12/5/08

It is late in the day, I'm sleepy, and I kind of have to go pee so don’t expect much from this rant. Ok, I'll talk to y'all Monday. Just kidding. So Tuesday afternoon I get a text from Pat asking if I want to go shoosting Wednesday evening. I say yes and Wednesday John, Pat, and I make plans to meet at the Winchester Gallery. Pat was going to leave work around 1600 h and so was I. I was going to swing by John’s and pick him up if he were home but he wasn’t expecting to be off until 1700 h. I said to meet us there. I arrived and parked next to Pat’s truck then went into the store. He wasn’t to be found. I shopped a bit, thinking he’d return, but he never did. I finally called him and was texted back that he was in the range shoosting. I went to the range. I took my three guns in and got signed up for a lane. I whipped out the Space Gun, as the Hi-Point Carbine is now being called, and fired off a couple clips worth of ammo. Oh yeah, ear penises made all the difference in the world over ear muff hearing protection. Sure, it was a tad louder in there but my ears never did start ringing so I think I'm going that route from now on. Pat had a rental gun from the range and it sucked! The thing was loose and flollopy as hell. None of us could hit shite with it. I let him shoost the Space Gun and the Baby Eagle. He liked the BE! In fact, he asked how much I wanted for it. I said $400.00 but he could buy a new one for just a little more. Yeah, I'm willing to sell it, but not wanting to, if you know what I mean. John showed up just about the time we ran out of ammo so we went out and talked to him for a bit. He’d forgotten the 1911 and had to rent a range gun. He chose a 1911 clone in the medium size, 4” barrel I believe. Pat and I both bought more ammo and went back in. Oh, I also drug out the Judge for a few shots. I blew through all the #4 birdshot shells and a few of the 000s as well. Actually, I think I did a cylinder of my old home defense load: one #4, two 000, and two Werewolves. It was then that I decided that I'm not going to bother with the birdshot anymore. Well, I'll probably buy some on the way if I ever go to the country to shoost watermelons and stuff like that. I won’t be using it at the range or for defense anymore though. Ok, now that I say that, if I ever start carrying it in the car as a defense weapon, I'll probably revert to the one, two, two loading again. Anyhoo, with a new silhouette, a fresh box of 9mm and a box of .45 Colt ammo, I went back into the range with Pat and John. I blew a bunch more holes with the Space Gun and then the Judge. John made an approving sort of noise at my accuracy with the Judge at one point. That made me feel all warm and fuzzy. Pat asked if he could shoost the Baby Eagle again so after I put a clip’s worth of ammo through it I handed it over to him. It was at this point I shot an additional five rounds through “his” rental gun. Like I said, it sucked. I think I shot the Space Gun another time and then called it an evening. John and I left Pat in the range with my BE and settled up out fees. Pat eventually ran out of ammo and came out. He got a little pissy, halfheartedly I'm sure, when I opened the case to wipe down the gun. “I didn’t pocket anything!” he said. I told him that I'm a “wiper downer” after shoosting and that I wasn’t checking up on him. He settled up as I packed my bag. We then tried to go back to the store to shop for my replacement if he were to buy the BE. They were closed, eight minutes early I might add! I blew it off and we decided to go to Campo Verde for dinner. It was as tasty as I remember Campo Verde being. Too bad the one over by me had to close down. Oh well. We talked guns and cars and stuff through dinner and out into the parking lot. Eventually we all went our separate ways. I decided that if Pat bought the BE, or even if he didn’t actually, I was going to swing by SMR Firearms, the place where I bought the Space Gun, and get a Hi-Point 9mm pistol. Almost every review of that gun I have read has been positive. The only “bad” review I've read was actually about the .45 ACP version that the tester couldn’t get to feed ammo until manually cycled several times. Virtually every review of the 9mm has had nothing bad to say about it, well, except that it is butt-ugly. I agree about it not being a very pretty gun, but it has kind of grown on me. Anyhoo, yesterday morning I called SMR to see if they still had any. “Sold the last one last night,” I was told. One the one hand, I'm a little disappointed. But on the other, I really didn’t need to buy another gun, inexpensive though it is. We’ll see what Pat decides on his gun purchase. I'm hoping he decides against buying mine to be honest. We’ll see. Oh, speaking of the Space Gun, last night I found a website selling fifteen round magazines for them! I bought a couple. So now if I buy one more ten round magazine for it, and Pat doesn’t buy the BE, I'd have enough clips to load a full 100 round box of 9mm ammo at one time! Bring on the Zombie Apocalypse!