revolvers « Girls <3 Guns

Tag: revolvers

Saturday, March 19th, 2011

Some observations from my CCW addon range trip

Armed and Safe does business right.
I am more comfortable shooting the Smith & Wesson Bodyguard revolver than I am my Bersa Thunder 9, even with more difficult to use sights and a crazy trigger-pull. because the revolver fits my hands.
I didn’t feel as grungy after shooting a revolver than I do after shooting semi-autos. What’s up with that?
I can pick up a brand new gun of a type I’m not overly familiar with, remove its tags at the range, shoot five lethal shots with it, adjust myself and then shoot more accurate subsequent shots. Cool!

Tags: Armed and Safe, concealed carry, Female Shooters, Girls and Guns, guns, revolvers, Smith & Wesson, Washoe County Regional Shooting Facility

Posted in Concealed Carry, Range Time, Running the Gun | No Comments »

Friday, March 18th, 2011

Armed and Safe Saves the Day

When I took my CCW class, I was in a tough spot in life. My not-so-nice ex-husband and I had recently separated and he had made some threats against me. Additionally, he left me with a lot of debt. I had a need for self-defense and no money to make that happen. I couldn’t even pay rent on my own. But GB helped me out by letting me borrow his Bersa Thunder .380 as a carry gun for me and Armed and Safe allowed me to take their CCW class for free through a scholarship for a female shooters made by an American soldier.

I knew Armed and Safe would help me with an addon just like they helped me to get my original permit, so after I left Safe Shot on Saturday disappointed that I couldn’t qualify there, I called Armed and Safe. Allan Main answered my call on his cell phone. He was out at the range setting up for a CCW class to qualify. He told me if I got my happy butt to the range before 1:45 p.m. that day, he’d qualify me right there. No range fee, no target fee, no fancy ammo. Just $5. Nice.

I had my range gear in the car with me as I was driving away from Safe Shot: eyes, ears and revolver. I stopped off at Sportsman’s Warehouse to pick up some ammo and then I floored it out to the Washoe County Regional Shooting Facility. Allan and Kelly Main of Armed and Safe had arranged for private use of a range to the left of the range I normally shoot at when I patronize this facility. It was a nice range; reminded me of the bay we used at the Sacramento Appleseed held at the Sacramento Valley Shooting Center.

Before exiting the car, I applied my eyes and ears, grabbed my gear and then bee-lined for the firing line. I checked in with an assistant of Kelly. I didn’t catch his name, and that’s a shame, because he was awesome. He bellied me up to the firing line, eyeballed my gun and told me a few things about it and revolvers in general. He revealed to me that he himself conceal carries a revolver. Good times.

Allan and Kelly both came over and checked out my new toy. I showed Kelly the laser (which I didn’t use to qualify; it’s not visible in daylight) and Allan showed me his sights on his revolver. The gentleman who was supervising me showed me his too: his front sight was painted with bright red nail polish. Nice!

On my revolver, the sights are black on black and set very close together both horizontally and vertically. This coupled with what I read online that my gun tended to shoot high and off to the side due to the insane trigger-pull on it inspiring people to drag wood or jerk the trigger meant I needed to be careful. So when the line was hot, I paid close attention to my trigger discipline. My first five shots were all high of my target, but they were grouped nicely, so I just had to work on my sight alignment and sight picture a little bit more. This was my first time shooting this gun, so I had to get used to it and I did. My next shots were right on.

Kelly surveyed my work and proclaimed me “qualified.” She filled out the paperwork and I signed it. Then, I gave her the quoted $5, plus a $5 tip for all of the help she and her two coworkers had provided. As we wrapped things up at the range, the rest of the class participants headed back to Scheels where their class was taking place and I went back home.

Grinning like an idiot.

Armed and Safe saved the day.

Tags: appleseed, Bersa, CCW, concealed carry, Female Shooters, firearms, Gear, gender, Girls and Guns, guns, revolvers, Safe Shot, Smith & Wesson, Sportsman's Warehouse, Washoe County Regional Shooting Facility

Posted in Appleseed, Concealed Carry, Range Time, Running the Gun | No Comments »

Wednesday, December 29th, 2010

A Gun Where I Least Expected

I’m working on converting old slides to DVDs for work right now. I came across a series of landscape pictures. Some of the photos center on plants and various items, such as pens and lens caps, are employed to give the viewer an idea of the size of the plant. When I brought up the next slide, however, I did not expect that I would see this used as a size gauge:

Or maybe the owner was just showing off.

Tags: guns, revolvers

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Wednesday, September 15th, 2010

Gun Blogger Rendezvous: September 12th, 2010

I almost didn’t attend the Gun Blogger Rendezvous on Sunday. I’m Mormon. To attend the Rendezvous would require me to shop on Sunday by patronizing the breakfast restaurant and the range and Mormons try really hard not to shop on Sunday but to instead spend it at church and with family and friends. Additionally, I would miss partaking of the Sacrament, which is important to me spiritually and I would be ditching my class of 3 year old Sunday students whom I teach each week.

