The Blue Ridge Shooting

OK, here is what happened, from my perspective.

I've been looking at getting a 1911 for some time now and made an agreement with my wife that I could only buy another handgun AFTER I sold one of the one's I already had. She was concerned about the amount of money I've been spending on guns and told me that she didn't see the reason for any more (women, what do they know????) ANyway, I got her to agree to no net gain in number, but with no provision for value. So, I've decided to sell my Glock G23 (if you want it, let me know).

A guy here in Northern Virginia who does some gun training with Piedmont NRA INstructors was interested in it and asked me to meet him down at Blue Ridge Arsenal in Chantilly, VA so he could check it out (They also have a mid 70s Colt Commander on consignment that I looked at once before and wanted to see one more time before making an offer). We decided to meet at 2:30 on Sunday but that morning, because of the snow storm that hit the DC area, he called to see if we could meet earlier. Of course, I couldn't because my mother in law needed to get to work (she works at a Wayne's World like TV station here) and being from Georgia she can't drive in the snow.

Anywa, I dropped her off at 2:00 and then continued onto Blue Ridge just as the sun was breaking. It turned into a beautiful afternoon and my wife called me on the phone to tell me to hurry up, she wanted to take my son out in the snow . . . . and besides, she didn't think Blue Ridge was a safe range to go to (it has a less than stellar reputation in Northern Virginia, but is under new management who have made great strides to correct some of its long standing problems). Anyway, I show up and sit down with the potential purchaser. He likes the look and feel of the gun and finds things in order and asks to try it out on the range. Never one to say no to range time, I gladly go ahead and also rent a Kimber Pro Carry with a 4 inch barrel ($15 - I wanted to shoot a 4 inch 1911 before making an offer on the Colt they had) and two boxes of ammo ($18) and buy an hour of range time ($15) for a total outlay of about $60 (the high prices at Blue Ridge are one of the lingering problems that the new management hasn't gotten around to correcting yet).

Blue Ridge, for those not familiar with it, has two ranges. Range 1 is directly behind the gun counter and there are windows where the staff can look in and see that everything is ok. Range 2 is a room next to Range 1 but without any windows into it. They both hold about 10 lanes and we were placed on Range 2 (Lanes 16 & 17). There were two guys and their girlfriends in there with us as well on lanes 11 and 12. Anyway, the potential buyer shoots a couple of magazines worth through the glock and really likes it, indicating he wants to buy it (thats good - makes me that much closer to my 1911 purchase). I shoot a magazine through the Kimber and find that the rental gun is disgustingly dirty and that I don't really care for the recoil - though its accuracy is pretty dead on (2 inch 4 shot groups at 20 feet). After I finish the first box, I decide to take out my Ruger Mark II and just get some nice leasiruely practice rounds in