DragonBlasts

Archive for the ‘Guns and Bloggers’ Category

All it takes is a donation of $5.56 (5.56 being the NATO round for the M16) towards a bloggers impending medical bills.

Whats a Viper? This is a Viper:

HOLSTER ONLY!! GUN NOT INCLUDED!!!

This is FOR THE HOLSTER ONLY! I ain’t parting with the gun, folks.

I’m not going to assume that I have the readership that even comes close to JayG, Weer’d, Brigid, Linoge, Uncle, Bayou Renaissance Man and all the rest.

So I’ve enlisted their help to get the word out of my giveaway.

A blogger by the name of Tam, who writes the uber-popular and *Man do I wish I had her kind of website traffic* blog called View From the Porch is facing some impending medical bills.

In this season where the weather turns cold, bills get a bit higher, and money gets a bit tighter, it would be nice to help out a fellow human being that could use a little bit of a leg up.

So click here and go on over to her site, hit up her tipjar for $5.56. When you make the donation, you’ll get an e-mail confirmation. Forward that e-mail confirmation of payment over to dragon@dragonleatherworks.com with “DONATION TO TAM” in the subject line, and I’ll I’ll put your name in a hat and draw it on Sunday, Dec. 02, 2012.

If you are the lucky name picked, I’ll make you the holster to be delivered by X-Mas. A list of guns that I can fit the Viper for is on the right sidebar on this webpage.

The donation MUST BE FOR A TOTAL OF $5.56 IN ONE PAYMENT, not two or three that add up to $5.56. I WILL NOT ACCEPT IT UNLESS IT IS DONE AS ONE PAYMENT.

You can donate in multiples of $5.56, and I’ll put you in as many times as the multiple calls for. You want your name twice in the hat? Donate $11.12. Three times? $16.68. And so on.

Lets help out. Tis the Season.

Thank you, and God Bless.

************UPDATE************UPDATE****************

Don’t want a Viper Holster? Click here and donate for a set of custom grips!

Video is up!

Yep…thats yours truly, interviewed by the local ABC Affiliate in Knoxville TN.

Just go, read the sticky, and donate. Great prizes up for grabs, not the least of which is one of my holsters.

What are ya still doing here? GO ALREADY!

Heya folks…there’s a new addition to the blogroll…

A Girl and Her Gun

Good writing, but more than that, its a fascinating read on one womans transformation from extreme anti-gun, to a passionate 2A advocate and a voice for self-defense.

What are ya still doing here?!?!!?

Go. Read.

Carteach0 has a very cool fundraiser going.

Yours Truly has donated a sweet-looking Talon, and its already posted on the page.

For a measly $5 donation (half a pack of cigs, folks!) you can enter to win this rather good-looking holster.

So…click right here, go over to the post, read it, and make a donation. It’ll help a Wounded Warrior. We owe these men our lives and safety…the least you can do is make a donation.

Well….seeing that I have a small stable starting to build up, I’m going to be doing week-end shooting with a handgun picked from my *arsenal* (five handguns ain’t no arsenal, but it’ll make the panty-wetters get all nuts..) and put up a resulting post, one each week, of my thoughts on the gun, how it shoots, how it feels, accuracy, etc.

First up will be the smallest handgun in the collection, the Bersa Thunder, which is Breda’s daily carry piece. I don’t have a holster for it (I usually pocket-carry the Bersa in an inside jacket pocket, or inside leather vest pocket), so I’ll simply leave you all with this picture of a custom-built Talon, which was made for the Worlds Most Dangerous Librarian.

An excellent post at a blog known as In Jennifers Head where the author, gun blogger and blog owner Jennifer, posed the question and extended an invite to tell how you became a gunnie.

So as to not fill up her comment with a long post, I’ll simply post it here, and let folks know over there that another entry was made.

