Quote:
Originally Posted by Lee Lapin
(53 now, been carrying since I was 21 and still training)
How was it when you bought your first gun at my age? Any regrets or things you'd do differently? Advice for someone so "young"?
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I grew up in rural Alabama, and my dad ran a small country store. I worked there from the time I was old enough to see over the counter and by the time I was 13 or so was running the place by myself when my folks had to be elsewhere. Crime was always something at the back of your mind in a situation like that. Fortunately we suffered only from burglaries (three or four over the years) and never robberies. My dad had an old S&W five-screw Model 10 that he always kept handy but there was never any call to use it save for the time I had to dispatch a neighbor's cow that had been hit by a car.
I bought a S&W Model 36 snubbie as soon as I was old enough, in the summer of 1974. And I got my first carry permit then too, all it took was going by the county sheriff's office and filling out the card. The Chief's Special was a constant companion from then on. It went with me through graduate school in 1975, nobody worried overly much about guns on campus then, believe it or not. It was there in the car with me the day I was headed back to school after a visit home and came upon a sedan parked in the middle of an intersection I needed to get through. More of a hazard to navigation than the parked car was the man in civilian clothes holding a long-barreled shotgun. I stopped about 100 yards away and started to commence a three-point turn to find an alternate route (and a telephone), when a State Trooper in uniform, complete with Smokey the Bear hat and an AR-15, stepped into the road from concealment and waved me forward. Turned out there had been an escapee from the local county jail, the trooper sent me on my way after a brief talk. I was glad to have the revolver aboard but much more acutely aware of its limitations at that point.
The Model 36 got shot a lot, an awful lot. I had bought a Lee Loader in .38 Special and was turning out wadcutter practice reloads by the box, plus loading 158 gr. hardcast SWCs to carry. I loaded shot loads with Speer shot cups (they were yellow then) and #8 shot, dicovered that buckshot would fit in there too. The snubbie was getting pretty tired, and after I got out of school and started a new job I ran across a nice new 3" Model 36, also in .38 Spl. I traded in the snubbie and started with a new companion, and after all these years a 3" Model 36 is still my favorite knockaround gun for woodswalking and fishing and such.
Then I started riding reserve with the local PD. I had joined the small town volunteer fire department soon after establishing residence, and got asked to ride along some with the PD as well. Since I was carrying concealed with a permit, I continued to do so during ridealongs. But after a couple of things that suggested life in a squad car might get a little more interesting happened, it began to feel as if the Model 36 might not be enough gun. So along about 1978 I bought a satin nickel Colt Combat Commander in .45ACP, and made the first of several transitions in types of firearms I had to work my way through. I found it important to build confidence with a firearm that was to be carried, so as to be comfortable carrying it. I found it took time to do this, and did not necessarily come easily. I find that this has not changed for me through the years. Transitioning from one type of gun to another means getting a new set of moves ingrained in muscle memory, and that takes time and repetition.
The Colt was easy to reload for too, and I graduated to a single-stage press to reload for it. I suggest taking up reloading as a hobby along with shooting, picking a caliber that is easy to reload for as a primary consideration. Saving money on practice ammo is often a big consideration for beginning shooters.
The Commander was a lot more reassuring gun to carry but it took a while for me to get used to. Fortunately a friend with a lot of 1911A1 experience in the Army helped me learn the gun and how to shoot it reasonably well, and after a while I was comfortable carrying it cocked and locked. All of my early training was informal, at the hands of family and friends. That was all anyone who was not police or military got in those days for the most part. The group I was running with began shooting a variation of what was to become 3-gun in the late 'seventies. One of that group was a Special Forces retiree, a friend of Bob Brown, who ran the local range. It seems that the SOF (_Soldier of Fortune_) crowd had an influence on what we were doing at our local range.
All I did to this gun was buy spare magazines for it and put a set of Pachmayer rubber grips on it, otherwise it was box stock. And I shot it- a lot. I think it's important to shoot what you carry a lot, and be good with it. Your ability to shoot well will degrade under pressure, so you need to be as good as you can get on the range to have a better chance at being good enough on the street.
I lived with this gun for years, even after I had left Alabama and moved to North Carolina in the early 1980s. It was a shock to discover that there was no such thing as a concealed carry permit in NC, and it took a while to learn what was legal and what was acceptable and what was the difference. It was legal to open carry in a vehicle but not to carry concealed, and while it was technically legal to open carry in public there was this thing in the code about 'going armed to the terror of the public' so open carry was not practiced. So it was either carry concealed and be illegal, or not carry. I elected to generally obey the law and carry in my vehicle, which became sort of a de facto holster.
