Guns 301 - Semi-automatics

Sorry everyone! Work has been cracking the whip. But i would like to continue on with my overview of different types of guns and get into a brief discussion of semi-automatic handguns.















"Semi-automatic" refers to the action of the gun, or where the next bullet comes from. There are about a gajillion moving parts in these guns, which is why you have to keep them clean or they jam on you like crazy. I am going to take some indecent liberties with explaining how they actually work, mostly because i am not sure i fully understand it myself and i like to refer to the process as "magic." Basically you load the gun by slapping the magazine into the hole in the bottom of the grip.





















You pull the slide back to chamber a round . . .














and then you point the firearm at something you wish to puncture and pull the trigger. The bullet is fired, just like when you pull the trigger in a revolver, but the gas from the round pushes the slide back on a semi-auto handgun. The slide blows back and ejects the spent shell casing. Once that happens, the (very strong) spring in the magazine pushes the next round up into the chamber. Just like that, you're "automatically" ready to fire again, as many times as there are rounds in the gun.

Here is an exploded view of a semi-auto:


















Oh, and a terminology thing: "Semi-automatic" simply means you have to pull the trigger one time for each bullet. "Fully automatic" means you can theoretically pull the trigger once and then hold the trigger down and spray bullets all over the place. Fully automatic handguns don't exist outside of that dumbass "Underworld" movie because they would be absolutely uncontrollable, and because you would be out of ammunition in like 2 seconds.




















I don't mean to give a political commentary, but sometimes you do hear legislators talking about restricting semi-automatic guns. It baffles me a little as to why, or what crime that would prevent. I know people who can fire revolvers every bit as fast, or faster, than semi-automatic handguns. So it's not really a speed-of-fire issue . . . Legislation of this type is probably proposed by well-meaning people who think that "semi-automatic" sounds scary and so it should be taken away. This is why i am such a big proponent of people learning to shoot. After you have pulled a trigger a time or two, you learn that a gun is not something to be scared of. It is simply a tool. Nothing more, nothing less. Dismounting soap box now.

You don't have to cock the hammer on a semi-auto, generally speaking. They are all double-action. Some of them (Glocks, etc) don't even have an exposed hammer, so you're SOL if you want to fire it single-action. You can cock the hammer if you want on those that do have a hammer, and you see it done a LOT in movies or on TV, but it is pretty much a useless gesture. Just takes "I want to shoot you" to "I REALLY want to shoot you."

Semi-autos are pretty much the concealed carry gun of choice for most of us who carry. Basically we want as many bullets as we can get, available as fast as we can get them, and semi-autos fill this bill pretty well. I will get into that a little more in a separate blog entry, mostly because i have to go to work again. :(

I kind of blew through this entry, and i really really need some coffee, so let me know if there is anything you would like to know more about! I can address it in the comments or edit the entry or whatever.

But i will leave you with some awesome photos I found. :)























































These are pretty fugly even by my standards. And the one with the snakeskin grips is EXPENSIVE, like 4-digit even before you pimp it out. Kind of ironic that guns are considered to be a redneck/yokel/poor bumpkin kind of thing, eh? ;)

In honor of Funder

F Minus.

Pop cans make perfectly fine targets! Just remember to pick them up when you're done.

How I Got Started - Part One

So let's take a break from talking about specific types and functions of firearms and talk about a subject very near and dear to my heart . . . me. :)

I have had a few requests (ok, one) wanting to know more about how exactly i got started shooting and why i've kept at it. Like so many of people's life experiences, it was mostly driven by family. Neither of my parents nor my older sisters were into firearms when i was younger, but baby brother sure was. I remember him begging my mom to "make" him guns out of old wood scraps. I should take a moment here to mention that even though my mom is not particularly into firearms, she IS very hands-on. She is the reason i can chainsaw, crochet, make jerky, nail two boards together, run a router, and work on my own car. So yes, we always had scrap wood around the house, and she would nail two 3" chunks together to approximate the shape of a pistol, and Scott would run around and shoot the hell out of stuff with it. Muzzle safety is a concept that escapes most kids.