For me, it was simple…my grandfather had me shooting a BB Gun by the time I was eight (I would spend almost the entire summer target shooting right in his backyard out in Rocky Point, Long Island NY) and my dad started me hunting at age 10, with a .410 bolt action shotgun that he bought at a fire sale from a sporting goods store that had half of its building burned down in a fire. The gun was in the fire, an d the stock was pretty well charred. He’s a woodworker, so he happily bought the gun for pennies on the dollar, brought it home, and made a new stock for it.

When we moved from Gloucester City, NJ to Marlton NJ, we moved into one of the many tract homes that were springing up all over that area. We lived on the edge of the development, and for many years we would walk out the back patio doors, across our backyard, and into the woods that ran right up to our property. 500 feet later, we would hunt pheasant and quail in an open field that was in the midst of the woods, along with rabbit. Deer were also plentiful there.

(On a side note, we literally would walk out the door dressed in blaze orange, carrying shotguns, from a house at the edge of the development. No-one ever called the cops with a *man with a gun* call, and we hunted those woods and fields from 1975 to 1984, at which time the woodland was bought up by a developer, and another tract development went up right behind our house, destroying the woodland, and an excellent hunting area.)

My yearly hunts took a hiatus from 1978 to 1882 which were my military years (Navy) but that didn’t stop me from shooting. Each naval base I was stationed in had trap and skeet ranges with VERY reasonable range rates, and I would spend every other weekend (mainly because I would go shooting right after payday, which was twice a month) at the trap and skeet ranges.

After my stint was done, I came back home and got back into hunting. The only time that I didn’t hunt OR shoot was when I was married the first time around. She wasn’t fond of guns or the shooting sports (an understatement…I’m being very gracious here…) and once she killed that in me, it took a while to get it back.

After my divorce I met a great woman (who later became my wife) that was very supportive of my desire to get back into hunting, and guns in general. WHen we moved to upstate NY I began to slowly rebuild my firearms collection, which was heavy in the longarms department in the past, but not so much now.

And I’m teaching my boys how to shoot. My oldest son (from the first go-round) is an excellent shot, but he’s not really interested in guns. My wife and I have 2 boys, aged 14 and 12, and I’m getting them exposed to shooting with a Ruger 10/22, and an antique Winchester bolt-action single shot rifle. For hunting in Upstate NY I use a 5″ 1911 (we are allowed to pistol hunt uo in Sullivan County, where we live) for deer, and a single-shot 12 gauge for turkey and smaller game.

The wife is a very good shot, as is the 14 year old. Our youngest is on the Autism spectrum (Aspbergers) and he’s not a gunnie, but will come out and shoot a mag or two through the Ruger just to make me happy.

So, there you have it. How I became a gunnie, and my attempts at passing it along to my kids.

So it was D-Day, Thursday the 28th of April. Just the day before, my holster sales site had been hacked. Google put me on their *don’t visit this site because it MAY be harmful to your computer* blacklist, and actually stopped people from being able to hit my site. (Side Note…who elected them to police the InterWebz, and to block traffic? I’m still researching if there’s a lawsuit there….) So, Wednesday was hectic and harried, with site repairs, reaching out to Google to have them do a site review so as to prove the site WAS NOT infected and WAS NOT pushing malicious code (it wasn’t, BTW…the hackers simply injected a javascript redirect, but they put it into the wrong place, and it never re-directed…), so when Thursday rolled around, I was more than ready to get out of Dodge and enjoy a weekend of meeting people, making contacts, and hopefully doing some business and growing the business.

The ride out was uneventful. It was long (just over 6 hours from the point where Jay and Weer’d picked me up in Port Jervis) but comfortable, and I was enjoying the fact that after leaving Port Jervis and crossing into PA, all I had to do was tuck my shirt in, and I was legally carrying my handgun (a Desert Eagle 1911G) openly in a Free State.

