We're now range regulars on Sundays. It's nice to see the usual guys, check out their new gear, chat a little..you know, join in on what humans like to call "being social". But occasionally, there's someone new.
Yesterday, that someone new was a (Reasonably Nice) man teaching his (Jackass) friend how to shoot. Reasonably Nice was politely interested in what I was shooting, asking me about the laser sights on the .38, etc. He did have a little trouble when I showed him the other guns in the Fallacy collection - he kept asking if I had rented them and I had to keep answering, "No, this is mine too."
Jackass, now, was a different story. As soon as I walked onto the range, I caught his attention. I was only two stalls down from him and Reasonably Nice, and he kept looking at me and smiling as if I was some strange animal. I could practically hear the narrative running in his head: "OMG! Girl! Gun! Girl touching gun! OMG! Boobs! Boobs near gun!"
I had a hot-brass-down-the-shirt incident (remind me to wear turtlenecks.) which of course involved the inevitable hot-brass-down-the-shirt-HOT!-ow-ow-ow dance. Jackass's head was peeking around the corner of my stall so fast, you would have thought I was the featured entertainment at one of those gentlemen's clubs. "Hot one, huh? Heh heh heh." I looked at him like he was an insect.
And to top it all off, my friend Nicole (who came with us yesterday to continue her love affair with the Mk II) told me that while I was busy shooting, Jackass got behind me, and quick as anything, pulled out his cell phone and took a picture. Rude.
Did Jackass not notice that I was armed?
27 comments:
Funny thing, boobs are. A pair of them will turn many a man into a drooling idiot.
As much as I wish I could say that was an oddity, get used to it. Every time I hit the range and there's a woman shooting, the range guys are always "available" in case she needs help.
As far as 25 yards go, that's about what I shoot at that distance. At 10 & 15 I can stay within the rings quite easily, but at 25 the cheap red dot sight I have is too fuzzy.
However, remember that you're throwing a .22" chunk of metal and hitting a target 75 feet away. Just getting it "on paper" is the same as "on torso". I call this "Good 'Nuff".
Oddly, with the 10mm, I can keep them all in the rings at that distance, but that's because it's open sights and I can see the damn thing.
And I promise you I shan't be taking cell phone pictures of your rear when we're in Louie-ville ;)
Robb - very smart, considering I'll be under the protection of Mike-istan. ;)
& no laser on our 22 revolver. I don't know if one would help or hinder.
breda,
I'll change Robb's comment ever-so-slightly - a pair of them [boobs] will turn many a man into one...
Figure it's the same attitude as sci-fi conventions - the male:female ratio is so incredibly lopsided that the mere sight of a female, being such an anomaly, sends the average guy into bIZarRo world...
And don't bother with a laser on the .22 - there's only one reason for lasers, IMHO, and that's for surviving gunfights. The best thing to do to improve that grouping (which ain't bad) is practice, practice, practice.
Gee. Go shoot more .22LR. How tough is that?
:)
Reminds me of the time I was shooting with my friend Kim down in Tulsa last summer. One of the other guys on the range noticed that she was, and decided to appoint himself her pistol coach. She quickly shut him down by telling him that "This is how the showed us how to shoot in the military".
I loled politely, in my stall; he was armed.
But seriously, your jackass was a cad and a bounder and deserved a sound thrashing :).
Oh, I have no laser, just a red dot holo-sight. At 10 yards, I can get quarter sized groupings. at 15, fist sized, and 25 "paper" sized.
The big problem with a holo is that it can actually confuse you if you rely on it to sight in. You practically have to be already be dead on to see it and if you're not used to a particular pistol, finding the dot can be a real pain.
However, once you do... Man can you shoot good!
And Breda, Mike isn't who I'd worry about - It'd be the person who owns the match to my wedding band.
If your .22 pistol league is anything like mine, you're more than good enough to start out. You, like me, wouldn't be close to winning on raw score (I think the high raw score so far is a 594/600), but my league's a handicap league. So, as long as you shoot a minimum score (some folks don't make it the first couple of times out, some get it in one), you get a handicap score. The best kind of shooter to have on your team is the guy shooting in the 590s, but next best is a beginner who's improving rapidly. (my team's in first place right now because we've got so many beginners)
If you want to give that a go, see if you can borrow a few different pistols the first few times out (that's what I did this year) and then buy your own, or just keep borrowing until you figure out if it's for you or not. Or slap a decent red-dot on your mkII. (You'll almost certainly shoot the pistol better than the revolver in the timed and rapid fire stages)
And bummer about the jackass.
