I wanted a place to discuss my handguns and firearms in general. Everyone seemingly has lots to say about guns, so I promise you this won't be a rant blog.
So, after work today, I took my AMD-63 to my local range. I used an hour of range time to get the rifle zeroed. It took a full hour, as the instructions I used instructions that came with my sight adjustment tool were not the best. I used Google on my phone to find some other written instructions and while those covered what the other instructions didn’t, they left out things as well. I was confused as to how to adjust the front sight post. The instructions were not clear and I ended up walking the sight post in the opposite directions as what I intended.
The range I use (Elite Shooting Sports) is an indoor range. They have a 100-yard range and I thought I’d need long range to zero the sights. Nope. All I needed was 25 yards. I couldv’e used the handgun range instead.
I shot approximately 36 rounds. I shot Red Army Standard 124-grain FMJBT (I’ve like 500 rounds of that). I was shooting in groupings of three and checking to see where the groups were landing and attempting to make adjustments. I ended up zeroed my last 5 minutes of the session.
The first grouping was pretty tight, IMO (1-inch group):
The tang that the hammer strikes is mushroomed a bit but that’s pretty much normal for most AKs. It’s only mushrooming due to the Tapco trigger group that was installed to keep the firearm compliant. The Tapco hammer is harder than than the tang. The original trigger group did not beat up the tang (otherwise, it would’ve been bad when I first received it). Eventually, the mushrooming will stop. Once it does, I’ll dremel away the mushrooming.
The Tapco mags performed flawlessly.
I had a serious amount of fun. I will probably be shooting this rifle a lot more often!
NOTE: all targets were shot from 7 yards standing.
I was going to the range Sunday morning and the wife woke up and asked where I was going. I said, “the range.” She said, “I wanted to go too,” and I said, “well, get dressed and come with me!”
We brought four guns with us: her Ruger SR-9C, my RIA 22TCM MS 1911, and my Bersa Thunder 380 Plus. Of course, I was carrying my Grand Power P11 in a concealed fashion, too…that went with us.
We arrived and she had to take a gun safety orientation class. It was also crowded but we didn’t have to wait long for an open lane.
We decided to shoot her Ruger first. It had never been fired before and she’s owned it over a year. It was cleaned and lubed (by me) and ready to fire. We loaded the ammo (she’d never done that before…for a handgun, at least) into the two mag that the handgun came with (one 10-round and one 15-round mag). I gave her a quick summary on how to hold her gun and to not put her finger on the trigger until she was ready to fire. She knows proper sight alignment already (she’s retired US Army). Then, to demonstrate the proper hold and trigger discipline, she stood beside me and I squeezed the first round out of her handgun. The round went right into the red. That is a testament to the gun’s trigger and sights because that normally doesn’t happen with me…it usually takes me a few mags to warm up.
I then gave her the handgun and she shot her first two handgun mags ever:
All but 5 of those are probably kill shots. And one of those in the red is mine (the one that’s to the direct left of the X)! We ended up firing 100 rounds out of the SR-9C. The ammo was Remington UMC yellow box (mega) FMJ. There were no failures whatsoever.
I ended up firing more ammo from her gun than she did. Here’s my target:
If she doesn’t want her SR-9, I’ll take it…I’m happy with the way it shoots and the trigger is exceptional!
Next, we fired my 1911. I fired the first shots so she wouldn’t be surprised. She was still surprised. I told her it was loud and shot out fire. I think she thought I was exaggerating. After the first two shots, she said, “OK, this gun is loud!” She later (after the range) said she was intimidated by it. She shot it extremely well. She loved the heft and the fact that the weight negated the recoil (never mind that it’s going to be a soft shooter anyways). I took video of her shooting this gun and I was honestly flinching the whole time due to the muzzle flash. The guy the next lane over kept looking over, probably mentally saying, “WTF is that?”
We fired 59 rounds of 22TCM with no failures whatsoever, although she kept unintentionally enabling the safety, which makes me wonder if it’s not positive enough in engagement…IMO, one should not be unintentionally enabling a safety.
I didn’t get a snapshot of the target but here’s some footage of her shooting the 22TCM:
Our time was running out so we had to decide on shooting only one of the two guns that still hadn’t been fired. She decided to shoot my carry gun, the Grand Power P11, a sub-compact. We only fired 36 rounds out of the P11, but I think she loved this gun just as much as the 1911. She loved the lack of recoil. I later showed her why it had no recoil…I showed her how the barrel rotated. And she was very accurate with this gun too. Here’s the target:
I shot a magazine and all my shots grouped under the red…very tight grouping and I wasn’t shooting slow. She shot a mag and started up high (the grouping around the 7 & 8, above the red) then she took better aim and plugged the middle grouping. She wasn’t messing around!
I shot the last mag of the day, from the P11:
I was going for head shots since we were out of targets. I was trying to shoot once and rapidly follow up with another (not quite double-taps). I had several flyers but still, that’s a pretty tight group of 12!
She said she wants a sub-compact. I have a few sub-compacts she’ll probably shoot: a Sig Sauer P320C slide on an SC grip module; a Springfield XD9 Mod 2 9mm; a Bersa Thunder 380 Plus (not really a true sub-compact). And she’ll probably end up renting some range guns to get a feel for what sub-compact she enjoys shooting.
We’re going to try an outdoor range this weekend if it isn’t too cold.
