Other People's Money

I am the proud owner of three Glocks. That’s Bruce in the middle, flanked by The Duke and Liberty. I’ve built this modest collection all on other people’s money.

Bruce was bought with the proceeds of some stock options that I had to exercise after changing jobs in 1992. I was fine with just one Glock for a while, but after a few years I wanted to add a second gun. My company had a sales contest one fall, and I managed to win enough Visa gift cards to buy a G21SF using my GSSF discount. This one I named The Duke.

Then, 2 years ago, I won a Glock in a random drawing at a GSSF match. A Glock 19 named Liberty joined the gang.

It doesn’t stop with Glocks. I’ve also used a company safety bonus to buy a very nice used Mossberg 500, bank bonus money to buy an SKS, and another sales contest to buy a Ruger 10/22.

The best deal – a coworker called me one Saturday from a gun show. He had found an excellent deal on a couple of Mosin Nagants, which he described as in excellent mechanical shape but needing substantial cleaning. His offer: if I would clean one of them for him, I could have the other one for myself. I agreed. Welcome, Vassily!

Now, if I could just figure out a way to get other people to pay for ammo!

Frankenglock

Starting this blog got me thinking about Bruce, my Gen 2 Glock 17, so I went back and looked through my notes I’ve kept over the years about the changes I’ve made. After marking up an exploded parts diagram, I’ve come to the realization that after 18 years there are only 6 original parts left – the frame, the barrel, the slide, the slide cover plate, and the two pins. Maybe, instead of Bruce, I should name it Frankenglock.

While some parts have been replaced because they broke, and some have been changed deliberately, most of the parts have been replaced as part of my yearly visit with the Glock Armorers at a GSSF match. This is a benefit of belonging to GSSF that cannot be overstated – you get to visit with a professional factory Armorer (not just an amateur like me), who goes over your Glock with a fine toothed comb. They replace any parts that even seem like they might fail in the near future, and in most cases they give you the old parts as spares. Beyond the obvious customer service advantage, this service makes sense economically from Glock’s point of view. Chris Edwards, the GSSF Director at Glock, once told me they save quite a lot of money every year just on shipping charges for warrantee work alone.

The only parts that have been replaced because they actually failed are the rear sight and the extractor. The rear sight was originally an adjustable target sight and was broken when I got it from the pawn shop, a fact I learned from the two policemen I met at the range that first day. The extractor got chipped over time, probably because I ignored good advice and would load a round directly into the barrel then drop the slide on it, rather than loading it through the magazine the way they tell you. Let that be a lesson, kids.

Parts that I’ve changed voluntarily probably aren’t as many as they would be if this were any other pistol. I installed an extended magazine release and an extended slide stop lever to compensate for my short fingers and thumbs. I’ve also installed Warren-Sevigny sights with the fiber optic front sight, and when I’m competing with Bruce, he gets the (-) connector to lighten the trigger pull a little. For carry, the normal connector goes back in, although the current connector is a GSSF replacement.

The only other change I’ve made is to use a slip-on Hogue rubber grip, just to provide some indexing for my grip. Since the Gen 2 frame doesn’t have molded finger grooves, this helps me get the same grip all the time.

All the other parts – trigger, firing pin, recoil spring, internal safeties, and the like – are all factory Glock parts, albeit replacements. I see no reason to mess with what’s worked.

So, that brings us to the point – is Bruce still Bruce? Certainly from the BATFE’s point of view, yes, since it still has the original frame and serial number. Beyond that, I think so. Look at his namesake, Bruce Willis. Is he the same man in Red as he was in Moonlighting? Less hair, move the muscles around some, maybe some additions or subtractions not publicized, but yes, he’s still the same, even better from the added experience. And so it is with my Bruce - still the same, in fact, arguably better.

Getting Started in Competition

A few months after I bought my first gun, I was in the local sporting goods store buying ammunition, and the owner of the store told me about a gun club that met at our community range, and held competitions every month. The next time they had a competition, I decided to go see what it was all about.

The Marengo County Shooting Club met monthly and held a match that consisted of 3 very varied stages. The membership was a mix of older shooters, well versed in the core NRA competitions of slow fire target shooting and action pistol, and younger shooters like me. We shot in one mixed group, revolvers and semi-autos alike, and every stage had a combination of shots that tried not to give any advantage to either kind of gun. There were 2 core stages - a slow fire target stage, and a combat stage. The third stage varied from month to month, and was usually either steel plates or bowling pins. Each stage had an individual winner, and the combined score produced an overall match winner.

I found out early on that the slow fire target was my worst event. It was untimed, and the shooter fired 6 shots on a standard NRA target at 25 yards. In those days I just did not have the patience or trigger control for a slow steady 25 yard shot.

My best stage was the combat stage. It was "run and gun," very close to today’s USPSA stages, and usually consisted of a series of “bad guy” targets laid out over a field course. There were always 6 shots, a reload, and 6 shots. Some months saw a third string of 6 shots, or a shotgun string, or a rifle string.

Scoring was simple. The silhouette targets had an X ring, 10 ring, 8 ring, and so on, so hits were scored directly, with an X counting as 10, and acting as a tied breaker if needed. Misses counted as zero. Your stage score was shooting score divided by the time it took to shoot the stage. I figured out quickly that I could shoot a fast time with less than perfect shooting and still win, and my strategy became to shoot as fast as I could, and accept less than perfect shot placement.

I soon found, though, that I could go too fast, and the down side of that is I could not miss fast enough to win. Many times I came in second because of one miss. And because of that, I only won the combat match once the whole time.

I only shot with this club for a little over a year, but I must say I enjoyed shooting in this club as much as anything I’ve done in shooting. And, the trophy I received for winning that one match is still on my office wall today.