I forgot to mention that several of the beginners (who shoot scores good enough to count, and get some of the highest handicapped scores in the whole league) are quite content if they get better than half their slow fire shots in the scoring rings. In other words, don't let your current skill level stop you--it's better than quite a few of the new shooters we've had.
He took your picture. Unbelievable. What an utter ass.
I can't comment on the shooting, but hitting the target? Seems pretty darn good to me!
Lots of good shooting advice coming out.
My own, .02, get some .22 snap caps and begin dry fire practice every single day. Trigger control, sight picture. Work on one thing at a time. You can work trigger break just by dry firing with your eyes closed.
Also, try taping a laser pointer to the barrel. Dry fire against a dot on a wall.... and try to let the hammer fall without the laser dot moving. Thats trigger control... And the cats will have a ball with it too.
Lots more advice.... some might even be good.
The jerk.... burns me up. WISH I had been there to see that... I would have made his life miserable, very publicly.... and enjoyed it. Wouldn't be able to help myself. I'm weak that way.
I am open sights, so far, perhaps scopes in the future when I want to shoot something important over three hundred yards. Go with the practice, practice and practice - nice things about .22 is that it hasn't gone up like gasoline. Not being the object of foolish louts and lust I have no advice, but then I always ask the men that wanted to dance with my wife if they wanted to fight outside before or after the dance. They all backed off, although I know the correct answer is "I'll fight you after the dance." they didn't grow up where I did and have no manners.
"Jackass" gives the male of our species a bad name. I know quite a few women who had a great time at the range, only to be put off and picky about whether to return by one pig who can't keep his eyes to himself. The camera phone adds to his idiocy. Some people come into the world stupid...some people go out that way, too. He's probably the latter.
I could practically hear the narrative running in his head: "OMG! Girl! Gun! Girl touching gun! OMG! Boobs! Boobs near gun!"
Get out of my head Charles!!!
Watch your front sight to the detriment of all else, and press such that each break is a surprise. All else is superfluous.
I just noticed what you fired that with....
Really not bad at all. The Taurus 94 has a mediochre trigger at best, and the 4" model is pretty short and light for serious target shooting.
We have one in .32 long. Nice pistol, but ... not a target pistol.
Not bad at all!
The president of our IPSC league is a woman. She schools most of our dumb asses...
The only thing I fear, tho, is woman-to-woman competition; women get down right mean when playing for keeps!!
Carteach0 has a good suggestion...so good, in fact, I think I'll act on it myself. I need some more .22LR snap caps.
That 50' target the proprietor of this here blog put up is about as good as I remember being able to do with my .22LR Heritage Rough Rider, back when I started (and probably as well as I could do now, being out of practice).
The Heritage is a .22LR/.22WMR convertible, and I recently heard convertibles like the Rough Rider and the Single Six are more accurate with the magnum. Have to try it soon. I'm trying to remember without digging through the archives...you have a Taurus, no?
About Jackass (and his type) don't let 'em get away with it ... ever! Every guy notices a cutie now and then but shame on him if he starts gorping. The cell phone was definitely over the line.
What should have happened was your friend should have immediately shouted really loud (provided you weren't in the middle of a string of fire), "Breda!!! I can't believe that guy just took a picture of your A$$!!!" Then you could have engaged in a loud and lively dialogue between just the two of you (never directly addressing Jackass). The sole purpose of such dialogue would be to attract attention and thoroughly embarass Jackass (if possible).
Is it good or bad that Mike-istan wasn't around? Just asking because my better half was groped once while we were out. She was in mortal fear of how I would react and chose not to say anything ... especially since she wasn't 100% certain of the perpetrator. She had dressed cute (nothing she couldn't wear in front of the kids but nevertheless ... cute) and apparently someone took it as an invitation to run his open hand across her behind. She had a plate of food in her hand and was leaning forward when it happened. When she turned around, it was unclear who it was. In your case though, you knew and it would have been something special to see you berate him publicly.
Wow! Thank you everyone for all of your target shooting tips and words of support. I'm going to have a lot of fun practicing now, jackasses be damned.
oldsmoblogger - yep, a Taurus
wild deuce - mike-istan was a couple stalls down, shooting his 357, so didn't notice what happened. And, yes, we held off telling him until Jackass had left. Just in case.
1. You don't shoot very well, and don't know much about guns, and you have your husband clean them for you, and you basically do not even own one. So you can come down off the Gurrl Parr pedestal any damn time now.
2. When a man forgets to button the top button and does the ouchy dance--without, I notice from your account, calling cease fire as one waves a loaded gun around--he gets a lot more than "heh." So boo effin hoo for you. You screwed up and got laughed at. Sexist? Consider it a safety talk.
