Social Life

I occasionally try to expand my social horizons beyond overweight middle aged men that like the smell of cordite and Break Free gun cleaning fluid. I usually attempt to mingle with member of the distaff sex, when I can, in hopes of establish some sort of mutually companionable setup. Call me crazy, but, Girls are neato.

When you meet a new girl, sometimes a man, like me, has to hide some of his geekier habits. Not to deceive, but to introduce at the proper time. Militant stamp collectors with a sideline in a 2 room DC Comic Book collection can sometimes weird out a young lassy. Now I don't collect comic books, and I am no philatelist. I am a gun geek. Duh. That's what this blog is all about. I am geeky in other areas, but those areas are JUST geeky, and don't have the political baggage attached to them that firearms do.

So when I meet a new girl, half the time you get a "I've never shot a gun before" out of her, but no outright hostility to shooting.

So, thanks to the internet I know what I have to do next. I have to get a .50 caliber Desert Eagle, a .500 Smith and Wesson, or one of the Swiss .600 Nitro Express revolvers, and take the new schmoopie down to the range and pressure her to fire the hand-held artillery. This forever changing her neutral stance to downright hostility towards everything gun related. Here is a picture of a gun that's great for small stature first- time shooters







They really need to put something in that picture more common so you can see the scale. A beer can, a quarter, a book of matches, a .38 snub nose, SOMETHING. That revolver is truly huge.

What?

Ok, ok. That's not how I'd do it. I don't have a .22 pistol, yet, but I do have the conversion kit for 1911 that's pretty fun. That's how I'd start off someone that had never been shooting before. (For the record, I'd not shoot that .600 Nitro Express revolver on a BET!) And I wouldn't hesitate going from that to the .380 or fire .38 Special in my revolver. If she took to that, I'd demonstrate with a mixed cylinder of .357 and .38 to show the difference, and offer to let her try that after seeing the difference.

Unless she takes to it. Plenty of women go right to the .45 without passing go. Corky's missus, for one. Her only complaint about the .45 is the ergonomics of the grip, not the BOOM! She likes the BOOM.

This is all IF she expressed interest in going to the range at all. Pressuring to go to shoot .22 when she doesn't wanna is almost as bad as giving her a .44 magnum to fire first thing.

Does this sound condescending? Dangit! Ok, how to take a new boyfriend to the range who has never fired a gun before and is curious to try it out. Sadly, males can be a hazard. Some might consider it an affront to their manhood to be taught how to shoot by anybody, but especially a girl. What might help for anyone, but particularly for a guy, is a familiarization session in private before hitting the range. I'm all thumbs myself when trying out a new gun with an unfamiliar action. To fumble in public in a range where everyone knows what they are doing is embarrassing. Even a revolver can do this. How? Well pulling the trigger is simple enough, but to reload you have to get the cylinder out, and you push THIS here with a Smith, pull THAT there with a Colt, swing out THAT gate there with a Ruger Single Six, etc.

A few dry fires at home, and calmly going over the 4 rules won't hurt. The private familiarization, showing how to check to see if the firearm needs to be loaded, learning the trigger feel, how to align the sights and operate the safety and how to squeeeeeze the trigger, all of that is much nicer when you don't have to have hearing protection or the prying eyes of strangers about. This works not only for new-shooter men, but women too.

That's all I'd do at a familiarization session. Make some holes in paper with light calibers, and make it all about the new shooter. I'd recommend a silhouhette target. Easier to hit a spot that the shooter KNOWS would be effective in the real world. Nothing is more confidence-building than successfully hitting what you are aiming at.

Anyway, these are things I am thinking about after a first date. I don't know why I bother since I am socially inept enough to worry about a second date. Maybe I should work on my pick-up lines. "If you struggle you will only make it harder!" done in an Austrian accent doesn't pull in the willing babes like it used to. And it's been an even longer interval since, "would you like to look at my etchings" worked. Here's some fresher lines I'm tempted to try out:

"Baby, you must be a parking ticket, cuz you got FINE written all over you."

"How YOU doin?"

"What does this smell like to you?"

"You're just like algebra? In that I can study YOU all day long? No. In that you are a total mystery to me and I will soon cast you aside in utter frustration and insist I'd never need you in life anyway but knowing that I probably do."