A Noob Gets a Lucky Break

I bought my first pistol, a Gen 2 Glock 17, from a pawn shop in a small town in Alabama in the fall of 1992. It was the only Glock in town, and when I went to pick it up, I asked the owner if he had any 9mm ammo, too. He managed to scrape together 42 rounds of various weights and bullet types, and threw them in, gratis, with a couple of targets. He then showed me all that he knew about the Glock design, including how to field strip it, how to load it, and how to shoot it safely. And I left that shop a very proud gun newby, off to the range.

I was very fortunate that the town I lived in had an awesome outdoor range, one that I have only been able to fully appreciate as I have moved around the country and lived in areas without good public outdoor shooting ranges. Basically, the town had built a new sewer treatment plant, and taken all the excavated dirt up the road about a mile, and built a 10 foot tall 3-sided berm, 100 yards across, and 100 yards deep. The front 50 yards was all crushed gravel, and the last 50 yards was nice grass, planted by the local Boy Scout troop as an Eagle Scout project. That Eagle Scout project also included five covered rifle shooting benches, two large covered pistol bays, and a chain link fence all the way around.

I drove to the range with my new pistol, 42 rounds of ammo, and a target. When I pulled up, I noticed a police car there. Two uniformed police were shooting silhouette targets. Great. I was nervous enough about shooting for the first time, much less with cops there.

I moved my stuff to one of the pistol bays, and made busy while I watched the cops shoot for a while. Soon, they seemed to be finished, and started packing up to leave, so I went to put out a target.

Once of the cops noticed me and called out, and I waved, and he asked, “Hey, what have you got there?” I told him it was my brand new Glock. He smiled and looked at the other cop, and pulled his own Glock out of his holster. “Like this one?” We chatted for a few minutes, long enough for them to find out just how little I knew about my new gun.

So, two experienced cops gave me my first and best hands on training. They showed me how to clean it, what to oil, and, best of all, how to shoot it. In 30 minutes they taught me a decent modified Weaver stance, how to use the sights, how to reload, how to clear malfunctions, and basically how to run the pistol. 42 rounds didn’t last long.

As we parted, one of the cops gave me some of my best advice, too. “When you feel comfortable enough with that thing, get a carry permit, and carry it. We can’t be there all the time.”

Good advice, good teaching, and a good beginning. I was hooked.

Gun Nerd Fact of the Day

My Ruger 10/22 and Browning Buck Mark are named Captain America and Bucky, respectively. Right now they both look stock, but I have plans. That's what gun catalogs are for.



Looks like Cap packs a 1911, as expected.

Early comments on some of the sites I've visited expressed disappointment that Captain America carries a gun. I find it very true to the original comics.

Beginnings, or how I got started on this twisted road

I know a lot of people who got started shooting when they were young. They were introduced by a father or grandfather, usually through hunting.

I’m not one of those people.

We had no guns in my home growing up. My Dad had been in the Army and National Guard in the 60’s, but once he left the service he never took another shot as far as I know. I was as interested in playing Cowboys and Army as much as any kid in my neighborhood, but except for a brief summer of BB gun shooting, we never got involved with real guns. Guns were a mystery, and admittedly a source of fear because they were unknown.

After college and getting married, I moved to Texas to take my first job, and there I got to know people for whom guns were just an every day part of life. But I was also playing a lot of company league softball, and I took up golf at that time.  So between a young wife, my job, softball, and golf, I didn’t look to add anything new.

In 1992, I decided to change jobs and move back closer to where I grew up in Georgia. I ended up with some money from stock options, which made for a very nice Christmas for my family. I even had some money left over, and I wanted to buy something I would not have bought otherwise.

I can’t say what made me first think about getting a gun, but once I got the idea, I ran with it. I researched the caliber and type of gun I wanted to buy, and I visited lots of gun stores. My youngest brother had just joined the Army, and his advice was to go with 9mm as the caliber, for a couple of good reasons – magazine capacity and availability of ammunition. He told me he could probably walk into a roadside shop in Karachi, Pakistan, and buy a box of 9mm. (Years later he found out he was right.)

My wife was not entirely sold on the idea of having a gun in the house, but she warmed up gradually. I remember her requirement was that it be able to hold a lot of ammunition. “I want to be able to run down the hall shooting at the bad guy, without having to count my shots. Just like Bruce Willis.” So 9mm it was.

After a month of research, I was in a sporting goods store in Marietta, Georgia, with a pistol in my hand, ready to make a buy, only to find I couldn’t buy it because I was a resident of Alabama. That was my first encounter with what I was to find out is an astoundingly stupid collection of gun laws.

So I went home to Alabama and ended up finding a Glock 17 at a pawn shop in the town I lived in. My brother’s opinion of Glock was not the best, however, since the idea of a polymer frame handgun was still new. Glock had been in the US market only about 6 years. But one of his sergeants convinced him it was a good choice, so I made an offer on the gun, and it was mine.

It's now 19 years later, and I still own that gun, which I named “Bruce” in honor of Bruce Willis, my wife’s model for magazine capacity. I'm shooting Bruce in my banner photo, in fact. He's my favorite.

Welcome!

Welcome to my foray into the blogosphere.

I've been shooting since 1992, and I've been sharing about it online since 2008, first in the online forums like GlockTalk, then on Twitter. I'm not sure if what I have to say will be interesting to anyone but me, but that's the nature of the beast.

My goal with this blog is not to try to be some Uber Operator or world champion shooter. I'm not an Operator. I've never been in the military or law enforcement. I've not even had very much formal training.

But I love to shoot, and I love to talk about shooting. So, for what it's worth, welcome to my blog.