Chief reporter Peter Bingham has his day - maybe his whole week - made.
--------------------
The man was dressed in black: black shirt, black jeans, black shoes and dark, wrap-around sunglasses. He spoke softly and made sense.
rolex replicaThen he pulled his .357 Magnum.
"Do you want a go," he asked.
"Go ahead. Make my day," I snapped back. (It's a line I've waited 26 years to use in a story.)
Clint Eastwood made the words famous as Dirty Harry in the 1983 movie Sudden Impact as he confronted a baddie with his weapon of choice, a Smith and Wesson .44 Magnum.
This scenario was far less sinister. The venue was the New Plymouth Pistol Club's headquarters, nestled in a dip north of Bell Block on State Highway 3.
Ian, the man behind the silver- barrelled Magnum, is happy to interrupt a training session for this week's national championships at Taupo to explain the life and times of a pistol shooter.
But he'll only talk if we agree to keep names and faces out of it. That's to deter the nongs in society from tracing a member's address and possibly swiping his firearms.
"We have to be pretty careful," he said. "There are very strict rules associated with security, but that wouldn't stop some people from trying to thieve them."
Fair enough, but the attraction of owning a pistol that can only ever be fired on a range eludes some law- abiding people.
"For me, it's the wide variety of disciplines it offers. My preference is for the service pistol (Magnum) which (in the US) was used by the army, navy, airforce, FBI, DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) - you name it, they used it."
He readily admits bias, but claims the service pistol competition is the toughest of all.
replica rolex"If you are good at this, you will generally be good at all others. You shoot lying down, sitting, standing, left- and right- handed and from the hip, all from different ranges. You fire 90 rounds. Each is worth 10 points, so it's out of 900 (total points). Come back when you've finished your tour of the range and I'll give you a go."
Club secretary Ron shows us each of the nine ranges that have been built up over the years. A couple have curious titles, such as The Doll's House and the Cowboy Range. The former is a series of rooms where the drill is to open each door, identify the targets, fill them full of holes and move on to the next. All this is done against the clock, with seconds available to hit the target in each of the six rooms.
A visit to the Cowboy Range brings out the Wyatt Earp in me.
"You get to use three different firearms in this area. The shotgun's here (fired at targets through the window of a mock saloon), the hand gun here (steel discs in the open air) and a lever gun here (through the window of the undertaker's)," Ron said.
Adam is waiting at the next range with his Glock.
"It's basically a plastic gun (a polymer-type material) and is indestructible, really. It takes all types of ammo, can be dropped, pulled out of water and is still remarkably reliable."
Ron's baby is a 9mm Beretta.
"The American marines have got 350,000 Berettas just like this one," he said, taking it from a leather pouch
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