Year: 2011

Just before the weekend, it seems folks who attended the Lucky Gunner shoot were talking about the ammo waitresses at the event. Sebastian asked my opinion over drinks one night since I have a lot of experience bringing feminists into the shooting sports, have been to quite a few machine gun shoots in my day, and generally talked to a lot of women about their perceptions on the gun culture while teaching them to shoot.

One of my co-instructors used to say that the most common injury at a gun range is a result of a slip & fall. I’m not sure if this is an official statistic or if it’s one he gathered from working with the 100+ ranges in the area we taught. Either way, it fits with my experience at various ranges. Given that, the shorts worn by the ammo girls in the photos may not have been the best bet. They were in no way inappropriate or overly sexy attire, but longer pants may have been a better option given all the guns on or near the ground and brass flying at a typical machine gun shoot. Walking around a busy live range could put the legs at risk for scratches, scraps and what have you.

But, given most women’s clothing, I don’t see anything worth really complaining about if the adult women are going to choose to wear shorts instead of longer pants. It was the end of May. In Tennessee. With the sun beating down on much of the firing line from what I saw in the pictures. It doesn’t shock me that some would choose to wear shorts instead of heavier pants. Pants would be wiser, but for those who want to wear shorts, have you looked at the shorts available in even the adult women’s clothing sections of many stores? Those things aren’t often terribly long. I don’t have the world’s longest legs, and I can’t tell you how much trouble I had trying to buy shorts that fit the dress code for Southern Baptist church camp. I actually had to buy men’s shorts so they would be long enough.

I will disagree with some of the comments and say that I really doubt that the decision to hire women who happen to look good in summertime clothing is going to turn off women as customers. From what Sebastian told me, this was not an open range. This was a private, invitation-only event. Which means Lucky Gunner knew exactly who they were selling to on site. This wasn’t a commercial range where any Tom, Dick, Harry, Tina, Diane, or Harriet could walk in as a first-time shooter looking to learn everything they can about the gun culture in one visit. When you’re marketing to a private group where you know who the customers will be, it’s quite different than marketing to a broader audience.

I didn’t see anything inappropriate in the photos, and Sebastian would have been the first to call me and bitch if he saw any overt problems with the way things were handled on the line. Were shorts the best decision? No, at least not based on my experience at machine gun shoots which tended to be in New England during the fall and winter. But, I’ve seen plenty of female shooters who wear shorts to the range with zero incidents, and never have I had a female student, a feminist friend, or other new shooter complain about sexism in the community because of clothing. I didn’t see anything in the photos that I wouldn’t see on average American women in the warm summer sun in just about every corner of the country, so I’m not sure why it would be considered any kind of controversy just because they wear the same kind of clothing on a range.

Like the tin man from the Wizard of Oz, I found myself having to oil my reloading setup into working condition for the first time in a long time last night. I decided, after a while of shooting air gun silhouette and smallbore silhouette, to try out field pistol again at our monthly IHMSA match. The load was .44 Special, with 8.3 grains of Unique topped off with a 180gr hollow nose bullet. You just want enough to take the animal down, but not too little that you have to aim way over the rams at 100 yards for lack of muzzle velocity.

The only firearm I have that really works for IHMSA field pistol is my Smith & Wesson 629. Smaller caliber pistols are generally preferred for this category, such as ones that shoot .32 S&W Long, .32 H&R Magnum, or .22 Hornet. Not being one to spend a lot of money on special purpose guns, I stick with something general purpose. The end result is that I scored 13 out of 40. For air pistol or smallbore, I’d be embarrassed at that score, but for shooting modified isosceles starting at 25 yards and moving out to 100 yards with a factory .44 revolver, I’ll take hitting 13 out of 40. One guy I shoot with got 21 out of 40 with a 4 inch barreled Ruger Blackhawk in .44 Special. He is not a believer in long barrels, and he doesn’t need to be.

Metallic Silhouette is one of those games where your fundamentals have to be pretty much perfect to hit anything. Shooting production category is difficult because most handgun manufacturers that aren’t Thompson Center don’t imagine their customers wanting fine enough sight adjustment for shooting at 50 or 100 yards. On rams, one click can be the difference between missing off its nose, and shooting it in the ass on some pistols. I generally don’t like mucking with my elevation settings, so I tend to just eyeball elevation. With .44 Special, you’re pretty much straight from 25 to 50 yards, a little up on the turkeys at 75 yards, but you have to aim over the backs of the rams at 100 yards. Between 75 and 100 yards, the bullet starts to drop more substantially.

I was thinking a reshoot, because I thought I might be good for 15 or 16 a second time around, but I only loaded 50 .44 Specials. I’d have to do the reshoot with .44 magnum, which would throw my sight settings, and to be honest, my wrist wasn’t up to it. Maybe next time.