I love this smile

Girlie Bear had her first experience at shooting pistols today.  I took the red-dot sight off of the 22-A1 and she put about 100 rounds downrange.  I wasn't that worried about accuracy today and concentrated on grip, stance, and safety.  The target you see above was after her first couple of cycles through the two magazines I have for that pistol.  My only admonition on accuracy with her was to not shoot the lights, target holders, or wall, but she didn't do half bad for her first time out.

She seemed to have a great time, but was very serious about doing it right.  She was conscientious about proper grip on the pistol, taking her time with shots, and being safe.  She even got to do a couple malfunction drills when the pistol had FTF's.  I've found with the 22-A1 that you have to give it a very steady platform to fire or it doesn't fire the next round, so I showed her how to cycle the slide and to hold it very firmly.  The recoil on it is so light that she had no trouble controlling it.

I was really proud of how serious she was about safety on the range.  I wish the same could be said about the group next to us. It was a group of 5 or so adults, most of whom were first time shooters.  The guy supplying the guns had pretty much emptied the safe and had a large assortment of pistols, including a .50 AE Desert Eagle.  It looked like a really neat gun, until it started to stove pipe when one of the new shooters was using it. When that happened he turned it 90 degrees to the left to look at the ejection port, which turned the muzzle of that very fine pistol pointed directly at us.  The first reminder from me was measured and gentle, the next one less so, and the third time was a "Let's pack up and go talk to the range safety".

Girlie Bear had a great time, and is already asking when we can go back.  I told her that once she gets comfortable and accurate with the .22, I'll let her shoot .38's out of my Model 13, and then she can try any of my other pistols.  This may be the thing that gets me off my butt and buying a 9mm so that she can shoot something more than a .22 and not have her poor father eating ramen noodles so that he can afford the ammunition.