But anyways, Scott got older and more wily and he somehow convinced the 'rents to get him a Red Ryder bb gun. We got the very serious lecture about how these guns CAN cause harm, and do not point the gun at anything you don't wish to harm, etc. As far as i can remember, we took this advice to heart and never even annoyed the dogs with the bb gun. I know people who are a little more cavalier with them. I have a friend who actually shot his own kid with one, being funny, and neither him or his 13 year old daughter realized until like 2 hours after the fact that the BB WAS STUCK IN HER LEG and they had to go to the doctor to get it removed. Moral? It IS still a gun, and it demands respect.

But anyways, back to muzzle safety: So Scott and i plinked on pop cans in my parents' driveway (and we lived in a rural enough part of Washington state that no one was going to freak out about kids with a gun) and we never put our eye out or anything. Although Scott DID get the bright idea once to shoot a bumblebee which was on one of my mom's flowers . . . FORGETTING THE PICTURE WINDOW DIRECTLY BEHIND THE FLOWER. Bringing us to another important safety consideration--backstop. Don't shoot at anything if you don't know or can't see what's behind it. The look on Scott's face was pretty priceless, and i think he learned a pretty important lesson. I also think he got massively spanked.

So that was my introduction to guns--the bb variety. I would also plink with Grandpa's old Remington 511, which is a bolt-action .22 rifle and the next logical step up in caliber.

At some point around my 17th or 18th year on this planet, i was introduced to handguns (which i just typoed as 'handfuns')(which sounds kind of dirty). My first handgunning experience was with the previously mentioned Ruger Single Six revolver, during a backpacking trip with my family. My dad always strapped this gun on for hiking, despite the fact that a .22 won't actually kill most of the things you encounter in the backcountry unless you are very very precise with the location of the shot. Think "hitting a cougar in the eyeball" precise. But anyways, we set up an old tin can and shot at it and it were fun.

I was more intimidated by semiautomatic handguns because they are louder and shell-flingier. And because they have external moving parts, there is a margin of error when you shoot them. If your hand is in the wrong place, the gun can hurt you. Actually you can hurt yourself shooting a revolver too but it is easier to do with a semi-auto.

Anyways, around age 20 (the years are all starting to run together), my brother and myself signed up for an introductory handgunning course at the local indoor gun range. The course was a one-day affair, taught by the woman (!) who owned (and still owns) the range. We sat through a classroom session with 6-8 other people and learned about different types of handguns, how they work, different bullets and calibers, muzzle safety, etc. It was fascinating, informative, and fairly inexpensive, particularly in light of the second part of the course, which was a giant free-for-all with all of the range's rental guns. We shot everything from .22 revolvers to .45 semiautomatic Glocks, .357 magnum revolvers to 9mm Sigs like Daun's, it was awesome. We had professional supervision, requisite eye and ear protection, professional instruction on form and function . . . it was a great value. It was not a competition, everyone learned a LOT, and it was a fabulous introduction to modern handgunning. Seriously, i highly recommend calling up your local indoor range and seeing if they are having an introductory handgun class, or even a ladies-only handgun class. It is a safe and sane way to get started in the awesome world of awesome firearms.

I will write more later about long gunning (shotgun/rifle) but for now i have to trot off and earn a living.

Props

Props to alert reader dp (and her husband) for this great picture.


Washington, D.C., circa 1925. "Girls' rifle team of Drexel Institute." National Photo Company Collection glass negative.

This picture should be clickable, but Blogger is weird with pictures sometimes. So if that is the case, you can see the original blog entry this is pirated from here.

So i guess my little ladies' shooting blog is just an old idea with new technology. :)

I was going to save this picture for a post on what to wear when you shoot, but it is just too cool. I might have to find a way to make it into a blog header.