Carl Levitian
member
Okay, I'm an old fart, I openly admit that, and I realize times have changed a great deal since I started shooting 58 years ago with my first .22 rifle. I met my wife on a shooting range 41 years ago, and we've been shooting together ever since.
But it seems of late, that on the range where we are members, and on the local public ranges we sometimes go to just for a change, things are getting like a practice session for a Steven Segal or Mel Gibson movie. Super tactical all the way. Tactical guns, tactical lights on the guns, tactical clothing, and rapid fire as fast as the trigger can be pulled. It got bad enough at our range that the club passed a two second rule. At least 2 seconds has to pass between shots. Noise complaints from neighbors, range chewed up by stray shots, and safety concerns, let alone the distracting atmosphere to other shooters.
Most of this seems to be young men under 40ish, all have the black auto pistols, and almost all the shooters seem intent only on the combat aspect of shooting. How many rounds can be pumped into a man sized target at 7 yards?
My question; does anyone shoot anymore just for the sheer fun of plinking, or target shooting?
Like playing the game with your partner of who can bounce the golf ball to the 50 yard berm before the other?
Or putting the unbroken clay bird on the 50 yard berm and breaking it, and then make a game out of cleaning up the pieces. It gets interesting when it gets down to dime size pieces. Just fun. Everyone these days seem so intent on defending themselves from the evil horde that's coming to get them, like some mass paranoid thing. Heck, Karen and I are the only ones out there with rimfires. Everyone else has the black 9mm's, .40's and .45's. We even had one man, a grossly over weight guy in black tactical clothing come over to us and engage us in a conversation where he asked us why we always are shooting .22's. Told that we just like to shoot for the heck of it, he informed us that we need to be able to protect ourselves, and we need to practice with real firearms that have some knockdown power! Galling to say the least, not to mention that from the looks of the target on his lane, he could barely hit anything with that shiny Kimber 1911 on his hip. Is there some immanent Chinese paratrooper invasion I'm unaware of?
Yet another time, one guy comes over to us and admires our shooting, but then goes on about how it's obvious that we're new to shooting since we're still using .22's, and it was time to step up to a "real" gun, and we were welcome to try his HK something or other. Karen politely informed him that when she graduated high school in 1962, she was shooting in club competitions back home in Texas with her High Standard target pistol, and I had qualified expert with the M14 while I served in the army. He goes away and leaves us alone, which is what we want.
It seems to me that the whole gun world has gone bananas over the black guns and tactical shooting, and nobody shoots just for the fun of it anymore. Almost all the young guys seem to be imitating some Hollyweird action hero, and obsessing over double taps when the bad guys come through the door. Maybe living in a middle class neighborhood, and not having the local Hells Angels chapter mad at us, I can't relate. Nor do I think that Karen and I will be engaging any Colombian drug lords in the near future.
It's gotten to the point where it's become a PITA to go shooting. We try to fit our range sessions in on Tuesday or Wednesday mornings to have the range to ourselves, to avoid the unwanted advise from the concrete comando crowd.
But I wonder what happened to shooting as a hobby vs shooting as the obsession.
Carl.
But it seems of late, that on the range where we are members, and on the local public ranges we sometimes go to just for a change, things are getting like a practice session for a Steven Segal or Mel Gibson movie. Super tactical all the way. Tactical guns, tactical lights on the guns, tactical clothing, and rapid fire as fast as the trigger can be pulled. It got bad enough at our range that the club passed a two second rule. At least 2 seconds has to pass between shots. Noise complaints from neighbors, range chewed up by stray shots, and safety concerns, let alone the distracting atmosphere to other shooters.
Most of this seems to be young men under 40ish, all have the black auto pistols, and almost all the shooters seem intent only on the combat aspect of shooting. How many rounds can be pumped into a man sized target at 7 yards?
My question; does anyone shoot anymore just for the sheer fun of plinking, or target shooting?
Like playing the game with your partner of who can bounce the golf ball to the 50 yard berm before the other?
Or putting the unbroken clay bird on the 50 yard berm and breaking it, and then make a game out of cleaning up the pieces. It gets interesting when it gets down to dime size pieces. Just fun. Everyone these days seem so intent on defending themselves from the evil horde that's coming to get them, like some mass paranoid thing. Heck, Karen and I are the only ones out there with rimfires. Everyone else has the black 9mm's, .40's and .45's. We even had one man, a grossly over weight guy in black tactical clothing come over to us and engage us in a conversation where he asked us why we always are shooting .22's. Told that we just like to shoot for the heck of it, he informed us that we need to be able to protect ourselves, and we need to practice with real firearms that have some knockdown power! Galling to say the least, not to mention that from the looks of the target on his lane, he could barely hit anything with that shiny Kimber 1911 on his hip. Is there some immanent Chinese paratrooper invasion I'm unaware of?
Yet another time, one guy comes over to us and admires our shooting, but then goes on about how it's obvious that we're new to shooting since we're still using .22's, and it was time to step up to a "real" gun, and we were welcome to try his HK something or other. Karen politely informed him that when she graduated high school in 1962, she was shooting in club competitions back home in Texas with her High Standard target pistol, and I had qualified expert with the M14 while I served in the army. He goes away and leaves us alone, which is what we want.
It seems to me that the whole gun world has gone bananas over the black guns and tactical shooting, and nobody shoots just for the fun of it anymore. Almost all the young guys seem to be imitating some Hollyweird action hero, and obsessing over double taps when the bad guys come through the door. Maybe living in a middle class neighborhood, and not having the local Hells Angels chapter mad at us, I can't relate. Nor do I think that Karen and I will be engaging any Colombian drug lords in the near future.
It's gotten to the point where it's become a PITA to go shooting. We try to fit our range sessions in on Tuesday or Wednesday mornings to have the range to ourselves, to avoid the unwanted advise from the concrete comando crowd.
But I wonder what happened to shooting as a hobby vs shooting as the obsession.
Carl.
