I had a pretty packed weekend starting with Cirque Du Soleil's Alegria on Friday night.   My short review?  It's a FUN show but NOT the awe-inspiring event that seeing Mystere in Las Vegas was a few years ago.  I recommend it HIGHLY nevertheless and it's far more creative / artistic / interesting than most of what passes for "live theater" these days.  The show makes you remember what it's like to be a 5 year old again.

Saturday afternoon I attended a wedding in Palo Alto for an old friend of mine who now lives in San Diego followed by drinks + dinner in SF with another group of friends.

This afternoon, I took a few friends out to our local shooting range - Jackson Arms - to exercise a few constitutional rights.  I wanted to teach a couple of 'em the basics of shooting and of course, just plain have fun unloading a few rounds myself.   My "cold shot" (the first rounds of the session):

(Photo courtesy of my handy cameraphone. )

A decent shot cluster BUT, alas, this is from just 25 feet and using a Ruger 10/22 target carbine rifle with mini-MAG 22 LR ammo.  I'm a lousy shot and have a LONG LONG LONG ways to go to achieve Kim Du Toit level proficiency (Kim starts his day shooting from 25 YARDS).  

On tap today:

• Ruger 10/22 Carbine
• Ruger 22 Mark II Target Pistol
• Glock 9mm 17
• Ruger 9mm PC-9 Carbine

We picked up 100 rounds each of 9mm and 22LR and had both a pistol and carbine for each caliber.   The 9mm handgun and carbine were popular and we expended all the ammo pretty quickly (the gals in particular seemed to like the meat-iness of the 9mm carbine shot).   For the 22's, we practiced more carefully and had a small shoot-out at the end of the session:

My shots (highlighted in green) arguably won the day due to their tighter clustering.  My friend "K" (pink) was a close, debatable 2nd.   "J" (yellow) put on a surprisingly strong showing given it was only her 2nd session at the range.   "M" (orange) landed 2 shots inside the 10. 

Guns don't define me or my blog (visit Kim's blog for all the Gun Rants you can eat) BUT, I do highly recommend just TRYING a gun range once in your life before voicing a political opinion about firearms one way or another.  The most common reaction I get from first-timers is amazement at just how simple firearms actually are up close and personal.  

That's it?  Well, ya, what did you expect?

Folks who are practically shaking from nervousness when firing off their first round often become smooth "hand-finds-hand" reloaders by just the 2nd or 3rd clip.

For all the rhetoric and weight on all sides of the gun control debate, people are often quite surprised that the object of such fury and passion is a mere few pounds and so mechanically simple to operate.  Gun safety isn't something that should be taken lightly but it isn't rocket science either.   It's certainly far from the Rube Goldberg proportions that so many anti-gun activists try to make it out to be.  Holding one and putting it through it's paces a few times demystifies the beast quite a bit.

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