I cannot say why I like the wrist bands they give out at the Angeles Range.
They are just so to the point. I hope I’m not the only shooter who reads them let alone follows the rules they silently shout. The two adages remind me for some reason of the annoying WWJD bracelets some especially annoying and sanctimonious players on the PGA Tour wore a few decades back. Shooting in Los Angeles and Ventura counties is something like playing golf in the same areas. It’s not as easy as it should be.
What got me back into shooting — really what’s in the process of getting me back into shooting — was my informal inheritance of the first firearm I ever shot.
It’s a single-shot Marlin Model 101 in .22LR, made way back in 1971. I had forgotten about it until my brother handed it to me a while back. Then I remembered it. Soon thereafter I started to shoot it and soon after that I decided I wanted to improve the sights or maybe even get a scope for it. The scope experiment didn’t work out even though I found a cherry Marlin 300A on Ebay that’s back it a box in the garage.
Once I gave up on the scope I made a move for a peep sight and settled on this neat barrel mounted job from Skinner Sights in Montana. Having never used a peep sight it has taken some getting used to but I like its simplicity as well as how at home it looks on the old Marlin’s barrel.
What all this gets me to is why?
Why any of this? I enjoyed shooting when I was a kid. Two of my brothers took me to an uncontrolled county range in Texas Canyon when I was 11 or 12. Those ranges were all closed and developed decades ago. I didn’t really get back to shooting until my early 20s and later in the 80s when I got into serious skeet shooting.
Things have changed. Shotgun shooting is very expensive these days, shooting a .22 much less so. I think the old Marlin was kind of a rehabilitation project. It had sat for so long, leaning in the corner of my brother’s room waiting for some hapless sheet of paper to show itself downrange.
The recreational shooting game has changed a lot over the decades. Many shooters use AR-15 variants. I have no idea if they truly enjoy the shooting or if they enjoy some idea of shooting that kind of weapon. It’s just another popular thing I don’t get and would not have gotten 40 years ago.
The other side of the coin is where the serious shooters live, people who compete For me, it feels a little like tennis. I like to play tennis in the same way I like to shoot .22s. The idea of competition is not very appealing.
That said, I do want to shoot and play tennis to the best of my ability. I think I have taken the Marlin as far as I want to go with it. I will go on shooting it because I like its ability to transport me back in time, even though it’s weird being the old guy at the range with the single shot rifle. I will write about the next part of the process soon.
