[TunnelRat]

I want to start this with a story. This passed Saturday I was at the range. Upon arrival I noticed a couple, man and his wife or girlfriend, shooting. I put my gear down and started getting ready. I noticed they were wearing matching SIG Sauer hats and had matching SIG P226 Elite Darks with 22 LR converserion kits. Going off of MSRP we're talking $1218 per gun plus $285 for each conversion kit. That's just over $3000 worth of guns, again MSRP so actual price was likely less. My guess is they had just taken a SIG Sauer class at the Academy, hence the hats and gear.

To the man and his companion's credit they were good beginners. Definitely passed novice but not overly experienced. I noticed they had numerous failure to ejects. Apparently no one at the Academy told them that those conversion kits require good quality 22 ammo, not the cheap stuff they were shooting. Still they cleared the malfunctions just fine.

The first warning bell happened when I was loading a magazine between firing. Suddenly the woman yells out that she's going down range and just starts walking out from behind the firing line. Now my firearms were on the table but this woman had no idea from where she was if they were clear and made no effort to check that they were. This is a safety issue. The man made no effort to check on me either. I imagine that whatever course they had taken had a range safety officer that did this for them, but that's not the real world. People can be idiots and people make mistakes, you should always get a verbal confirmation, and a visual one if you can manage it, before going downrange.

The next oddity came from watching them change targets. I watched as time and time again they took down brand new Shoot-N-See reactive targets that had all of 1 magazine shot through them (shooting 22 this leaves a lot of the target left). For people not in the know these are peel and stick targets that are reactive so that when you shoot them they leave bright yellow circles around the hole (heat reactive paint). They are very good for figuring out where you're hitting. They come with little pasties, small maybe inch circles, that are also reactive. You cover up the holes with the pasties and keep shooting. It makes up for the targets costing a good 10 times that of paper targets. I looked at the table and saw a stack of the backings for the targets with all the pasties attached. I looked over at the man and asked him out of curiosity, "Do you prefer not to use the pasties?" He looks down at the backings for a second, pauses, then looks up at me and says, "For what I paid for these targets I don't really care." Now I'm not poor and I'm not rich, but that's basically throwing money away. I realized this guy was either rich that he really didn't care, or didn't even realize that was what those little circles were for. I will say that he suddenly started using them the next time he changed targets.

Lastly the man and his companion started getting ready to leave. The man informed me, "We'll leave our hearing protection on so you can keep shooting." I would hope he would, as it is in the rules and general common sense, but I got the impression he was doing me a favor. His companion came over and politely asked me what I was shooting. I explained to her and she nodded pleasantly. The man looked like he couldn't care less. They were obviously not SIGs and thus not interesting to him. This is sort of funny as I had a good $2500 in guns on me.

Anyway they leave and the woman says goodbye, man nods in my direction. Upon leaving myself I realize that the two of them had put out both the rifle range and archery range flags on the flagpole. I don't know why they thought they had to put out two flags, it's not a signal core, but I guess they saw both and put both out there.

So what's my point? This isn't really a new thing. The same situation has essentially happened before, and always with shooters of SIG pistols. They always have the matching hats and the brand new shiny SIGs. Not the standard SIGs mind you, but always Elite models with the beavertails that, in my opinion, really do nothing on a SIG. They buy the models with the most adjectives SIG can fit on the box. Or more likely the ones that the Pro Shop employees convinced them that they needed.

But it's their money you might say. Rightfully so. But when you can buy a plain jane P226 either used or factory certified for half the price of the new Elites with arguably better craftsmanship it tells me something. It tells me they don't know better. And in many cases it appears they don't care to know better.

So how is this like BMW? The BMWs of today are great cars, just like the BMWs of the past. But many of the people buying BMWs today know nothing about the car, its engine, or anything else about it. They buy it because it has those three letters on it: BMW. The same goes for SIG. They buy it for the name and not for what's under the hood. Now what's under the hood certainly helped to build that name, but that's not really why they're there. It's a status symbol to them.

Now this doesn't mean all BMW owners or all SIG owners are like this. There are a number of people in both camps that own them because they do know what's under the hood. But I have to say they're in the minority. And just like the BMW owners that buy them for the heated steering wheel you have the SIG owners that need beavertails, Diamond finishes, and "Tactical" or "Combat" written on the side. While I can appreciate these features to a point, as a purist it makes me a little disheartened.

This was a long rant, thanks for reading.

-TR