Musings about guns, life, and training.
-by Devon S
To kick off the RenArms blog, I figured I would start at the beginning. No, not my childhood in the woods of NH. More importantly, I figured I would start with the beginning of my most consistent carry gun.
Before I begin, lets establish some ground rules - safe words, safe spaces and all that junk we are forced to swallow in 21st century America.
1. We don't care about your politics, and truly don't want to hear about it. That is not to say that politics are not important, but simply that this is not the place for it. You dont go to the bar as ask for a venti macchiato cappuccino, with soy milk and lots of foam, you order a beer. Likewise no politics here, capiche? Capiche!
2. We do want to hear about your opinions on guns, gear, life, America, freedom, and the rest! Please comment and participate! This is meant to be a community building exercise while showcasing some pretty cool stuff!
3. No bickering with others. Exercise the Golden Rule and we will have no issues here.
4. Please use this as a spring board to give us feedback, send good ideas, request stuff you want the store to do, and enjoy the updates as we grow and progress into the next phase of trying to be the best gun shop FOR YOU in NH!
5. We will do our best with grammar and spelling, but let's be honest for a moment shall we; this is a side gig for us. We would rather be shooting or selling guns than obsessively checking. Bear with us and don't be a Grammar Nazi.
6. These are our OPINIONS! Opinions are like bum holes, everybody has one, MOST STINK! We are no exception. We don't claim to be the authority on much, but sharing opinions is a defining characteristic of the human experience. Share with us as we share with you, just do it with respect and kindness (See #3).
So as I was saying, my story starts Christmas of 2008. I had been working at a hole-in-the-wall gun shop in Gonic NH called Renaissance Firearms for just over a year. About to get married, I decided to establish myself as the best fiance ever and buy my fiancee a Glock pistol (I had a lot to learn FYI).
So after all the wrapping paper was off and the wassail sipped, we decided to go try it out. My future wife had never really shot a hand gun let alone a G19, so she was limp wristing, and it kept jamming. I decided to shoot it and make sure it wasn't the gun.
This was about to be a life altering gun experience for me and i never knew it until years later. I HATED Glocks, and all they stood for. I hated the grip angle, the boxy feel, and those darn finger groves. Point of the story is, it was love at first shot. It was eye opening for me; a gun I had totally sworn off and handled thousands of times but never shot was radically different once I shot it. The recoil was manageable, the angle is very comfortable once you stop pointing like a 1911, and the brutally simple functionality and lack of a manual safety was... refreshing!
This is not a glock commercial, honestly it is just an Op Ed piece to say that it really doesn't matter what you think, until you shoot the gun, all you have is a vague opinion. For me, I was dead wrong. As I get older I find myself finding out just how many things I don't know. More scary than how wrong I have been, is just HOW MUCH I don't know. I look back at being 20 and say, "Wow I was young, dumb, and full..." well you know the rest, but being 30, my biggest fear is reaching 40 and saying the same thing.
The featured photo is one you may have seen on our FB, from a day training on a particularly rainy Saturday. After ten years, that Glock has taught me a few things, and I will end this introductory post with a few ideas and bullet point them for brevity. Hopefully you can either agree, enjoy, or maybe even learn from the lessons I have gained from this pistol.
-Never judge things you have not fully explored, or at the least, know there is room for you to be wrong if you do.
-Train with anything long enough and it will become natural. For me this is true with this Glock, and my M9 I carried in the Marines. If there were two pistols I had to choose to take into combat, it would be those two. Not on their merits, but simply because I have more round down range with them than any other pistols.
-Lack of an external safety, when shooting from concealment or the hip and striving for the fastest shot on target for self defense, pays for itself in spades (IMHO).
-You can buy the newest this or that, but no technology can beat comfort and experience with YOUR choice sidearm.
-Train early, hard, often, and from uncomfortable positions and situations. If you could choose when a life threatening situation could occur, I think you would agree with me and say that you would choose to not have it happen at all.
Be safe, shoot straight and see you around the shop!
-Devon