Bum Scoop

One of the other things I got up to during the con weekend, but wasn’t properly part of the con, as such, was a trip to the shooting range.

The idea for the trip started, innocently enough, in this tweet back in December, and as discussions evolved, it quickly became apparent that the Friday morning before the con would be a good time for me, Yanni, Josh, and Bill to be available. Of course, the thing I forgot about when we discussed it was that they might have authors to cart around and entertain, so ultimately it was decided to just bring them along.

And it was a hell of a good time.

We found an indoor range not far from the hotel, and there we rented a nice selection of pistols and long guns of various calibers. My favorite, perhaps to the disgust of the gun nuts, was shooting the AR-15, a clone of the M-16 I carried for so long in the Corps. I dunno what it is about the .223 rifle, maybe just that it was the first thing I ever shot (back when I was 22 and a fresh-faced boot), but there was something about it that was both fun and strangely comforting. I took a turn on everything else but the M-1A1 (so they said) carbine we rented. (Pictured below in the capable hands of Joe Abercrombie.)

The other favorite was the .45 pistol, which was my first time firing anything like that, though at $25 for a box of 50 rounds, it seems like it could be a really expensive hobby. If I started shooting for fun, I might have to stick with a 9mm or something. Or start selling more writing. Bottom line, though, it was a great time and I had a lot of fun with my friends and a handful of unsavory author-types.

And here’s a picture of some of the participants in the shooting lanes. Obviously it would be rather tough to get more photogenic pictures from the front, so you’ll just have to trust me that, from left to right, we have Myke Cole (with a Glock 17), Yanni Kuznia (.38 revolver), Joe Abercrombie (the aforementioned M-1), and Brent Weeks (the AR-15). Brent, incidentally, was the high-shooter of the morning, so dubbed after shooting a smile (three upper and three lower teeth) into a target with the revolver. So I guess I have to be careful about who I’m calling “unsavory.”

Next time (if there is one), I’m thinking summer months, open air, and maybe with a bit longer of a range so I can remind myself how to shoot at real distances, not just the 20 meters or so we had indoors.

Mirrored from Bum Scoop.