The Friday after Christmas was a good, good day. Many years ago, I had the opportunity to relate to the members of this forum a day spent reintroducing my wife (now of just shy of 60 years of marriage) to the shooting of the pistol. She had been good when I was a callow college student and taught her how back in the day. Turned out she was still good at it. That was a good day.
The 27th of December, 2019, was another. My younger son and the two grandchildren he has raised as a single dad had come down to Prescott from Montana for Christmas. The grandchildren are a nineteen year old boy and a sixteen year old girl. My son and grandson are both fanatical hunters and fishermen. Two years ago, I gave my grandson one of my 1911s (Colt Series 80, lightly worked over). He had brought it with him.
Somewhere in the days before Friday, in conversation with my granddaughter, she told me she had never fired a pistol. Since I had already planned to take my grandson to the range, I asked her if she would like to go too? She immediately said “yes, she would like to go.”
A couple of hours of basics, mostly firearm safety and sight alignment and trigger squeeze followed on Thursday. As a beginning firearm choice, I got out my old Ruger target .22 (which had seen very little use in the past few years). Then, I thought, we could try my Browning Hi-Power in 9 mm and my little Sig Sauer P239 DA/SA, also in 9 mm. A light caliber introduction to the game. Manageable recoil.
Friday morning, me and the grandkids took off for the indoor range. My grandson and I are already in their files, so our entry to the range was merely a formality. My granddaughter, however, had to receive the full range safety briefing and I was pleased to hear her ask once or twice if what the RSO was saying was the same as the rules I had covered the day before (they were, just phrased differently).
Into the range, we went into the magazine loading and a real quick refresher on sight alignment and trigger squeeze.
She fire 100 rounds of .22. At 10 yards the group was under 8 inches. Shifting up to the Browning, she fired a 25 round group of around 9 inches — the strays being in the first magazine when she had to learn the recoil.
Then the topper. I shifted her to the little Sig. Twenty-eight rounds and she was back to the 8 inch group. Then, I turned on the Crimson Trace red dot sight. Forty-two rounds at 10 yards — a 4 inch group!
We went home and had a great dinner. One outstanding day!
A day later, she announced, after discussion with her elder brother, that when they returned to Montana, she wanted to take the Montana Game & Fish Department Firearms Safety Class! A perfect response.
A couple of days later, when I was describing the day to a friend of mine, a retired career police officer, he had the answer to the red dot sight thing — the young people now have all grown up playing computer games. The red dot is their “natural habitat.” They already understand how it works, even to leading a moving target.
All in all, a great day. She’s a convert and I think I just have to give her the little Sig next year (I don’t shoot it very often anyway).
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