[PhantomJ]

Long story fun shot

In 2001 I was stationed on a ship at Norfolk Naval Base, I lived nearby in the Virginia Beach area. I had no guns of my own in Virginia, due to livig on and off ship and Virginia handgun law being a PITA. My buddy Joe bought a Glock 17 from a local VA Beach Pawn/gun shop. With the purchase of any gun from the shop you got an automatic membership to their range for a year. One Saturday shortly after he got his Glock, he invited my wife and I to accompany him to the range as guests. The gun portion was was the upper story of small two story shop and had a 4 lane pistol range in the shop. The range had a gun rental system/scheme where for 5 dollars you could rent any gun in the case one at a time and change as often as you wanted. The caveat being you had to shoot ammo bought from the shop. I paid my 5 bucks checked out a Colt 1911 paid for a box of .45 and headed around to the range. Being inside the store the range was very small, total length on the range was maybe 50 feet. Per Virginia law at the time, in order to be "threatened", the assailant had to be within 25 ft. So we set our targets at the max "threatened" distance and started to practice. After about half the box of .45 is gone I have a decent group in the 9 ring on a human sillouette and I had punched out the center x. Joe says "damn how often do you practice", I reply something to the effect of, "well this is the first time I've shot a pistol in 5 years, but I grew up on a farm shooting pretty often". Joe said he'd like to try the .45, so we traded weapons. I tried the Glock out for a couple shots, then just drained the mag at the target as fast as I could. My grouping, if it can even be called that, suffered. Joe burned up the rest of the .45 ammo, so Joe, the wife, and I were taking turns shooting on his target with the Glock. Joe took the .45 turned it in for a model 29 S&W 8 and 3/4'" Dirty Harry special. He starts shooting it, and it being a small indoor range, you can actually feel the shock wave of every shot going off. Joe says "Oh man you have to shoot this thing", I tell him I've shot one before and don't like the effect each shot is having on my ears through the hearing protection (muffs were leaking around the glasses earpieces). So a little bit of teasing about manliness and such later I agree to one shot, But the body of the target on my paper is all full of holes. So i say "how bout right between the eyes", Joe laughs, says "yeah right lets see it". I aim said hand cannon at paper target not very far away. BOOM!!!! One perfect clean hole dead center of the head. Joe turns to my wife, in smallish voice says. "Remind me to never, under any circumstances, piss him off if he is holding a gun"

BTW still have the paper, its tacked up in the garage!!