Taking Your Girlfriend/Boyfriend to the Range

hi recently in our society we've seen a lot of people buying a lot of firearms many of these people are first-time gun owners they've just bought their first gun a lot of them are seeking firearms education and training and that has been difficult for a lot of people to get because of the beer situation a lot of people are unemployed or underemployed and they might be able to afford buying the gun but they can't afford to take expensive classes also because of the beer situation a lot of those classes are not in session or they're in session with significantly reduced numbers of students this has led to a lot of new firearms owners seeking the help or advice of acquaintances or friends that are more experienced firearms owners kind of a hey friend can you take me to the range and that's great but today i want to discuss a particular aspect of that and that is the situation of a man who is an experienced firearms handler taking a woman to the range when that woman is very inexperienced at handling firearms and she's a woman with whom this man is intimately involved or she's a woman with whom this man would like to become intimately involved in short taking your girlfriend to the range i also want to discuss the reciprocal of that a woman who is a very experienced firearms handler taking a man to the range who's very inexperienced at handling firearms with whom she's intimately involved or with whom she might want to become intimately involved in short taking your boyfriend to the range these things might sound like they're exactly the same and in many ways they are the same but in many ways they're very different and this presentation comes of course with a couple of caveats first as i go through this i'm going to sound like a terrible sexist and chauvinist and i absolutely am not and please watch this in its entirety because i am going to talk about a woman taking a man to the range and secondly a lot of times when i do presentations like this i will say that i'm not trying to give you advice i'm not trying to tell you what to do i'm only showing what i do today is different today i am actually going to give you some advice but that comes with the caveat that my advice is based on my training my education my experience different people have different experiences so they have different opinions and different advice okay with that let's get started the first thing i want to say is men you have to prepare ahead of time don't stop on the way to the range saying oh wait i have to pick up this no a week out a day or two out make sure you've got all your stuff together and it's all boxed up and bagged ready to go you have to be prepared ahead of time and part of that preparation is two very important things one telling the woman that you're taking to the range what kind of conditions are going to be there in terms of weather and heat are you going to an indoor range are you going to an outdoor range that has covered areas are you going to an outdoor ranch where you're just under the sky are you going to a place that's not even arranged maybe you're just going to somebody's private property she has to be informed as what type of weather conditions you might encounter now if you're going to an indoor range the weather might be irrelevant but sometimes it's very relevant a lot of indoor ranges have powerful fans going on to blow the smoke and pollutants out and sometimes those fans create a significant breeze of cold air there's some indoor ranges where it can be pretty cold in there and whatever woman you're taking to the range has to be aware of these kind of things so she can dress appropriately another thing is you have to make her aware of what kind of head bathroom facilities there's going to be some places will have real-life bathrooms with running water and flushing toilets some places will have portajohns some places will have genuine outhouse pit toilets some places might not have anything and some women are okay with some things and some women are not okay with some things a lot of women are okay with whatever the situation will be as long as they are aware of it ahead of time if they're forewarned they can bring the appropriate things you also have to make sure that you give her a really good estimate of how far away this place is and how long you intend to be there so when she finds out there's no bathroom facility but you tell her that's about 10 miles away and will be there for an hour or so that's not very long and she'll be okay with that you have to make sure that she understands things like that so she can dress appropriately bring the appropriate things and one very important part of that and i'm sure i'll repeat this several times before we're done is once you've told her all that you have to be prepared that she's going to ignore you now in terms of dressing appropriately let's take a trip to somewhere else and let me see if i can illustrate my point this is susie and she's a client of mine who's volunteered to be here today to model some of the things that women wear to the range that they shouldn't let's start with the hair it might look nice but it's going to get in the way especially if you're trying to shoot a rifle and that hair is stuck behind the stock and the low-cut t-shirt if we could all be adults about this t-shirts like this not only attract people's gaze but they attract empty shell casings ejected from autoloading firearms and those shell casings are hot and i know a couple of people who have shell casing shaped scars in their cleavage and this t-shirt is short-sleeved which might be comfortable on a day like today where the temperature is over 70 but in this very location less than a week ago the temperature was around 20. depending on where you are and what time of year it is you may have to prepare for hot or cold weather she's also wearing spandex pants which aren't really appropriate for the range and let's take a close-up look at her footwear sandals have no place on the range and especially no place in the field so now let's see what suzy looks like when she's wearing more appropriate range attire now we see susie wearing more appropriate attire baseball cap hair and a ponytail held back with the what do you call that hair tie a hair