======
Other happenings:
I ordered 3 mags for my P11 from Cheaper Than Dirt. I ordered 3 12-round mags. They sent me 3 15-round mags. I double-checked the receipt and sho-nuff it says that I ordered 3 12-round mags. I was a bit pissed. I do not want the hassle of having to ship these back while waiting for them to send me the correct mags. I opened one mag’s packaging and inserted it into the P11. It fits fine, although it’s long and hangs out of the gun by an inch or so. It’s fine for the range but not fine for carrying. I guess I can keep them for range duty and use the two that came with the gun as carry mags. :/
I also ordered 4 Jagemann 15-round mags for my Glock 19. My Glock came with 3 10-round mags. They’re supposed to be good mags. We’ll see. They were cheap @ approx $11 apiece.
I’m totally awed by the way this gun shot today. I’ve had it a while and was itching to see how it shot…alas, I’ve been busy and hadn’t had time to visit the range. I made time today and went to Elite Shooting Sports (the best time to go is around 7PM…it was empty today!). Anyways…
This gun manages recoil extremely well, especially for a sub-compact gun. It’s accurate as all hell, too…I’m not kidding:
Grand Power P11 Mk12, shot at 6 yards out, Winchester White Box 115-grain FMJ, 12 rounds.
I shot this gun after shooting 50 rounds from my XD9SC-M2 and Glock 19. Normally, it takes me a few mags to begin shooting well when going from gun to gun, but not in this case. I was actually shocked at the tight group. I only shot 24 rounds out of this gun, though…was pressed for time, once again, but I may make this one my carry gun, once I put some JHP through it and once I determine what’s up with what appears to be light strikes (see below comment).
I shot at 6 yards. I shoot between 5-7 yards whenever I shoot, as that’s the range a typical shootout will more than likely occur. I don’t attempt to shoot long distance with my handguns…that doesn’t really serve a purpose, IMO…if you shoot someone that’s 50 yards from you during an incident, you’re going to jail, so I don’t shoot at long distances. My foyer in my home is maybe 3-4 yards long and the biggest area in my house might be 6-7 yards, so that’s sufficient for me (in case my home has a break-in…*knock on wood*).
This gun is easy to hold while shooting, even though the grip texture isn’t aggressive (it feels a bit slick, in fact). There’s no muzzle lift at all. In fact, follow-up shots are a breeze. The sights made it really easy to aim, and it probably helped that I’ve been working on shooting with both eyes — previous to today, I’ve always shot with my left eye closed (I’m right-eye dominant). I’ve also been working on my trigger pull.
The only problem I saw with the gun was some possibly some light strikes (gun would go “click” with no boom…I’d have to drop the mag and eject the bullet in the chamber…it would fire on the second attempt), but it could’ve been the ammo (although the other guns didn’t exhibit this issue…they were using the same ammo). One thing I didn’t try — and should’ve — was to pull the trigger again without racking…I believe this gun offers double-strike capability, as it is DA/SA. I’ll try it when I next shoot the gun if I have light strikes.
UPDATE — I’ve found that these weren’t light strikes, but were fails to return to battery. The gun would be out of battery, I’d pull the trigger and the gun would then go into battery, but be in DA mode.
I did not try the double-action on this gun, as this gun doesn’t have a decocker and I wasn’t willing to ease the hammer down with a round in the chamber.
I took the TP9SA to the range this weekend. It shot well! I’m very impressed.
Some notes:
This is the first striker-fired gun I’ve ever shot.
I shot 108 rounds of Remington UMC 115-grain (megabox).
I was shooting from a distance of 10 yards.
There was one stovepipe that occurred when firing the first magazine.
There was one failure to feed that occurred when firing the second magazine.
The trigger is great! It feels hyper-sensitive. Reset is loud and tactile enough for me to know when it resets, without issue.
I shot with the larger of the two backstraps…I honestly can’t tell which of the two fit better in my hand, though
A lot of my shots were to the left of the bulls-eye (my left, when aiming). At first, I thought the rear sight needed to be drifted, so I used Kentucky windage and aimed maybe 1-1.5″ to the right of the bulls-eye and I hit the bulls-eye. I decided to stick with using the proper sight picture because I know from my prior range visits that I needed to work on trigger pull and finger placement. Well, the last magazine was very good…I placed a good bit of my rounds in the bulls-eye while using the same sight picture I’d been using the whole session.
Instead of continuing to become familiar with the TP9SA and work on muscle memory with this gun, I switched guns and shot with the SP2022 the last 20 minutes of the session. This was a bad idea, as the next 20 minutes, my rounds were all over the place. Next time, I’m only coming with one gun.
I’ve some video footage of the range session, but only of my SP2022. The video is here:
The target is far enough away to where you can’t see a damned thing…sorry about that. I’ll work it out on the next visit. I supposed I could lower the FOV setting on the camera, as well as move the target up a bit (in good/bad guy situations with handguns, 10 yards is a bit excessive as far as self defense goes, IMO).
Another thing I did was to test the 9mm Federal HST JHP I have, just to ensure it didn’t jam…I saved it for the last 5 minutes of the session, as I wanted to shoot them while the gun was dirty. I shot 10 JHPs without issue. As well, I was only able to shoot them through the SP2022. I’ve 10 left…I’ll shoot those through the Canik on my next range visit. The Canik cleaned up pretty well. There’s quite a bit of barrel wear at the ejection port, though…just the paint coating, though. It’s not a huge deal, although my SP2022 has more rounds through it and has NO outside barrel wear. I did lube the Canik VERY well before the range session (with TW25B)…the rails looked good. There was a tiny bit of wear on the underside of the slide itself, though, and I’ve no idea what caused it, but I’ll be sure to apply some grease to that area before the next visit.
The feed ramp already has what looks to be copper on it, where the bullets contact it while being fed into the ramp. I’ll leave the ramp alone, though…as long as the gun functions properly, I’m happy.
I’m looking forward to the next range visit with this gun!
