An AK-47 burns worse than a toaster, a Saiga 12 goes boom, and other recent adventures

Keith (a college buddy of ours) just made it back from Iraq last month, and after relaxing back home, stopped by on his way back to Texas. Jon and I decided it was entirely worth a day of leave to take Keith out to the gun range and get some new pictures, but couldn't talk Old Ike into leaving WSMR for the day. I've heard that "a day at the gun range doesn't count against your days here on Earth," and I'd say it's a philosophy that Jon and I subscribe to pretty well. 'Course we're both from Kansas, whereas Ike is from Colorado, so maybe that has something to do with it...

So we packed up The Element (yes, I know) and headed out to the range bright and early on a nice Friday morning. The days are starting to actually cool down here, in sunny New Mexico, and being a Friday we were hoping to get a quiet range for our little group. While there were a couple of other's out there (I'm convinced Las Cruces is the place retirees choose if they want a nice public range nearby, and they don't want to be up in Raton), we did manage to grab a couple of benches to ourselves and setup shop.

Keith has been full time National Guard for a while and spent most of his time overseas (Bosnia and Iraq so far). While we all grew up shooting, I'd say that the shooting bug bit most of our crew recently; not so with Keith, who got an AK-47 and 2,000 rounds of ammunition for his 18th birthday from his dad (retired highway patrol and now gunsmith).

'course he's from Kansas too...

We had several new guns to test out that day:

• Remington 700 in 300 Win Mag
• Saiga 12
• AK-47

and I hope to get the movies from that day up on the sight soon. We tried to fill out the regular targets (cantaloupe, car door, etc) and we did some silhouette work as well. Look for a future post when I get the movies online.

- Frank