Tuesday, January 09, 2007

Shooting Spree

At the end of last weeks post I mentioned that I was going shooting. I didn’t elaborate. What I was shooting, where I was shooting, with what was I doing the shooting, for what purpose was I doing this shooting, and so on. Well you will be happy to know they I will answer some of these questions. Last Tuesday three Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering friends and I went to a shooting range in Pennsylvania. The purpose of this trip was to fire a whole series of cool guns. I won’t go crazy over the details of the weapons I fired or the characteristics they had in kickback accuracy etc. instead I will take you on a picture journey of my day.

This is me firing a 9mm Glock, I also fired a 9mm Beretta but since you probably wouldn't be able to tell the diffrence between the two guns I wont bother posting a picture of it.

This is an Uzi (with a long barrel and a stock) I have to talk about this gun, it was amazing, almost no kickback, and extremely accurate. I really like it, unfortunatly the import into the USA of Uzi's where banned in 1994.

This is the AR-15 (civilian version of the M-16, semi-automatic) scoped, and with a bipod, this was lots of fun as the M-16 has been the standard issue infantry gun since Vietnam. Also, with the scope and bipod it was very easy to hit exactly what you where aiming at 30 yards away (even if the scope needed to be calibrated).

This is a scoped, .308 sniper rifle, with a bipod. This was cool because it put really big holes in things. It also had a really fun kickback (in otherwords big).

AK-47 Kalashnikov you have seen one of these at one point of your life. In a movie or in the news, its famous for fireing without jamming in any condition. It is also famous for being the number one terrorist weapon, this is because they are very cheap to make and the USSR and russia where never very good at holding on to them (they sold them to anyone). Now they are very easy to get on the black market.

Heckler and Koch MP-5, this was a great gun. Fun to shoot easy to handle and really nice to look at. Heckler and Koch are basically the Cadillac's of gun makers, so you can kind of get an idea of what it was like to fire on of there assault rifles.

FN-FAL as far as I can figure out the Germans used this in WWII It has a ton of kickback and is extremely heavy, but it was a taste of history.

Mosin Nagant was the gun used by the Russians in WWII, it was also a taste of history. To make things even more intresting one of my friends who was with me Sergey had a great grandfather who had one of these when he fought in the Battle of Stalingrad.

Finaly the M-1 Garand the gun the America used in WWII, this like the Mosin Nagant and the FN-FAL was heavy and had a ton of kickback.

So ends my shooting trip (excluding the 12 gauge shootgun which I don't have any pictures of me shooting). Of course there is still some questions I didn't answer. We when shooting because we are Mech. and Aero. Engineers, thats all I need to say, of course the fact that we all like guns and knew tons of stuff about the weapons we fired before hand, should be ignored. Finally if you couldn't tell we where shooting at bowling pins and teddy bears, and paper targets with the handguns. Out of six shots with the Beretta I hit two in the heart from about 20 feet, since I forgot to ask for the target we shot at when we where shooting the Glock I am not sure how my accuracy was with it.

5 comments:

  1. If you think this is an excessive amount of photos of the day’s events just be glad he didn’t post the rest of the 2,000 pictures that were taken.

    But I was assured that very few innocent bystanders were hurt.

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  2. Dude, at least you spelled "Kalashnikov" right. =)

    As for the FN-FAL, you kinda got that one wrong. Development didn't start until post World War 2, and how could it be used by the Germans, if it is a French gun? More info on it here (and check out some of the other stuff):

    http://world.guns.ru/assault/as24f-e.htm

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  3. To clarify we only took 153 pictures. Also, the FN-FAL was designed in Belgium, its first prototype fired rounds used by the germans in WWII. This is where my confusion came from, while it was being designed and came into manufacturing during WWII, Germany never ordered them until late 1955. For more information http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FN_FAL\

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  4. I just want to clarify this one line.

    "How could it be used by the Germans, if it is a French gun?"

    Simple, after France surrendered, Vichy France went to war on behalf of Germany. It didn't last too long, but it did try. In fact, according to my father, the head of the Socialist Party, who is always claiming to have been a war hero, actually served in the Vichy Guard, and among other duties, he may have been assigned to patrol concentration camps.

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  5. The title "Shooting Spree" sounds a lot scarier than it actually is.

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