Luke E.

   Our WalMarts have just in the last month or two started having anything more than large rifle (7mm mag, 300mag, and a few others) ammo in the cases. Now they have a decent selection. They put the ammo out at 7am at the location closest to me and i've not been in any earlier than 4 or 5pm so it isn't flying off the shelf anymore. I guess the reason I asked is, There was little to no ammo being put out for most of the last year and then a few months back it started picking up a little so it got me thinking... If I had gone to WalMart 5 days per week and they only put out ammo on three of those days, that's 9 boxes per week, rifle being 20rds and pistol 50rds. If I bought 5 rifle and 4 pistol then I have 100rds for my AR or? and 200rds of pistol. I average shooting more than this so buying at this rate would not even keep up with my shooting needs much less put me into the hoarder camp. Now if truth were known, I would say that for the first 6 months after Sandy Hook very few folks were getting 9 boxes per week even if they were at WalMart every morning so that would have put someone with my shooting needs at an even larger deficit. I was very fortunate to have quite a large stock of reloading supplies before any of this happened because I bought more than I "needed" for that week. I call it thinking ahead so that I don't get caught with my pants down. To me, the difference between a shooter and a hoarder is not a concrete number because everyone shoots different quantities in any given period of time as well as everyone having a different idea of what is a good number of rounds to have on hand is. I don't know many folks (especially on TGO or any gun forum for that matter) that would turn down the opportunity to have 10,000rds on hand for every caliber they shoot. I guess it all depends on who it is that has the stockpile. I am with you on the resellers that seem to have the connections with the right people in the Wally World food chain though! Scuzz!

   Gotcha. I just didn't know it by MRAD. I've got a mil dot scope on my .243 but i'm not completely proficient with it.

I received a package in the mail from Midway, [URL=http://s303.photobucket.com/user/lukeduke_03/media/Grendelbrassandbullets.jpg.html][/URL] I went in to buy my wife a carry gun today and ended up buying an EOtech as well so that just put the build behind just a hair more but I got it below dealer cost so I couldn't pass it up. I'd never seen a used one for this price! I hope I used the right link

   I hope so.. My main criteria is that it be a 1st foclal plane scope. I know that there are great scopes that are not and there are probably some bad ones that are but I want a great one that IS. I really haven't taken any time to read up on MRAD ranging so I won't really know what i'm missing... Ignorance is sometimes bliss I guess.

   There wasn't a Walther PPS in the case when we were there (that I saw anyways). I actually picked up her Shield today so now I have to take the frame in for some color. Part of me wants to show it to her now since she already knows that she is getting it.. I would have to take it back and get the color put on and then I would wait until Christmas to give it back to her. I guess i'll see if I can just forget about it so I won't be anxious to give it to her now.  I did put 50 rounds through it this afternoon though because I've seen where a lot of folks have had trouble running 115gr projectiles until they had a few hundred rounds down the pipe. I'm happy to report that it functioned flawlessly for all 50 rounds.   Thanks again everyone for all the input!

   Very good to know!

You do not have to have a pistol (short barreled) upper to have a legal pistol as there is not max barrel length for a pistol. An AR pistol is an AR void of a buttstock and any sort of vertical foregrip. Others will almost certainly chime in and add anything I might have forgotten but I think I have it covered. Unless you just happen to want to buy the upper anyways.

I'm glad you got that one! It's on my very very short list so I'll be looking for a review.

   What do you consider a "hoarder"?

My wife and I have no kids yet so we've got quite a while before we have to make any school decisions but by then we will have sold our house in Lascassas and built on our land out past Christiana. Even though we've no kids yet, we have already started worrying about schooling. If I can get my income back to where it once was then we will likely be looking at private school but if not then we will be looking for the best public option so good to hear Eagleville is still worried about the kids enrolled in their school. If you are zoned for Riverdale, how do you get moved to Eagleville? Sorry to jack your thread here, just got my curiousity up.

 Ah, I didn't think about Eagleville. I live in Murfreeesboro also but I wasn't recognizing the jersey.

 Timthetoolman and I cleared out a couple more trails on one side of the property today and when we got done we decided to make a set for coyote. I have an electronic call that I got from DaveS and got in the woods and got the call set up and sat down. After getting settled I hit the button to fire up the call when my decision to not check the batteries came back to bite me. Between calls I would have to hold the remote under the camo net and rub them around in my hands to warm them up enough to wring the last bit of juice out of them. Even when I did get it to work it was intermittent and staticy so when it got close to being dark we started packing up. Evidently we were being watched because as soon as we started moved around I heard a deer about 20yds behind us stomping and blowing at us. It is about 200yds through the woulds from where my "safe haven" feeding and watering hole is so i'm sure that's where she was headed. I try to leave that spot alone unless i'm getting close to the end of the season and need more meat in the freezer. It is kind of a fail safe spot because there is at least one group in there once and a lot of the time twice a day during the winter so I try to not put pressure on them right there. Good luck on opening gun day fellas.

 Where does he play?

   Good to know.

