I had a few days to kill in Beijing prior to my trip to North Korea, so before leaving the United States I started researching some of the sites I wanted to visit. I knew that I couldn’t miss the typical Beijing tourist attractions such as Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, but I also wanted to get out of the city and see the Great Wall, so I began perusing the websites of travel agencies that offered excursions to various sections of the Great Wall. Most of the tours consisted of a half day trip to a section of the Great Wall followed by a tour of the Ming Tombs or Summer Palace. Now, no offense to anyone who is a diehard fan of Chinese history, but neither of those sites sounded particularly appealing to me. After further searching, however, I came across a tour that was well-suited to my interests: The Beijing Target Shooting & Great Wall Day Tour. A full day of history and firearms. How brilliant is that? Now, some people might scoff at my choice of visiting a shooting range in China when we have multitudes of them in the U.S., but as you will see, this is not your typical shooting range.

My guide and driver picked me up from my hotel on a chilly and damp morning in September. Since my flight had only just arrived in Beijing the prior afternoon, I was still a bit jet-lagged and groggy, which is the ideal condition when handling firearms or attempting a very steep hike. My guide, however, was very talkative and prevented me from drifting off to sleep as we sat in the infamous Beijing traffic.

“So,” I asked her, “do you often take tourists to the shooting range?”

“Yes,” she replied “but they are usually men.”

“Ah.”

I soon realized that I was probably the first solo female that she had taken out to the shooting range, because she seemed totally puzzled as to why I would want to go there.

“Lindsay, do you shoot guns in the U.S.?”

“Yeah, I shoot a few times a month.”

“Do many girls shoot guns in the U.S.?”

“Sure. I know a lot of girls that like to shoot.”

“Do you have guns in your home?”

“Yeah, I’ve got a few.”

Each answer was met with a look of bewilderment. China has some of the strictest gun control laws in the world. Private ownership is banned, and the few public shooting ranges are prohibitively expensive for the average Chinese citizen. The idea of owning a firearm and taking it out to the range on a beautiful weekend day to shoot targets with friends is something that is completely alien to my guide and driver.

We finally arrived at the “Small Arms Mobilization Center”, a decrepit military facility an hour’s drive from Beijing, and after a rail-thin soldier in crisp military attire performed a quick ID check, we proceeded onward to the shooting range.

The People’s Liberation Army welcomes you!

Mao loves guns

One of the range employees led me into a room lined with glass display cases full of rifles and handguns. In the center of the room was a display of various machine guns, rocket propelled grenade launchers, and mortars. She followed me as I walked around the room, noting my weapons preferences on a sheet of paper.

“I’ll take 30 rounds on this…and 30 rounds on this.”

I felt like a kid in a candy store.

You can shoot any of these. Some can be rather expensive.

After choosing my sample of firearms, we hopped in an old army jeep and headed out to the firing line. Unfortunately, cameras were prohibited out there so I was unable to take any photos of the range or myself handling the firearms. Disappointing, yes, but I’m not one to argue with Chinese army policy.

Surprisingly, I was the only foreigner there. I thought there would at least be a handful of us, but the only other customers were some wealthy Chinese tourists. They entertained themselves with shooting trap and handguns; I had the entire rifle section to myself. I thought it was a bit odd. Why limit yourself to the dainty little pistols when you have so many powerful firearms to choose from?

The range staff consisted of young guys dressed in olive drab fatigues. Bizarrely, their uniforms had an American flag patch sewn on the shoulder. They handed me eye/ear protection, loaded each firearm, placed it on the table in front of me, and provided a running commentary on my shooting skills. “Too high. Good. Good.” I shot an AK-47, Type 81 light machine gun, and the QBZ-95. The QBZ-95 was an interesting gun. It’s the standard assault rifle for the People’s Liberation Army, and was incredibly light with very little recoil. My favorite, however, was the light machine gun. The 30 rounds in the magazine went quickly, and when I turned around I was surprised to see 20 Chinese tourists standing behind me. Apparently they found a Yankee girl blasting away with a Chinese machine gun to be quite amusing. Glad I could provide them with some entertainment.

As I was leaving, one of the staff members lifted up a corner of a tarp covering a large, bulky object.

”Do you want to try the tank?”

As exciting as that sounded, it would set me back over a hundred bucks.

”Maybe next time, dude.”

My accuracy with the AK-47 needs a bit of work.

The rest of the photos are here. If you’re headed to Beijing and are interested in the Great Wall/Shooting Range excursion, you can book it through tour-beijing.com.

Yeah, I told you I was hooked on this new hobby, didn’t I? A couple of weeks ago I picked up my new shotgun, a 12 gauge Beretta 3901 Target RL. The best thing about purchasing a firearm in Virginia is that you can take it home that very day, unlike in California, where I had to wait 10 days to pick up my old Soviet rifles. WTF, Golden State?

I’ve taken it out a couple of times over the past few weeks and it has performed admirably. And by that, I mean my scores have improved significantly. Of course, that is also due to the additional lesson I took last month so now have a much better idea of what, exactly, I am supposed to be doing.

Below are a few photos from this past weekend when Wayne, Olga, and I headed out to the Bull Run Shooting Center on a beautiful fall day.

Yeeeah, I don’t mean to brag, but I beat all these dudes. OK, I guess that is bragging.

PULLLLL!!

Broke it.

Unfortunately, I forgot my camo hat at home

I love this commercial.

