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.
(more…)

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.

the good news: i had a great time attending the phoenix pink pistols monthly shoot at shooter’s world today. i was using federal american eagle ae22 ammo, which performed flawlessly. at the range, i paid $2.49 for a box of 40 rounds, but i found it as inexpensive as $1.80 at ableammo.com. the ammo shoots so clean, that i don’t think i’ll clean the pistol until after the next time i go shooting.

the bad news is that my new bsa optics sight broke after like 3 shots. and that’s why in the picture above, the sight isn’t on the pistol. fortunately, i had the foresight to bring a small screwdriver and grip, just in case i didn’t like the sight. looking at their return policy, i see that i have to send them $10.00 and pay for shipping, just to have the darn thing serviced or replaced. you can be sure that i will never buy a bsa optics product again. and frankly, i don’t know that i’ll bother to even return it.

after the shoot, we went to lux coffee bar for coffee and conversation. there’s nothing like good coffee and conversation in a friendly atmosphere. i like lux even better than copper star coffee, where we’ve gone in the past after our shoots.

so i added a bsa optics gd30sil green dot sight, using an aimtech apm-11 aluminum weaver mount, along with black nylon grips on my s&w 2206tgt .22 pistol. looking forward to trying it out in the range this weekend at our phoenix pink pistol monthly shoot.