Christmas Eve Range Time

/ Richard R. Barron
Our Ruger 22/45 Target, Walther P22, and Ruger 22/45 Lite sit on the bench at our range in the back pasture this afternoon.
Our Ruger 22/45 Target, Walther P22, and Ruger 22/45 Lite sit on the bench at our range in the back pasture this afternoon.

I made time today to shoot a few of our firearms, including the NRA Special Edition Ruger Mark III 22/45 Lite I bought Abby for our 12th anniversary, my Ruger Mark III 22/45 Target pistol, and the Walther P22 I bought Abby for Christmas in 2009. I put about 140 rounds downrange, all .22LR, both to stay current and because it was an amazingly warm Christmas Eve day to be outside shooting. I had a lot of fun.

Afterwards I cleaned all three pistols. The Walther is easy to disassemble and reassemble, but the Rugers are notoriously difficult to reassemble, so much so that the Ruger Mark IV’s have been completely redesigned for one-button takedown and reassembly.

That said, getting the Mark III’s put back into working order isn’t undoable, as long as your learn and practice the tricks. You can find the full set of instructions elsewhere on the web (here, for example), though webizens have half a dozen or more slightly different versions of this. But I am here to encourage you that it’s not that hard to do. I got my pistols reassembled in just a few minutes.

This is how the Ruger Mark III's look once you have them field stripped.
This is how the Ruger Mark III’s look once you have them field stripped.

Also on my Christmas radar is the early morning launch tomorrow of the James Webb Space Telescope, the next generation deep-sky space telescope that will in some ways replace the Hubble Space Telescope. I have an alarm set to get up and watch the launch at 6:20 a.m. central time.

This is the Ruger 22/45 Target pistol, ready to shoot.
This is the Ruger 22/45 Target pistol, ready to shoot.