tie better neckline over shirt jeans and real shoes and socks preferably high top shoes so when you are the more experienced shooter and you're taking a less experienced shooter who is a woman to the range you have to remind her to wear the appropriate attire and you have to prepare that she's going to ignore you so you have to bring some appropriate attire for her let me show you what i mean so you have to make sure that you assemble the correct hot weather cold weather wet weather and hygiene gear just in case the lady you're taking to the range neglects to bring any now in cold weather putting a hooded sweatshirt on under your jacket or my favorite just a long sleeve t-shirt it's a great idea also bring an extra coat a rain coat a ball cap or of course my preference of jones cap and in cold weather a stocking hat gloves and you may not be able to bring her extra shoes but extra socks are a good idea now for hygiene gear one of my favorite things is this compressed heavy duty paper towel add water and expands very rugged depending on what you use it for it's reusable let me show you the website for these great piece of gear toilet paper self-explanatory some kind of wipes depending on where you are in what time year it is insect repellent of course there's also sunscreen lip balm the list goes on and once you get all of this stuff together put it in one bag so it's ready to go remember when you're out in the field or on the range and you're too hot or too cold or too wet or too dry it can be miserable and when you're taking an inexperienced shooter to the range if she's miserable you're going to be miserable and men you have to remember that although firearms training has to be safe and so forth it also has to be a positive experience it has to be fun and if she's not having any fun you're not going to have any fun now with that concept in mind let's take a look at some firearms on the topic of the best firearms to take a novice to the range i want to preface that discussion with three things first i'm going to use handguns to illustrate some of the points i want to make but these points are applicable to rifles and shotguns as well secondly i have a presentation on my top five handguns for beginners and my top five rifles and shotguns for beginners so for a more detailed discussion on those things you can watch those presentations and so today i'm just going to give you the short version third as an experienced firearms handler when you're taking a novice to the range the firearms that you're really going to use are the ones you have available to you but if you have access to a variety of firearms there are some that are better than others so with that the firearms that i want to use are what i can describe as user friendly that means that they're not prohibitively bigger heavy but not prohibitively light or small either that they don't have prohibitive report or recoil and that they're simple to operate now most new shooters will find that a revolver is simpler to operate than an auto load although there can be a lot of technique that goes into reloading a revolver as far as just shooting it most people will find that it's simpler than an autoloader and in shooting a revolver versus an autoloader there's something i want to show you let's take a look now i'm going to put you slightly behind me in the instructor position and when you've got a new shooter on the range shooting an autoloading pistol and they're doing something wrong like bringing their head down to the pistol instead of the pistol up to their line of sight and they're shooting and then you tell them don't bring your head down bring the pistol up and when you tell them that they do something like this do what notice where my finger was that's a position you don't want to be in however if that same situation occurs with the revolver you give them the instruction do what with a double action revolver it requires enough of a concentrated effort to pull the trigger back they're not as likely to shoot you on the subject of using firearms with limited report and manageable recoil there's a few things to say about that first of all when a novice knows that they're going to go to the range and they're getting excited about shooting guns what they don't want to have happen is get to the range and then have you hand them an airsoft gun and preferably not a pellet gun either let them shoot real guns otherwise it's going to be a big letdown for them and in my opinion just about the best caliber to start with is 22 long rifle and for rifles chambered in caliber 22 long rifle i'm of the opinion that if possible you should start them out with something that isn't an autoloader one of my favorites is this henry lever action if you're going to go with a handgun again 22 long rifle if possible now the conventional wisdom is that when you're starting out with a novice that they should start with a rifle and that they should achieve a certain level of competence with the rifle before transitioning to the handgun handguns can be difficult to shoot and it's very easy to get them pointed in the wrong direction however when that new shooter is a woman i have found that it is very common that when you're trying to learn sight alignment sight picture trigger control breath control stance all at the same time a lot of women that are new shooters can do handgun stances whether it's a modern technique or an isosceles or whatever it is you're doing but they can achieve those stances better with a handgun than they can with a rifle it's easier for them to do that and so in that learning process sometimes starting out with a handgun for a woman is a better way to go now i know that i say start out with a 22 well not everyone has a 22 but if what you have is a 9x19 well then that's what you're going to go with but if what you have is a 357 magnum then i think it's a good idea to start them out with some kind of lightly loaded 38 special target ammunition 44 magnums can be loaded with 44 special so on now i want to discuss shotguns generally a shotgun is not what you want to use for a novice however some people want to learn about shotguns sometimes a shotgun is all you have and in managing recoil a lot of people will make the assumption that instead of using the very common 12 