Bought my first pistol the other day...I'm not sure I've heard anyone talk about guns on this forum.
LN, considering the avatar you are currently using, should we be very afraid?
Signor V.
Not at all, just give me your support. And by that I mean your wallet.
Originally Posted By: The Italian Stallionette
Nice to see you back LN. Molly is really two already? Holy cow. She must be getting into everything hu?
Don't know anything about guns. Are you a hunter or is this a protection gun?
TIS
Molly is beautiful and cute and wonderful and amazing.
Molly sure can be a handful sometimes (all the time) but I still wonder how something can be so awesome and wonderful as watching her be cute or giving me a hug and a kiss. And how could I ever make her as happy as she makes me?
It's a Sig Sauer Mosquito .22LR. My Skeeter. It was used, but it doesn't look like very much. The price was $350 and they knocked it down to $320 on sale, but I got them to come down to $300. Basically I got the sales tax knocked off.
It's a .22LR, which is just about the smallest caliber they have so it won't do a whole lot as far as protection (but still better than nothing). So I am just shooting targets, or making cans of pop explode, and having fun doing it.
My motivations for getting a gun are both for personal protection and because it is a fun hobby to shoot. I think hunting would be fun, and I like deer meat, but I'd need to get a rifle or shotgun. I do want to get a .22 rifle just for "plinking" and Walmart has one for $107. I'm finding that guns are like Lays chips, they taste a little salty and you can't have just one.
I am going to get a carry permit soon though. Indiana has a Lifetime Personal Protection option so instead of having to renew it every 4 years you can do it once. Go to the police department and sign the application from online and get fingerprinted and then hand over two money orders... $75 goes to Federal government and $50 to state (or vise versa) and then wait for it in the mail.
I probably won't carry my .22 but it's nice to have the option to, and it would be another layer of legal protection for things like transporting it from home to the range or a farm. My next pistol will be a 9mm. I went with a .22 first since you can get about 1,650 .22 caliber bullets for the same price as 250 9mm bullets. It's a lot cheaper, which means I can shoot a lot more for the same price. 9mm is the cheapest of the defense calibers. Kind of like looking at ink prices before buying a printer...
.22s are good to start off with too as far as practicing but I used to shoot BB guns all day long way back when (and I still got both my eyes) so I picked it up pretty quickly. I have a natural ability for it, an eye for angles at the pool table comes in handy here too.
The first response most people have is telling me to make sure Molly doesn't hurt herself with it. I think people who don't have a lot of experience around guns fear them either because they aren't familiar with them or because the only things you ever hear in the media about guns are negative, maybe both.
A gun will never decide to shoot anyone, or anything, even a target. I mean seriously, targets are just begging to be shot at. Those circles all piled inside of each other...
Guns today have more safety features than you might know about. Many guns (including mine) have an internal lock that requires a key to turn it to the right place or it won't fire. You wouldn't even know it was there unless someone told you. My gun won't fire if there is no magazine in it (so you can't put a bullet in the chamber and fire it). It has a double action trigger which requires 12 pounds of force to fire the gun, you can cock the hammer back to make it single action and then it only takes 4 pounds. But if you are carrying the gun in a holster or whatnot the 12 pounds is a nice safety feature. There's the usual safety switch too. Along with all kinds of locks and so on and so forth for miles and miles.
The best safety feature ever though is knowledge/education. I think it's important not to fear guns, but to respect them. I will teach Molly about guns and what to do and not do with it to use it safely. I'll take her to the range and let her shoot if she wants. There will be no mystery behind guns. She will know full well the dangers of them too. But my responsibility doesn't end there. Keeping the guns locked up and away from the ammo and so on all falls onto me.
Having and carrying a gun is a huge responsibility and I think it's worth it.
If you have any other questions I'll do my best to answer them.
Long as I remember The rain been coming down. Clouds of Mystery pouring Confusion on the ground. Good men through the ages, Trying to find the sun; And I wonder, Still I wonder, Who'll stop the rain.