(Note to self…PA would be a great place to move to. You can carry your sidearm on your hip, and no-one will panic or go into a panty-soiling fit of convulsions at the sight of a gun…)

We arrived in Pittsburgh and made quick work of the checking-in process at two hotels (unfortunately, Jay’s hotel was about 7 miles or so from the hotel that Weer’d and I were in) then settled into the first nights event, which was a get-together that Say Uncle had gotten the ball rolling on. Folks streamed in quickly between 7PM and 9PM, and the get-together quickly grew to about 20 to 25 people. I met and put faces to alot of the online names that I know, and it was a pleasure to meet everyone. I was open-carrying all night, at the Radison in Pittsburgh, whilst having two ales and a taste or three of some scotch and bourbon. No, I was NOT inebriated. I had dinner along with the drinks, and was totally in control of my motor functions, and moreso, of my mental functions. I know this disappoints the Brady Bunchers, Rep McCarthy of NY, and all the other hand-wringers and anti-gun types, but it is proof positive that RESPONSIBLE gun owners and carriers are just that…RESPONSIBLE! We *can* enjoy a social drink with friends, and we *can* be polite and in control of our faculties whilst doing adult activities while armed. I actually had two patrons of the bar/lounge area who were not part of the gun blogging crowd walk up and ask about open carrying. It gave me a great feeling to actually educate someone on open-carry, and felt even better being an ambassador *for* open-carry by setting a good example and setting their minds at ease.

The evening ended all to quickly, we said our goodnights, and headed off for what sleep we could get before the first full day of the Annual Meeting actually got underway.

Had an absolutely fantastic time at the NRA Annual Meeting. A group of gunbloggers (including yours truly) hung out, met for the first time, met again, etc.

I forgot my camera, so there’s no pictures for folks. But, there will be blogging about the trip, in as much as what I can remember about the trip.

First up, tho, are *thank you’s* to the following folks…

GunUp
Lucky Gunner
Crimson Trace
Old NFO

GunUp and Lucky Gunner picked up the tab for Say Uncle’s soiree on Thursday Night, which is when the bulk of us gun bloggers arrived.

Crimson Trace did the same on Friday Night, picking up the dinner tab at the Tilted Kilt.

Saturday night was a two-parter, with a Gun Blogger Roundup hosted by Alan Gottlieb of the Second Amendment Foundation, and Alan Gura, the star starting pitcher and go-to guy where lawyering is concerned. (After hearing him speak, I can see why he won the Heller and McDonald cases. Very bright, and quick-thinking.)

The second half of the evening was arranged by Old NFO, a fantastic gent who I had the pleasure of making a holster for a few months back. Thank you, Jim…the evening at Lidia’s was icing on an already fantastic cake that was the NRA Annual Meeting.

So, a big shout-out to all the folks I met, old friends who I hadn’t seen in far too long, new faces finally put to the names, and new friendships forged…

JayG
Weer’d
Say Uncle
Laura and Chris
Mike W.
T-Bolt
Alan from SnarkyBites
Breda
Bubblehead Les
Newbius
ZerCool
Nancy R.
Tom from My Gun Culture
Cemetery’s Gun Blob
The Miller
No Lawyers
Clint1911
MacBournes Musings
Heath and Amanda
Bending Spoons
Old NFO

Lucky Gunner stepped up to the plate a second time, with Sunday Lunch.

Myself, JayG, Uncle, and Weer’d carpooled each day, with Uncle and I open carrying every day, Weer’d and Jay carrying concealed and/or open as they wished, and no-one got shot, there were no drunken shootings, arguments that led to shootings, arguments in general, or anything else that the anti’s claim happens when people exercise their God-given and Constitutionally guaranteed right to Keep and Bear arms.

Go Fig.

Anyhow…more to come later. Right now, I’ve got blogrolls to update.

Don’t ask…just listen!

Yours Truly made an appearance on Vicious Circle, and it was interesting. QUite interesting. Especially the Poo Flinging Ebola Moneys.

Its Vicious Circle #91!