getting hardware and wetware up to speed

As I am sure you all are aware at this point, I recently came into possession of my very own M1A SOCOM II. I have been wanting a rifle for a while now, and this rifle in specific for not much shorter, so it is kind of nice to finally have one sitting around the apartment.
The problem is that it has been doing just that – sitting. Granted, I have been away from my apartment, and therefore the rifle, for a little while now, and will not be getting back to it for a few more days, but the fact of the matter is that I need to do some exercising with it, and of it. I fully plan on going to the range a few days after I get back in town, and have a few thoughts in consideration of that.
First, the new addition to the family needs something to be carried around in. Here in Kalifornistan, carrying an exposed firearm is probably not beneficial to your health. The unfortunate thing about rifles, though, is that there are almost more cases for long guns than there are cases for handguns. You have your softsides, your covert cases, your hard sides, your airline-approved hardsides, your softsides-that-turn-into-shooting-mats, your multi-gun combinations of all of the above… Urg, the list goes on.
I confess the idea of a gun case that turns into a shooting mat was appealing to me, until I sat down and thought it through thoroughly. First, the mat is generally smaller than most other shooting mats – about 48 inches, on average. Being about 74 inches in length myself, that is a wee bit small. Second, I always have liked things that do multiple things at once, but always wonder if those combined abilities are accomplished at the detriment to each other. Third, I am not sure they are worth the cost – they are two to three times as expensive as your average softside case. Sure, you get a shooting mat out of the process, but a piece of carpet remnant would work just as well for that purpose. Fourth, most of them are not lockable – a potential future concern. Now, do not get me wrong, the Stryker Rig, produced by Tac-Force is a damned fine-looking piece of equipment, but while I would like a shooting mat for eventual outdoor shooting, I do not think this is the best/most cost-effective route to secure one.
As for hardsides, I do not see the need. They are not like my pistol hardside case that allows me to carry all of my various pistol accessories and materials – in fact, most can only carry just the gun. Additionally, I probably will not be flying with this thing… well… ever, and since most of my transporting of the firearm will simply be to and from a range, a softside would certainly be easiler to lug around, and definitely to store.
So, to get to the point, the case currently at the top of my list is a case produced by Leapers and sold by Cheaper Than Dirt. The 42 inches of lateral space should be sufficient for my 37.5 inch rifle (there is a 38 inch version, but I think I want more than half an inch of play), and I like the styling – seems like it would offend the sheeple a lot less than one of those evil black bag things. And on the days when I want some serious shooting, it can port both my rifle and pistol, and mags. Oh, and it can be locked. Meets all of my admittedly basic requirements. If you have any better suggestions, though, feel free to let me know.
Alright, so we now almost have a way to get the firearm in the door (still need to actually order it). What is next? Ahh, yes, sighting the thing in. This rifle opens up a whole new door for me – adjustable sights. My Baby Eagle is a standard-use, fixed-sights pistol, intended for dumbarses like me to be able to get it on target without too many moving parts and complications in the matter. M1A’s, being based off M-14s as they are, allow for a little more customization, especially since they have to take into account range. Namely, the forward sight is adjustable if you loosen the screw holding it place with an Allen wrench. Though some instructions indicate one should try and center the sight yourself before sighting in the rifle, I think I might just give Springfield the benefit of the doubt and assume they knew how to stick the sight on. In any case, we are talking milimeters, if not micrometers, and I am not sure if my eyes are that good.
Regardless, the back sight is completely adjustable for elevation and windage. Sure, we are talking 1 Minute Of Angle clicks, which is far from being sufficient for the hardcore rifleman, but it is still significantly more than I had. Expert or no, the rifle can take into account the range of the target (after all, high-speed or not, rifle bullets are still affected by gravity), and any crosswinds (assuming you are intelligent enough to do those kinds of calcuations on the fly, or know how to adjust for sighting shots). At any rate, one of the things that can be quite useful when sighting in a firearm is a stable platform from which to fire it, and for most people, that is not just your hands. Our bodies shake, and the point of a sighting is to shoot as accurately as absolutely possible, not just humanly possible. That way, when you miss in the future, you know it is your fault, and not the hardware.
When it comes to stable platforms, you have two choices. First, you have shooting rests, which can range from a tightly-rolled sleeping bag, to little more than a padded cushion on top of a midget tripod, to full-blown, holds-the-entire-rifle, adjusts-every-little-detail, weighted sleds that require you to just… well… pull the trigger. The only catch with these is that they are not remarkably portable. Stable as hell, yeah, but they do not fit in your back pocket, nor do they attach to your firearm. Enter bipods. These things have been around about as long as gunpowder-powered slugthrowers have been… especially since the first version of a man-portable “rifle” was hardly portable, and not at all rifled. They range from little more to two sticks tied together and your rifle resting in the angle, to some of the most expensive pieces of metal and plastic you can find short of buying a whole new firearm. Right now, I am eyeing up a Harris 9″-13″ Swivel Bipod, and its according adapter so it can mate up to my SOCOM II’s ventral Picatinny rail, but as always, I am open to suggestions. Unfortunately, this particular widget is a little expensive, but Harris receives positive reviews across the board, and when it comes to resting my even-more-expensive firearm on something, I think I can live with a little quality for my money.
Alright, so we have a rifle, a means of transporting it, and a system to ensure it is functioning at peak accuracy (or as much as I can adjust it to be)… That leaves only me. What knowledge do I have with rifles, and where do my skills lie?
Well, suffice to say, it is limited – a considerable factor into my reasoning behind purchasing this thing. In reality, my only real rifle experience was about a year’s worth of shooting air rifle competitively in college. The rifles we shot were extraordinarily expensive (even moreso than my current SOCOM, if I recall), but were single-shot, compressed-air-powered pellet guns. Kinda like those Daisy things kids had way back when, and still do, so far as I know. Underneath the barrel was a 1.5″ by 10″ (give or take a little) cylinder holding compressed CO2, and you loaded up your little teeny lead pellet before each shot, got on sight with standard ghost-ring-and-post sights, squeezed the trigger, and did it all over again. Granted, the target was a scant 10 yards or so away, but the 10 “ring” was a dot, and each successive ring was only about a centimeter farther out. But plinking pellets is not shooting an actual rifle – no recoil, different weight, different clothing (yeah, I wore the whole leather shooter’s jacket, and boy did it help), etc. So how am I going to get better?
Well, the obvious answer is getting out there, shooting, missing, learning why I missed, and fixing it. However, oftentimes, that can lead to nothing more than reinforcing the same bad habits, since sometimes you will not know the cause of the malfunction, or just not be motivated entirely to fix it. As one could probably expect, there are a variety of solutions to this kind of problem.
First off, and most expensively, you have organizations like Front Sight that offer specialized courses in just about every firearm discipline there is – pistol, rifle, shotgun, etc.; along with specialization in each one, such as defensive pistol, precision rifle, and more. The drawback to these things is that they are inordinately expensive (ranging anywhere from $500 to $8000, depending on the length and type of class), and are generally only offered during the week, necessitating the ability to take time off from work. Granted, for some people, getting that amount of time of fis as easy as simply asking for it, but I am not quite that lucky, nor am I lucky enough to have that amount of disposeable income just sitting around.
Enter something called “Project Appleseed“. What is this organization, you ask? Well, I will let their own writings speak for them in in this instance:

