New Shooter (kinda) report

So, I was spending time with the fam this Christmas, just so y'all know.  Included in that is my step-son, who I hadn't seen since I booted him from the Casa de Rage back in 2012.  He'd kept in touch with his mom over the years, so it wasn't like we were not talking to each other.  He flew in from the Left Coast, where he's been working and adulting for the past few years, and doing a good job on the adulting part.

We did the usual Christmas stuff.  Eat lots of good food, open presents, drink good drinks, etc.  Included in that was a trip to the range, because why not?  He had it in his head that he wanted to try a .357 Magnum revolver.  Specifically the type used by the French counter-terrorism forces, because as he puts it "They shoot them more than any other gun and they still work".  So I found an article on said counter-terrorism forces.  What kind of revolvers do they use?  Well, they have the French MR 73.  Yeah, like we'll be able to find one of those around here.  But wait, what is this?  They also use the Smith and Wesson 686.

Now THAT is doable.

So we go to the local Merchant 'o Death, and we rent a S&W 686.  Buy a box of ammo.  Run the target out to 15 feet, because while he used to shoot with me back when he was a yoot, he hasn't touched a gun since then.  I ran through some of the basics with him:  proper stance, proper grip, breathing, trigger squeeze, so on and so forth.  And he proceeded to do a pretty darn good job of poking holes in paper.  Only a few were outside the lines, and most of his shots were within the eight-inch Shoot-n-See target I'd pasted on to the paper.

And he said he had fun.  Cool.

So, we see him off the next day.  He flies home.  Saturday night, the Mrs. gets a phone call from him.  "Hey, Mom, can I talk to Dave about a gun?"

He's at a gun shop, purchasing a 22LR revolver.  A Ruger Wrangler.  That'll be his practice gun, he says.  He's already looking around for a decent price on a S&W 686, but doesn't want to wait on his dream gun to get to the range again.

One more gun owner for the win!

As an aside, I put another eight-inch shoot-n-see in the head area, ran the target out to 50 feet, and put six rounds through it.  Now I want a S&W 686 with a six inch barrel.  What a sweet shooting gun....