LeadMonkey
.410
I had the chance to go to the Shot Show 2013 in Las Vegas this year. I happen to have a good friend that has a Internet forum that allows him access to the firearms world. He runs the mossbergowners.com website where he does all sorts of product testing and reviews. This is the 3rd year that he has gone to the Shot Show, this is where he cultivates contacts and vendors that helps grow his website. Like I said previously I had an opportunity to join him this year and I geared up and flew out with him. My main goal for the trip to be honest was to get as much free stuff as I could but I wound up getting educated on a grand scale. I was introduced to companies and fire arm systems that I would have never been able to see, feel or learn about anywhere else. I was schooled on all manors of optics, ammunition and weapon platforms. I came away from this trip with a greater understanding on how the world of firearms works and operates. I would like to chronicle my time out at the Shot Show from the view of a new gun owner that has had little exposer to assault rifles, optics, and ballistics. So, lets get started!
Let me fill you in on some of my background before I get into the meat of everything. I grew up in a normal(ish) family, I have a mother, father and a little sister. I grew up and lived in the great (now the most upside down) state of New York. My family wasn't much into the hunting aspect of upstate New York but guns have always been apart of my life one way or another. I grew up playing with plastic guns (that would get me killed now if I pointed them at any type of law enforcement) bows and arrows. My father always told me to treat any type of weapon as if it was able to kill something. At the age of 5 I didn't get the concept of death and killing so I would always point my toy guns at anything I saw and pull the trigger. That didn't fly with my father who would take the toy gun from me and destroy it right in from of me. I got the point real quick to never point a gun at anything unless I wanted to make it go bye-bye. Then as I got older I was introduced to real firearms. At the ripe age of 11 I shot my first gun, it was a glock 17 and it was provided to me by my cousin who was at the time a Marine. The second gun I shot was a full size AR-15, it didn't take me long to fall in love with firearms after that.
Fast forward 16 years and here I am. I have my CCP l, I own a Glock 19 and a Mossberg 500 20 gauge pump shot gun. I had fallen out of sorts with the firearms world but working in the security field had opened my eyes again to that world. I will be the first one to tell you that I have very little knowledge of assault rifles and I'm not going bullshit my way through a conversation. I am just not exposed to that world, until recently. I work with law enforcement where I am employed and they have taught me so things about the world of assault rifles but it wasn't enough for me. I wanted to know more and I wanted to know now! So when the opportunity to fly out to Vegas came to go to the shot show, I jumped on it!
Now onto the meat and potatoes of this so far uninformative rant I have going. My good friend Dan was my main point of contact for all the information that was pumped into my head. He owns numerous weapons and is highly educated in that world.
One thing that I couldn't figure out was why I kept seeing .308 and .223 every where but I rarely saw 7.62x51mm or 5.56. I thought that was slightly odd, and then I asked why this was? When I was told they were the same thing (.308 and 7.62x51mm are the same damn thing!) (along with the .223 and 5.56 which are virtually the same.... 5.56 having a bit more pressure behind it) it was just what part of the world you are in, metric and imperial forms. That blew my mind! Seriously, all this time I thought there was a huge difference in the 2 rounds. Nope all the same. So if you already knew this good job, but I will be the first one to tell you, most of the world doesn't know that!
Another aspect of the AR world that I had no idea about was the rifle it's self. There was so much you could have or do to it! From a gas system to a piston based system. I didn't really get to much into detail with that but what I gathered was that the gas system used the spent gases from the ammunition to cycle the weapon as oppose to the piston system that used rods and recoil to cycle the weapon (if I am wrong please let me know!). Dan owns a P.O.F AR and from what I saw and felt this thing was amazing and would perform amazingly. This was as opposed to the Mossberg AR I got to pick up and hold (sorry guys, just giving my opinion here). You can just tell how an AR will operate just by holding it. I have found that the lighter more solid the feel the better performance your going to get out of it. Also I had no idea that people literally build their own AR's. I was under the Assumption that you need to buy the whole rifle then you could change out things. Nope, I was told that I could buy the lower and then just start building from there! At that point my eyes opened up to the possibilities and my mind just took over from there.
