Bear Arms Range

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HuffPo Isn’t Totally Worthless

August 16, 2012 by 3 Comments

While I may think that Arianna Huffington is a parasite whose political leanings change with the wind and that her Huffington Post is usually full of tripe, it does have its uses. For example, in a story about a local Tea Party group, I found out that they are having a machine gun social.

I have shot at Bear Arms a number of times and it is a really nice range. Moreover, the prices for shooting the MP5 are cheaper than a lot of places that I’ve been. Sadly, I won’t be able to attend it as I’ll be at the Gun Rights Policy Conference in Orlando on that day.

It is instructive to read the comments. For people who profess peace and love and gun control, they are amazingly violent in their thoughts and rhetoric.

From Sushigirl:

Oh how quaint. I have an idea, blindfold all of them and let them shoot away.
Actually I don’t mean that, I don’t want anyone to be hurt. But how stupid can these people be. Disgusting.

From FredSanders who has 1910 fans which must mean he comments a lot:

I hope they all blow themselves away defending each other from each other.

 From Cacey with the tagline “ignore rudeness, honor discussion”:

How boring is Asheville if this is the best fund raiser they came up with. A boring event for obviously boorish people.

You get the idea. I’m glad Cacey thinks Asheville is boring because it will mean one less tourist clogging the streets with their Obama bumpersticker-covered Priuses.

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What We Did For Mother’s Day

May 14, 2012 by

The Complementary Spouse has two daughters – one in the St. Louis area and the other in the piedmont of North Carolina. In other words, not right next door to us. Thus, we were on our own for Mother’s Day.

After coffee and cake in bed while we attended the Church of CBS Sunday Morning, we finally got moving and headed out to Bear Arms in Brevard. I had scored a couple of Living Social coupons that gave us all day shooting for $5 each. We thought it would be fun way to spend a rainy afternoon.

The Complementary Spouse wanted to try out other 9mm pistols (in addition to her full-size M&P9) and I wanted to shoot my new Ruger SR1911 and my new-to-me EAA Witness in .38 Super. The Witness was a full-size, steel-framed pistol made in 1995 by Tanfoglio and had a tricked-out flat trigger for competition. This would be the first time I had shot either the SR1911 or the Witness.

We started by trading back and forth with my Ruger SR9 and SR9c.  The Complementary Spouse is coming along as a shooter and is growing in confidence. She just needs more practice and who of us doesn’t.

I then shot my SR1911 for the first time. I was amazed by how accurate it was. In the picture below, I have circled my first seven shots. It was done at 7 yards. I’m an OK shot but no where near a great shot. I was shocked that I could group it like that.

In addition to shooting the two 9mm pistols, the Complementary Spouse shot both the .38 Super Witness and the .45 SR1911. While she did OK, she really didn’t care for the additional recoil. Both are large pistols which are harder to grip with small hands which I think has much to do with the additional felt recoil.

I ended the range session by shooting the Witness at 10, 15, and 20 yards at a regulation USPSA target. My goal was to take my time, concentrate on the fundamentals (trigger control, breathing, stance, grip, and sight picture), and keep all my shots in the A zone. I succeeded at 10 yards and then it progressively worsened with the additional distance. That said, it was a good exercise and made me concentrate on the basics. It transitioned the range session from plinking to actual practice.

We ended the day out with a quiet dinner at a local cafeteria. Our Mother’s Day wasn’t exciting but definitely was satisfying.

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Spent The Afternoon At A New Range

February 6, 2012 by 1 Comment

The Complementary Spouse and I spent a few hours this afternoon breaking in her new Smith and Wesson M&P 9. It was her reward for winning a bet with me that this blog would hit 500,000 visitors before the end of 2011.

We went to Bear Arms in Brevard, NC which has two indoor ranges. They have a 40-yard rifle range and a 25-yard pistol range with five bays for rifle and six for pistol. This was our first time there and I was impressed at how nice it was. At the pistol range they had plenty of room to store your extras with individual metal tables for each bay. One thing I really liked about their range setup was that they had distance markers hanging from the ceiling for each of the five target systems. Often, you are just estimating the distance based on lines on the floor.

The pistol shot well with only two or three failure to fires. It was always with some Fiocchi 130 gr. ammo so I think it was the ammo and not the pistol. The pistol digested some cheap Hungarian MFS 2000 ammo that has been problematic in certain of my pistols with no problems.

The only problem we really had was that white dot in the front sight fell out somewhere within the first 50 rounds. It didn’t impact our shooting but I was bit surprised by that.

The Complementary Spouse did well. It was her first time shooting a center-fire semi-auto and she group her shots very well. She was a little surprised by the recoil but I think over time and with more practice she’ll handle it well. The M&P had a lot of texturing to assure a firm grip. The downside was that the texturing under the trigger guard started rubbing her middle finger and she stopped shooting before it broke the skin. I think a piece of Moleskin on the trigger guard (or a bit of sanding) will take care of it in the future.

While this isn’t the closest range to us, I think it is one we’ll be going back to on a regular basis. The price was only $20 for the two of us for as long as we wanted, the pro-shop was good, they have really nice handcleaning facilities, and the couple running the shop were really nice and friendly. All in all it is a place I’d like to shoot at again.