What is Project Appleseed?
It’s a program designed to train people in basic rifle marksmanship using rack-grade rifles and surplus ball ammo; as well as a program to revitalize the tradition of the Rifleman. Once you become a Rifleman, you’ll be able to, with an iron-sighted rack-grade rifle, make head shots at 250 yards, and body hits at 500 yards — all as a result of the 25m marksmanship training you’ll receive at an Appleseed shoot, followed by battlesight zeroing at 300 yards.

What’s your real agenda?
We seek to do three things: teach marksmanship and respect for the tradition of such, and to preserve the knowledge of our Revolutionary War history. That’s all we’re about, plain and simple. We believe that if we teach it, it’ll wake our fellow Americans…and an awake America is an America that cannot be defeated. We want freedom to ring strong. We want Lady Liberty to be safe.

Marksmanship means more than accurate shooting. It means a love of liberty, a respect for our forefathers, and an acknowledgement of the debt of honor we owe to them. We believe this debt can never fully be paid back, but we believe that by keeping the faith and passing our teachings on it will certainly reflect our ability to pay what we can.

The upshot is that this is a group of largely-volunteers who either travel around the country, or assist from around the country, and offer weekend-long clinics in becoming a “Rifleman”. These clinics predominantly, from what I have seen, focus on shooting prone with slings, and make use of a specialized 25m target that can simulate targets ranging from 100 yards to the full 500 yards out. You can show up for one or both days of the clinics, and they run from $45 (for one day) to $70 (for both) in cost – with military/Guard/Reservist members, and under-21-year-olds attending for free. And before you get too concerned, any and all firearms are accepted at the firing line – all calibers, all designs, all sights, all styles. The only real details are that you will be firing and reloading rapidly, so bolt-actions may not be the best idea, and that you need to be familiar enough with it to shoot it, reload it, and service it rapidly. As mentioned, you need a sling as well, but they do not permit the use of bipods – the premise is to teach you the basics before you go making use of technology, and a well-tightened sling is almost as good as a bipod when it comes to stabilizing your firearm. Furthermore, if you are intersted in becoming an instructor yourself, you can go to a five-day course, and learn far more about shooting than you ever would have previously wanted, in theory – after all, their volunteer instructors have to learn to teach somehow.
So… yeah. An organization of people interested solely in improving the shooting capacity of the American public, and willing to do it for effectively next to no cost. What is the downside? Well, unfortunately, they do not offer meets in Kalifornistan. The closest one would be in Boulder City, NV, which I suppose is not that far away, but is still not right next door. I have to wonder if they could make use of the Carrizo Creek Range, but I am not sure if it would be possible to set up an effective 25m range on its grounds. The second downside is their schedule… I do not think I will be able to make a meet this year. Doubt I would be up to actually shooting at a meet this year, regardless, but there are still so few Appleseed events, and they are still so spread out, it justis not going to work. The third glitch is that I have no faith whatsoever that my particular hardware can reach out and touch something, accurately, at 500 yards. Something about the SOCOM’s 16.25 inch barrel versus your standard M1A’s barrel length of 22 inches… Those extra six inches impart a lot of extra spin, a fair bit of extra force, and a lot of extra accuracy. However, I knew that when I purchased it, and it was not bought to reach out and touch someone at a quarter mile… hell, I cannot hardly see that far, much less hold anything stable enough to hit it. I was looking for something reasonably easy to wield, while still having a fair bit of power behind it. Oh, and Kalifornistan-legal was somewhat useful as well… a full-size M1A normally comes with a flash-suppressor on its barrel end – at least in free America. Here where the laws are stupid and the lawmakers are worse, it is replaced with a pointless barrel brake.
There we have it – transportation, perfecting the hardware, and trying to perfect the wetware. And more planning and plotting and schemeing. Yup, I be a bored little gun nut.