Gun Thread - Father's Day Edition

I'm going to drop the usual format today and dedicate the thread to my dad, who taught me how to shoot. I'm fortunate to still have him around, and sending lead downrange a couple of months ago when I went turkey hunting with him was really a reminder of all the fun we've had out in the field and on the range.

The first gun I ever shot, if I recall correctly, was his Ruger MK I, .22 auto. Many, many guns and chamberings have been passed between us since. We learned reloading together and spent countless hours tinkering with different bullets and powder charges to wring every ounce of accuracy out of all our gun/cartridge combinations.

My love for the M1911 ... came from dad. The Remington Models 700 & 870. Ditto.

Shooting his M1 Garand a few weeks ago in Georgia finally prompted me to get off my ass and order one from CMP myself.

My two favorite memories of shooting with my dad are probably the following, although it's a crowded field.

First, there was the time he shot a golf ball in midair with his 4" S&W Model 25-5 in .45 Long Colt. My role: thrower of said ball. Now, he missed it a few times too and grazed it once, but when he finally centered it, that thing took off like a rocket. We were able to find it, and if I looked hard enough around his house, I'm sure it's still around somewhere. Hitting that target stationary isn't easy; hitting it in the air ... damned impressive. The man can shoot.

The other top memory is back from when he was the sniper on the sheriff's department SWAT team. They had a custom Remington M700 in .30-06 with a barrel so heavy that the thing tipped the scales at around 15 pounds, IIRC. Felt recoil was about like a .22 at that weight.

The sheriff's department had a 200 yard range, but there was an obstacle course behind the firing points. On the course, there was a large corrugated steel pipe that the ends were capped on to make a tear gas training room, and from the top you could see the target stands on the 200 yard range that were, at that point, now a skitch over 300 yards away.

There was all sorts of debris down at the end of the range from practicing door breaching operations, etc. So we took some little bitty pieces of cinder block that were scattered around, set them on top of the target stands, and proceeded to vaporize them from the top of that pipe with the sniper rifle. That was the first time I had ever shot anything that far, and my love of long-range shooting was cemented right then and there (no pun intended).

The left likes to deride the "gun culture" at every turn, but they mean something completely foreign to my way of thinking when they use that term. To me, guns and shooting have always been synonymous with quality time with dad, and for that I will be forever grateful.

Gun Of The Week

(answer below)

Gun Of The Week - Answer

That's the Savage Model 72 "Crackshot" .22 L.R. More specifically, it's my Model 72. It's the first gun my dad gave me and has punched its share of paper and squirrels over the last ~35 years. My little brother, who's a 2LT in the Army right now, learned to shoot on it too, as did many boy scouts in Middle Georgia.

Today I took it to the range, and it's now the first gun my daughter ever shot.

Tips

If there are topics you're interested in seeing in the gun thread, please send them to AoSHQGunThread at gmail. You can also send them to me on Twitter at @AndyM1911.

posted by Andy at 02:46 PM

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