Keith

Blown4v, since you're in Memphis please come shoot the match at MSSA on Feb 18th. (It's always the 3rd Saturday of the month). I tell everyone this but DO NOT come to "just watch" your first match, you really don't learn anything and it's kind of a wasted day. Once you shoot it you'll figure out what you need to work on pretty quickly. The XD is a fine choice, I'm a glock shooter but this is a 95% practice/5% gear kinda thing. Regarding the shotgun, I would strongly suggest an autoloader. You can pick up used 1100's pretty cheap and they're fine if they have a choke. At MSSA some of the steel plate racks are NOT kind at all to cylinder bore shotguns so you'll want a way to tighten up the pattern. If I was buying one today I'd probably get a FN SLP, but a 930 or 1100 will work fine. Hell even if you come out to the match with a break open shotgun I guarantee someone in your squad will let you borrow a shotgun to use. Also to correct something earlier in the thread, MSSA does not use major/minor power factor in 3gun scoring. However because they use EZWin Score software on the Palm's they have defaulted everyone to 'major' so that the there isn't an advantage given for shooting just a major PF pistol. This is why the match scores show up that way.

No that's what a lot of folks do, myself included. Unless you can do it yourself or have a local connection that can (I can't and don't) there are several companies that will do this for you. I spent another $160 with TROS to have it cut, crowned and threaded 1/2x28 or if you don't feel like dealing with it you can buy a new one for $275 from CMMG and just be done with it. The PS90 is a nice compact little gun when SBR'd, otherwise it's a little ridiculous looking with that long barrel sticking out in front. Kind of like a non-SBR UZI.

I've done this and the biggest recommendation I can make is don't even bother with trying to drill out the blind pin. I just used a chop-saw to cut through the entire barrel and shroud just about 1/2" below the blind pin (ie, closer to the receiver than the muzzle). You're going to have TROS or whoever cut another several inches off anyway so why bother trying to make it neat, just hack through the whole danged thing and you won't even have to worry about unscrewing it, it just falls off if you cut far enough back. You'll still need to grind/thin down a wrench to tighten the new barrel on but that only took a few minutes with a grinding disk. Honestly the hardest part is just filling out all the paperwork, waiting on approval, getting the engraving done, shipping the barrel around (if you buy the CMMG SBR barrel you can avoid this but then you've got an extra half-chopped barrel you don't need), etc etc. It is a good opportunity to learn about Form 1's and NFA paperwork though. Also be sure to use the dowel trick to keep all the pieces together if you do it yourself. It's pretty simple really, the instructions on AR15.com make it look harder than it is (in my opinion).