Imaginary bad guys made of paper beware!

[roxybisquaint]

I know you're all tired of hearing about my new gun, but I had to post about it again. The man and I went shooting tonight and I can say with certainty now that the Springfield XDM is a sweet, sweet gun.

Even better news: I have overcome my trigger pull problems and I shot really well. At one point I tried the man's Glock just to see if the gun itself was a factor in how well I was doing. Nope. I've only tried his gun a few times before, but I took a single shot and put it straight through the center of the target :)

My shots always had a tendency to go down/right, but I'd recently gotten some dry fire rounds and had been practicing my trigger pull. Once I really paid attention to what I was doing, I discovered that I was pulling the gun to the right with my trigger finger and pulling the gun down with my support hand. I corrected that and kept practicing. When we went to the range tonight, I got to put my practice into practice and the result was that I kept slamming rounds though the bullseye. I even made some good headshots (and I've always sucked at headshots).

This was my worst target of the evening:



My hand was getting pretty fatigued by then and I had a few stray shots. But it's the only target that was exclusively mine (we'd been sharing targets before this). On my best target of the evening, I actually blew out a whole section of the red area.

Comments

[roxybisquaint.livejournal.com]

LOL

So that vest of yours, how heavy is it?

[the-narration.livejournal.com]

Areal density 0.94 lbs/sq. ft. so... I guess around four or five pounds for the whole vest? I'm not sure exactly about the square footage (it's an Extra-Large/Regular but seems to have had someone with broader shoulders in mind... should have gotten a Large/Long instead), but I shelled out an extra $100 or so for it because it's about two-thirds the weight of a typical Level IIIA vest.

Honestly, it's pretty light. I notice the stiffness and the warmth when I wear it, but the weight isn't really an issue.

[roxybisquaint.livejournal.com]

Oh that's not bad at all. I thought those things were heavier. The extra cash for the lighter weight was surely money well spent.

[the-narration.livejournal.com]

Very much so. It'd be a lot heavier, thicker and less flexible if I'd gone with the cheaper one. As it is, it's not uncomfortable and if I wear something over it, no one's likely to notice it. Even people who know I'm wearing it only notice a slight thickening of the torso.

(Of course, as soon as you buy something they come out with something better. The next catalog had a vest that was even lighter plus Taser-proof for $1000. Too rich for my blood, but now I've a sore case of vest envy.)

It could have been a lot heavier. The 8x10 metal trauma plates for distributing impacts and stab protection (that I don't wear because they're super obvious, even through clothes) would add another 20 oz. each. And since they're completely rigid the back plate was a little rough on my spine to be wearing ten hours straight. If I got Level III or IV ceramic plates for stopping rifle rounds, I'd at least triple the weight: the lightest Level III plate is almost 4 lbs. and the heaviest Level IV is almost 8 lbs. (And you need a front plate and a back plate.) So a real hardcore tactical vest like a soldier might wear could be more along the lines of 20 lbs. instead of my concealable five pounder.