Back in the Saddle

[FN509Fan]

I bought my very first firearm in 1990 when the house my first wife and I were general contracting in a fairly isolated area in a far west Chicago suburb got burglarized shortly before we moved in. Illinois required we get a Firearm Owner's Identification Cards (FOID) from what I thought at the time was a highly restrictive state. As soon as my FOID arrived, I headed to the next gun show and bought a NIB Sig 226 for $600 that had spent some time on the shelf. The wife headed to a breeder and picked out a beautiful white German shepherd puppy who wound up weighing in at 125lbs fully grown. What started with the SIG turned into a 300 round a week shooting habit for me and the ex for several years and me getting into reloading with a Dillon Square Deal and picking up other shoot'n toys.

Fast forward to 2006, I moved to what my brother calls the People's Republic of Maryland (he's lived here for decades) where I met my 2nd wife who can't believe she hooked up with a guy with a NRA sticker in the back window of his pickup. She was fairly anti gun (and anti NRA) and as of this year, I hadn't been to the range in 15 years or more. With all the political turmoil of late, wife #2 expressed an interest in learning to handle a gun and be able to defend herself. During the COVID lockdown, I taught her gun safety with my trusty SIG 226, we reviewed numerous gun safety videos on YouTube and I scoped out our next acquisition.

You can guess from my handle what our latest acquisition was. The wife is kinda ambidextrous so I wanted a fully ambi gun for her to decide which she wants to use a her dominant hand and to "qualify" on and build up her muscle memory on. This will be our self defense gun and since it arrived, we've both put sever hundred rounds of cheap Russian steal cased ammo through it. She started out shooting right handed but shifted to left and pretty much stuck there.

 

With my gun nut tendencies rejuvenated, I had also been drooling over the New Vaquero in 45 Colt. Though hard to find, I located one in Georgia just shy of the prior MSRP and snatched it up. I don't plan to get into cowboy shooting, just like the experience of shooting a (replicated) part of gun history. While I had plenty of supplies for my Dillon SCB from a couple of decades ago, I had no experience with 45 Colt and Dillon didn't have any dies so I bought bullets and cases and regular dies for my single stage RCBS JR3. The first 48 rounds were 250 gr XTPs with the lightest loads of Unique and VV#N350, both of which discouraged the wife from trying it out. So I've loaded some lighter loads using bullets that were gathering dust. We'll see how they work out, the first round were right on point of aim and I was pleased with them, I'm a little worried about lighter loads.

At work I sit in front of a computer for 10 hours a day, so I'm not up for spending much time on the computer at home. But I hope to utilize the forums to find the best places to go shoot, and maybe do some socializing once this COVID crisis is over. Back in Illinois, my ex and I were part of a small cadre that went shooting every Saturday and pizza afterwards. It would be great to find that again.

[RangerTrace]

Good for you.  Buy more guns and shoot them all!!

[Skytrooper]

Welcome !  Good to see that you are "back in the saddle"  !