Old Dog

Congrats. Forget buying new guns now.

I have used them and regular ear muffs with maximum protection for a very long time. The electronic are indispensable if you are a shooting competitor or go to the range with friends and like to talk to each other. Other than that a good set of construction earmuffs bought at Lowed with 30db noise protection work great for everything else. I usually use inside the ear soft ear plugs and an ear muff as sometimes someone shooting a .44 mag is in the next lane to me. At my range, any handgun caliber, whether out of a handgun, is allowed so it can get loud at times.

One thing I have learned in 42 years of shooting is that how a gun feels in the hand is only applicable to target or competition shooting and even then I shot my least comfortable gun better than the ones that felt better in my hand when I used to compete. I own guns that feel great in my hand but do not shoot as well as others that feel less so.

I have been known for buying a firearm simply to shoot up a few hundred rounds of spare ammo I had and then selling the gun afterwards. :0

It was a .380 and described as having the same effect of a brick going through a glass window. I lived in Texas and carried a .380 Walther PPK in a shoulder holster in the early 70's when it was considered a gun best suited to those who peed sitting down. Back then most Texans carried a .38 spl revolver for concealed carry and a Ruger SA openly. I was considered a maverick northerner for carrying a .380, a caliber not thought highly of in 1972. Heck the 9mm was considered a caliber for the wife back then too.

The one and only iconic Bond gun is the Walter PPK. I was lucky enough to be a young man living in a State where I could carry a gun in 1972 and first got the Beretta that Bond used to carry and then the Walter PPK to keep up with him. I cannot describe the feeling of being 21 and carrying a Walter PPK in a shoulder holster when everyone around me was carrying a 1911 or revolver. Thought I was too cool for school back then. I hate how they destroyed the look of the PPK with the extended beaver tail and its less than reliable performance. I did buy a Sig P232 last year as I think that is the sexiest .380 out there but I got slide bite. I am no longer the skinny kid I used to be. I will sheepishly admit to still collecting weapons disguised as ordinary household items.

I find that buying a box of a dozen on the internet to be the cheapest. For a few dollars more than I pay for a pair of batteries in Lowes, I can get half a dozen or more online. Just Google the batteries.

Our Secret Service often cannot even carry guns in foreign countries to protect the President but for you I think they may make an exception. Unless you live under a rock it is pretty common knowledge that the US has the most liberal gun laws in the world outside of third world nations perhaps. We had a guy in one of the Florida gun forums seriously ask about carrying his gun on a cruise ship and then in each of the 3 countries he was visiting. Doesn't anyone read any news except about the Kardashians?

Wat, ya supposed to clean your guns? I have just been selling them when they get too dirty and start jamming.

Used to go once a week and in fact moved to where I live now to be near a public range. Took a pay cut so that I have my Friday's free to shoot. Life was good for the last 3 years as I was at the range almost every week which was either entirely or mostly empty during the business hours on Friday. Bought, sold and traded about 34 guns over that time so I got to own and shoot every gun I ever wanted to. Now I have not gone shooting since the end of last year. The range has been mobbed with lots of people waiting (I assume new gun owners who bought guns thinking that this was their last chance to do so having never read what the proposed gun control laws would be) and since it is attached to a gun store, there is no place to sit and wait. They do not have a wait list so you pretty much have to stand around and keep track of when it is your turn to go. I have a few thousand rounds of ammo sitting in my ammo box but am reluctant to use it as the cost to replace it, assuming I can even find ammo to replace what I shoot, is too high. The days of my weekly range trip where I would bring 4 guns with me and make it a full afternoon are no more for now. The cost to shoot a few hundred rounds is too high and the range is mobbed even during the work hours since we currently have all the snowbirds from the north here. They will be gone after Easter so I will try again to hit the range but it will not be once a week and certainly not with a few hundred rounds. The last time I went shooting was the end of last year when I fired all my self defense/carry guns to make sure that they were still 100% reliable and that I could put them where I wanted to. For the time being it looks like I will be shooting only once every few months until this madness is over. Worst part is now that I no longer work 5 days a week, I find myself with every Friday free and no more range time to fill it. Today I am posting on gun forums but I really need to find other hobbies to engage in on Fridays as my dream of moving to someplace warm year round and shooting as often as I want is no more for the time being.