   Sorry I didn't get this to you earlier, i've had computer troubles and have just now been able to get Windows to open up.    Anyways, I looked at the polish I used and it is Northern Tool brand Green polishing compound. I'm not finding it on their website by itself but they have kits that come with all the different compounds and a few polishing wheels and what not. The Northern Tool here in Murfreesboro has round plastic tubes with sticks of the differents compounds in them, on one of the end caps. Each color is representative of a certain grit and i'm fairly certain all the manufacturers stick with the same color/grit so any should give you the results you want. I know the surfaces that you want to polish are steel but I went with the polish that is for brass so that I would get a slicker finish. I snapped a pic of the tube with me cell so if you want to see it, PM me your cell number and i'll send it your way. Also if you can't find the same stuff just send me your mailing address and i'll grab another stick and send it to you. It was only a dollar or two.

   I think that I've actually seen part of that video but had forgotten about it. I really appreciate all of you guys and gals help with this aspect of the process!

    Well first off, the holster with the Blue panel on the front is the same color that i'll be having the frame ceracoated for her. As for the belt thing.... that could be tough.. See I married a "princess" :) so i'm not sure how i'm going to get the whole belt thing in play but I don't see much way around it. There are a few options such as the Spanx type spandex deal with the pocket built in for a pistol that i'd like to get for her as well as one for inside her purse so that it is shielded from hands that are endlessly digging at Mary Poppins like depth for something that may of may not be in there  :rofl:  but there really isn't a substitute for having it located somewhere around your waistline. I guess we'll have to really make a strong effort to find a belt that she can live with. Are there any that function okay without a belt? I wear a Crossbreed type knockoff and I don't attach it to my belt but I do have a belt on which adds some rigidity to it indirectly. I'm getting worried that I may have celebrated her picking out her first carry pistol to early because i'm already getting the feeling that picking a gun was the easy part and picking the holsters is going to be the tough part of the experience!    Oh yea, Yes this has helped more than you know! I'll look through the website that you provided with her tomorrow night.

Awesome! i'll sit down with her and flip through the videos and see if anything strikes her fancy. I've started kind of explaining the pros & cons of different holster designs and carrying positions so her seeing someone else reinforcing what i've told her will go a long ways. Maybe the videos will narrow it down some and then we can go to the gun show armed with that info. Thanks guys.

    Well the bright side of this is that she doesn't have her carry permit yet and we're already very busy through the first of the year so we've got some time to shop around and find ones that she likes or at least can live with until she gets used to it and forgets that it's there anyways. I didn't think about going to the gun show to try holsters out but that sounds like what we need to do as soon as she has the gun.

   My bag with dremel and polishing compound is in the shop but i'd be glad to look and see what it is and let you know tomorrow. If I haven't let you know something by noon, shoot me a PM and remind me. I will say that it doesn't take much with a dremel to get the job done and after that you're basically adding wear to the bearing surfaces. As I was polishing I remember thinking to myself that if I ended up being able to tell the slightest difference that i'd be lucky. Just to see if it was worth doing I only field stripped it and polished the tops of the surfaces and then fit it all back together. The first time I racked the slide I couldn't believe how big of a difference it made! I'm not exaggerating when I say that it felt like the slide was floating over the frame! I get busy and forget easily so be sure to remind me if I you haven't heard from me by noon.

 I've got a buddy with an FFL and he said he bought several a while back at a good rate and is giving me at least the one for my wife at his cost. He has done better than cost on a couple occasions when a birthday or something fell around the time. I will give him some extra if I decide to buy one for myself as well though. I don't like to take advantage of the situation and him doing one at around $250 is a big favor as it is. I saw that PSA had them for $359 but if my friend didn't have one I was going to get it from On-Target because I would have only saved probably $50 and it's worth that to me to deal local and keep my money close by. 

Thanks for the heads up. My wife did let me hold the shield while we were there and I noticed that the springs were a bit stiff but nothing 200-300 rounds won't work out but the biggest thing I noticed was how roughly the slide interacted with the frame. The full frame M&P's are this way to a lesser extent but usage does smooth it out some but not completely. I stripped my full frame and polished the bearing surfaces of the chassis which made a HUGE difference! It honestly gave it the feel of a hand mated custom pistol which translated into a much lighter feel when racking the slide. It still has the same weight when holding the slide all the way back or anywhere stationary but when you are actually moving the slide, you are only over coming the spring tension rather than the spring tension+overcoming the friction. When I pick the Shield up I will probably run some assorted ammo through it just for testing purposes and then polish it really good. Once I polish it I will run some of the same assorted rounds through it and compare notes. My guess is that polishing it will allow it to only fight the spring rather than spring and friction, which should let it cycle the lighter bullet weight loads. I'll take notes of the before and after and post my findings here. I'm rather excited for her to be getting such a fine pistol and at the price I'm getting it at, I may end up with two of them if he'll sell me the second one at the same price. If I decide to go ahead and buy two of them it should total up to $500 for both total plus tax and government fees.y only hesitation comes from me being in the middle of building a 6.5 Grendel out of my TGO receiver set. Decisions decisions.

   Sad isn't it.. My number one thing that I want to do is to build my own suppressor and it is irritating to have to wait so long just so that you can make something yourself, using your own tools and equipment, in your own shop and all on your own property! I really don't think we are as free as we think we are... 

   See Spots should have just sent you a pm to start with!

I just remembered that I have a pic saved on my desktop. PM me your email and i'll shoot it to you. I don't wanna fool with photobucket right now.