Chaney and her 9mm

Oct. 5^th

A week ago I took my youngest daughter Chaney to one of our monthly Safari Club meetings.  She loves going to these things and hanging around a bunch of hunters and listening to their stories.  The upside for her, since she is an eleven year old kid (and a girl) she is treated as a mini-celebrity whenever she shows up. 

We hunters have an ulterior motive in making her feel as welcomed as we do.  We want her to hunt!  More specifically we want her to grow up and continue hunting.  She is the next generation to go afield, and she is a female to boot.  This is a demographic we desperately need to nurture and increase.

At the conclusion of our meetings we hold a raffle.  We start with a firearm that is donated every month as our “grand prize” then subsequent ticket winners get to choose prizes ranging from T-shirts to knives.  This raffle also included free range passes to a local shooting indoor shooting range. 

Well…Chaney won.  Not the gun (unfortunately), but she did score the free range passes. 

On our way home she asked when we could go.  Now Chaney is quiet the rifleman (well…”riflegirl”) but she has never shot a handgun.  I explained to her that we could go anytime we wanted to, but that the range is really more of a handgun range.  We really can’t shoot high powered rifle there.

She thought about that for a millisecond and said, “That’s ok….I want to learn how to shoot a pistol”.

Ok then.

Chaney the "riflegirl" with her bison she took with a Winchester Model 70 chambered in 30.06

So…a couple of days later we headed over to the range when I got home from work.  I had told her that I would start her off on a .22 pistol (very light recoil) and then, when she felt she was ready I would move her up to the 9mm.  (My concealed carry gun is a Sig Sauer 239 chambered in 9mm.  I felt that this would be an appropriate gun for her because it is big enough to absorb some of the recoil, but not sooooo big that she wouldn’t be able to hold it properly.)

Before we left the house I went over the fundamentals of pistol shooting….grip, stance, breathing and the functionality of the firearm itself.  She handled it well,…but I could see trepidation in her.  She was nervous,…but determined to work through it.

When we got to the range I rented a .22 ruger and we headed to our lane.

She loaded up the .22 and began taking shots at the paper target 25 feet away.  After the first shot, and the fear of the unknown dissipated, she began plinking away with delight.  Now it was time to move up to the Sig.

Again I saw the trepidation return.  She was determined to shoot this larger caliber, but she was clearly nervous.  Other shooters were shooting around us, so she had become instantly familiar with the noise that 9’s 40’s and 45’s make…and frankly they are pretty damn loud…especially when discharged in a building.  Still she loaded up the magazine of the Sig and prepared herself mentally for the first shot. 

For those of you unfamiliar with the Sig…the pistol is a semi-automatic Double Action / Single Action firearm.  What this means is that the first trigger pull requires a full press of twelve pounds of pressure.  This is a lot…and the travel of the trigger is pretty long too…but the action of pulling the trigger causes the hammer at the back of the gun to travel backwards then when it reaches it’s full arch to fall forward and slam the firing pin causing the gun to go “bang”.  The gas expansion of the cartridge in the chamber then forces the slide back…expelling the spent cartridge, forcing the hammer back, and then chambering another round.  Now that the hammer is back, the second trigger pull is a “single action”…pull the trigger and the hammer just falls.  This second (and subsequent) trigger pulls now only require three and a half pounds of pressure.

So…Chaney concentrated…pressed the trigger, and put her first round in the center of the target!  She shot a second time and placed the bullet about 4 inches from the first.  Then…without me coaching, she raised the gun slightly and did a third round in the “head” of the target.  Then she calmly looked down her sights waived the gun back and forth in a scanning motion then looked at me for direction.

I was stunned.  She performed a perfect “failure drill”.  (Two shots center mass, and a “failure” shot in the head.  Then the scanning for additional threats). 

“Where did you learn how to do that?”  I asked incredulously

“I’ve watched you shoot dad….I just figured that is how you do it.”

Hmmmm….children do pay attention to your actions apparently.

So…after burning through another hundred rounds or so we packed up and headed home.  

Did she enjoy shooting the pistol?

Well…based on her incessant demands on the way home to check our calendar and set up anther time to go back, and her asking me if she could get a semi-automatic for Christmas, I would say yeah…she enjoyed it!