After doing so poorly at skeet shooting in Illinois, I decided I needed some proper instruction in the finer parts of shooting a moving target with a giant gun, so back in June some friends and I took the “Learn to shoot” class at the Bull Run Shooting Center in Centreville, VA (does that qualify as real Virginia?). If you live in the DC area and have any desire to learn how to trap shoot, I highly recommend the class. Here are a few photos from that shooting session. I went back a few weeks later to shoot a few rounds with Wayne and Olga and even bought a fancy Browning shooting vest (I desperately needed the recoil pad insert, and the giant pockets to hold the shells). I gotta say I am pretty hooked on this new hobby. Now I just have to purchase my own shotgun. I guess that’s an important thing to own, or whatev.

Me

Laura

Liz

Nick

Olga

Wayne

I flew back to Southern Illinois over Memorial Day to visit my relatives and celebrate my cousin Katie’s graduation from high school. On Saturday morning some of us went skeet shooting at the World Shooting & Recreational Complex in Sparta.

The complex is so big that my uncle has a “gun cart” to get around it. As you can see, it holds shotguns instead of golf bags.

Katie and I

And with my brother, uncle, and dad.

That was the first time I’ve been skeet shooting and it was really fun, despite the fact that I only managed to hit one clay pigeon. I’ve found a place out here in Northern Virginia that has shotgun sports, so I think I’ll take a lesson there in June. Maybe then I can hit two clay pigeons.

This past Sunday I went shooting with my cousin Jason and his friend Danielle. I purchased a Mosin Nagant M91/30 back in July 2004 but never got a chance to test it out because I moved to London shortly thereafter.

We headed out to the canyons past Thousand Palms – public land where you are allowed to target shoot. There wasn’t much in the way of targets, but someone did spray paint a giant blue man on a piece of plywood and place it on the side of the mountain, so it was kinda like shooting at a giant smurf.

Taking aim at the giant smurf

The Mosin was just as I expected – LOUD (yes, I had ear protection), with a nice kick, but damn that bolt can be a real pain in the ass sometimes. I really had to smack the bolt pretty hard to eject the spent shell casing.

After I went through my box of Winchester 7.62x54r ammo, I tried out the guns that Jason brought along: two shotguns and a Glock handgun.

The shotguns were fun to shoot

I also purchased a Mosin M44 back in November 2005, but haven’t had a chance to disassemble it and clean off all the cosmoline gumming up the parts because I left the gun at my parent’s house in California when I moved to DC.

The M44 with permanently attached bayonet

I had a lot of fun shooting that day, and I’m definitely hooked on the Mosins. I’ve got to find myself a few Mosins and shooting range out here on the east coast. DC has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation, though, so I’m not quite sure how I would go about purchasing firearms in Maryland or Virginia (certainly there aren’t any gun stores within DC city limits) when I’m a DC resident. I’m pretty sure I can do that, but prior to do that I have to go down to DC police headquarters and apply for some pain in the ass registration certificate for every firearm I buy. Whatev, maybe I’ll just wait until I move somewhere else.

(Post title is from “Glorified G” by Pearl Jam, of course)

The 10 day waiting period is over, and I have picked up my Mosin Nagant! Here it is:

In my opinion, the most interesting aspect of this rifle is the information located on the receiver, which is pictured below:

A quick glance at the receiver tells me that this rifle was produced in 1942, a year that is well known in WWII history due to the bloody fighting that occurred at Stalingrad. The lack of a smooth finish on the receiver also indicates that the arsenal was using various production shortcuts in order to get the rifles to the soldiers at the front as quickly as possible. At the bottom of the receiver is an imprint of an arrow inside a triangle. This indicates that the rifle was produced at the Izhevsk arsenal, which is situated in the foothills of the Ural mountains. The serial number of this rifle is “K3 4577.” The “3″ is actually the Cyrillic character that is equivalent to the “Z” in the Latin alphabet, so the serial number can be translated as “KZ 4577.” At the top of the receiver is the Soviet hammer and sickle enclosed in a wreath. There are a few more marks on this rifle, but I’m not sure what they mean so I will have to research them further.

This rifle is truly a beautiful piece of history, and will look even better once I clean all the Soviet grease off of it. Now, if only this weapon could talk! Did it see action at Stalingrad, Kursk, or Kiev? Perhaps its previous owner participated in the capture of Berlin? Unfortunately, we’ll never know. In the future, I would like to purchase a few more Mosins…I really want one that was produced before the Revolution, and an M44 would be nice, too.

Also, I need to put my Mosin somewhere…it’s just sitting in the corner of my room. I would like to hang it on the wall, but my mom isn’t too keen on that idea. Oh well.

More photos of my Mosin here.

OMG! I bought a gun!

Yes, it’s true! Yesterday I purchased a true piece of history – a Russian Mosin Nagant M-91/30 rifle. The M-91/30 was the standard infantry rifle of the Soviet Army in the Great Patriotic War (known to us Americans as World War II). Due to California gun laws, I have to wait 10 days before I can bring it home, therefore I will not have any pictures of it posted here until July 10. Here’s a picture of someone else’s Mosin, though:

Kat went with me to buy it, and it turned out that the salesman was a former classmate of ours from St. Theresa School. How random is that??? Anyways…

A brief history of the M-91/30:
In the years following the Civil War the Red Army wanted a standardized weapon for their troops. This was due to the fact that dozens of different weapons were in use following the Civil War and keeping them all supplied with ammunition was very difficult. A committee began work on modernizing the M-1891 in early 1924. The first trial weapons were made in 1927. The final design was adopted in on 10 June 1930, by the head of the Red Army’s armaments department Ieronim Uborevich.

With the outbreak of hostilities with the German Army in 1941, weapons production became the focus of Soviet industry. In this regard the M-91/30 proved to be the most widely manufactured Soviet weapon of the war. More than 12 million rifles and carbines were made in Izhevsk and Tula during the war.
By the end of the war over 17,475,000 M-91/30 rifles had been manufactured.