Shooting

Apparently my mayonnaise expired a month ago. I suppose I'll find out tomorrow if it's still good when I eat the sandwich I just put it in to.

Yesterday, one of the other field engineers took me shooting. He had a shotgun and a 9mm pistol, both of which I used, and a rather high-powered hunting rifle which I opted out of trying. We went to some seemingly random place outside of town that he said he usually goes to and fired against a hillside. To go along with the guns, he also had a home-made clay pigeon thrower mounted on the trailer hitch of his Jeep. After he showed me the basics of the shotgun we set up some clay pigeons on the hillside so I could practice against stationary targets. First he went so I could observe and then I gave it a arty. I was two for four (which is how many shots it held) with the stationary targets. Then we move don the moving targets off the thrower. Again, I was two for four even counting my first shot where I know I tracked poorly and subsequently missed badly. A second round of moving targets had me at two for four again. It seems like that was the theme for me.

The 9mm was a while different story. It really is designed for rapid fire use from the get go. The shotgun was easier for me to load and had a safety and you had to clear the empty shell after each shot. The 9mm's 10-round cartridge was a little harder to load, but putting it in the gun and pulling the slide to put the first round into the chamber also cocked the gun as well. So you had to de-cock it if you didn't want the next movement on the trigger to fire the gun. Plus, it had no safety. Since it was a pistol and not a shotgun, it was also a whole lot harder to hit the stationary targets with even though we set them closer. Of the ten rounds, I hit a target with my first shot and subsequently missed the next nine. I could tell from the dust kicked up that I wasn't missing by much, but I was still missing. Then again, these clay pigeons we stuck in the ground were only four inches across. The pistol was a lot harder to hold steady since I couldn't butt it up against my shoulder like I could with the shotgun. It did have a lot less kick to it, but I just couldn't keep my hands steady. However, with practice I can definitely see how someone get become both very fast and very accurate with a pistol.

Both guns were surprisingly easy to use, though I'm not sure why I should've expected any different. Many years of design have gone into making guns as easy to use as possible. I can also see why a pistol, while smaller, would generally cost more than a basic shotgun. It simply has a lot more parts to it and is somewhat more sophisticated if I may use that word in a broad sense. I certainly had fun, much of it coming from the chance to learn about and operate a few firearms from someone personally. I'm definitely not in the market for a gun of my own, but I do feel a lot less uninformed about their operation.