I still have an unopened box of Federal Bulk pack. The CCI's are not the most popular for plinking, range or target shooting due to their expense. They may be the best and most reliable though. For self defense the Stingers seem to be the most popular and very hard to get. I have half a box left and treat them like Gold, not shooting them at the range but rather loading them into my .22lr that sits in my living room gun safe. I have a few boxes of mini mags as they are, or should I say were, plentiful and easy to get. I also have boxes of Velocitors. The purpose of a .22lr is cheap shooting for most except for competition shooters. The CCI ammo is not cheap. Therefore the bulk packs are the most popular as you used to get hundreds of rounds for about $16 around here. Now it is about $36 for the same ammo. If you have a .22lr revolver then the cheapest ammo is what you will normally buy. If you have a .22lr semi auto then you will usually find that the CCI mini mags will make it function most reliably or at least that has been my experience with a few .22lr rifles and semi auto handguns.

I stopped shooting and buying ammo. I have between 500-1000 rounds (more for .22lr) of ammo for each caliber I shoot. I used to shoot a box and then buy a box to replace it but now I am buying brands I never used before and paying almost 3x what they were selling for a few months ago. I will just keep what I have. I have a nice selection of practice and self defense ammo and at today's prices it would cost me $50 a range session and that is only shooting one box of ammo when I used to shoot a few hundred rounds per session. I had arranged me work schedule to free up Fridays. I moved to where I am because there was a public range juts 20 minutes away and I could shoot weekly. Now I am sitting here on a Friday when I normally would be at the range with some friends. I was tempted to go but when I called them they had a long wait. I would have thought that with the price of ammo the ranges would be empty but the opposite is true. My guess is that many non gun owners have bought guns thinking that they may not be able to do so in the near future and wanted to get one just in case. Now these new gun owners and shooters have discovered that you do not just point a gun and hit your target and are visiting the range to learn how to shoot and play with their new toys. I know that once I took someone out who never shot before they wanted to do it again and again. I will wait this craziness out. I have the rest of my life ahead of me to shoot.

I have an NAA mini revolver and they are interesting to show people but a PIA to reload as you have to take them apart to do so. Also the tiny grips, even on the Black Widow you pictured, accuracy is problematic at more than a few feet/yards distance. Sure you can shoot slow and hit things further out but it takes a lot of practice and why bother since they will never be a target gun? They are cool however. I am going to get the new one they have out which has a swing our cylinder just like the regular revolvers. I believe it is called the Sidewinder. Someone even makes a speed loader for it and now we are talking.

I do not join them anymore. I provide them money using the round up on web sites that is far in excess of membership dues. When I joined them last few times I had the same problem that you did plus the NRA was sending me mail and calling me at home to solicit funds for everything they were involved in. I kept telling them to leave me alone but the mail and calls kept on coming so I did not renew with them. Their phone solicitations were getting too aggressive for my tastes. It is much better giving them money using the round up on the many websites I buy from. Plus last year they got local politicians to present legislation to allow open carry in Florida and then allowed the bill to get watered down to no open carry and only to allow brief exposure of a concealed weapon. Far from an open carry law and no definition of what "brief" means and we still have people being arrested for unintentional exposure of concealed firearms. These days with SuperPACS and people like Bloomberg matching the NRA dollar for dollar on advertising and campaigns, the only real strength of the NRA is its united voter block. Unfortunately during the Presidential election they showed that they were unable to deliver the votes of its members and politicians have taken notice. I think my vote is more valuable than my lousy few bucks for membership anyway.

They sell stun guns that look like cell phones, flashlights, etc.. If in a bag it would be hard to tell from an x-ray. I deal with the TSA on a regular basis and have to have everything we ship x-rayed. One of the problems that they face is that after someone looks at x-rays for a long period of time they really stop seeing detail as it is impossible to keep the line moving and look at each x-ray in great detail. After a while they just get bleary eyed and miss details. They are trying to rotate their people more often to combat this but as with all humans there will always be some workers who take a mental break and let some things slide.

