There are several ways to spend time with firearms in during this quarantine. I am going to mention some ideas and focus on one in today’s post.

First and foremost, most indoor ranges are closed. Mine happens to have both an indoor and (mostly) outdoor component. The pro shop is closed, but as long as you stick to your personal space rules, you can shoot at the rifle range, shotgun range or one of the numerous private bays.

Then, there is dry fire practice. That is pulling the trigger on an empty firearm (please make sure it is unloaded!). There are a number of drills that you can do to practice trigger control. I have heard that professional shooters spend as much time dry firing as they do actually shooting. Try using your offhand, I bet you can use some strength training.

Something I like to do is reload ammunition. Unfortunately, I have loaded all of my spare brass. I will do a future post about this. So not to much more today. With kids, decorate paper plates to be later used as targets. You can make them up and put them away to be shot at later. They can keep them when they are done too. Clean your guns or inventory model and serial numbers for insurance are some other ideas.

Finally, I wanted to talk about air gun shooting. I suppose that you could also do Airsoft (I don’t have any) as well. Be mindful that in a lot of jurisdictions it is illegal to discharge an air rifle. In my mind, if you do this with some degree of discretion, it can be done safely and under the radar.

Air rifle with pellet trap

This trap I built during the summer. It holds two bags of rubber mulch and is constructed of 3/4″ plywood. Shooting pellets, I was shooting straight through 3/8″ plywood and BB’s were tearing up the rest of it. This rifle can kill a 20lb animal. My point is just because it is an air rifle doesn’t mean that you don’t have to wear safety glasses or treat this tool seriously.

My intent was to set this up and fire 10 shots or so a day. That hasn’t turned into reality, but my son and I occasionally set it up and fire a few shots. I think that I would like to eventually buy a better rifle because pumping 6-8 times gets to be a drag as well.

When my brother and I were young, we liked to setup catalogs along the fence line and shoot at them. Then we would thumb through them and be silly about how each shot would hit the different pages incidentally. We also liked to shoot at reactive targets (filled with water, etc) but that can get a little messy if you are doing this inside.

Its fun – Be Safe.