Bushmaster

Went with a buddy to pick up his Bushmaster "Patrollman" today, but it turned out that it had not arrived at the gun shop yet. Big disappointment. We managed to spend some time punching holes in paper with our array of handguns (mostly his, but who is counting!;-) ) . I got the opportunity to shoot his .44 Mag, formerly "the most powerful handgun in the world". It has been exceeded now, but it is still PLENTY powerful, with a good deal of kick for me. It would take a lot of rounds before I became comfortable with that gun. It is a VERY cool Ruger revolver model, it is just that I'm not man enough to shoot it well yet.

For some odd reason, I also seemed to have developed a "pull to the right flinch" with my 9mm. Oh well, guess I'll just have to practice more. We were shooting an honest 25 yards today, and whatever I said about our first foray out, it was MUCH shorter than we were shooting today. I suspect that we were only shooting 10 yds before, BIG difference.

I also got a chance to shoot his Taurus 1911 frame .45. BIG hole, plenty of recoil, but nothing like the .44 Mag. Very much a style of gun in the running for "sometime" in my collection.

We took a target out to 75yds and got out my Remington 742 30-06 and each shot a 4 shot group. Hadn't fired that gun in over 20 years, but I'd kept it cleaned and oiled over the years and gave it a little TLC last night in prep for today. It shot very accurate, it seemed to want to jam on the final shot in the clip -- I'd guess that I need some new clips, the gun is 32 years old, that could have something to do with it.

Anyway, I couldn't resist picking up a new Bushmaster "shorty". They move their model numbers around quite a bit, but mine is an XM15-E2S, which looks an awful lot like this current model. In fact, it looks identical.

So why "an assault weapon"? The reasons are:

• Mostly because I've wanted to shoot one since I was a little kid and they look extremely "military". I can't afford a Hummer, F-16, or a tank, so this will have to cover my little boy immature army fantasies.
  
• It shoots .223 and NATO 5.56mm rounds. I picked up Wolf .223 at 20/$7 and some off-brand 5.56mm for 20/$10. I have hopes that in bulk I can be running at 20/$6 or less. In contrast, the cheapest I could get 30-06 for was 20/$22.
  
• It has a 30-shot clip. When punching holes in paper, there isn't any advantage in having to switch clips more.
  
• It is very light -- something like 6lbs.
  
• It is SUPPOSED to be very accurate and have very little recoil.
  
• Did I say it "has that look"?
  
• It may be the last chance I have to ever get one. I know, I know, Democrats are HUGE supporters of ALL the rights found in the Constitution-like the right to Abortion, the right to a completely private call a terrorist of your choice, and of course the COMPLETE right to not have any kind of government spying WO a warrant, as in they would NEVER support having your company send a W2 form of your pay unless they could obtain "probable cause" that you were cheating on your taxes! They are SO trustworthy that I'm SURE that they would never try to infringe on a right that is directly listed in the constitution!
  

Now I have another reason to be very anxious for some warmer weather!