gauge transition to a 20 gauge 20 gauge ammunition if you make a fair comparison is going to be significantly less powerful than 12 gauge but not always if you make the right ammunition choices or maybe the wrong ammunition choices sometimes 20 gauge ammo can be more powerful than 12 gauge ammo also 20 gauge shotguns are typically smaller and lighter than 12 gauge shotguns now here's my mossberg maverick 88 and 20 gauge and my mossberg 512 gauge and you can see that the 20 gauge is just a little bit longer in this case however it's thinner and significantly lighter and so we don't want to assume that the 20 gauge is going to automatically have less recoil sometimes it can have more recoil let me see if i can illustrate that i've got my mossberg 500 loaded with winchester super target 12 gauge two and three quarter inch one ounce of number seven and a half lead bird shot let's see what kind of recoil i get now let's see how that compares to the 20 gauge i've got my mossberg maverick 20 gauge loaded with winchester super x 20 gauge three inch one and a quarter ounce of number five copper plated shot let's see what kind of recoil i get with this could you see the difference i could certainly feel the difference sometimes 20 gauge can have a lot more recoil than 12 gauge i want to discuss a little bit about targets this is an outstanding target it's got the square in the middle the four smaller squares so it becomes five targets in one the entire target is divided into one inch squares making it really good as a zeroing target because you can measure how far off you are and it's a reactionary target like a shoot and see a supply of these were donated by a couple of viewers thank you very much however this is not really a great target for beginners the center square is relatively small and you're going to have beginners hitting all around it not hitting it very often and they will become discouraged and think they're not doing very well now we don't want to lie to beginners and tell them they're doing a great job when they've missed the entire cardboard but we do want them to use a target that will give them some positive feedback and make it feel like they're doing well this target might not be the right target for that let me show you a different target here's another really good target it's a reactionary target like a shoot and see it has a well-defined aiming point and it's a target that i can use on camera to illustrate points however again not a really good target for a beginner because of the relatively small aiming point people will think that they're not doing well and if you start shooting this target at longer distances like 50 yards some people are not going to be able to see that red center aiming point very well and for a new shooter it can be difficult to find the center of this target because it's not symmetrical this isn't really a good target for a beginner so let me show you a couple of targets that i do think are good targets for beginners this is what i would consider a good target for a beginner first it's big secondly the aiming point in the center is fairly large this is a good target let me show you one other this is a good target for a beginner it's symmetrical and it has a large aiming point a novice can have a fairly large group and still feel like all their shots are in the bullseye so we've talked about having the right clothing and the right hygiene gear we've talked about firearms and ammunition and targets now i want to spend a really short time discussing the training itself there's a lot of different instructors with a lot of different techniques and the techniques you use will depend on you and the student and the range and firearms and ammunition you have available to you but there are four points that i consider very important that i do want to cover first is start out with a large target at a very short range and when i say large i mean something like the target with the big red bullseye at a range of three yards maybe five yards and you have to be ready to feel the questions and commentary that will come with that when you set up that big target and you say stand here and shoot it from three yards you have to be prepared that a woman is going to say to you something along the lines of what do you think i'm blind or just stupid and you have to think very carefully about how you answer that question there's a lot of wrong answers and only a few right ones but the right answer will probably be something along the lines of i don't think you're blind or stupid but in my experience i've seen a lot of people that should be highly skilled firearms handlers like military and police personnel who couldn't hit a phone booth if they were in it and shooting firearms is more difficult than a lot of people think so humor me let's start out really close and we can always go to smaller targets and greater distances as we go along does that make sense that's probably going to be better than something like blind or stupid no but pigeon-toed and uncoordinated yes and who's the instructor who's the student just stand there and shoot it like i told you you're probably not going to get very far with that now the second thing is dummy drills just about the most difficult thing for anyone to master is trigger control and you'll see people jerk the trigger and people anticipate the recoil and a lot of people will do that without realizing that they are doing it and dummy drills are a good way to work on that and point that out now with a revolver it's easy to do you put some live rounds and some empty casings in there and off you go with an autoloader you really need dummy rounds and if you just don't have dummy rounds you can do a thing where you take the firearm from the student and where they can't see you you work the action hand it back to them and then tell them you don't know if there's a live round in the chamber or not and then they shoot on an empty chamber anticipate the recoil and what they're doing becomes very obvious dummy drills are great however when you're taking a novice to the range who is a woman never do that drill without telling her that you're doing that drill don't surprise her with it when she expects the gun to go off and it doesn't and you say there i was doing a dummy drill she