Shooting party

Friday, we went shooting with some friends of ours. The firing range that's closest to our house requires that you have your firearms in cases when you arrive. We don't have any cases for our guns. Well, we have one case for a small handgun. Our friends had a large, hard sided case that could contain our guns and his! Makes for a heavy case, but it got us in the door! After we got there, we saw that you could rent gun cases from the park firing range - something that at least wasn't well advertised on the website or when we were there last year.

We had a whole lot of fun shooting each other's guns! One friend hadn't been shooting in about 10 years so there was a lot of teaching and learning involved. But we had never shot their guns so at least I had to be instructed on how to safely use their guns too. We had a .32, a .22 pistol, a 9mm, a shotgun, and the AK. We only had 5 shells for the shotgun since they didn't want us to shoot anything but slugs with that. Our friend who hadn't shot in 10 years now feels much more comfortable with the guns living in her house which is extremely important.

We shot for a long time! About 2 hours. Usually when me and my husband go shooting with friends, we only shoot for about an hour. The range we used was well controlled and very safe. They had a lot of rules, but all the rules made sense for everyone's safety. Things like, when the range is cold, and folks are changing out their targets and picking up their brass, leave your firearms on the table at your station, step behind the line on the floor, and do not touch your firearm. It's a good way for the workers to quickly see that no one is in danger. The range we usually go to in the Smokey Mountains has no attendants, and is basically a fire at your own risk type place. If you want to go down range and you're not the only ones at the range, holler to the other folks when you want to go down range so they know not to fire right then.

No one said a word, or even blinked at my obviously pregnant state at the firing range. They did glance at the king size pillow I brought with me. But no one said anything. The first time my big belly was exposed to pistol fire, I wrapped the pillow around my belly, and all three attendants at the range said, "oooooohhhhhhh!" Two came up to me and said, I wondered what the pillow was for! Earplugs for the baby! The baby didn't seem to mind the pistol fire even without the pillow and when I was shooting. The rifle fire was another issue. He handled the AK noise (quite a lot of noise) alright for a while, but quickly tired of that. After a while, I got a swift, strong kick after each round on the AK. After I wrapped the pillow around me, the kicks got softer. Our station was pretty close to the door, so after a couple minutes, I stood in the door with my belly outside, past the well insulated wall with only my head really in the firing range where I could watch the action. He liked that a lot better. So, in general, baby boy handled the shooting extremely well!

We went back to our house where our friends completely cooked dinner for us! Quite a treat for the pregnant lady. I was very grateful that I wasn't on my feet and cooking. And they cleaned up afterwards too! Quite wonderful. And the kitchen nazi in my didn't show up, much to my own surprise. I was just so happy to be sitting on my butt telling them where to find a slotted spoon instead of doing it all myself. It's amazing how quickly I get tired now that I'm 7 1/2 months pregnant. Quite disheartening.

Overall, a great day! And I went to bed almost as soon as they left around 10pm.