Duane Thomas

I was A-class in USPSA, 2.3 percentage points away from Master, and lookin' forward to gettin' the M, then I lost interest in USPSA. Eventually I would get the M, but it was in IDPA Stock Service Pistol, on the original 90-round classifier.

Good point. Well, that answers that question. Thanks, Jim. So, if I want to fire my SIG P320 with GrayGuns Hybrid trigger system in place, I guess it's an ESP kinda day.

Does anyone know if the GrayGuns Hybrid SIG P320 trigger system is legal in SSP? Logic tells me it would be, since we are allowed to replace trigger components in SSP, the only proviso being none of the external parts can look different, with the Hybrid system the only replacement part that shows is the trigger itself, and that looks identical to the stock part, but the truth is, I don't know.

A solid choice. On the short list for The Best Western Ever Made. The only other realistic choices would be Red River and Once Upon a Time in the West.

Well, yeah.

Joseph, you are SO awesome.

Nope. Mark at Dillon saves stuff under issue dates, but not article titles.

Just got this email from a reader: "Did you write an article for Blue Press, 4-5 Year’s ago, where you talked about wasting 20 Year’s shooting slow but accurate? But then you had to teach yourself how to shoot fast, and not slow down, and the hits gradually came and kept coming more frequently? I had that posted on my refrigerator and read it twice a week, but don’t have it and wanted to show my shooting buddy. Can you direct me to a link for it? Please? " A year or two ago I got hit with a piece of ransomware called Zepto. #1 on the list of things I lost that I regret was my record of all the articles I've had published over the decades, and where. Does anyone out there in the great Benosverse group mind happen to know in which issue of The Blue Press I had an article titled something along the lines of "Fast or Accurate...Or Both?"

I've been in every issue of The Blue Press. Also the occasional thing in S.W.A.T. I just published my third book.

AND own Josh Randall's original mare's leg.

I did. You have made me curious about My Darling Clementine. I'll be checking it out.

An excellent choice!

1938 Errol Flynn or 2014 Scott Eastwood?

Thanks, man. Hopefully, I can find the actual article, too.

I'm trying to track down an old article of mine, it was published in Dillon's Blue Press, and the title was "I Damn Near Cried." That was the title my editor gave it, my original title was "The Kid and the Air Rifle." In any event, for some strange reason I am missing, from my collection of Blue Press issues, six issues from 2002, I skip from Mar. 2002 to Oct. 2002. I would not be at all surprised if that article was in one of those issues. And no, I cannot simply go onto Dillon's web site and find it, their back issues of the The Blue Press only go back to 2005 (aside from the very first issue, natch, which they have on there as a sort of historical curiosity). Would anyone out there in the Great Enosverse Group Mind happen to have a copy of this article? And if so, could I get a scan of it?

So, do you still have a singlestack from back in the day, or has this been an experience of re-gunning? Myself, I've been spending a lot of time with the Wilson EDC X9 lately; in fact, I have an article in the current Blue Press about how much I love this gun. Having said that, I do have to admit that lately I've been hearing the siren song of the singlestack 1911 .45 calling me back.

Okay, obviously I need to check out Twelve O'clock High.

A solid choice.

