What better way to celebrate the 230th anniversary of our great nation than by going to the range? It was supposed to rain yesterday, and it eventually did -- in fact, before I even got back home -- but in the morning before the rain rolled in, I hit the door with my range bag, the Ruger MkIII, and about 240 rounds of .22 Long Rifle. I got there and a buddy of mine, who I met through a lady I work with, was there shooting with a friend. He set me up a target at the 7-yard mark, and I loaded that little bugger and blasted away. The fella who loaned me the Ruger told me that once I shot it, I'd have to have one, and by-George, he was dead on the money. That little gun is more fun than a barrel of monkeys, and cheap to feed, to boot! I put the rounds through that little silhouette target just as fast as I could pull that trigger.
"You got him!"
"Yup. I figure ten rounds of even .22 in the head would ruin anyone's day." ;-)
I'd gotten used to shooting the .45, and in comparison, the .22 is like a cap gun in terms of recoil. I think that might have been why I was caught off guard when my friend handed me what I think was his Glock 19 and let me run through a mag or two of 9mm. The muzzle flip on that little thing was some kind of fierce! Maybe it was just because I'd been shooting the .22, and maybe it was because my Ruger P89 9mm is almost a pound heavier (12 oz.) than the G19. I still did pretty good with it, though..I managed some COM shots when I went for 'em. Makes me want to pull out my P89 and see how it does in comparison, though, since I haven't shot it in a while. Maybe next week.
Addendum: AlanDP at Blogonomicon says in comments:
Based on my own experience, I think polymer-framed guns have a different kind of recoil because so much of the weight is in the slide. This causes a very sharp twisty kind of recoil instead of a less sharp pushy kind of recoil.
That makes a lot of sense; I'd never thought about that. I was thinking it was more because the pistol was so light due to the polymer frame. I also saw something else I'd never seen before on any kind of autopistol: part of the top of the slide, just behind the front sights, was cut out and you could see down into the slide, where the barrel was. I asked the guy why it was like that and he said it was to make the gun lighter. I guess there are tradeoffs everywhere you look, but if the recoil was like that with a 9mm, or a .45, I'd just as soon get used to lugging around a Government Model 1911 (or a Commander or Officers' Model). I don't even know how one could shoot a full-power 10mm load out of a gun like that (180 grains at about 1300 fps, or in the case of the same Double Tap load 1425 fps); it'd be a handful and then some. Maybe some folks are just gluttons for punishment, but as for me, I think I'd just as soon find something heavier or better weight-balanced, such as, oh, a Kimber Eclipse Custom II -- which, incidentally, is the next gun on my to-get list.
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