My girlfriend and I have been dating for close to four years at this point, and before today she has shot a total of maybe ten rounds. She doesn't dislike guns, but she's never really shown a whole lot of interest.
Well, she's home for spring break, and we were at my parent's, discussing what we wanted to do. After ruling some stuff out, I mentioned hey, it's beautiful out, let's go to the range. She said yes, and I about pooped myself.
So we gather up a variety of guns, and head out to HCFG. In the car, we discussed the four rules of firearm safety, and she made the comment at one point that they were all pretty much common sense. So once we got there and signed in, we went over all the rules again in detail, and started to set up the range, at about 10-15 yards. My favorite targets are paper plates, so I just stamped a 2" circle or so in the middle and called it good.
I decided that we'd start out with some rifle shooting, offhand with iron sights. Since she has talked about going with me to an Appleseed over the summer, I walked her through the operation of my 10/22 LTR.
We go over stance, breath control, how to hold it, all that good stuff, to the best of my ability to teach. I demonstrate a couple shots, and had a nice little clover group going on. It's her turn, I walk her through breathing and trigger pull, tell her to take her time, and she looks at me and informs me that her first shot is going to be in the black, because she's a badass.
I get the hint, back off a little, and she sights, and fires. Her first shot is in the black, touching my first three.
She fires four more times, loading a new magazine (one shot loaded each time) after each shot, and all but one are in the black.
We end up shooting my 10/22, my dad's Henry .22, and my scoped Weatherby Mark XXII (from probably 20 yrds). She fell in love with the Henry.
We had two hours or so until we had to get her back to her house to babysit, so I asked her if she wanted to try her hand at pistol shooting. My 22/45 is totally stripped down at this point, and has it's grips ground off, so it wasn't available to bring. I didn't have target ammo for my 1911 (
), so the choices were my mom's Lady Smith and my buddy's G19 that I'm safekeeping while he lives in Chicago.
She decides to give the Lady Smith a shot, does pretty well but the noise with the short barrel gets to her a little, so we move over to the G19. I demonstrate a nice slow fire in a Weaver stance, and she follows by putting all ten I load for her into CM of the plate. Ok...
So I load a full mag for myself, and shoot at the plate rapid fire style, keeping them all on the plate at about 10 yards. She laughs, says hey, I can do that, and shoots her ten, about one shot a second, and stays totally in the center of the plate.
We clean up, and I take her back to Geist. On our way, she mentions going again tomorow if the weather is nice!
So a girl from Geist who grew up in Chicago attending Catholic school who has never had any interest in firearms decided today that this whole shooting thing is a whole lot of fun. She wants to go to an Appleseed, and I mentioned the Lebanon Sheriff's Gunsite classes or the ACT classes, plus Appleseed, and she was definetly interested.
So I may well be getting her a Ruger Mark III with a Pac-Lite upper for her birthday.
Yeah her stance isn't a traditional combat one, but we can work on that at an Appleseed. Sorry for the long post guys, this just is really exciting to me, and I had to share with the INGO family!
P.S. Yes, that's a Mini Grip in her pocket.
Well, she's home for spring break, and we were at my parent's, discussing what we wanted to do. After ruling some stuff out, I mentioned hey, it's beautiful out, let's go to the range. She said yes, and I about pooped myself.
So we gather up a variety of guns, and head out to HCFG. In the car, we discussed the four rules of firearm safety, and she made the comment at one point that they were all pretty much common sense. So once we got there and signed in, we went over all the rules again in detail, and started to set up the range, at about 10-15 yards. My favorite targets are paper plates, so I just stamped a 2" circle or so in the middle and called it good.
I decided that we'd start out with some rifle shooting, offhand with iron sights. Since she has talked about going with me to an Appleseed over the summer, I walked her through the operation of my 10/22 LTR.
We go over stance, breath control, how to hold it, all that good stuff, to the best of my ability to teach. I demonstrate a couple shots, and had a nice little clover group going on. It's her turn, I walk her through breathing and trigger pull, tell her to take her time, and she looks at me and informs me that her first shot is going to be in the black, because she's a badass.
I get the hint, back off a little, and she sights, and fires. Her first shot is in the black, touching my first three.
She fires four more times, loading a new magazine (one shot loaded each time) after each shot, and all but one are in the black.
We end up shooting my 10/22, my dad's Henry .22, and my scoped Weatherby Mark XXII (from probably 20 yrds). She fell in love with the Henry.
We had two hours or so until we had to get her back to her house to babysit, so I asked her if she wanted to try her hand at pistol shooting. My 22/45 is totally stripped down at this point, and has it's grips ground off, so it wasn't available to bring. I didn't have target ammo for my 1911 (
), so the choices were my mom's Lady Smith and my buddy's G19 that I'm safekeeping while he lives in Chicago.She decides to give the Lady Smith a shot, does pretty well but the noise with the short barrel gets to her a little, so we move over to the G19. I demonstrate a nice slow fire in a Weaver stance, and she follows by putting all ten I load for her into CM of the plate. Ok...
So I load a full mag for myself, and shoot at the plate rapid fire style, keeping them all on the plate at about 10 yards. She laughs, says hey, I can do that, and shoots her ten, about one shot a second, and stays totally in the center of the plate.
We clean up, and I take her back to Geist. On our way, she mentions going again tomorow if the weather is nice!
So a girl from Geist who grew up in Chicago attending Catholic school who has never had any interest in firearms decided today that this whole shooting thing is a whole lot of fun. She wants to go to an Appleseed, and I mentioned the Lebanon Sheriff's Gunsite classes or the ACT classes, plus Appleseed, and she was definetly interested.
So I may well be getting her a Ruger Mark III with a Pac-Lite upper for her birthday.
Yeah her stance isn't a traditional combat one, but we can work on that at an Appleseed. Sorry for the long post guys, this just is really exciting to me, and I had to share with the INGO family!
P.S. Yes, that's a Mini Grip in her pocket.
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