Okay, done. You are no longer a member of Self-Defense-Handguns.com. Honestly, I was sorry to see you go. I always enjoyed reading your posts on BrianEnos.com over my years here, I enjoyed your posts to Self-Defense-Handguns.com, brief though your stay there was. Knowledgeable, helpful, friendly. I certainly classed you as one of the sterling exceptions. Again, I have been asked a serious question, so I will give you a serious answer. I came here because I expected better. Bear with me while I tell you a bit of ancient history. I joined this site, originally, the second day it was in existence. How that happened was, I was laying in bed one morning, fast asleep, my phone rang, the answering machine picked up, I heard this voice saying, "Hey, this is Brian Enos..." Well, to a guy like me, that was like a Rolling Stones fan suddenly, out of the blue, getting a phone call and hearing a voice saying, "Hey, this is Mick Jagger..." Lemme tellya, I woke up, from asleep to wider than wide awake, probably the fastest I ever have in my life, and practically got air friction burns reaching for the phone. Brian had gotten my phone number from the folks at The Blue Press because I had just written, and had published, an article on his book and how awesome it is, and he wanted permission to put that up on his site. The folks at Dillon had told him they didn't own the copyright to that article, I did. He actually wanted to know how much I'd charge him to put it up on his site! I found it flattering. I was, like, "Take it, free of charge." Brian told me the reason he wanted that article was because he had just started up his own website the day before. He didn't know what would happen with it, maybe nothing. I was dressed and on my way to the library - this was before I had 'net access at home - within minutes of hanging up, and on here a few minutes later. When I joined, there were literally single digit people who got here ahead of me. Those were heady days. Only a handful of people posting to the site, all of them sharing in this open-handed, generous nature - an EXTRAORDINARILY high signal to noise ratio. I got involved in the site in a big way. I have to admit to a bit of amusement, coming back here now, to see that my overall post count still puts me as the 5th highest ever to the site, even after years of being away. But that's how important this place was to me. I'd be on BrianEnos.com, answering people's questions for hours on end, almost every day for ten years, when the God's honest truth is I should have been writing articles, making money. On a few occasions, I did triple-digit posts in a single day. And these weren't wimpy little one-liners, I am not, as you may have noticed, the least verbose person on Earth, I was giving people real, detailed responses. I moderated the IDPA forum for eight years, because it had become an absolute snake pit, the source of most of the problems on the site, so much so there was serious talk from Brian of simply deleting it and making this a no-IDPA forum site. Largely to stop that from happening, because I love the sport, I said, "I'll take it over." And I guarantee you, by the time I was done, the IDPA forum was the most well-behaved area on this board. If you're at all curious, go and read my Rules of the Road over on my site. You think they're tough? You think they set a high standard? You think they're all, "Here's the line, toe it or we're going to have a problem"? That's how I ran the IDPA forum. (Those rules were based on Brian's verbiage for the rules of behavior on BrianEnos.com, and I asked and received his permission to use his stuff as a matrix, but let's just say there have been considerable additions, and not to make them more lenient either.) I was a proselitizer, I tried to talk the people at Dillon into letting me do an article on BrianEnos.com in The Blue Press, but they wouldn't let me, damnit. I did manage to get a two-part article in Front Sight, a retrospective of Brian's career, leading up to the formation of BrianEnos.com, mostly because it was a stealth way of giving the site free, nationwide publicity. I told anyone who would listen that BrianEnos.com was "where the real shooters hang out, if you've got a question and want a real answer from people who know what they're talking about, this is the place." And it puzzled me, and frankly somewhat disturbed me, the number of times I'd do that, and the person I was talking to would get this look of distaste on their face - and we're talking serious shooters out at IDPA and USPSA matches - and say basically what my friend said: "Yeah, I tried that, I didn't like it." The word that got used, over and over again, was "elitism." I argued with them, I told them that wasn't true. So, on to this thread here. Like I said, I expected better. Okay, I was cautious, but still I figured I'd come here, tell people, "Hey, there's a young mother who needs your help," and I would be swarmed by people stepping forward, saying, "Sure thing!" Because that's what I've always expected from this site. I have to say, it's been a sad and eye-opening experience. Even the one moderator who posted to this thread, in my humble opinion, came across like a clueless jerk. I still have an extremely high regard for Brian. I think he's one of the coolest people I've ever met, a real human being, I class him as a friend, despite the fact I live about as far away from him as I can and still be in the continental United States, and I trust he feels the same. What the site has turned into, if this thread is any indication...not so much. I'm glad that it's still great source of information and camaraderie and aid to you. Seriously. But before you get all defensive, all "Oh, how dare you criticize my alma mater," bear in mind I was a member of this alma mater, and had done more for it than you ever will, in overwhelming probability long before you ever even knew it existed. I have certainly put in my time to rate having an opinion in the matter. I don't know what's happened. Maybe the membership has changed over the past five years or so I've been gone. Maybe nothing changed. Maybe I just always looked at this site a bit starry-eyed. I really don't know. In any event, I think I'm probably done here. Finally, completely done, 15 years after I first came here and dedicated a fairly large chunk of my life to it. I mean, really...over 13,000 posts? Ye gods. It's a sad thing, but hey, I'm a big boy, I'll survive. The truth is that if I put as much time and effort into my own site as I did into this one, it would have been a huge success in, like, five minutes, right?

I'm certainly sorry that you feel that way, but I will follow your wishes in the matter.

