Double Action shooting range

Friday, December 28

I was in Detroit visiting family for Christmas, and my brother Scott and I went to the shooting range. We were avid shooters when we were kids. Brad and Andre came with us. Scott owns several guns; we brought along his M-16, a duplicate of the weapon he carried in Vietnam, and a 9mm Beretta semi-automatic pistol.

First I fired 30 rounds with his M-16, a .223 military cartridge, while standing, at a 30-yard target. The gun was real heavy--Scott says it has a match barrel, that's why it's heavier. A guy next to us was shooting an M-16 with a regular barrel; it was lots louder. The recoil was not nearly as bad as I expected. Scott says there's a special spring mechanism inside the stock that reduces recoil.

I reeled in the target and my shots were all in a fairly tight pattern, but they were all low and to the left of the center; only 8 were in the black.

Next I fired 15 rounds of 9mm ammo at a 10-yard target with Scott's Beretta. I was hesitant at first, both with the assault rifle and with the pistol, because it's been 20 years since I've fired a weapon heavier than a .22. I was also worried about the recoil of the semi-automatic pistol, but it was a dream to shoot. I didn't do so well with the pistol; out of my 15 shots, only five were in the black, and three were completely outside of the circle.

Scott fired 15 rounds with the Beretta and his pattern was almost identical to mine. "I feel a lot better now," I said. I fired another 15 and did a little better, but I didn't keep that target because Scott fired 15 more into the same target, so I couldn't distinguish between his shots and mine. He put most of his into the black this time.

Then I fired 20 shots with Andre's .22 rifle with a 'scope at a 30-yard target. The shots went piff, piff, piff, compared to the loud bangs of the M-16 and the 9mm. All of them were inside the black, and only two were outside the 9 ring.

I fired 20 more shots with the M-16 at a 30-yard target, this time from the bench with a couple of sandbags to rest on, and put every one into the black.

I wasn't doing all the shooting, we were taking turns. Scott beat all of us at everything, of course. Brad Thomas joined us about 15 minutes after we started (we shot for an hour). I shot lots better than Brad and Andre even though they are regular Double Action attendees with Scott, which surprised me.

As we were driving home I said to Scott that it must be like riding a bicycle, you don't forget how to do it.