I’m in the process of getting rid of the various accumulations of the last half-century of my career, finally tossing old TV audition tapes, show reels, newspaper clippings and all the assorted mementos of a life in the media. It’s not easy.
Despite a memory that can forget half of a four-item grocery list, I still remember pull quotes of interviews from decades ago. Mine’s the type of memory that attaches emotionally to otherwise unremarkable stuff. That makes purging problematic.
My purge includes my gun safe(s). Not just moving guns around, actually sending most of them to new homes. I’m struggling, despite realizing that we never really own guns, we’re only caretakers. Properly cared for, they’ll be around long after I’m not. Many of mine have had several prior owners.
My recent trip to Range Ready in Louisiana helped me refocus on some guns I really like, not those I “might shoot one day.” The Louisiana event was “Plinkapalooza,” a celebration of rimfire designed to remind invited media types that rimfire is where the love of shooting originates. Plinkapalooza delivered.
Thousands of rounds of .22 LR, .22 Magnum and .17HMR were fired at targets reminiscent of the long-gone shooting galleries of my youth. Ringing steel, popping powder-filled balloons, shooting PEZ candies, and exploding targets reminded me of why I started shooting…it was fun. And rimfire was — and still is — affordable.
Plinkapalooza was a reminder that gun writers focus too much on the latest and greatest stuff. We don’t pay nearly enough attention to the guns that helped introduce most of us to shooting: rimfires.
Plinkapalooza re-focused me on the fun of shooting. The pure joy of ringing steel or popping balloons or hitting candies with guns that don’t punish me with recoil, stun me with concussion, or impoverish me with the cost of ammunition.
It was also a reminder shooting isn’t just serious business and I’m neither a stealthy ninja killer nor a sheepdog protecting the flock. I’m just an older guy reconnecting with the childlike fun of shooting.
Rimfires aren’t as cheap as they were when I was a kid, but gasoline isn’t twenty-three cents per gallon either. Times have changed and so have the guns, the ammunition and the accessories. But the fun’s still there.
The majority of the guns we shot were fitted with Banish suppressors from Silencer Central. Everyone agrees suppression is terrific for heavy calibers. With rimfires it’s magical. Shooting a suppressed Smith & Wesson FPC carbine the loudest sound I heard wasn’t the crack of the round, it was the trigger reset. Throughout Plinkapalooza, suppression was so good that unsuppressed S&W .22LR revolvers sounded like heavy calibers by comparison.
The ability to actually hear steel react added to the fun of challenge targets like Caldwell’s KYL (Know Your Limits), “flashers” ( Caldwell’s Flash Bang AR500 steel target hit indicators) added visual stimulus to ringing their steel targets. Seeing a flasher illuminate after a 100-yard it on their 33% deer target – with a handgun I can’t yet talk about – wasn’t just gratifying, it was great fun. And fun in shooting isn’t a bad thing. We sometimes forget that.
In classroom sessions, The Kinetic Group’s J.J. Reich reminded us that the vast selection of .22 rimfire rounds today don’t mean the diminutive cartridge is only for plinking. Like any firearm, it has the ability to do serious damage, despite being tons of fun to shoot.
Seeing what a plinking round did in ballistic gel brought that fact home. While thousands of rounds reminded me of the joy of shooting, seeing the impact of Federal Premium’s .22 Punch, a 29-grain, nickel plated, flat-nosed .22 LR bullet zipping along at 1080fps, reminded me it’s still very much a weapon.
But it wouldn’t have been a true media event if we didn’t get to see – and shoot – guns that are either custom or not-yet-available to the general public. The rifles and pistols from Volquartsen are true, hand-fitted, highly smithed guns that are actually affordable…at least when compared to heavier calibers. Smith & Wesson’s Victory .22s with carbon fiber barrels and high-end accessories are also serious competition contenders.
But a brand normally thought of for affordability also held its own. Rifles from Savage Arms weren’t just affordable, they were dead-nuts accurate. Unfortunately, I can’t talk about their newest entries into the .22 rimfire category, but shooters will find them attractive (we’ll keep you posted).
Plinkapalooza was an opportunity to see new products, visit with some friends and, more importantly, reconnect with the fun of shooting. It was also a reminder for all of us that “plinking” can preserve and improve all-too-perishable shooting skills. None of those are bad things.
As always, we’ll keep you posted.