Take Dad Out To The Range

In a simple exchange last week, I took my dad to the local golf driving range as he's a big golf aficionado (I'm really not), and the next day we went to the shooting range.

While I love my dad dearly, he's a product of his environment - with a very liberal, Canadian, anti-gun outlook which has very much been driven by the media etc.

With his age of 77, there is no point arguing it with him, he's not going to change his views, and getting into a heated argument, which is where we tend to end up would have spoiled the day if not the whole visit. 

In short I've finally learned not to fall into that particular no-win situation.  Only took 48 years to figure it out, but yay me.

As such, I declined to argue and said let's just go have some fun.

And fun there was to be had.

I met up with Tosh and he brought his family who were visiting from New York to the range.  In contrast to my dad they are big firearms aficionados and looked forward to shooting stuff they can't have in New York.  They live near the PA border in New York.

So we got setup at Range Six as our usual Range 4 was busy. 

We started with some pistols.

I had him start with the suppressed 22 as that's always a nice intro and he had fin with that.  I then had him shot the Beretta 81 and then my Glock with the 509T on it and (gasp! - 15 rounds in the magazine).

Then I got him shooting some more historic pistols, starting with my Romanian Tokarev.

First, since he's Canadian, it was my Inglis Hi Power, which is only a couple years older than he is:

Since he has a washer and dryer at his place made by Inglis it was all rather fitting.  Letting him shoot it with the magazine filled up to the "dangerous" 13 rounds capacity rather than the Canadian legal 10 rounds was a bit of subtlety on my part.  Amazingly, yet absolutely predictably,  nothing bad happened.

Then on to the Colt 1927 - The 1911A1 Colt made for the Argentine Army contract and marked 1927.  This one was older than he was and yep, it still works flawlessly.

He nailed all the plates on the plate rack with both.

I thne had him shoot my suppressed Tavor, and the 300 Blackout pistol with the suppresor on it, and let Tosh's family shoot all the pistols and rifles as well.

We all had a good time at the range, which is what it's all about.

Range Trip: Something To Tok About

Went to the range today.

I finally brought along the Romanian Tokarev.

The firearm even after being cleaned is still oozing cosmoline and it really started dripping off the firearm once it was sitting in the sun.

As I noted before, the sights on it are really rather good and large for a military pistol from the 50's.

The first five rounds shot from 7 yards - "On command, At the deserter's head - Fire!":

Not bad at all.

I'm rather pleased with it. The Tok's thin form really fits in the hand, the steel frame sucks up the recoil, and it chugged along shooting 50 rounds of 7.62x25 without a hitch. The Romanian add-on safety lever to let it be imported into the USA works well and is easy enough to manipulate.

A nice historic weapon from the Cold War, and it's one of the more affordable and relatively plentiful Curio and Relic firearms still out there.

Something To Tok About - The Cugir TTC

The box brought by UPS requiring an adult signature contained something to Tok about.

The TTC made by Cugir of Romania is the Romanian version of the Russian Tokarev TT-33 Pistol.

A variation of the Browning design, it offers a slim grip, weighs 1.8 pounds, and carries 8 rounds of the zippy 7.62x25 Tokarev cartridge - the world's fastest production pistol cartridge at the time, eclipsed when the .357 Magnum came along.

The sights on this TTC are tall and remarkably decent sights for a handgun of the time period, especially as a Tokarev's main function at the time was to use it to gesture heroically:

Frequent alternate uses included shooting dissidents in the head at execution range, or shooting conscripts fleeing the battlefield, and the sights are more than adequate for all three tasks.

While the Tokarev originally had no external safety, as it would be carried with the hammer half-cocked which was considered sufficient, import regulations required a safety be added, and thus a small but reasonably usable safety switch was added above and to the right of the trigger:

This pistol came absolutely slathered in oil. Oil that coated the magazine, the barrel, the slide, the grip, and which quickly dripped off and migrated to the table, my hands, everywhere. Certainly there can be no complaints about the pistol being shipped dry.

This Tokarev was manufactured in 1953 and comes with a single magazine and a rather decent surplus leather holster and metal cleaning rod.

The Romanian Tokarev may very well be one of the last affordable Curio and Relic firearms to be imported in large numbers. Now being sold at AIM Surplus for $220, it's an easy and relatively cheap acquisition of a very historic and still useful firearm.

Once I get all the oil wiped off and give it a good cleaning, I'll take it out to the range to try out.