well since 6 years I live in the land of the free where everybody from a kid to a grown man can own a weapon. And so it was time to finally 'man' up and go to the local shooting range to learn how to use one.

Now John was so nice to provide us with a M1A rifle and a .22 Cal custom so we can try to shoot with total beginner rifles (.22 Cal) and with civil version of the standard military weapon M14 of the 70s

To quote him:

if you shoot me with the .22 Cal I gonna be mad as hell and visit a doctor to remove the bullet. If you hit me with the M1A don't bother calling an ambulance

 So obviously we were rather careful and tried not to hit him.

To give you a rough idea of the difference in the bullets and cartridges we used.

the cartridge on the left side is the .22 Cal and on the right is the 7.62x51mm for the M1A. The differences are pretty obvious.

Me practicing with both rifles. On the top picture is the .22 Cal with scope, which was incredible easy to manage and had basically no recoil. The lower pictures is the M1A with an iron sight which got rather painful after a couple of shots and made me prefer the .22 cal quite a lot.

our targets were about 50 yards away for the first time and after a while got quite consistent shots at this range.

next week we are going to try the classic 1911 Colt or maybe a couple high powered riffles in the 100-300 Yard range. Depending if I feel comfortable with it. I have the feeling I rather practice with the .22 cal at this point in time. Since the ammunition is quite a lot cheaper for it and it's not as loud...