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Guncels, in, in, in.
I shot my Ruger 10/22 on Saturday, after putting the Sig Romeo 5 on it. I had a lot of fun shooting it while sighting it in, but I didn't ultimately get it all the way sighted in because the rail started to come loose. I'm going to have to apply some blue Loctite and screw it in again. Ruger apparently does not recommend the use of blue Loctite, and I hoped to avoid using it, but it appears necessary. The gunsmith told me it would be okay.
Shooting with a red dot on a rifle is a much smoother experience than shooting with iron sights on a pistol, I guess mainly because you have many more points of contact with the gun so it's easier to keep it steady. Even though it's not sighted in perfectly, I have never managed to get that many hits in at 50 yards, though it's been like, ten years since I ever tried it.
I also attended a skeet shooting event, since the gunsmith invited me to it. I followed a group around as they shot. It was fun just watching them and listening to their banter, and I was grateful for my Walker's Razor electronic ear muffs for letting me hear them pretty well even with hearing protection on. All of them, except for me, had expensive break-action over/under shotguns, apparently averaging around $3,000 each. Expensive hobby! On the other hand, a break-action shotgun is great for safety. Everyone who wasn't shooting kept their shotgun broken open over their shoulder until it was their turn, and you can clearly see if a gun is ready to fire or not if it's a break-action. Clay shooting sports are very popular around here. On invitation, I tried shooting some myself; out of 6 singles, I managed to hit exactly one. At least the one felt pretty good, but it clearly needs a lot of practice.
Skeet is not where you are supposed to start clay shooting. Trap is easier to start on. However, there's a lot of stiff competition here, and I'm not about to drop $3,000 on a gun for a sport that I'm likely never going to be good at. For aspiring clay shooters on The Motte, I recommend just getting a friend with a shotgun and dicking around with the clay thrower to see if you like it. I shot like that once in college; one of the guys in the dorms had a dad with a clay thrower, so one of the dorm events was shooting his shotguns and hitting some real easy clay throws over a swamp. It's a far cry from shooting 100 clays in a day in a competition, but it should be fun, and you don't need a super expensive shotgun to do it. You can get a Maverick 88 for probably around $300. Ideally, you'd get one of the deals with both an 18 inch barrel and a 28 inch barrel so you can get the most out of the shotgun.
Anyway, to cap this off, my mom sucks at shooting her 9mm. She's probably jerking the gun around too much immediately before firing, but I don't know how to fix it, since she doesn't practice. I kinda wanted to try putting a red dot on my Ruger Mark IV to see if she could make more consistent shots with that, and then if she can, try getting her gun milled and putting the optic on that. Otherwise, this could be a use case for the Ruger PCC. Sure, it's not the most ideal rifle, but with an optic, it would be a lot more accurate than a pistol. I don't feel as bad about buying something that isn't optimal if I get to hand it off to someone else once I'm done having my fun with it.
Probably I won't buy a new gun for a while, though. Gun owning is all a LARP anyway. Maybe I'll get some dummy 12 gauge rounds and an 18 inch barrel for my Mossberg 500 and just practice with it a bunch.
Got a favorite pistol optic?
Re: your mom, if the problem is what you think, and consistent range time is the big limiting factor, consider getting her a laser training system. You put a dummy round with a laser light in and can practice smooth firing/trigger pulling in your living room. You record the target on your phone and an app tracks your progress, runs you through drills, etc.
Oh man, that's a great idea. That's a lot cheaper than buying a new optic and getting a slide milled. Thanks man.
Edit: Dude I am looking at a review of this thing and it's basically perfect. Thank you so much for telling me about this. This would be good even for me.
Edit 2: Apparently you don't even need this stuff, you can just get a 9mm training cartridge by itself for $10 instead of $150. Awesome!
No problem, I got given one for Christmas a couple of years ago and it was great.
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