I talked it out with CS Tactical and he encouraged me to attend, then I went home and talked it out with GB who encouraged me to attend as well. I rarely miss church and this is a once-in-a-year event. It would be my first time to shoot Cowboy Fast Draw. I ended up talking myself into going and I’m glad I did!

We ate at the breakfast buffet, which was delicious! I’ve never consumed a Sunday brunch breakfast buffet before on account of being Mormon. It was cool. They had breakfast, lunch, dessert– anything and everything. We took up one big table and two smaller tables and we brought to the tables a wide variety of eats. I ended up with eggs, bacon and hash browns again. I downed 2 glasses of the yummiest chocolate milk! Then, I had chocolate ice cream with chocolate syrup for breakfast dessert. I wasn’t aware that dessert was an acceptable course for breakfast, but according to the buffet folks, it is and I wasn’t going to argue with that deliciousness!

I checked my watch because for the past several days we’ve been late getting out of breakfast according to our agenda. This time, we were nearly on time.

Sunday, September 12th, 2010

8:30 a.m. Leave the Silver Legacy “Silver Baron B” Hospitality room for one of the restaurants for breakfast.
9:15 a.m. Leave for the Cowboy Fast Draw Blogger Match.
10 a.m.- noon Cowboy Fast Draw Shooting.

It was 9:36 a.m. Time to go! Again, I was nervous learning a new skill in front of professionals, but my positive experiences with The Smallest Minority, D.W., Allan, the CS Tactical guys, The Molly Minute, etc. the day before learning steel helped me to have the confidence to try to learn Cowboy Fast Draw.

The Cowboy Fast Draw range is a shed outside of the clay range. A couple of cowboys armed with multiple belts, revolvers and holsters met us there at the shed and gave us a quick history of fast draw and the basics of fast draw. Then, we got started. I missed the target on my first shot in the first round, but I nailed every shot after that in good enough time that I beat my opponent Aunt Bea. I lost in my second round to True Blue Sam and in my third round to CS Tactical.

Here are the results (compliments of Mr. Completely):

I’m very happy with where I ended up. I expected as a newbie to be dead last. 10th is not bad! Yay! After the shooting, I raced back home. Threw off my range clothes, cleaned up my hands and face and threw on church clothes. I grabbed my Primary bag and made it to church just in time to teach my Sunday School class. Whew! I still missed Sacrament, but at least I didn’t ditch Sunday School.

Tags: cowboy fast draw, Gun Blogger Rendezvous, guns, revolvers, shooting, shooting range

Posted in Gun Bloggers Rendezvous | 4 Comments »

Wednesday, September 15th, 2010

Gun Blogger Rendezvous: Show-N-Tell

After the Major Announcement, we had a rousing round of Show-N-Tell. Instead of bringing in our pet birds or telling the class about a coloring crayon picture we drew, our Show-N-Tell involved, in the words of The Smallest Minority, evil black firearms! More than half of the time, I had no idea what I was looking out. As a gun newbie, the Show-N-Tell went way over my head for the most part. Special thanks to The Smallest Minority and D.W. for sitting next to me and helping me handle the various toys that came my way.

A highlight of the evening for me was when a revolver was passed down to me from D.W. and I passed it straight to The Smallest Minority. I said to him, “I don’t know how to check this.” Usually when someone hands me a firearm, we are both super-safe about it. First, they check that the firearm is empty by dropping any mags and racking the slide and then passing it on over to me for me to check with my finger and with my eyes that the mag is out and the action is empty. But, I didn’t know how to do that with a revolver.

The Smallest Minority showed me how to open the gate and roll the cylinder outwards to check if the revolver was empty. We’re all responsible adults at the Gun Blogger Rendezvous, so it was empty as I had anticipated it would be. But checking was absolutely the right thing for me to do. Thanks to The Smallest Minority for not making fun of me, talking down to me or talking over my head when I needed help checking the revolver. Sometimes in the gun world, experts can be insensitive to the newbies, but I never felt that way in the company of our awesome gun bloggers.

Here are some pictures of the Show-N-Tell, but like I said, most of this went over my head. I don’t know why the firearms are awesome or even what they are. Hopefully you will. Enjoy!

After the Show-N-Tell festivities, we were hungry! We ate at the Gecko’s BBQ restaurant, which runs a weekend all-you-can-eat ribs dinner special for $9.99. The BBQ sauces have gluten in them, according to the chef, so I ate my ribs naked… they were still good. Although the waitress was clueless when it came to gluten-free. I told her I needed gluten-free food tonight and she brought me wheat-ified cornbread and put croutons on my salad. Oh well. The ribs were still good. Nom om nom.