaching is that, "I will share with you what I know." I'm certainly not an expert shooter by any stretch of the imagination.  I explained to him about finger placement on the trigger, proper grip and anticipating recoil. When I made a bad shot, I pointed it out to him and told him what I did wrong.
I had a really, really good time.  I got some seriously needed recoil therapy, but made sure my charge put many, many rounds down range.
After I packed up and he and I were about to exit the range, he looked me directly in the eye, shook my hand and said, "Thank You so much!
I just smiled at him and tried not to grimace as he crushed my hand.

As we all walked out into the parking lot headed to our respective vehicles, I said, "See, that wasn't so hard was it?"  They both turned and said, "OMG! NO!"  Whereupon the young man thanked me profusely again and crushed my hand.
I wish I had a pic of the two of them afterwards.  I wish you could have seen their eyes.  They were two fully awake human beings. Sheepdogs and future shooters in the making.

Wisely, Belle recommended that they both go take some basic handgun classes, rent some guns and try them out until they find the one that is right for each of them.

Did I mention that I had a really good time yesterday?


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