The 7 Truth's about guns and shooting matches

I have my helmet and eye pro, now if I could just mount a mini to this thing!

Being old, allows me a certain latitude, like passing on homilies to the young whippersnappers.

So this is the start of my "TRUTH" post, I will update as my brain kicks in and out.

TRUTH Number 1

 

If you want an gun to work, don't Fu&$ with it.

Really, I almost learned this years ago, when fast cars and mud trucks were what took all my 

"disposable" income.

Think about it, 

(I didn't) when you change a cam or a carburetor (look up what this was) you get more horsepower, 

but more horses do no good unless they get to the back wheels, 

and if the back wheels just spin, then it is still all wasted.

Now you can hang just about anything on a AR rail now, but do you know if it changed your POI?

You can change the barrel in a AR platform faster now than I used to change my daughters diapers, but will you have to go with a new bullet weight due to a different twist?

Now I am far from a gunsmith, but I do know logic, logic tells us that if change one thing, you are going to have to change a lot of things if you want it right.

If you are going to have to have all the newest Tacticool stuff on your gat, have a pro install it, it will be the best money you every spent.

TRUTH Number 2

Buy the best gun you can afford

Then save your money, 

don't jump in to upgrades,

then buy another gun exactly like your first one.

Buy a ton of practice ammo

Then learn to shoot it

Hear me out. 

Most of us have to drive a good piece to a shoot or compete, so you have travel cost. 

Then it's a whole day that you could be, making overtime,spending with loved one's, catching up on chores or Honey dew's or like me, sleeping, so you want to make the most of your field time.

It more than sucks when you gun goes down 15 min's into the match.

If you have a same same backup gun, then all you have to do is go to you car and swap,

keeping your rig the same means it's a 5 min swap, not one that will lose you a whole day.

A SASS match in Orlando taught me this, in the 1st four stages

I had two Cimmarons and one Ruger SA break.

All were stock guns that were bought new within the last six months of the match.

My Stoeger S/S also developed a cute little trick were the extractor would skip over the shell head.

Between my roommate and I we had enough backups to allow me to finish the match, but it taught me a lesson.

TRUTH Number 3

It is what it is.

This is my fall back phrase whenever I hear a tale of woe.

Your guns gonna break or F up if you shoot it a lot.

It will, it happens in all the sports that rely on anything mechanical.

I was at a IDPA  match in FL where my roommate,

who came straight from work, shot his duty pistol. 

On the 1st stage his rear sight flew off his Duty P226 to parts unknown.

He, being a tactical ted, drew his back up Glock 26  and tried to finish the stage, 

three rounds in the gun reversed a spent case and jammed it back into the barrel.

Two guns , that he trusted his life to and took care of, failed within 3 mins of each other.

I spent untold hours, days, weeks on my baby 1973 corvette.

It's first rally started great, 15 mins in it began to rain, I turned on my windshield wipers and they proceed to do a very inept imitation of  the movie Captain Blood, battling each other to death across my windscreen.

I stopped and had to tear off the passenger side wiper by hand, but got right back into the rally, 20 mins later the bolts holding my alternator both sheared at the same time and my fan belt pulled that 10 lb chunk of metal into the fan, which shot it though the radiator and out the front of my car.

I don't have to add that due to the wiper incident, I was in last place, with no one behind me, oh, and this was before cell phones also!

Shit happens, 

Have a backup, or two, or ten like me ( ok, do not be like me, but you see where I am going, right?)

 

 One is none, two is one and three is better, I must be betterest of them all

Truth Number 4
If you do upgrade your gun, 

Buy the very best parts you can afford.
Do it right the first time, 

I know you heard this little statement from everyone in your life since you were 7, 

there is a reason, it's true.
Parts and guns have gotten a lot better over the past twenty years.

In the late 80's about 3/4 of the aftermarket parts were total crap.

But most of those parts and  guns are still out there.

( Be honest, how many times have you had a gun or part that sucked, and you sold it off at a gun show, come on, you can tell me)

That is why you have a stock backup in the backseat. (Truth 2)

TRUTH Number 5
Always shoot your gun before you enter a match
I have ran enough stages in IDPA, CAS and IPSC to know the following is a fact.

On any given game day, at least 10% of the guns brought up to the line on the 1st stage will not shoot.
Get to the  field early ( like that is gonna happen), ask where you can test fire and put some rds downrange. While your at it, make sure you are hitting somewhere close to where your aiming also.
You would not believe how many people have never fired their gun except for at an indoor range at 20 ft.

TRUTH Number 6
You do not know everything.

I thought I did, I started working in a gun shop when I was 12 or so,
sweeping up and stacking boxes of clay targets in exchange for 12 gauge hulls to reload.
I ate, breathed and dreamed about guns.
I read every book in the local library, the downtown library and
spent every extra dime I had at the book store and newsstand.

By 1982 I had amassed ( and read) a collection of every issue of every gun magazine printed in the US
up to the current ones, this was before the internet
( if you gave me a month and year,
I could tell you from memory what was on the cover of guns and ammo for that month).

I had fixated on Smith and Wesson ( a S&W rep used to come to the store, he always wore the safari clothes like the ones in the old browning catalogs, crisply pressed.
I acquired a huge man crush and set a goal of one day being a "REP"),
I would call S&W, write letters, and was a general pain in the ass to anyone that might know something
I wanted to know. If you had cut me I would have bled S&W blue.

Years went on, I worked in gun shops and even ran one, some time in the mid 80's
I was at a IPSC shoot and overheard a guy talking about a factory J frame 357 mag.

I knew there was no such animal, and I told him so
" You might have a Straham custom, but S&W NEVER made a J frame 357"
He was polite, nodded and walked away.

At the end of the day I was heading to my car to dump my gear when I heard someone whistle.
I looked over and the "Liar" was at the trunk of his car, he motioned me over.

I walked over for him to tell me that he was sorry,
but he pointed at the inside of his trunk.
There on a nice gun rug was a factory S&W 357 magnum 5 shot J frame.
The gentleman had been a high muckity muck with the FBI and the S&W he had was boasting a X serial number prefix (X=Experimental), but he was right and I was a huge fool.

Don't get me wrong, there are liars, I can not even begin to count the number of people that told me they had "a Glock7, you know the ceramic one, my brother in law whose is a SEAL gave it to me"
after Die Hard 2 came out.


Bottom line to this long, rambling, now I know I am an old man story,
you don't know everything.
Learn from everyone, I have even learned stuff from kids at the field.
I know everything about one thing, that is I don't know everything.
(unless we have been drinking, then all bets are off)

TRUTH Number 7

You don't learn crap on days everything goes right.
Think about it, have you ever had one of those days when your pistol flew from the holster to your hand,
you aim was just a little better, your gun had no hiccups and the temperature was just right ?
What did you learn that day?
Absolutely nothing.

What about the day your gun went down three times? Some guy in the parking lot helped with fixing it?
You fumbled your reload on stage one, two and three?

Now, which day was better?
I say the shitty one.
You learned something, even if it was a small thing.
If you don't keep learning, you stagnate, if you do that, you might as well be dead.
I feel sorry for people whose life is perfect, I have a few friends like that,
they are really the saddest (and most boring) people I know.

More to come

See you Tomorrow

Until then

Stay Thirsty My Friends.