The Glade 4.0

So a few months ago I visited my cousin in Colorado, and we went out to the mountains to shoot some of his guns. He was a sniper in the military and served in Iraq for quite some time. He first deployed in 2006, IIRC. Anyways, we loaded up a Remington 700 custom (sniper), Saiga 12ga shotgun with bulpup conversion, AK-47, Ruger 10-22, and a Glock 19. We drove and parked by a canyon near a remote highway, then walked a bit into it. We set up some targets that were already there.

Glock 19:

My first experience with this was when my cousin fired it loudly by my ear before I put the ear muffs on, and I could definitely hear a loud ringing sound after, just like a video game. It went away after a minute fortunately, but I was still bothered. Anyways it was damn hard to aim this! It's surprisingly difficult to hit something that isn't next to you. A chipmunk ran by, and my cousin yelled at me to shoot it, so I obliged but missed every shot. Also the recoil threw off my aim each shot. I wonder if it's possible to hold it such that it re-aims itself after every shot.

Remington 700 custom (sniper):

This was really fun to shoot, and very loud. Bolt action. I'm not sure how good my accuracy was though.

Saiga 12ga shotgun:

This is a semi-auto shotgun that shoots every time you pull the trigger. It's quite a beast actually. For some reason I was scared the recoil would make it smack me in the face, so I didn't fire it in quick succession (to the disappointment of my cousin). I could see it being great for close quarters combat though.

Ruger 10-22:

Possibly my favorite gun to shoot, because I could actually hit targets that were decently far away (100 yards or so). It's only .22 caliber and a bit of a pea shooter, but it's scoped and I could even stuff while standing up, and even firing quickly. It's semi-auto. My accuracy impressed my cousin quite a bit.




AK-47:

Really fun to shoot, and it had quite a large recoil. It was very difficult for me to accurately hit things through the iron sights, and had to re-aim it after every shot.


General notes:

1. Guns are even more fun than I expected, and much more fun than the air rifle I used to own.
2. Scopes apparently require you to be an exact eye distance away from them, and I had to keep shifting my body to look through them properly.
3. My cousin for whatever reason has a blatant disregard towards gun safety... but I don't want to delve too much into this topic
4. I can understand now why so many soldiers and police historically couldn't hit jack **** in battle and wasted tons of ammunition

Your cousin is an *******. "Here cuz, have permanent hearing damage! wheee!"

Shooting is a good time, glad you enjoyed it in spite of your cousin.

I'm not sure but I suspect that since he has hearing damage from his time in Iraq, he thinks everyone else deserves to have hearing damage too.

Did you hold all of them like you did in the picture? Because I can't tell if you're left-handed or not. If you are left-handed, shouldn't your wristwatch be on your right wrist? Also, firing any of the semi-autos with that hold should bounce hot casings off of your right arm.

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I wear my watch on my left wrist. *shrug*

Don't fire guns without hearing protection, unless you have more immediate concerns. My father, retired submariner, had minor hearing loss from his career in a tin can full of machinery, but recently went to a range and blew something internally. Screwed him all up - with ear protection. I think it was coming anyway, but it illustrates that it's damaging. (VA is completely paying for his hearing related medical bills and providing him a disability check for $250/mo without being asked).

Many people are very accurate with all sorts of guns, but it takes practice.

.22's are high velocity low weight and tend to be more accurate, with less stopping power. Fun for ranges. My old roommate had a .22 hand gun with a laser sight and it was just silly. Everyone's grouping was tight.

Yes, and although I'm primarily right-handed I use my left hand for many activities. I didn't encounter any issue with casings hitting my right arm.



I used hearing protection for all the guns except the .22. The .22 wasn't very loud, and my cousin said I didn't need protection for that one, so whatever.



Yea I could see myself becoming much more accurate if I just had enough time to understand the intricacies of aiming well for each particular gun. I used to be really accurate with my air rifle, which had iron sights.

Properly gripped, it's pretty easy to re-acquire your sight picture after every shot, but there is no way to make it "re-aim itself". There's several schools of thought on gripping a pistol, none of which are easy to describe; hands-on instruction is much better. I will tell you, however, that it's important to squeeze the trigger smoothly, not pull or yank it. When the gun goes off, it should be a surprise. This helps you avoid anticipating the recoil. Anticipation causes you to tense when you think the trigger is about to break and jerk the barrel slightly off target.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Huh, that's an interesting take.

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This cold and dark tormented hell
Is all I`ll ever know
So when you get to heaven
May the devil be the judge

Its a good method to combat flinch.

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Holy shitsnacks!

The best way to tell when it's happening with a handgun is (for a right-handed shooter) if he's missing consistently low and left. For a left-handed shooter I believe it would be low and right but I'm not 100% sure off the top of my head.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

That would assume everyone "jerks" the same way, which is also interesting. Would have thought that would vary.

People all jerk the same way when the jerking is the result of anticipating recoil because all handguns have the barrel sitting above the fist; what happens is an unconscious push forward and down prior to the weapon going off, and it goes left because of the way the wrist is constructed.

Different people DO jerk differently; you're right about that - but it's because they're making other shooting errors as well. There's charts available that show what error corresponds to being off target in what direction. If the problem is recoil anticipation, which is one of the most common ones, it will always be generally low/left for a right-handed shooter because all handguns follow a similar overall pattern and everyone's wrist is basically put together the same way.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The other common jerk pattern is based on pulling the trigger slightly to the side as you pull out because you have the pad of your finger either cooked up too far on the trigger or not far enough.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Take it slow and easy, take some basic lessons, practice and don't become enamored of the gun cult. You have the right, it isn't a requirement and we don't want to read negative headlines about you.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

I don't plan on buying a gun anytime in the near future, so there's nothing to worry about. And I live in Massachusetts so it would be difficult, at least to me.