Personally I cancelled 6 backlogged orders. As someone who is a partner in a shipping and distribution business I sort of agree that temporary help can be hired to clear up backorders. We do so all the time and there are employment agencies that supply experienced people. I was buying my ammo from Lucky Gunner who ships next day. They are great but are currently out of a lot of ammo. Others showed ammo and guns as "In Stock" but upon questioning it seems that they actually mean that their suppliers had it in stock and they did not have it in their warehouse, if they even had a warehouse. As a former ecommerce business owner I have a pet peeve about online companies who sell things that they do not actually have possession of. It is not uncommon for a business to keep no or little inventory and use a distributor to fill their orders. So for some companies, in stock does not mean that they actually have it in stock. The attitude is to take orders because their is no downside. If they show an item out of stock they do not get the order. If they show it in stock there is at least a chance that they will be able to obtain the product from their supplier, have the customer wait until they get it or at worse not get it at all which is the same result as showing it out of stock. Some will not hire extra help as it cuts into their profit. Believe me, I have been in this business for 40 years and know all the tricks of the trade. Do you think Bud's Gun really has its own warehouses located throughout the USA and instead of shipping direct to their customer they incur the cost to ship from a warehouse in your state to their central warehouse where it is then shipped to you? I had it out with them about that and no one could give me an answer as to whether they actually owned the warehouses in the other States or where they simply gun distributors that they used like everyone else.

I can assure you that it has adequate stopping power or I would not be here right now. Took me only a few weeks to see what a lightweight bullet travelling at high speed can do to flesh. Shoot someone in the arm and it can come out of their back or neck. I do not think we would still be arming our troops with M16/M4's if it was an inadequate weapon regardless of the opinion of a few.

I normally shoot once a week but lately I have been skipping my range days. I used to shoot a box and buy a box so I maintained my ammo level but my normal sources of ammo have dried up and the cost is outrageous. I think I will just wait it out. It is kind of a sad commentary on people that they really do not bother to learn what all this gun control talk is about and instead rush out to buy any gun they can find in stock as if they think all guns will be banned soon. It may happen but not this year. There is no other reason by people are buying up guns that are not even the target of NY State gun control laws.

I think it should be mentioned that there is a difference between a tazer and a stun gun. A taser shoots out two darts attached to wires while a stun gun has to be pressed against someone. I have a stun gun and it is simply a square box with two flat pieces of metal at the end. It would look like a razor or similar as it just is a battery with a switch and prongs to plug it in. I am assuming that you are talking about a stun gun as tazers are quite bulky and not really suitable for carrying in a pocketbook.

Thought it would be nice to see how many veterans we have in this forum, who saw combat, where and what weapons they used. I will start. Vietnam 1970 - 1971 M16 w/M203 grenade launcher, M60 machine gun, M79 Grenade Launcher and 1911 handgun. I was in the Mobile Artillery and we used 175mm and 105mm guns. Slept near these guns for many months and the Army did not issue ear plugs. The flash at night was very bright and yet we still were able to see the enemy when they attacked and were not deafened by the blast. That is why I take comments about certain calibers blinding you and making you deaf if you shoot them, with a grain of salt. The link is to a picture of a 175mm gun so that you can see how big they are. ** Post corrected** I had originally posted 150mm instead of 105mm and showed the wrong picture of the gun. That is what happens when you get old. http://farm7.staticf..._2516190676.jpg

That is enough for a day or two at the range, I guess. Seriously, I keep a minimum of 1000 rounds for each of my major calibers. About 300 for .380, 2500 .22lr ad 800 .22 mag. When I use a box, I buy a box so that I do not drop below these numbers.

It is just an observation that those of you in NJ are very concerned about gun control while those of us in Florida are worried about having to live under restrictions like you currently have. Most of us would find living under NJ gun laws intolerable and very restrictive. I guess it shows that things can always get worse and/or be happy with what you have as it could be less.

