Home on the Range

I'm really starting to get the hang of this shooting thing.

We spent the entire day at the shooting range today completing a variety of drills. First we practiced shooting while tactically walking forward, backward, and sideways while attempting to take cover behind a wall.

Next, we shot at small moving targets from 10 and 15 yards away. At the same time our ammunition magazines were loaded randomly with real and fake bullets. Each time a fake bullet enters the chamber, the gun purposely malfunctions (requiring us to tap the butt of the handle and rack the slide in order to eject the fake round). The targets were much smaller than the ones we were used to and moved at various speeds. I did pretty well at this but did have some misses.

Then we shot at targets from both the driver's and passenger seat of a police vehicle. We also ran through a scenario where we had to pull up in a car, unbuckle the seatbelt, open the door with one hand while aiming the gun with the other, and then move to the back of the car without taking our sights off the target. We then practiced shooting from behind cover while standing, kneeling, and lying on our stomach.

The last moving drill was the best. We had a series of three walls (each one closer to the row of targets). We were timed as we shot at small metal targets from both sides of a wall. We then had to reload our gun while moving to the next closest wall. We couldn't move until we hit each target twice. A total of 21 hits had to be made before the time stopped. I had the fastest time of the day with 65 seconds (the second place finisher had 70 seconds.)

The last thing I did before lunch was a simulated shooting program. In a small dark room, an entire wall had a video projected on it. There were six different video scenarios that would play and we had to decide whether or not to shoot. We used laser guns so the computer could show where each shot actually hit on the screen. It was like playing a realistic video game. I passed all of the scenarios.

After lunch, we had a practice 'day qualification.' This is a timed exercise of a total of 25 shots from 25, 15, 7, and 3 yards. Some of the timed shots required us to shoot twice, reload, and shoot twice more before the targets turn sideways. From 3 yards, we had to use one hand (first the strong hand, and then the weak hand). The target is the silhoutte of a human with a small box around the heart area and a larger box from the bottom of the throat to just below the ribcage). A perfect score is 250 and I got a 243 (that's 20 hits in the small box, 4 hits in the larger center box, and 1 hit on the body area but outside the boxes).

Tomorrow (Thursday) is our final set of graded field problems. If I pass all of these, it should be pretty smooth sailing to graduation.