Went to Knight Shooting Sports last night with some friends from work. Had a wonderful time, even thought I lost about 60% of my brass which to me is like gold. It was more of a chance to put a lot of lead down range rather than a well focused, target practice, but still sometimes you need to do that.

I came away with a few things

1. If you ever decide to build a shooting range, do not paint the walls and backstop black. You can't see where you're shooting if you use a black target.
2. H&K may hate me and think I suck, but the Heckler & Koch SL8 is a complete joy to shoot. Damn if that's not a comfortable rifle. In fact, it could have been a lot more comfortable since the cheek rest and butt are adjustable, but luckily for me the owner of it is about the same size so it worked out well.
3. The M1 Carbine .30 is one smooth shooting rifle. Butter smooth. And fairly accurate to boot.
4. The Sound & Fury loads for the .357Magnum puts a smile on the shooters face. The muzzle blast also tends to burn said face.
5. The M44 isn't as loud in a larger range. But it's still damned loud.
6. The size of the range appears to have no affect on how much punishment your shoulder takes from said M44.
7. Give me a Mossberg 500A with a rifled slug barrel, I can hit a quarter sized target at 10 yards multiple times.
8. Ammunition is getting ridiculously expensive. Thankfully I generally only have to buy .22LR which even with the price increases isn't terrible.
9. If you leave your red dot sight on for a week, it won't work when you go to show it off.
10. It is un-possible to be stressed after firing ... lessee... one...two... carry the four... square root of pi... 11 different firearms.
11. Apparently it is not a good idea to eat BBQ at 8:00 PM. Gun ranges should have a snack bar.