0
In my previous entry, I discussed my renewed interest in firearms, more particularly handguns.
At some point during my research of various guns I might consider buying, I remembered my dad's gun collection. At first, I thought about the trips out into the boonies to shoot with the full array of weapons he had. He had two rifles and two handguns. One of the rifles was a .22 of some sort, and the other was a Chinese-made SKS variant. The SKS was "neutered", in the sense that it only fired in semi-automatic mode, though if you got it hot enough, it would "cook off" a few rounds in fully automatic mode. The idea sounds neat at first, but it's actually rather annoying when you're practicing markmanship on a target 150 yards away! However, my dad would do it for fun sometimes, shooting rapidly from the hip so that the gun would heat up. If he was lucky, it would cook off the last 3 or 4 rounds of its 10-round capacity.
To be honest, I actually preferred the .22 rifle. Although there's something inherently "masculine" in shooting a large caliber carbine designed for military use, the bruises I invariably got made it hard to justify shooting more than about 30 rounds in a given day. With the .22 rifle, I could gladly go through a couple hundred rounds in a day.
The handguns were a .22 target pistol (i.e., with a relatively long barrel for a handgun) and a 9mm semi-automatic pistol. I couldn't remember the brand of either.
Anyway, as I was thinking of my dad's 9mm, I remembered the trips we made to the indoor shooting range. I can remember working on my accuracy at ranges of 7 up to about 15 yards. (Random memory: I can remember one trip in particular, where we ran into our barber on the next lane over. He was shooting a revolver with black powder bullets. He let me shoot a round, and it had quite a bit more kick than my dad's gun.) I was having a lot of fun, so my dad bought me a “National Shooting Club” membership, complete with a photo ID card, and he promised he'd bring me back as often as I could afford, i.e., I'd have to buy my own ammo. As we neared the end of the session, during which my accuracy had been pretty decent, I wanted to keep going. Dad resisted, thinking that we’d already shot quite enough for one day. But eventually he relented, and he bought me another box of bullets.
With each reload, my accuracy suffered, however. At 15 yards, my previous 4-5 inch groupings were now covering almost the whole paper target. By the last clip of ammo, I only sent the target out about 7 yards. My dad kept saying I was too tired to shoot straight, but it was just so weird. Up to the moment that the gun fired, I could swear that the gun was aiming at the center of the target, as accurately as I had been earlier in the day. Yet the bullets would miss the center by half a foot or more sometimes. I remember firing one shot and no new hole appeared on the target. I tried to convince myself that the bullet had passed through an existing hole, but my dad kept saying that I missed the target completely. I couldn’t believe it!
Despite the poor ending, it had been a great day at the range. It was the last time I went shooting with my dad, however. I was proud of that NSC card, but I never got to use it again. I was a freshman in college, and soon I was off to CSU, Chico. Tight finances and the distance kept me from the hobby, and over time I lost the urgency to want to go. Then I got married, moved around a lot, and started having a children.
Now, about a dozen years later, I want to get back into the hobby. And remembering my father’s 9mm, I called my mom about a month ago and asked if she still had it. As luck would have it, not only did she still have it, but she was planning to visit us within the next month. So she set about to finding all the parts to the gun (the gun itself, the box it came in, the magazines, a holster, and even some unused ammo). About a week before she came, she told me it was a Ruger. Up to that point, I had no idea what brand it was.
In the meantime, I prepared myself to take possession of my father’s handgun, the one in his collection that I had loved the most. I studied for and received my Handgun Safety Certificate, a state requirement to purchase a handgun, and apparently even to inherit one. I purchased a cable lock, since I was almost certain my dad hadn’t had one. I even researched the form I would need to fill out to register myself with the state, so to speak.
In the weeks I waited, I began to grow anxious. I began thinking about Dad more, thinking about the trips we took, about that day at the range. I found myself more emotional, more prone to crying during chick flicks or whatnot. I can remember sitting at church, and a girl talking about a friend of hers whose father had been killed in a car accident. That had set me off, so bad I had to walk out of the chapel and collect myself.
So Tuesday morning, less than four days ago, my mom showed up to visit and see her grandchildren. She dropped off the gun, but it wasn’t until that night that I finally got the chance to open it up. It was in the original cardboard box the dealer delivered it to my dad in, complete with the model number, serial number, date of purchase, and a few other registration numbers (probably dealer license numbers or whatever). Inside was a red hard plastic Ruger box. Inside that, was the gun itself, along with a lock for the box and the instruction manual. (The red box didn't fit inside the cardboard box when locked, oddly enough, so that's why the lock wasn't on.)