That almost got me into trouble the first time I really needed a gun in hand in NC. It was around Christmas and I was going back to the car after doing a little shopping after work. I noticed a man hotfooting toward me across the parking lot, and got to the car and got it unlocked before he got there. He never said anything to me at first. He was holding his right hand down behind his pants leg and as he got to within about twenty feet I sat down in the car and retreived the Colt from under the seat, keeping it out of sight behind my right knee. I doubt he ever saw the gun but he did see my movement. The man stopped closing on me as I got under the wheel, moving laterally and saying, "You aren't going to shoot me, are you?" I said, "Not if you don't come over here with that knife," and drove away. I was indeed very close to drawing down on him, and had I done so I would have shot him if he didn't stop immediately. But he apparently concluded he had lost the advantage, and stopped.
In 1990 I was asked to accompany a friend, her daughter, daughter's friend and her mom on a trip to an out of the way island off the coast of NC. Access was only by a small ferryboat, I was asked to go because I had a four-wheel drive truck and that was the only way to get around on the island, which stretched for miles. We would be camping, and there was too much gear to carry by hand. A few years before I had switched from carrying the all steel nickeled Commander to a Lightweight Commander that was blued, and I didn't want to carry a blued gun on this trip where I couldn't maintain it. I wasn't supposed to have a gun at all where we were going but there was no way I was going to be responsible for women and children in an isolated place without one along. Glocks had been out for a year or two by then, and they were supposed to be pretty durable as far as finish was concerned, so I bought a new Glock 19. I bought it early enough to get used to it before the trip, and to be sure it ran right and I could shoot it well enough. It did and I could.
I depended on the Glock for a number of years after I made the transition from single action Colts. I have experimented with several other pistols in the interim- pocket pistols/backups, to include a Beretta Model 70 in .22LR, a KelTec P3AT in .380ACP and a Kahr PM9. There's also been a Kahr P9, and lately a Kahr P45. After more than a decade the old .45ACP is calling me again. The P45 is a neat pistol and shoots well, but I find myself looking at components to build the equivalent of my old Lightweight Commander (now retired to the safe) out of modern materials. Unfortunately Caspian has hit a snag with availability of their titanium frames. My 'smith is all lined up to build it for me as soon as components become available though, and I look forward to going back to a 1911A1 style pistol again.
I had had some pretty serious medical problems for several years which precluded my doing things like driving and shooting. Unfortunately these problems started up right after I had made up my mind to start teaching formally, and had taken three NRA Instructor classes and the first NC Concealed Carry Instructor's class after we finally got concealed carry here, so I never got to get started teaching. Lately I have gotten better, though I was forced to retire early for health reasons. I am driving again and have again started training, starting back with a bang at the OPS's Snubby Summit in Titusville, FL last year and attending Louis Awerbuck's basic shotgun class in Durham, NC in May this year. I'm still pretty halt and lame and have a lot of work left to do, but I'm working on it.
All this is a pretty long winded recitation, I know. But you asked 8^) and so you get all my war stories, such as they are. That's by way of explaining how l'il ol' me got to where I am, and why I am willing to offer advice to an absolute stranger. I haven't been exactly where you are, I don't know your particular circumstances, but I think I know enough about the subject to offer what I have to give. Just don't go mistaking me for an expert 8^), we have some of those here and I know some of them, but I'm not one of them. There are a lot more people here better qualified to give you advice than I am, find them and listen. That's the absolute best advice I can give you, to take advantage of some of the genuinely outstanding trainers who are working these days. The shooting community in this country is blessed in the extreme to have such a gathering of eagles to look to. Find good trainers working close to you, and take advantage of their skills, knowledge and abilities.
A lot has changed in the last few years in a lot of places. There seems to be a growing realization that the police can't be everywhere all the time, that police are in fact not legally obligated to protect private citizens, and that people need to take responsibility for their own security and that of their loved ones. And a lot of people are stepping up to the plate to take on that responsibility. There are so many resources now to make concealed carry easier, lots more knowledge, shared experiences, more options, more training opportunities. So many more jurisdictions now allow concealed carry, and the practice seems to be spreading at the state and local level. It seems the pendulum is swinging in the direction of expanding protections for law abiding gun owners at last.
I hope you'll support that movement. It seems you have some awareness of the responsibilities involved in deciding to take responsibility for yourself and your family. Help make it easier for yourself and others who feel the same way by learning to handle firearms safely and responsibly, by exercising your political muscle at every opportunity, by being a good example for others who are following the same path. I hope this helps.
Stay Safe,
lpl/nc
