Shooting and stuff

Aaron and I predictably got away for some shooting, this time a night session where we fired a variety of handguns and long guns by flashlight, auto headlight and weapon-mounted lights.

Aaron has a new Czech military surplus CZ-82 pistol which, I must admit, feels damned good in the hand and shoots like a dream. I'm sure that he'll be blogging about it later (EDITED to add that he did--right here.) and I'm resisting the urge to call up and order one this morning.

We also had a quantity of new AR-15 rifles--he had two and I had one--all recently put together by us and brought out for testing. Sadly that didn't go well as one of his AR's (a AR pistol made of CMMG parts) and mine--assembled over a few months from Rock River components--both exhibited some sort of binding in the buffer tubes that kept the actions from cycling. I've never seen this before and it was curious to watch both of our guns--made by different people from different companies' components and using different ammunition both fail from the same apparent problem at the same time. But as Aaron said, better at a test shoot than later when needed.

We also fired tactical shotguns for a bit, as both of us have Remington 870's with Surefire lights. His is an older light that he bought used for less than half what mine cost new, so when my bulb blew out on shot number seven as his kept working, well let's just say that I was not amused. Fortunately it's a Surefire and they stand behind their stuff. That's why I buy their lights almost exclusively. I have no doubt that this'll be fixed quickly.

That aside, there's nothing like a 12 gauge shotgun when you just want to shred targets. They do have their uses.

We finished up with some tactical shooting from and around my car. It's all good practice, as you never know when the wolves will appear or what may be around you. Cars are almost always around and they make pretty good cover. And the night-shooting? Well it is dark half of the time.

We finished up and returned to Aaron's house, where we spent half of the night cleaning guns, drinking beer and watching Jason Statham movies. Of course morning was heralded way too soon by the stomping and giggling and horseplay of their little girls. There really should be a law barring small children from getting up early on Saturday mornings. I mean, it's not like there's cartoons on all the TV channels any more. Remember when there were just three channels on the TV and all of them showed cartoons on Saturdays? And FUN cartoons--not half-hour long barely-disguised toy commercials. For some reason, that stopped. Since it did, kids under twelve really need to sleep until at least noon on Saturdays now.

But since they didn't, I wound up playing numerous games with the oldest daughter, games whose rules seemed to be invented on the spot by her and always to her advantage. That kid's going to make one heck of a Contracts lawyer some day.

Lagniappe and I drove home yesterday. And as usual, I have a couple of observations and some common sense to impart.

When road construction on a highway causes the state to shift the lanes and put up signs that order all trucks and buses to use the left lane, that also means that other slow vehicles which are not trucks and buses need also move to the left instead of driving along like bliss ninnies in the right lane at or below the speed of the slowest trucks or buses which are now in the left lanes. I should not have to state this, but after the drive, it's obvious that some people just don't get it. Also, the old caveat still applies that if there is no one ahead of you for half a mile or more while an unbroken line of cars behind you stretches clear back to the horizon, YOU'RE WRONG! Get the hell out of the way and let the people whose heads aren't up their asses like yours is get past.