It was quite a moment to see that gun, to hold it, to struggle to operate the slide. A Ruger P89, it has a manual safety that kind of gets in the way of grasping the rear of the slide to pull it back. The instruction manual clearly states never to operate the slide by grasping the front half, even though that seems an easier way to do it. Whether due to lack of lubrication, or perhaps just because of how the gun is built, it’s difficult to get the slide to move at all, yet once it does move, it almost flies back. Releasing the slide slowly is similarly troublesome: it stays, stays, stays, then nearly slams shut. And locking the slide open is even more difficult. The slide stop is placed so far from my thumb that I have to hold the gun at an awkward angle (on its side, over-rotated so that it’s even upside down to an extent) to lock the slide open, unless I cheat and grab the front half of the slide (which is a no-no, remember!).
I read the owner’s manual cover to cover, then field stripped the gun to see what state it was in. As I had feared, it was filthy inside. Grease and metallic powder and large-grain dust everywhere. The barrel was so full of large dust flakes that for a moment I thought the barrel was pocked. Luckily, it was an illusion of shadows cast by the dust in the barrel.
The spring and guide rod were covered with greasy metallic powder, and the trigger assembly looked like it was a component inside an automobile engine, it was so covered with grease and soot and large-grain dust. I don’t know what amount of dust/grease buildup is normal in a gun, but if I had had to guess, I’d have said this gun had never been cleaned since my dad bought it. But I was up to the challenge of cleaning the gun myself, at least what cleaning can be done without further disassembly after field stripping.
To be honest, field stripping it was actually fun. Even cleaning and lubricating it was fun. It was amazing how much difference in appearance there was, before and after. Maybe it’s just the novelty of it, but I’d like to learn to appreciate the maintenance aspect of the gun, the way that car restorers appreciate the maintenance aspect of their vehicles. I intend to take care of this gun. It’s not just some toy that you put ammo in and blast away. It’s a well-crafted machine. It’s one of the few tangible things I have left from my father. It’s my inheritance.
At some point during my research of various guns I might consider buying, I remembered my dad's gun collection. At first, I thought about the trips out into the boonies to shoot with the full array of weapons he had. He had two rifles and two handguns. One of the rifles was a .22 of some sort, and the other was a Chinese-made SKS variant. The SKS was "neutered", in the sense that it only fired in semi-automatic mode, though if you got it hot enough, it would "cook off" a few rounds in fully automatic mode. The idea sounds neat at first, but it's actually rather annoying when you're practicing markmanship on a target 150 yards away! However, my dad would do it for fun sometimes, shooting rapidly from the hip so that the gun would heat up. If he was lucky, it would cook off the last 3 or 4 rounds of its 10-round capacity.
To be honest, I actually preferred the .22 rifle. Although there's something inherently "masculine" in shooting a large caliber carbine designed for military use, the bruises I invariably got made it hard to justify shooting more than about 30 rounds in a given day. With the .22 rifle, I could gladly go through a couple hundred rounds in a day.
The handguns were a .22 target pistol (i.e., with a relatively long barrel for a handgun) and a 9mm semi-automatic pistol. I couldn't remember the brand of either.
Anyway, as I was thinking of my dad's 9mm, I remembered the trips we made to the indoor shooting range. I can remember working on my accuracy at ranges of 7 up to about 15 yards. (Random memory: I can remember one trip in particular, where we ran into our barber on the next lane over. He was shooting a revolver with black powder bullets. He let me shoot a round, and it had quite a bit more kick than my dad's gun.) I was having a lot of fun, so my dad bought me a “National Shooting Club” membership, complete with a photo ID card, and he promised he'd bring me back as often as I could afford, i.e., I'd have to buy my own ammo. As we neared the end of the session, during which my accuracy had been pretty decent, I wanted to keep going. Dad resisted, thinking that we’d already shot quite enough for one day. But eventually he relented, and he bought me another box of bullets.
