I am sure a lot of you are also tired of hearing that particular refrain, or at least seeing it on interwebz forums.
Tonight...I shot a steel match in Phoenix. It's one of my regular weekly matches. My sons were both able to come shoot it too. Usually only my oldest can shoot this one with me because my youngest is still on FTO (he graduated from the academy 2 months ago) and usually works Thursday nights. My oldest works for another agency and has been on for 4 years.
Anyway....there are five of us who shoot together. Myself, my sons, and two or three other badges from other agencies. We have a good time. We travel to weekend matches in Payson, Prescott, and Catalina AZ three to four times a week.
My daughter, who is 14 and a GREAT competitive shooter in her own right shoots with us at least once a week. She is shooting a 9mm 1911 that I built her for her 14th birthday in Single Stack.
Tonight, there were seven of us total. We for there a bit later than normal because my oldest son was held up with paperwork. We were under the ramadas, loading magazines, smoking cigars, and giving other shooters we know from years of doing this a weekly ration of good natured shit. A lifted oil burning Chevy pulls in, rolls coal, and four guys climb out. They are new faces. All of them ate totally tacticooled out. I mean, they had all the 5.11 gear, Oakley shades, sleeve tatts and their carry gear was all from "tacticool dood operators operating operashunally dot com"...(eye roll). They go to the stat shack, get their dance cards and start talking smack about how they were going to dominate tonight and how they heard some cops shot at this match and how......"cops can't shoot" and how they would "embarrass any cops that showed up".
My daughter started to say something, but I gave her "the look" and she quieted down. A lot of the other shooters were rolling their eyes too. Some were done shooting, some were getting ready to shoot, and some were waiting to see what happened.
Anyway, we started "up top" which is where Stage 4 and Stage 3 are...up a hill to the upper practical range...and if you start there, you can finish on 1 and 2 which have better light as the sun goes down.
My group started on 4. It was pretty vanilla. My oldest son beat me, I beat my youngest, one of the guys we shoot with beat all of us...and my daughter killed it. She turned in a better time that everyone but her "Uncle Randy". That girl can run her 1911.
The tacticool doods were stacked up behind us, watching us shoot and I caught bits of "....tactically speaking, this is....blah blah blah". We went to 3, put our cards in and I watched the tac-doods shoot. I an say one thing. Everything they learned about shooting, they learned from YouTube or from some video game. They looked like a bunch of TV Seals crossbred with monkeys fucking footballs shooting guns. I mean, it was like....BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG HIT BANG BANG BANG BANG HIT...
They were going from low ready, to shooting, to high compressed ready, to scans....basically doing the ENTIRE ballistic ballet that looks cool on TV...but has no place in a fight.
We were all waiting on 3, and the group in front of us finished up, so us and the tac-doods were there together congratulating one another on how "badass" they shot and how one of them "operated that bitch". More eye roll. More cow bell. More...are you fucking serious.
Anyway...the group in front of us got done and we started to shoot. I went was first in the box. It was a real simple 2-popper one plate rack move 2 popper one plate rack with a mandatory reload between your first and last shot. With no misses, it would be sixteen rounds, and usually could be done without a reload, but this one had a mandatory. I shot the first 8 reloaded on the move, shot the last 8. 16 rounds, cleaned it, 6.9 seconds. My oldest did it in 6.4, daughter did it in 7.4...and the rest of us were all in the middle and within about 2 seconds of one another.
The fastest I saw one of the tac-doods do it was 12.6 seconds. Eye roll.
We move down to 2 shoot it before the tac-doods come down the hill. Stage 1 is stacked up, so we are waiting to finish and the tac-doods come up and they are STILL talking shit. Stage 1 has not one, but two mind ya...TWO Texas Stars which are kind of my specialty. I fucking love them. I mean, I get a stiffy shooting the stars.
My group shot them well. I let the tac-doods go ahead of me because I had to go over the the restroom. I came back, and the loudest of the tac-doods was spoting off about something. Anyway...he emptied THREE mags on two stars and both mags had +5 Taran base plates on them.
I stepped up...10 plates, eleven rounds (I had one miss)...no reload needed on my Glock 17.
I quietly walk away. We drop our cards, go to safety and swap out match guns for carry guns and carry mags...and head back to the ramada to have a cigar and say goodnight to the other old hats.
The tac doods are there. One of them pipes up and says "Where are all the cops, I wanted to show them how to shoot".
My daughter said..."You mean you'd show them how not to shoot. Because...Dude, you all just got beat by a bunch of cops...and a 14 year old girl".
Priceless.
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Originally Posted by Kan S LaTrans