The danger is from two fronts. Both your local and federal government can pass gun control laws. Right now there are bills working their way through the process. If the Federal Government bans do not pass you may see more effort made at the State level. I am sure that many local politicians would rather the Federal Government pass gun control laws so they may be sitting and waiting to see what happens before they support any State gun control bills. I am convince that we are raising a nation of wimps who value life above their liberty and we will eventually succumb to those who do not value life as much as we do just as Rome did. Here was a civilization that had multi storied indoor shopping malls and apartment buildings, running and heated water, etc. who were defeated by people who lived in mud and grass huts. Look at our current enemies and their willingness to sacrifice lives for their beliefs and decide if we are capable of defeating such people. Heck, they can live with no electricity, butchers, cars, etc.. We will crumble if we have no electricity or gasoline. At least most of the nation will. I just do not get the attitude of people who will vote to restrict our constitutional rights to save "just one child". I like to save kids as much as the next person but not at the cost of my liberty and civil rights. If the anti gun people were truly for saving lives they can save a lot more by passing laws to prevent automobile accidents, school bus accidents, swimming pool accidents and medical accidents which all claim the same or many more lives than guns do. Heck, just try to find someone willing to ban alcohol as that is a killer of people too. Nope, when it comes to banning things that people have no personal use for they are all for it if they think it will do any good at all. Some people want to feel a part of something greater than themselves because they are incapable of doing great things on their own.

Oops forget about NJ laws. It was funny when I moved to Florida because I kept asking the guns store employees if this or that were legal. I could not believe that there were no restrictions but Federal on guns and accessories. Even bought my first automatic opening knife which is legal here. Our concealed licenses are for concealed weapons and not just firearms so I can carry a concealed machete if I want. OK, I will amend my response to say an AR14 or even AK, with two 15 round mags attached to each other. No need to buy any special device to do that. In Nam we simply taped them together and if it worked in the jungle it will work anywhere.

Only 8 rounds as this reply states. First off for your intended use I would suggest an AR-15. A .45 pistol or shotgun just do not hold a lot of rounds and if you ever tried to reload a shotgun with people shooting at you (I have) you will quickly decide that a rifle with a 15 round mag is much better. As for the handgun I personally have a gun for such a use during a tornado or hurricane incident. I rather have my 17 round 9mm semi auto than an 8 round .45. Once again, try facing multiple assailants with a .45 (once again, I have) and you will wish your gun held a lot more rounds. A 9mm with Speer Gold Dot +P ammo has very good street results plus you can get shots off faster with a 9mm than you can with a .45. I do not care if the .45 is the best bullet in the world if I can only get 8 or 10 of them in a mag. All I can say it enter a few competitions with a .45 and a 9mm and see which gives you the faster time. Sure you can practice but with the cost of ammo and range time you are not going to be able to practice enough to get to the point where you can handle a .45 as well as a 9mm. Realistically, most people go less and less to the range after the initial thrill of a new or first gun wears off. Especially after years pass without ever even thinking you needed the gun for any defensive role. Just the way it is. Competition shooters are the exception. Down here we have people who carry concealed guns and either rarely or never go to the range after their initial visits. What we think we are going to do usually is not what we actually do and I can guarantee you that after the novelty of a .45 wears off the reality of the cost of the ammo and recoil will make you shoot it less and less and wish you had a 9mm to feed cheap ammo to and not beat up your hand so much. In the end we all get whatever floats our boat. I would suggest that everyone should have a good high capacity gun, shotgun and rifle in their home. Shotgun can be omitted though due to ammo capacity and the fact that a good semi auto rifle with high capacity mags would prove more useful and just as deadly if not more so. Too many thing a shotgun will mow down anything in its path. Not so plus they have a lot of recoil. Get a 9mm now and a .45 later. We all end up buying guns in different calibers to experience them. BTW, I have used a revolver for home defense for about 42 years and so far it has worked as no one has ever tried to break into my home. I recommend a semi to people because the younger generation was raised on them and I am tired of defending revolvers to people who view them as antiques. My revolvers have never jammed on me, even after storing them for years without use. Cannot say the same for my semi auto. I think especially in emergencies a revolver is a good option/second gun because you can crawl through mud, beat it up and it will shoot. With a semi you will need to bring a cleaning kit with you, lube, cleaner and something to hold all those parts in while you clean it. Revolvers do not have such needs. Rinse and shoot. My .357 mag goes on my hip during an emergency while my 17 round 9mm goes into the holster compartment of my bug out bag with 3 extra mags. For most people who will buy a gun for just in case, a revolver is a great choice because there are no extra magazines to buy, no extra self defense ammo to buy to check for reliability issues, no remembering to re-lube it every so often, no need to clean it once in a while to get all that crud that sticks to the lube/oil after a year in the safe, no need to test to see if it is still reliable, etc.. And as I said, for the overwhelming majority of revolver owners, a revolver has kept danger away so that they never had to use it.