Bang! Bang!
2 weeks ago, I fired a handgun for the first time. I went up north to Whitehall with my housemate Chris, where we found The Firing Line, an indoor shooting range.
The Firing line is a shooting range, directly attached to a gun shop. The nice thing about this place is that they rent guns by the hour, and have dozens of different handguns to borrow.
.22, 9mm, .45 ACP, .44 Magnum
I was upfront with this being my first time. After about 2 minutes of instruction from the shopkeeper, Chris and I headed into the range with a .22 pistol. It was really easy to fire, and keep groupings tight. It didn’t have a lot of kick, and was a really gentle gun to start with. Obviously this meant that an upgrade was needed.
Next we went to a 9mm Ruger. This one definitely had more kick, but more importantly, it had a huge problem with jamming. It was a little nerve-wracking the first few times that it happened. A live bullet cocked diagonal in the loading mechanism is certainly something to give a first-time shooter pause. We got it worked out, however, and promptly finished off the box of 9mm ammo, and returned the piece of shit Ruger to the shop.
Following the 9mm, we went up to a .45 ACP. That was a nice gun to fire. It shot much larger ammunition than the 9mm, but had comparable recoil. Chris and I were able to fire it pretty accurately, despite the large caliber.
As we were wrapping up, we decided that with time left for just one more gun, we might as well just go for broke. “Can we shoot this .44 magnum Smith and Wesson revolver in the bottom of the case?” as I point to the largest gun in the store. “Honestly, I can’t even fire that thing, but go for it!” the shopkeeper tells us. Words like that concern me, but not enough to turn down this opportunity.
We head into the firing range with a box of ammo and a gun that would put a smile on Dirty Harry’s face. It was mean, heavy, and downright intimidating. As excited as I was, I was also scared shitless. This thing was a Gun.
I loaded the cylinder, cocked the hammer, and aimed the Model 29 down the range. I aimed and slowly pulled the trigger…. BANG!!! Holy Christ!!! This thing is insane. Loud enough to almost make me mess my pants, the kickback was the stuff of legends. I suddenly feared and respected this gun twice as much as I had before (and that was already a lot.) Even after firing 20 rounds, the sound of it firing still made me jump every time.
The whole experience as a whole was fantastic. I’m glad I’m able to cross the .44 Magnum off my bucket list, but I honestly have very little desire to fire one again. That’s just too much gun for me.