Rifles: Better Late Than Never
For those that haven’t watched the video, I have a bit of a confession to make: I have never shot a rifle before. It’s why I brought in TJ to handle the rifle and shotgun related information. Handguns are my thing. I love handguns. I’ve been shooting them for a while. It’s easy to get a hold of more handguns via renting and such. You can carry them with you all over the place. Handguns are just fun to me.
But I run a gun blog…
As such, I need to learn how to use rifles. Last weekend, I took my first step. A buddy of mine that I’ve known since I was in Junior High School offered to let me shoot some of his rifles. Like I was going to say “no”?
So I showed up at the gun club I belong to and he brought out three rifles. One was a standard AR-15 chambered in 5.56 NATO. The other was an AR-15 that was modified to shoot .308 cartridges. The third gun was an all original (and I do mean ALL original) M1 Garand that, of course, shoots the .30-06 cartridge. If I’m honest: I don’t know enough about those bullet sizes to tell you more about them but I’m sure TJ will have a guide up soon. I do know that even though the bullets themselves were the same size as handgun bullets, if not a bit pointier, the brass behind them certainly held a lot more powder in them.
I’m not ashamed to admit I was nervous. Yes, even for the relatively tiny 5.56 round. As I started to load it up and prepare to fire, I could feel my ligyrophobia creeping up on me again. I don’t know why I was so nervous. Maybe I had watched way too many YouTube videos of people getting obliterated by high powered rifles. Maybe seeing that huge cartridge (at least huge compared the 9mm I’m used to shooting) had me convinced in the back of my mind that the “boom” was going to be a lot bigger than it was.
Regardless, I took a deep breath and reminded myself of the fundamentals I’ve learned to this point: breathe, aim, trigger control, follow through, reset, repeat….
BLAM!
There it was. My first ever high-powered rifle shot. It even hit paper relatively close to where I was aiming. I’m not going to lie: for a cartridge where the bullet itself isn’t any bigger than a .22LR, that thing jumps quite a bit. It’s nowhere near as bad as I expected though. Very manageable and I could easily shoot this just standing up (if the range allowed it). I can see why most militaries use this round. I finished up the magazine with a smile on my face like a 5 year old on Christmas morning.
Then came his next toy: the .308 AR-15. “Don’t worry” he said. “This one’s a bit bigger but it’s still manageable”. He proceeded to warm it up a bit for me. This one had me worried all over again. As I was standing a bit back, I could feel every shot from that gun in my sinuses. It had a “thump” to it, that’s for sure. I mentioned that when he got done and he said “I love shooting this when the line has a bunch of people with ARs. When it goes off for the first time, everyone looks over to see if my gun had blown up”. I could believe it. It was a lot louder than the 5.56 round. So it was my turn on the gun. This had a holographic red dot sight on it as opposed to the iron sites that were on the first gun. I’m going to stop for a moment here and say that having used both, when I ultimately get my own AR it will have the red dot sight. Those things are just phenomenal to shoot with. Seriously. They’re worth the money. Tacticool was making more and more sense to me.
But I digress. I calmed myself down again. One more thought to the awesome red dot sight, pulled the trigger and…
SLIGHTLY LARGER BLAM!
David was right, it’s not as bad as it sounds. There’s a strange phenomenon I just witnessed: a gun sounds a lot worse if you’re standing around it than if you’re the one holding it. Seriously. That thump that was smacking my sinuses and blurring my vision wasn’t there when I was the one holding the gun. Don’t get me wrong, I could definitely feel that it was a larger round. There was a bit more impact into my shoulder but still not bad. I could get into this whole “rifle” thing!
Then came grandaddy…
Dave then brought out the M1. Forged of iron and wood, this is the gun that won WWII. At 43.5 inches and weighing in at over 10 pounds, this thing was a monster. If you ran out of ammo, you could use it as a very effective club. The bullets, commonly referred to as the thirty-aught-six, were huge compared to the others I had been shooting that day. Where most rifles I’ve seen had recoil reduction devices built in and rubber padding on the end of the stock, this had a solid piece of hardwood for the stock and a thick steel plate at the end with what looked like spikes carved into it.
David explained to me how to load it: “make sure you keep your thumb here because the bolt will usually spring back and destroy your thumb.. They used to call it ‘M1 Thumb’. Also, don’t rest your hand here because when it fires it’ll take a chunk out of your fingers.” Oh, fun.
“Dave”, I said, “I think I’ll only do one or two shots with this one.”
“Don’t worry”, he replied, “You’ll want to shoot them all.”
And once again, breathe. Remember to breathe. Pull the trigger….
SUNUVA FREAKING BLAM!
Ok, that one had some kick. I could feel it in my shoulder. I could feel it in my ears even through my earmuffs. Still, David was right. I wanted to finish off the clip (and the M1 actually uses a clip!). Does shooting rifles turn you into a masochist? There were 7 rounds left and dammit I was enjoying this. I was hitting paper, getting decent groups and doing quite a lot better than I expected to. Then, on round 7 of the 8 round clip, I learned about a small issue with this particular rife. You see, David wants to keep it 100% original and it is. The springs that manages the en bloc clip are the original springs from WWII. That can mean a lot of things but in this case it means that this particular M1 has the tendency to eject the clip when there’s still one round in it. For some reason, this clip not only popped out prematurely, it smacked me right in the forehead. Specifically a sharp corner of it caught me in the forehead. You can see it in the video.
I was too busy laughing to notice how much my forehead was stinging. I’ll say this, I can’t fathom how our soldiers were able to carry this thing charging into battle day in and day out. I didn’t think it was possible to respect them any more than I already did but this takes the cake.
Final verdict? Oh I’m totally getting an AR-15. I loved the way the 5.56 handled. I’ll probably wind up getting the .300AAC upper for it at a later point. If you have been on the fence about getting a rifle, don’t hesitate. Go get one. You won’t be disappointed. Am I going to trade in my handguns? Heck no! This just means I’m going to have to split my time at the club between the steel handgun targets and the rifle range.
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