I truly love my expensive, high-tech toys. (Kathy will bear patient witness to this
phenomenon.)
As I gaze over my rifle rack, my eye lights delightedly upon
the SciFi-like Steyr USR, which looks just like a Star Wars blaster ought to
look … shiny, long, swept-back and sleek.
My other 2nd Millennium toys are just as high-tech and post-Industrial-Revolution
looking: The FN P-90S is another of
those weapons which have been featured on SciFi Channel shows (excuse me: SyFy
Channel … WTF?) … made of polymers and
metal, and oddly shaped like a raygun probably will be in the not-too-distant
future. The DPMS Ar-15 looks just like
the familiar, lethal workhorse it has become on the battlefields of Iraq and
Afghanistan.
They’re enough to make even the most ardent firearms
antiquarian happy.
But, by God, there’s really something to be said for taking
the Old Dogs out to the range and letting them bark. And that’s just what I did on this glorious
Fall day.
As I previously mentioned, the government-chartered Civilian
Marksmanship Program (http://www.odcmp.com/)
was founded in 1903 as part of the Defense Appropriations Act. The stated intent was to better prepare
American youth for military service in the event of callup, by training them
early in the fine arts of marksmanship.
That organization has gone through a couple of RE-organizations since
then, becoming a mostly-civilian run group.
But then, as today, one of the more popular parts of the
program is allowing American citizens, who are not legally prohibited from
doing so, to purchase military surplus rifles provided they belong to chartered
clubs who oversee their members’ shooting activities.
I got my CMP M-1 Garand a couple of months ago, and it has
been calling to me ever since … begging me to take it out to the range and let
it play. It was made in April, 1945, at
the Springfield Armory, and stands as one of the best rifles I own … even if it’s
so low-tech, it’s almost no-tech.
The Garand – called by Gen. George S. Patton “… the greatest
battle implement ever devised …” – is no petite firearm. In this age of lightweight polymer stocks and
light metal actions, this rifle is a tank.
Where my AR-15 is a mere 6-7 lbs fully loaded, the M-1 – at 11.6 lbs –
feels more like a sturdy artillery piece when shouldered.
The wooden stock is polished and darkened from gunpowder and
the sweat of multiple hands over the decades.
Some of the original bluing has worn off the gunmetal action.
But all these thoughts fade as the weapon snugs up against my
shoulder and I reach inside myself in the familiar meditative ritual. As I stare down the barrel at the target 100
yards distant, my eyes focus on the front sight. As the hubbub of the range recedes, the rifle’s rear sights, the target 100 yards
away, and the rest of the world go blurry.
Where normally I’d feel the weight of the firearm in my hands, I instead
feel only the lazy beat of my own heart. Instead of the loud kraaks from other shooters’ rifles, I hear my own muffled breathing
as my inner noise quiets down. It seemingly
takes forever and no time at all, before the Garand’s loud report startles me
out of my zone and the round is headed downrange.
Which is another thing to love about this old dog of a
rifle.
I went shooting with my brother-in-law Drew Masters, while I
was visiting on the East Coast recently.
Drew had recently obtained his own lever-action .30-30 rifle, and we
headed out to a nearby range to pound some rounds downrange. The .30-30 is such a light weapon, it has almost
no mass at all to absorb what becomes a rather vicious kick. Drew ended up the day with a large purple “range hickey” bruise on his right shoulder as a reward for
his efforts.
While the Garand is a far more massive weapon, firing a
bigger cartridge than the .30-30, its recoil is more of a powerful push than a
kick. With each round, your shoulder is
physically moved rearwards for several inches.
I mean, with other of my older rifles, like my 1943
Mosin-Nagant, your shoulder moves so much that your new best friend after shooting
is your chiropractor. The Garand is
nothing like that … you’re not hurting, even through you know you’ve been
kissed.
Maybe it’s the feel of the gunpowder darkened wood stock
under my hands, or the coppery tang of the cordite smell mixing with the gun
oil. Maybe it’s the feel of a perfectly designed shoulder
weapon… a weapon so perfectly designed it could only be improved by changing it
completely into something else. Maybe it’s
knowing that my father carried a rifle
just like this one through the jungle hells of New Guinea.
Whatever. Could be any or all of these things
But on a sunny, warm Fall day, taking the Big Dog out and
letting it play was perfect.
Just perfect.
