Range report: Borepatch edition

Per Borepatch‘s kind invite, I took advantage of the three-day weekend to go up to the Manchester Firing Line and meet the Borepatches for some recoil therapy.  (Note:  Jay, you’re next!  Really!  But I can’t help it if Mrs. Borepatch is prettier than you are. 😉  )  Please note that the Borepatches and myself are all from MA, but we’re forced to drive to NH for our therapy because we can’t rent guns or even buy bullets down here without a license.  “Massachusetts:  Propping up the New Hampshire businessman since ____.”

As the Borepatches have related in their range reports linked above, I chose a SigSauer P239 (9 mm compact with a single-stack 10-round magazine) for my shooty fun.  (My good friend Shoothouse Barbie is a huge fan of Sigs and their smooth, buttery action.  That would be her phrase, not mine!)

We debated whether to get one lane or two lanes, but since we only rented two guns (and at my request) we only got one.  I’m still uncomfortable shooting guns without a babysitter; I’m not confident that I know how to clear a jammed gun.  I suppose the only cure for that is more practice?

Speaking of jammed guns, I was confused/perturbed the first time I loaded up the Sig.  It actually looked like there was a gap of a few millimeters between the bottom of the grip and the lip of the mag.  I wasn’t sure I’d gotten the magazine all the way in; on Borepatch’s recommendation I very carefully and gently pulled the slide back about two millimeters until I could see a round in the chamber.  After a few times doing this I shrugged and accepted that the magazine looked loose but was fully locked in.  Then I just got on with my shooting.

Folks, I *LOVED* this gun.  If I was able to I would have taken it home to pet it and stroke it and shoot it and call it Sigmund.  (Sig-Sauer.  Sigmund.  [Recoil] Therapy.  Get it?)  The action was very smooth, the recoil very reasonable, it was loud but without too much kick.  The sights were a little screwy, however.  (Either that, or I’m jerking the trigger.  Yeah, it’s probably the latter.)  So I didn’t stop my goblin’s heart, but I’m fairly sure he’s not going to enjoy his food any time soon . . .

Once I started compensating for the sights, or my bad form, my groupings got better:

To sum up:

1) SigSauers rock my range

2) Mrs. Borepatch was every bit as friendly, lovely and charming as I thought she’d be

3) Mr. Borepatch is a fabulous range babysitter, self-effacing, courteous and gentlemanly

4) When Big Bore Bill (see Borepatch’s post) is at the range, a crowd will gather to watch him shoot the Smith & Wesson 500.  He’s good, too; he was putting multiple bullets through the same hole in the paper plate.  That’s a gun that I have no desire to try; I know damn well it would put me on my ass.  As Borepatch said, “Kills on one end, maims on the other.”  I suppose the good thing would be that it wouldn’t matter whether or not you hit the goblin with the first round; the BOOM is so loud that no perp would stick around for a second round.

5) I’m posting a smorgasbord of pix so the rest of y’all get a feeling what this range was like.  You could rent frickin’ machine guns, for heaven’s sake.  I saw a six-year-old boy (with eye and ear protection, of course!) calmly sitting a few feet behind his dad while the man ran through some pistol practice.  There were a few teenagers there with their parents.  And with all this dangerous hardware, the damage for the day was . . . . some dead paper targets.

Thank you, Borepatches!

P.S.  I have a lovely pic of the three of us, but I’m not 100% sure you two allow photos of your faces to be posted.  If that’s okay, I’ll update and put it here; if not, I suppose I’ll finally have to update Facebook!

P.P.S.  Is the Sig 239 really MA-compliant?  It didn’t have an external safety and you couldn’t see into the chamber without pulling back the slide; I thought those were both serious no-no’s in MA.