So my 22 y.o. nephew was visiting me and my mom and the only things we know how to do is go to the mall or to dinner and movies. I did take him to Casino Arizona where he played the highest limit poker of his life (3-6). Mom had staked him $200 and I told him the deal was that if he won he had to give back the buy-in and half his win. He won $95 and mom wouldn't take back ANYTHING! So I mentioned this in the LHE forum and I was told to leave it alone, pretty much.
Anyway, with all of those exciting things to do you'd think that we wouldn't be bored but you'd think wrong. Then I remembered someone saying that there were gun ranges in the area (Metro-Phoenix) and people could just walk in, rent guns, and shoot at targets. I'm formerly from the NYC area and 'nobody' is allowed to have a pistol. Well, you CAN get a permit but you have to jump thru some serious hoops so I'd never even thought of getting one. We checked the phone book and went over to one of the local places ( I won't mention which one because some of you ppl are insane). The first thing they do is show you a sort of training/safety/warning video. It tells you the basics of gun safety and after watching it (and literally signing away my life on the lengthy release form) I was ready to chicken out but my nephew was gung-ho so I had to follow thru.
The next step is to pick the pistol you want. I figured that a revolver would be easiest so I picked one and was told that it was a .357 magnum which I know from the movies is a ridiculously powerful gun to be banging away with but they said it would fire .38 rounds so I went with that. My nephew insisted on getting the fanciest semi-auto they had so he ended up w/ some competition 9mm. We each bought a box of bullets to go w/ our guns and rented a shooting lane for an hour. The cost of all of this was just under $80.
Here is some stock photo of a shooting range (the place we went to is MUCH fancier):
So, loaded up with our guns and ammo, the gun range guy brings us thru 3 doors that won't open until each is closed and brings us to our lane. After he watches that we're loading our guns up (my revolver held 7 rounds, the auto 12) properly, showing us how to move the targets we'd bought, and waiting while we popped off a couple of rounds each we were on our own. First thing I'll tell you is that it is [censored]
LOUD in the gun range.
LOUD! We're wearing those ear things and plastic glasses they give you and it's still [censored]
LOUD! Most of the other people shooting were being 'reasonable' about their target distance but my nephew wanted to be Dirty Harry about it and sent the target all the way to the back and I had to argue with him and we sent it back and forth between 25 and 50 feet. We spent about 45 minutes banging away with each other's guns at the various targets and then had a competition with the last of them. He won but not by much. Here is a pic of my final target. 7 rounds fired at 25 feet and 7 at 50 feet. I'm particularly proud of the head shot. That's exactly where I was aiming and got it on my third shot:
Another nephew is coming this Saturday. He's only 20 so no poker for him but it'll be back to the gun range for him and me! It's appalling in a way but a lot of fun!