Well, that sounds to me like a serious question, so I will endeavor to give you a serious answer. I did consider everything you said, as options. And I discussed the matter with a shooting buddy of mine, who is a friend of the lady in question, and also spends a fair amount of time on various message boards. His advice was, "I wouldn't do it. I've been on BrianEnos.com a few times, and the bottom line is, I didn't like it. I don't know what it is about competition shooters, but there's a real air of elitism that comes off the people on that site. They just do not deal well with beginners, the people who don't know as much as they do, the people asking what they consider really basic, stupid questions. The best analogy I could come up with is that throwing Beth in with that crowd would be like throwing a baby seal into a tank with a bunch of sharks." Made sense to me. So, to answer your question, the reason I'm not asking Beth to join this site, the reason I'm not giving her a link to this thread, is that if a person does not have a sufficient level of chivalry, a baseline willingness to extend themself to help another person, sufficient to motivate them to go to her, I want to keep them away from her. Certainly, with a few sterling exceptions, everything I have seen in this thread, the "If she wants my advice, she'll have to come to me, I'm not going to her," the "Just copy a link to this thread, why should I have to put any more effort into it," My Time Is Too Valuable attitude, has simply reinforced to me the wisdom of that decision.

Wow. Thanks for the support. I mean...seriously? Recruitment drive. No, I just don't like lazy, antisocial people. Certainly not on my website. If someone can't be bothered to actually join the site, my attitude is I don't need them, or their input, on my site. Admittedly I didn't develop that rule until earlier today, but it seems like a good one to me. I may amend that as time goes by. Probably not, though. There does seem to be a certain self-regulating function here. Because the people who could be bothered to "complicate their lives" to that tiny extent, in order to help another person, have actually posted some good, solid information to that thread. That's what I want on my site: friendly, knowledgeable people who will extend themselves to help others. It's not about making things as easy as possible for myself, it's not that I'm too freakin' lazy to copy a link, it's certainly not about any sort of recruitment drive, it's about having people who want to make things as easy as possible on the person who needs the information. It's a baseline way of viewing the world that really does have an effect on the overall vibe of a message board, in my opinion. I have noticed many times over the years, there seems to be an attitude among some people, on certain message boards, who have spent a lot of time getting really good at a particular thing, who have develped a high level of knowledge and skill, that their time is too valuable to be wasted dealing with newbie questions. They're just not willing to extend themselves. That attitude has been, by and large, absent on BrianEnos.com. It will be totally absent on Self-Defense-Handguns.com. Having said all that, and meaning every word of it, I will also (seemingly) reverse myself and admit I did click on the link provided by Mr. Not Up For Joining Another Website But Here Anyway Do It Yourself, and then clicked on another link from there that led to a page addressing the problems with biometric gun safes, and posted that link into the thread over on my site. As much as the attitude struck me wrong, I'm not going to turn my back on information the OP really did need to know. Other than that, I'll thank you to keep your commentary to yourself. When you have your own website, you can run it any way you want, without me kibitzing and critiquing. Honest. I expect the same courtesy. And if, for some hideous reason, I felt the need to call your personal integrity into question, I certainly wouldn't do it in public. That's just rude. But if you want to do this in public, I can certainly respond in kind. FYI, I did run by Brian the idea of posting links to questions on my site here on BE.com, as long as I don't use the opportunity to pump things I have to sell, before I started this thread, and he said that was just fine. My website has been up for over a year now. If I wanted to use BE.com in some sort of sneaky stealth attempt to lure people onto my message board, I'm kinda late out of the box, huh? Generally, I answer people's questions myself. The reason I posted here is that I know jack-all about teeny little box safes. The reason I posted a link to a question about .308 loads is that I know jack-all about handloading .308. And really, what do you think I might actually gain from this supposed recruitment drive? There must a level of fame and riches to be had here to which I am COMPLETELY oblivious. I mean, really, you can't even easily get from my message board to the rest of the site, thus to actually be able to find anything I have for sale. Engage brain, Nik. And basic politeness skills. Know what you're talking about before you accuse someone else of malfeasance in public. Because in case you're wondering whether you managed to offend and irritate me, you did.

I'm sure the lady in question would benefit from the insights and experiences being share here, if they were being shared instead in a venue where she could easily read them. There's also a thread over on Self-Defense-Handguns.com where a senior shooter is enquiring about handloading data for the .308 that could use some love, too. (Hey, we're not doctrinaire about either the "self defense" or the "handguns" part of the equation.) Going back to the "Glock 26" thread, it started out as discussion of the G26 but swiftly morphed into a discussion of how to safetly keep a gun in a home that also includes a small child. I have asked a female friend of mine to post, since she's a mother and shooter who's actually had that experience. I'm sure the OP would appreciate hearing from another woman and mother, instead of all this unrelenting maleness.

De nada. Feel free to poke around, post in any existent threads, start your own on any topic that tickles your fancy, ask questions, share knowledge, etc.

Well, that just means you'll have oodles of time to post on Self-Defense-Handguns.com, right? I have registered you manually, myself, which I can do as a site admin, and an email notifying you of your password should now be sitting in your email inbox.