3. You never even lived in a time when women were excluded. Maybe a guy looked at you, maybe he didn't. Get over it, or go get big strong hubby to deal with your high-school issues. This is not about you. Who knows, he might have been snap-shotting your absolutely laughable shot group.
Forty long hard years back, a lot of men lost a lot of friends to make it okay for you to try anything you felt like. Keep up the content-free whining, and a lot of them will, sooner or later, have had enough. Your yay-girls echo chamber is just making all female shooters look vaguely ridiculous. And some female shooters don't like that a bit.
oh, goody. An anonymous troll. So courageous!
In response:
1. I'm learning to shoot, of course I'm not very good. Sure, my husband cleans the guns...I scrub the bathrooms. We split the chores. It's called marriage - not that you'd have any experience with that.
2. I was wearing two t-shirts, not a button-down, not v-necks. Brass flies around, things happen. If I remember correctly, I finished the last shots, set the gun down, and then removed the brass.
3. The guy must have had a hell of a camera on his phone if he could get a shot of my target 50 feet away. Also, it seems that you're the one with the issues.
Oh, and FYI? It is about me. This is my blog.
Breda, do not let that SOB bug you...
Coward...
Good people care about you, your life, and what you write. That matters more than a trollish cowardly boor.
Think of it this way. Your blog has become so popular that you actually have a troll. Consider it a milestone, albeit an annoying one.
Good shooting BTW.
Well, as long as you don't have too many guys like Corporal Flashback that trolled you, ("I was in the, NAM, man! I went there so girls could shoot at the range, man, so I don't wanna hear them gripe none, man") at your range, you may want to make fun for Shutter-Bug in stories to friends and other shooters when he isn't around. Once he is the butt of a shared joke, if he pulls that again, other shooters may notice him. And point and laugh.
But you did learn that Viet Nam was fought to advance women's rights. Now you know, and knowing is half the battle.
B- so much to say...
I think for a new shooter, and a 50 foot distance, that's a terrific group. When I first started shooting, I think my 25foot groups looked that good. You got some good suggestions here from experienced, I presume, shooters.
My 2 cents woud be to dry fire every day, practicing on site picture acquisition, if you're thinking about gettin' competitive. Practice Trigger control until smooth squeezing is a muscle memory. It needs to become something you do automatically, like using just the right amount of pressure when you're applying mascara, or flossing your teeth, or any other task your had to learn and practice to get it just right.
Jackass deserved all the verbal humiliation you can heap upon his pointed. empty little head. My suggestion would be to point at him and laugh the next time you see him. Then report him to the Range Master, if there is one for Sexual Harrassment and ask that he be removed.
As for the mysogynistic troll... he, because it probably is a he, but might be a self-hating woman, needs to get back on the meds from the nice Doctors and learn to read for comprehension! The blog entry I read didn't contain any whining, didn't mention any unsafe behavior, and was quite clear about Jackass being the offender by taking a picture of a woman unknown to him w/o her permission and making a point of ogling her. Repeatedly.
Mr. Big, Bad, Brave Anonymous and the Jackass need to remember that every woman at the range is someone's daughter, and someone's Sister, and sometimes, someone's Mother. Then they should be asked, "If a strange man just eyed YOUR Sister, or Daughter or Wife like a piece of meat, or took a picture of her Ass, or talked to her like she was screaming harpy because she objected to being treated disrespectfully, how would YOU react?"
Of course this question presupposes the offender has an iota of empathy within the shriveled, dark, stunted corners of his warped, twisted, perverse psyche. Otherwise a good swift kick in the ass works well, too.
I would prefer turning him around to face me, before the kicking began.
Oops... did I say that out loud?
When I first started shooting I couldn't have hit a blue fin whale at 50 feet! That's EXCELLENT shooting for your experience level. Well behyond what I ever did. Just to try, takes courage. To get others into the sport. . even more. Don't let the trolls get you down. I had mine which is why I quit public blogging. . (that dime sized group REALLY sent mine into a tizzy he accused me of holding the gun to paper even though I had shots of the actual shooting and you could see the target in the distance)
Hang in there. . you are a role model for a lot of people. . shooters and non shooters alike.
Night. .
Good shootin'! And, you totally nailed the inner monologue of the Jackass of the species. :-P
*offers up spatula of smite for dealing with trolls* Fresh from the dishwasher, and ready for smiting! :-D From the sound of things, someone could do with a good smiting...and perhaps the removal (or more forceful installation - I'm not sure on this one) of a stick firmly lodged somewhere unpleasant.
Apologies on behalf of the more discrete (and hopefully less creepy) lovers of the feminine form.
Mr Jackass probably doesn't deserve a round to cure him of his bad graces - just a hearty thwack about the noggin with The Good Manners Stick.
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