thinks you're playing a prank she thinks you're playing a joke on her she thinks you're laughing at her and now she doesn't trust you if you're trying to instruct anything the student has to trust that you know what you're talking about and has to trust that you're giving them the straight scoop you're not playing games with them and you've just cost yourself that trust if you're going to do a dummy drill you have to tell her you have a certain amount of live runs and a certain amount of dummies you don't know where they are we're gonna work on trigger control now the third thing is an extension of that and that is don't be that guy i don't know anyone who's personally done this but you always hear tall tales about it where you give someone the pump shotgun with the low base light loads of bird shot and they're shooting it fine and then when they're not looking you sneak in around a remington 12 gauge three inch double up about 15 pellet and it knocks the hell out of somebody if you're going to the range with someone that you want to become your girlfriend don't do that if you're going to the range with someone who is your girlfriend and you want her to remain being your girlfriend don't do that don't be that guy now point four on my list is know when to say when right now there's snow out here and there's a little breeze and it's about 30 degrees some people will be fine with this all day some people won't some people are going to get cold after a while and they're going to want to go home now some women will be very upfront with i'm cold and i'm ready to go home some women will be passive aggressive about it some will really try to stick it out and be tough and when you're down range setting up a target you look back and you notice that they're standing here very cold they're not going to complain but they're just not having fun anymore know when to say when so we spend a lot of time talking about a man taking a novice woman to the range now let's reverse that talking about a woman who is a very experienced firearms handler taking a man to the range who is a very inexperienced firearms handler when that man is her new boyfriend or perhaps someone that she wants to become her boyfriend many of the concerns are the same some are different but what's really different is how you deal with those concerns and one of the things a woman has to take into consideration is that men sometimes have very large very fragile very displaced egos now what do i mean by displaced there are some men who think that just by virtue that they're a man that they are genetically endowed with expertise in cars and expertise in football and expertise in firearms even though they don't have any experience with any of those things and you have to deal with that for example when a man takes a woman to the range and he tells her about the weather conditions and he says we're going to the range the weather's going to be like this he has to anticipate that she'll just ignore him when a woman is taking a man to the range she has to tell him what the weather conditions will be like and so forth but he may deal with that differently if a woman tells a man they're going to the range is going to be 40 degrees and raining she can anticipate that he will probably dress appropriately but there's some times that he won't want to and you end up having a conversation that looks something like telling him now we're going to an indoor range and it's indoors but they have a big fan that's blowing in it can get pretty cold in there so bring a jacket oh i don't need a jacket i'm far too tough for that and the way you're going to have to deal with that might be something along the lines of please for me bring a jacket if you don't need it then don't wear it see the difference but what's more of a concern than a man not dressing appropriately for hot weather cold weather wet weather is a man's perception of what appropriate range fashion will be he's a novice he doesn't want to look like a novice he wants to fit in with the other people at the range and so in an effort to do that he might show up wearing something that looks like this okay hand me that bang stick i'm ready to go full semi-auto and empty my whole clipazine yeah now how do you get around that ahead of time before you go to the range a woman can have a conversation with a man that might sound something like okay when we go to this range it's a bunch of very conservative people that don't want to be associated with paramilitary firearms or paramilitary activities so it's best if you just dress in something like jeans t-shirt flannel shirt and most of the time a man is going to comply with that you won't have any problems but when you go to the range with a man you always have the concerns of making sure he's following safety rules and making sure he's doing things correctly without damaging his ego now we talked about firearms with moderate report and manageable recoil but when a woman takes a man to the range even if he is an absolute novice very commonly a man doesn't want to start with a 22. he wants to jump right to the 44 or the 50 or whatever it is you brought and so the first time you go to the range you might want to leave the heavier stuff at home only bring the light stuff and then depending on how he does with that bring to have yourself on a subsequent occasion or if on your first trip to the range you do bring the heavier stuff keep it put away he doesn't even know you have it let him shoot the lighter stuff and then depending on how he does you can move him up the food chain one of the problems that you might run into is that a man who is really a novice he has very little firearms experience and he goes to the range with a woman who has a lot of experience a lot of training she is or has been in the military and or a police officer or whatever sometimes women don't have any formal training they just have a lot of experience in hunting and shooting a good example is there's a lady that i've been to a lot of shooting competitions with as far as i know she has zero none no formal firearms training but she's shot in so many different competitions and done so much hunting over the years she has a great deal of expertise the number of competitions she's won she has so many medals and plaques