there’s a breast cancer charity raffle running over on monster hunter nation. it’s $5.00 per ticket, and anyone can enter. more pictures and information here. right now, you can purchase a ticket by phone or if you live in the area, at their store. there’s talk about a paypal method of payment as well. i am so going to buy a ticket.

i picked up a walther p22 in pink yesterday. i couldn’t resist. this is the first polymer framed handgun i’ve had, so it took a little getting used to, being much lighter than my smith & wesson 2206. i will say it’s almost as accurate. i really like the magazines, which have a protruding slide which is easy to depress when loading, and it fits nicely in my hand. of course, i shot it without cleaning it first, which may have led to several failures to cycle, but nothing that couldn’t be cleared simply by pulling back the slide.
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i attended the phoenix pink pistols saturday shoot today, and i wore my smith & wesson “yeah, i shoot like a girl” tank top. the range was pretty busy, though there were only 5 of us there. i tried out my .38 jacketed hollow points which performed flawlessly. made by hornady, i expected nothing less, especially considering what i paid for them (more than twice the price of standard .38 ammo). i’ll say that hornady ammo has lived up to its high end reputation.

(the bullet on the left is the hornady .38 jacketed hollow point)

i also found out that one of the other women, who i’ve known for several months now and have shot with several times, is trans.

i had no clue.

we all met at copper star coffee after the shoot and were sipping coffee talking about this and that, and she mentions that she’s going in for surgery, probably by the end of the year. thinking that she had some kind of ailment, or perhaps she was going in for a hysterectomy or something, i gently probed for a little more information. she looked at me and said, “you know, *the* surgery”. i had a blank look on my face, as i had no idea to what she might be referring. i started thinking that maybe there was some kind of girl thing about which i hadn’t yet received the memo. then she said “srs”.

at first i thought she might be making fun of me.

but no, it turned out she’s trans, and pre op. i remember thinking to myself “but i thought you were a real girl!”. and i caught myself and realized how bad i was for my poor use of language, even in my own head. i also caught myself shifting my perception, and had to remind myself that this bit of news really changes nothing, other than finding myself offering to help with her recovery, since i’ve been through it myself.

just…wow.

oh, and here’s a pic from the handgun basics class a few weeks ago of me trying on an AK-47 for size. they’re ugly rifles, aren’t they.

being officially pinned at the phoenix pink pistols, for getting my ccw permit.

…at the smith and wesson store. my favorite is the “yeah, i shoot like a girl” tank top. though the extra magazines will come in handy. special thanks to my hubby for letting me go shopping.

and speaking of guns, i got this lovely pin from the pink pistols for getting my ccw permit. i also picked up some new ammo for my smith and wesson 637 revolver.

interestingly enough, finding jacketed hollowpoints for a .38 is harder than it may seem. and they are a bit expensive, at $13.99 for a box of 25. i’ll have to do some searching on the net for better pricing.

when i was on vacation last week, i attended a ccw (concealed weapons) class at shooter’s world. i opted for the two 4 hour classes, as opposed to the one 8 hour class. there were approximately 18 people in attendance. two of us were women, the rest were men. indeed, on the first day of the class, before the second woman arrived, one of the male attendees remarked that he was disappointed that “only one woman was attending”. i agreed with him.
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this is what nexy’s cocoon looks like on the first saturday of a one week holiday from work. two very dirty guns home from the range. the phoenix pink pistols had our saturday shoot today, and we all had a great time. i shot fairly well, and seem to be getting better with my s&w 637 revolver. i still love shooting my s&w 2206tgt .22 autoloader though.

we were hoping a few people would attend today that visited our booth last week at pride, though perhaps they are waiting to first attend our handgun basics workshop on may 3rd. a few minutes before i left for the range, i put together a little safety flier for anyone new to shooting (mostly from info i found at the gun zone, though “the four rules” are pretty well known and propagated) but it turned out to be not needed.

one of the ideas behind the pink pistols is that if enough lgbt people are armed, perhaps the bigots will be less likely to attempt to kill us. in an article on southern voice online, covering hillary clinton’s position on gun control, editor rebecca armendariz writes:

One of the steps towards eliminating hate crimes like [the death of Lawrence King] is obviously tougher gun control laws.

ummm, because they’ve been working so well up until now?

the only thing tougher gun control laws do is to keep guns out of the hands of law abiding citizens. criminals, by definition, don’t follow the law, so will not be effected by “tougher gun control laws”. one of the steps toward eliminating hate crimes against lgbt people is to be armed, so that the bigots will be less likely to act upon their hate knowing that their intended victim may be armed. another step is to strictly enforce current laws.

i stopped by cabela’s today to check out their sale and gun show. this smith & wesson .38 caliber 637 revolver was on sale for $389.99 (normally $439.99, msrp $545.00) so i picked one up. after filling out a two page form, they do a quick background check, and i was good to go.

this is pretty similar to the gun my friend john bought in february, and i blogged about it here. i fired his s&w 442 a few more times since then and decided that it wasn’t as bad as i thought. i also picked up some magtech 38 SPL ammo which is not of the +P type, so it should have a little less recoil than what we were shooting. oh, and since they were having a sale, i stocked up on some ammo for my 9mm and .22.

in a stunning display of world class customer service, bsa optics responded to my broken scope email within 12 hours. they advised me that within 30 days of purchase, they’d pay for shipping, and emailed me a prepaid ups ticket. so i dropped the scope off at my local ups store this morning, and i wait eagerly for the repaired or replaced unit. so far, i am quite impressed with their customer service. i’ll post updates as they occur.