Range!

Yesterday I snuck out to the range for a bit with the lovely Paige. It was only one of her first few times out and for some reason she'd apparently forgotten the basics of sight alignment so we had to work on that for a bit with the Glock 22. Eventually after some discussion and some pen-and-paper "this is what you should be seeing" demonstration, I got her back on paper. Eventually she put one smack in the center of her target, hitting the center orange dot from 5 yards out. Baby steps. She was so proud of herself after all of the misses and thrown shots that I told her "Just do that fourteen more times and put them all in the ten ring (the first circle around the orange center) and I'll buy you a margarita on the way home."

Paige is motivated by alcohol like dogs are motivated by Milk Bones. She drew a deep breath, took the proper two-handed stance we'd worked on,aimed deliberately, and smoothly broke the trigger, hitting the center again.  And again. And again. And again...

It took her over five minutes to put those fifteen rounds on the target but she shot it clean and all fifteen were in the ten ring. If I didn't know her shooting history I'd swear I got sandbagged.

Next we did some one-handed shooting,. strong hand and support hand. And she got most of them on the target. She's very slow, but she's deliberate, does everything I taught her to do, and if she starts to get shaky or tired, she stops, relaxes, and sets up again instead of trying to yank the shot. But I told her that "a slow hit counts more than two fast misses" and she took it to heart, not wasting a shot. (I also told her that every time you rush or use bad technique and wank one off the target, some poor person at the ammo factory who loaded that bullet just for you gets a little pain in his heart.) 

She did good.

Then we hit the rifle line for a but. I finally put a proper mechanical zero on my Smith and Wesson MP-15/22 and gave her that to shoot while I worked on doing the same to my Springfield Scout Squad. She was loving the .22 and doing well with it but eventually she wanted to try the Springfield.

She wasn't as fond of this one. "Too heavy and too noisy."

But a good time was had, followed by a stop for a margarita or three on the way home--a bet's a bet--and then after we got back to my place we took a bike ride down to the end of the Bywater for a late dinner and a couple more drinks because Paige loves her alcohol enough to ride a bike to get some.

It was a good day.