and trophies i'm going to say she very possibly has more awards than i do she's someone has a great deal of expertise and someone like that will take a man to the range who is 30 years old and the last time he fired a firearm of any kind was when he was 13 years old in boy scouts and he got his shooting merit badge and yet he will come to the range and try to tell a woman like that how it's done he'll try to teach her something or at least he'll try to impress her with how much he knows instead of shutting up and getting some knowledge and information from her and in that situation a woman has to deal with that again trying not to bruise the fragile ego and you might end up in a conversation where a man's trying to shoot a handgun and the woman tells him okay hold it like so no i think i should hold it this way just try it my way and see how it works no i know which way i need to do it even though he may have never fired a handgun and you have to deal with that preferably in escalating ways don't start out telling him he's an idiot start out trying to help and there is when subtle ways don't work a technique that i have used on many occasions that is very effective but it comes at a cost now let me give you an example i've been in the marine corps and i've been in the army and so i'll have a conversation with somebody about the rank structures of the two different services and i'll say something like okay in the army an e6 is a staff sergeant and the marine corps in e6 is a staff sergeant in the army and e7 is a sergeant first class in the marine corps and e7 is a gunnery sergeant commonly called a gunny and someone will tell me no it isn't that's not the way it works and then i use this technique okay anybody here who's ever actually been in the marine corps raise their hand just me then how about i'll tell you how it works that is a very effective technique now to put that to our situation of a woman taking the novice man to the range hold the handgun like this no i know how i need to do it okay anybody around here who has won over a hundred medals plaques and trophies for shooting raise their hand oh just me fifty one still just me then how about i'll tell you how it works that is a very effective training technique and it will shut people up quick the problem is that it can also really hurt someone's ego and so if you are a woman who wants this man to become your boyfriend you may have lowered the chances of that happening now point four knowing when to call it a day that applies when a woman is taking a man to the range but it sometimes will manifest itself in different ways and sometimes has to be dealt with differently if you're out in adverse weather conditions and you told him what the weather conditions were going to be and you told him what the appropriate attire was and he ignored you and now he's wet and or cold he knows that that was stupid when you see that he's wet and or cold and you suggest it's time to call it a day don't remind him of how stupid he was for not listening to you he already knows that another thing that is an indicator that it's time to quit for the day is when the man is becoming very frustrated he's tried to shoot whatever firearm and he's gotten a terrible group you've given him corrective action he has a terrible group give him more corrective action he still has a terrible group and now he is very frustrated and very angry you have to recognize that you have to deal with it and you have to suggest that it's time to quit for the day but what you don't want to do is suggest that he has done something wrong or that he's being stupid or that he's being childish and you don't want to say well obviously you're angry and frustrated because you're just not getting it let's quit for the day that's not constructive remember we're talking about the subject of a woman taking a man to the range when she is involved with that man and we presume wants to remain involved with him or perhaps she wants to become involved with him now although his anger and frustration might be an indicator that you want to change that idea of wanting to become involved with him still a more constructive way to deal with that instead of telling him that he's just not getting it might be to say something along the lines of hey i can only shoot so much in one day and i'm pretty well maxed out and it looks like you are too and besides that i'm getting hungry you ready to call it a day more constructive there's one more thing i want to cover before we call it a day when you're the more experienced shooter taking the less experienced shooter to the range you have to make sure that you bring eye protection and ear protection for them now this is an ear plug case i wear ear plugs with every shot i take and i find that these orange foam squishy earplugs are readily available inexpensive and very effective i also find that when i'm taking a man to the range and i show him just roll these up like this stick them in your ear that about 90 plus percent of men can do that with no problem however women a very high percentage of the time have difficulty getting these things in their ears not because they're doing it wrong just because they don't fit very well so if you're a woman taking a man to the range get some orange foam squishy earplugs they're great if you're a man taking a woman to the range earphones are probably a better choice so as always don't try this at home on what you call a professional and thanks for watching the taking your girlfriend or taking your boyfriend to the range video you

Channel: Paul Harrell

Views: 193,138

Rating: 4.968287 out of 5

Keywords: paul harrell, paul harrell gun range, paul harrell girlfriend, paul harrell boyfriend, taking your girlfriend to the range, taking your boyfriend to the range, first time at range girlfriend, first time at range boyfriend

Id: itRNJ3SmEYE

Length: 32min 32sec (1952 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 05 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/DrSandbags]

Taking my girlfriend to the range to teach her stuff is always an incredible chore since the factory did not install the "movable fingers" option.

[u/diphrael]

"OF COURSE I have a girlfriend. Who do you think designed the new and improved high tech fleece bullet stop?"