With each reload, my accuracy suffered, however. At 15 yards, my previous 4-5 inch groupings were now covering almost the whole paper target. By the last clip of ammo, I only sent the target out about 7 yards. My dad kept saying I was too tired to shoot straight, but it was just so weird. Up to the moment that the gun fired, I could swear that the gun was aiming at the center of the target, as accurately as I had been earlier in the day. Yet the bullets would miss the center by half a foot or more sometimes. I remember firing one shot and no new hole appeared on the target. I tried to convince myself that the bullet had passed through an existing hole, but my dad kept saying that I missed the target completely. I couldn’t believe it!
Despite the poor ending, it had been a great day at the range. It was the last time I went shooting with my dad, however. I was proud of that NSC card, but I never got to use it again. I was a freshman in college, and soon I was off to CSU, Chico. Tight finances and the distance kept me from the hobby, and over time I lost the urgency to want to go. Then I got married, moved around a lot, and started having a children.
Now, about a dozen years later, I want to get back into the hobby. And remembering my father’s 9mm, I called my mom about a month ago and asked if she still had it. As luck would have it, not only did she still have it, but she was planning to visit us within the next month. So she set about to finding all the parts to the gun (the gun itself, the box it came in, the magazines, a holster, and even some unused ammo). About a week before she came, she told me it was a Ruger. Up to that point, I had no idea what brand it was.
In the meantime, I prepared myself to take possession of my father’s handgun, the one in his collection that I had loved the most. I studied for and received my Handgun Safety Certificate, a state requirement to purchase a handgun, and apparently even to inherit one. I purchased a cable lock, since I was almost certain my dad hadn’t had one. I even researched the form I would need to fill out to register myself with the state, so to speak.
In the weeks I waited, I began to grow anxious. I began thinking about Dad more, thinking about the trips we took, about that day at the range. I found myself more emotional, more prone to crying during chick flicks or whatnot. I can remember sitting at church, and a girl talking about a friend of hers whose father had been killed in a car accident. That had set me off, so bad I had to walk out of the chapel and collect myself.
So Tuesday morning, less than four days ago, my mom showed up to visit and see her grandchildren. She dropped off the gun, but it wasn’t until that night that I finally got the chance to open it up. It was in the original cardboard box the dealer delivered it to my dad in, complete with the model number, serial number, date of purchase, and a few other registration numbers (probably dealer license numbers or whatever). Inside was a red hard plastic Ruger box. Inside that, was the gun itself, along with a lock for the box and the instruction manual. (The red box didn't fit inside the cardboard box when locked, oddly enough, so that's why the lock wasn't on.)
It was quite a moment to see that gun, to hold it, to struggle to operate the slide. A Ruger P89, it has a manual safety that kind of gets in the way of grasping the rear of the slide to pull it back. The instruction manual clearly states never to operate the slide by grasping the front half, even though that seems an easier way to do it. Whether due to lack of lubrication, or perhaps just because of how the gun is built, it’s difficult to get the slide to move at all, yet once it does move, it almost flies back. Releasing the slide slowly is similarly troublesome: it stays, stays, stays, then nearly slams shut. And locking the slide open is even more difficult. The slide stop is placed so far from my thumb that I have to hold the gun at an awkward angle (on its side, over-rotated so that it’s even upside down to an extent) to lock the slide open, unless I cheat and grab the front half of the slide (which is a no-no, remember!).
I read the owner’s manual cover to cover, then field stripped the gun to see what state it was in. As I had feared, it was filthy inside. Grease and metallic powder and large-grain dust everywhere. The barrel was so full of large dust flakes that for a moment I thought the barrel was pocked. Luckily, it was an illusion of shadows cast by the dust in the barrel.
The spring and guide rod were covered with greasy metallic powder, and the trigger assembly looked like it was a component inside an automobile engine, it was so covered with grease and soot and large-grain dust. I don’t know what amount of dust/grease buildup is normal in a gun, but if I had had to guess, I’d have said this gun had never been cleaned since my dad bought it. But I was up to the challenge of cleaning the gun myself, at least what cleaning can be done without further disassembly after field stripping.
To be honest, field stripping it was actually fun. Even cleaning and lubricating it was fun. It was amazing how much difference in appearance there was, before and after. Maybe it’s just the novelty of it, but I’d like to learn to appreciate the maintenance aspect of the gun, the way that car restorers appreciate the maintenance aspect of their vehicles. I intend to take care of this gun. It’s not just some toy that you put ammo in and blast away. It’s a well-crafted machine. It’s one of the few tangible things I have left from my father. It’s my inheritance.
