Bang Bang

GUNS!  Wow.

This is your stove on guns.  I spent the better part of 6 hours yesterday firing rounds from rifles and shotguns, only to pause for reloading or hotdogs.  I'm not quite sure how to present to you the order of the day, as I feel my experience in gun-land may need to be broken up into 4 segments.  So let's get started because I have a lot of ground to cover.

The Rifles

I started off with a 100 year old .22 Henry, and I believe it was John's (our host) grandpa's.  It had a quick little punch to it, nothing too startling.  I had a moment in the day when I realized  that I was probably pretty desensitized to the sound of large guns because of the media I consume, and that was a little alarming.

Anyway, this little guy was fun.

 I was pretty happy to be firing guns.

Here's Ana with the same gun, also very excited.

Our host, John, bringing out the SKS and a 15 round .22 something-something with a scope.  He just kept bringing them out!  I imagine he was slowly gauging our excitement to safety ratio before he decided to put more guns in our hands.  He was so awesome.

This is Monty.  He's a badass, and he scared me many times with his youthful enthusiasm for guns.  He was occasionally unsafe, more on him later.

Here's Ana with a .30 calibre something-something gun.  I wish I would have written the names of all of these down.  This will teach me better journalism skills!  Here we see her post kick-back.  This monster packed a punch and made a deafening noise!

The same gun, different handler.  Apparently the rounds from this gun can travel a mile and still do some serious damage.

 The SKS and the other .30 cal, cooling off.

 .22 cal rounds, spent.  The lawn was riddled with shells.  I think in total I alone shot 250+ rounds that day.

 Ana, in the best shooting position ever.

Oh I miss this thing.  The SKS can hold 5 .30 cal rounds and a knife.  The knife only has one purpose (see SHOTGUN section). Honestly, I could have fired this gun all day long for several days in a row.  I loved the weight and the feel of it.  The power of the kick-back was almost comforting after a while.  When you loaded the bullets they made a satisfying click.

 Oh ya.

The Henry .30/30 rifle, the perennial choice of the whitetail hunter.  Now this thing was crazy loud.  It would make a mess of watermelons and the pump-action was so freaking cool.  In this picture, I'm just relaxing.

In this picture, I am also very relaxed.

 That stove never had a chance.

I love this picture.

The carnage!

MORE CARNAGE!  Yes, it's a waste, but it's better then shooting people or animals.

A little experiment.  Earlier, we dug a slug (a term for a bullet or spent round) out of the earth after I ran it through the top of a log with the SKS.  It made a really long trail in the dirt, maybe 6ft, before entering the ground and burying 8" deep.  So we thought we would set up the logs this way and see how far it went.



Below is Ana's favourite shot.  She wasn't there for the guns after she saw this.

I fired 6 rounds into the wood.  3 missed, 3 went in, and one exited out the side of log two.  2 of them were lodged in the trunk.

 AND HERE THEY ARE!  LOOK AT THE LEFT ONE ALL MANGLED UP!

The slug in the middle is the round from the SKS we pulled from the ground.  The other two are the SKS rounds after going through two logs and getting stuck halfway into the third.  All the copper got stripped away.  I would NEVER fire this against anything but wood and zombies.









The Shotguns

We shot at clay discs!  It was so much fun.  The main gun was a 12 guage Beretta Over-Under.  This thing has a spring on the butt that absorb 50% of it's kick-back.  It still is the second biggest reason for my sore shoulder.

 Here, Ana and I dust (a term used to describe the state of the clay disc after we destroyed them with our super-aim) all the skeet Todd launches for us.  He was so enthusiastic and willing to let us shot as many as we wanted!

 An example of a dusted skeet.

 An exampled of how many skeets I dusted.

 Same here.

 If you look in the high-mid right side of the picture, you can see a dusted skeet.

 There's one here too!  Can you find it?

 Ana looking so cool.  We had a competition to see how many we could each hit.  She beat me with both the little gun and the Beretta.  I was so proud of her!

Ok, remember Monty?  Here he is, ear-protectionless, getting in the way of Ana firing a large gun.  UNSAFE!  He was however, doing us all a favour by picking up the garbage with the business end of the SKS' bayonet.  I firmly believe the bayonet should only be used to collect litter, and only during a zombie apocalypse.  Guns are pretty fun, but safety is of the utmost importance!

So here we have it.  If you look closely, you can see a skeet being shot in half!

 BOOM BOOM!  That's the sound a shotgun makes.

 See the shell?

 Here too!  I love this women.

 I love this man.

This is the result of 10 people shooting the Shotguns all day.












THE CATS!

 I am the cat master!  I lure them with quick moving branches and kissing noises.

 They all eat hotdogs.

Saddest part of the day was not this moment.

But a moment previous to this was.  As all the cats fed on the hotdogs, I heard a small whimper coming from under the house.  There was a weak kitten there, with it's eyes still closed, unable to move and therefore unable to feed.  It will surely die, and it was really sad.  Peanut was the runt of the litter, so I really felt like crawling under the house to save the little guy, but then I thought of the cost and of Peanut, and I thought it wasn't a very good idea.








This!

Yup, this gets its own section.  Located within the fine eatery, Roxy's, this is a gem I have never seen before.  They had ONE IN EACH URINAL!  How decadent.  There is even a little football attached to it!

















Ooooooooo....you're probably wondering how good I was with all these guns. eh?!  I've always thought I was a marksman, even before ever having picked up a firearm, and I don't think I was wrong.

 Ana with the .22 cal 100 year old gun.  She shot at this thing a lot of times.  It was really heard to get a shot to hit the target.

 Ana with the Henry lever-action .22 w/ Scope.
TWO BULLEYES! 15/15!

 Me with the 100 year old gun, 2/10 shots.

 Me with the Henry .30/30, 3/5 shots.

 I can't even remember which one this was.  I think it was the unnamed gun, which would make sense.  5/5.

 Me and the SKS, 5/5.

 Me and the Henry .22 cal w/ scope, 15/15.

Another round with the SKS, 12/12 and 1/2 BULLSEYE!












It was a fantastic day.  I can just bring these to a gun store to show off my prowess and they'll just sell me a gun, right?