**Updated: now with 100% more recoil**

Yesterday, I got a phone call from Lissa, who told me she had just returned from the range and had fallen in love with a Sig P239. We shared squeees and range stories. Last weekend, Dr. Boyfriend and I took his WWII rifles to the range (I’ll update with pics later this evening, so please do check back tonight to see a video of me getting ROCKED by the Mosin Nagant!) We also talked grip and stance, and I utterly failed at describing my grip over the phone. Since it’s hard to disseminate a grip lesson via phone, I thought I’d post a video of the preferred practical defensive pistol grip, as taught by IPSC master Todd Jarrett. (I looked around for a good lesson on the modern isosceles stance, but couldn’t find one that I liked, so I guess I’ll have to make a video lesson at the range with my instructors and myself sometime. In the mean time, in this video, you can see Todd Jarret is seen taking this stance, and you’ll notice that his legs are not too far apart, he’s aggressively pushing the gun towards the target but his shoulders are not so far forward of his hips that he distorts his COM. He looks spry and light on his feet, not at all locked like the weaver stance.)

Thanks to Mr. and Mrs. Borepatch, as well as the rest of the Northeast Bloggers, for taking my girl to the range and encouraging her to shoot often. I’m wicked jealous that I have yet to shoot with Lissa and y’all have – twice now! (Funfact: Lissa and I met in highschool, on the track team, during a preseason drill in which we had to run across the gym while carrying eachother piggyback). Hope to join y’all one day.

Update:

As promised, here is me getting rocked by the Mosin Nagant. It was a nasty little – er- I mean big – bugger. And when it comes to big guns, I like a little roughness. I like a gun that requires a solid cheek and shoulder weld, one that give s my shoulder a good kick. I mean that: a good kick, not a horse kick, but I solid thrust. Like the .308 I shot, for example (seen HERE). The M1 Garand felt just like the .308 to me, in terms of the power it gave my body. It felt solid, and I absorbed the recoil nicely, much like I do with the .308. I liked it!

Me with the M1 garand

Yeah, I liked it a lot. I also liked the old-school leather arm-strap. Despite the fact that my arm went numb and the pinky nuckle on my left hand still feels a bit jarred, it was very effective and made for a comfortable best-rench accessory. Plus I felt kinda sexy with the gun firmly secured down the line by a leather strap firmly belting the barrel to my hand. I need to get me one of these – oh, wait, that’s right, I have 3 M1 garands already by association.

As for the Nagant, well, see for yourself. Here I am, trying my darndes to coax the recoil into zen oneness with cheek and shoulder weld. … but the damn thing wouldn’t have any of that:

done

Vinnie, you were pretty much spot on when you said the Nagant is more of a chiropractor. I had to have to my neck reset shortly after firing the sonofabitch (though I was already having neck issues prior to but now fixed due to the good work of Dr. Shiglay and a new isotonic pillow, but the rifle certainly added to the severity of the problem).

To go with the surplus rifle, we were shooting surplus ammo. Courtesy of the commies. Here’s what they were firing in ‘54, so it appears:

It was still kinda fun to shoot the Mosin Nagant, despite the neck pain that came later, because the rifle is taller than me (with the bayonet):