Consuming pills can be good for you...

I consumed 187 pills yesterday with no adverse side effects and not a hint of overdose. I didn't even need a prescription. Yes, you probably guessed it by the photo, I'm talking about freedom pills not pills of the pharmaceutical variety. For those that don't know freedom pills is code for bullets and if you don't know why then you wont actually "get" why even if I told you the reason for the term. Suffice it to say that yesterday I consumed a pile of them, sent them whizzing down range to explode their little lead-heads upon cold hard steel. Well, there were some cardboard torso shapes also so the bullets I sent that way ended up in the dirt mound to be seen no more.

I was at one of my clubs shooting a small match yesterday morning, the first using my new holster, rig and new handgun, and I have to say, I went in feeling a little nervous. I'd shot the gun of course, to make sure it worked and give it a quick sight-in (make sure it shoots straight) but it was nothing like the use it was going to get in this mini-match.

There was only 4 stages (courses of fire) today and based on my elapsed times it all totalled up to 99 seconds of shooting and running or 1.88 bullets fired every second. Targets ranged from 3 metres to 25 metres away and some were partially concealed, moving or had to be shot with the off-hand (one handed using the non-natural hand) which is designed to simulate being shot in the strong arm side and being incapable of shooting with it. Anyway, it's a fair amount of activity in short bursts of time so being unfamiliar with my equipment made me feel quite disadvantaged. I was safe of course. Always safe.

After the course of fire I evaluated the performance. There were no sheep stations riding on the result as it was just a small club match with about 40 competitors and besides, I won't get the results until probably Monday on where I actually placed in my division and overall; I was more interested in how the gun felt and performed though.

And so, how did it feel? The gun, a CZ Shadow 2 9mm, felt awesome! It was smooth in operation. I oil my guns reasonably well to assist with the smoothness but this thing was so much better than my CZP09. (Probably not as good as my STI EDGE, but still exceptional.) The gun settled back onto the target for the second shot and no matter how quickly I pulled the trigger it sent rounds into the same vicinity as the first. After the first stage I felt good about it and started to see myself rising up the ranks in time. I was told that the gun would bring me up about 7-8 places higher and after the first stage I began to believe it.

Scoring is done by dividing the overall hit score by the elapsed time giving a hit factor score which separates and ranks the shooters and so speed is a very critical factor. Shooters are penalised heavily for missing a target (or hitting a hostage/no-shoot target) but a super-quick time scoring C and D hits will probably trump a slower time with higher-scored A and C hits. It doesn't always work that way but without getting complicated that's generally the case; Speed and average accuracy will beat slow and super accurate. I was very happy with the result today and am looking forward to improvement once I start getting some practice time in. There's a big match taking place next Sunday, an inter-club match, in which all clubs around the state will enter and I am shooting in the match also. It will be much more serious of course, not quite shooting for sheep stations, but doing one's best is the rule of thumb. I'll go into it pretty confident with my gear though, especially after yesterday's performance.

So, today is a different story altogether; Yesterday was about me, today is about someone else. 250 of my freedom pills will find their way downrange but I'll probably only fire a handful. I'm taking a friend of mine shooting for the first time. She has never seen a gun in real life, except holstered on a cops belt I guess. She has certainly never fired one. I'll be taking her to my other club which is more set up for training purposes than the one I went to today and will run through every aspect of hand-gunning from what each part of the gun is called and what it does, how to dismantle and reassemble it, how to make it safe, load it, and of course shoot it accurately and quickly. I won't be getting too technical of course, nor will she get to shoot from holstered or do much movement and fire shooting. It's just a basic first lesson and so learning the safe handling and operation of a hand gun is the focus. It'll be a lot of fun for her though and I have to say she has got herself so wound up over it and is extremely excited.

I'll probably do a post about it but she is also on steemit and so am sure she will as well. I'll grab a couple of pictures to share, with her permission, as well. I'm looking forward to it actually. Anytime I get a chance to demonstrate how safe and fun my sport can be I jump at it and the fact she is so damned excited about it makes me feel that way also. So, some freedom pills will make their way home to where they belong (downrange) today...I'll let you know how it goes.