What I want everyone to take out of this is; no one know unless they have a open mind and are willing to dive in and get educated. That's the main reason our government and the general populous are in an up roar over gun control. They are uneducated, if they want to ban something and strip away one of our constitutional rights then they need to be educated. Rather than having new rules for owning guns they should all take a gun course. That's what my wife did, she was terrified of me shooting a gun let alone owning one. We went (my wife and I) out took out carry and concealed course and after that she came away with a greater respect for firearms and wasn't afraid of them. People just need to be educated.
I will never give up my right to own fire arms, and if the government strips us of our constitutional right to bare arms then they will have to come and get them.
ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ
-Lead Monkey
Let me fill you in on some of my background before I get into the meat of everything. I grew up in a normal(ish) family, I have a mother, father and a little sister. I grew up and lived in the great (now the most upside down) state of New York. My family wasn't much into the hunting aspect of upstate New York but guns have always been apart of my life one way or another. I grew up playing with plastic guns (that would get me killed now if I pointed them at any type of law enforcement) bows and arrows. My father always told me to treat any type of weapon as if it was able to kill something. At the age of 5 I didn't get the concept of death and killing so I would always point my toy guns at anything I saw and pull the trigger. That didn't fly with my father who would take the toy gun from me and destroy it right in from of me. I got the point real quick to never point a gun at anything unless I wanted to make it go bye-bye. Then as I got older I was introduced to real firearms. At the ripe age of 11 I shot my first gun, it was a glock 17 and it was provided to me by my cousin who was at the time a Marine. The second gun I shot was a full size AR-15, it didn't take me long to fall in love with firearms after that.
Fast forward 16 years and here I am. I have my CCP l, I own a Glock 19 and a Mossberg 500 20 gauge pump shot gun. I had fallen out of sorts with the firearms world but working in the security field had opened my eyes again to that world. I will be the first one to tell you that I have very little knowledge of assault rifles and I'm not going bullshit my way through a conversation. I am just not exposed to that world, until recently. I work with law enforcement where I am employed and they have taught me so things about the world of assault rifles but it wasn't enough for me. I wanted to know more and I wanted to know now! So when the opportunity to fly out to Vegas came to go to the shot show, I jumped on it!
Now onto the meat and potatoes of this so far uninformative rant I have going. My good friend Dan was my main point of contact for all the information that was pumped into my head. He owns numerous weapons and is highly educated in that world.
One thing that I couldn't figure out was why I kept seeing .308 and .223 every where but I rarely saw 7.62x51mm or 5.56. I thought that was slightly odd, and then I asked why this was? When I was told they were the same thing (.308 and 7.62x51mm are the same damn thing!) (along with the .223 and 5.56 which are virtually the same.... 5.56 having a bit more pressure behind it) it was just what part of the world you are in, metric and imperial forms. That blew my mind! Seriously, all this time I thought there was a huge difference in the 2 rounds. Nope all the same. So if you already knew this good job, but I will be the first one to tell you, most of the world doesn't know that!
Another aspect of the AR world that I had no idea about was the rifle it's self. There was so much you could have or do to it! From a gas system to a piston based system. I didn't really get to much into detail with that but what I gathered was that the gas system used the spent gases from the ammunition to cycle the weapon as oppose to the piston system that used rods and recoil to cycle the weapon (if I am wrong please let me know!). Dan owns a P.O.F AR and from what I saw and felt this thing was amazing and would perform amazingly. This was as opposed to the Mossberg AR I got to pick up and hold (sorry guys, just giving my opinion here). You can just tell how an AR will operate just by holding it. I have found that the lighter more solid the feel the better performance your going to get out of it. Also I had no idea that people literally build their own AR's. I was under the Assumption that you need to buy the whole rifle then you could change out things. Nope, I was told that I could buy the lower and then just start building from there! At that point my eyes opened up to the possibilities and my mind just took over from there.
What I want everyone to take out of this is; no one know unless they have a open mind and are willing to dive in and get educated. That's the main reason our government and the general populous are in an up roar over gun control. They are uneducated, if they want to ban something and strip away one of our constitutional rights then they need to be educated. Rather than having new rules for owning guns they should all take a gun course. That's what my wife did, she was terrified of me shooting a gun let alone owning one. We went (my wife and I) out took out carry and concealed course and after that she came away with a greater respect for firearms and wasn't afraid of them. People just need to be educated.
I will never give up my right to own fire arms, and if the government strips us of our constitutional right to bare arms then they will have to come and get them.
ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ
-Lead Monkey
