Ways To Spend A Rainy Afternoon

There are many different ways you could spend a rainy afternoon.

You could curl up with a good book.

The rain on the roof could make a nap even more enjoyable.

Or, you could shoot a full-auto Thompson submachine gun.

This past Wednesday, Sean Sorrentino and I did the last on the list. Thanks to one of Sean's readers, artist Guy Smalley, we had a great time with Guy's Thompson Model 1928 W.H. We also shot a number of other rifles and pistols but the Thompson was the highlight of the afternoon. You can see Guy holding his Thompson with its 50-round drum magazine below. Sean has posted a video of him loading the drum magazine. Through the wonders of editing, it came out OK despite me being the one taking the video.

Due to the weight of the Thompson plus the Cutts compensator, the Thompson at full auto is very controllable. The muzzle didn't rise that much and it was very easy to keep on target regardless of whether you were firing in short bursts or letting it run.

Some of the other firearms we had available to shoot range from Sean's Templar Custom AR-15 to my IBM M-1 Carbine to a whole ton of Guy's firearms. You can see some of the assortment in the next two pictures.

Table 1

Table 2

Unfortunately, we didn't have time enough to fire everything but we did get to fire quite an assortment.

We ended the afternoon firing Guy's AR-50 .50 BMG rifle. The muzzle break reduced the felt recoil tremendously. It kicked less than the Mosin-Nagant Model 44 pictured above. They both tore some big divots into the hillside in which we were shooting.

One of the more interesting aspects of the afternoon is that Guy and I live less than a 5 minute drive apart but had never met before even though we live in a little town. I think we'll be doing some more shooting together in the future.

I want to thank both Sean and Guy for providing great company on a wet afternoon.