Why I'm here.

I grew up in a somewhat liberal, extremely pacifist household in the equally liberal Washington state. I had some good friends who introduced me to the errors of my upbringing. Guns (any weapons really) were a forbidden topic in my house, so when I was first introduced to shooting sports I fell in love- kind of a forbidden fruit thing I think. My mother still wonders where she went so wrong.
Because of my upbringing, and my poverty in college, I am not your average gun guy. Most “gun people” buy a gun and it stays in the family, passed on through generations when the owner goes to their heavenly reward. I, on the other hand, go through guns like they were work pants. I get bored, or I look too close, or I shoot them till I don’t like them anymore. Over the past five years I have bought, shot, and sold or traded More than 50 firearms. Along the way I have learned TONS, established opinions, and had a great time. Now some will ask, “Why” ? It all comes down to a deal I made with my incredibly beautiful, and patient wife. When we were first engaged we talked about lots of important things in great detail, and one of those was firearms. She knew I liked guns and enjoyed shooting (though at the time neither of us had any idea how big this would become). She was worried about having hundreds of guns strewn everywhere around the house. We set a four gun limit at any given time. Over the years that deal has been revisited and modified, but the rule made me sell a gun before I could get a new one. It also has led me to play with a ton of platforms and a ton of accessories. This review blog is based on the experience gathered along the way. I have also figured out how to self-fund my gun addiction. In our house “gun money” is a separate entity, though I have on occasion used it to spoil my wife. “Gun money” is money made from a gun sale that is used for buying another gun or ammo. (Gun money also magically accumulates when I let my wife pick our sons names). Guns have become a real investment to mee, they hold their value very well. I have made a lot of additional “gun money” along the way. My addiction started with a $550 initial investment and has grown to around $15,000 in guns, and around $8000 in ammo (though little of that is left) in the course of five years.

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The gun safe.



I have two delightful boys, who are quite young, the oldest and I work in the “gun room” a lot. When I reload he plays with my tools, or when I tinker with a gun he steals my tools and hides them, (it was annoying at first, but has become a fun game.) for the longest time my rifles adorned the wall on a gun rack I made, and the pistols were hidden throughout the house. This arrangement worked great for a long time, but has started to be a problem, as all my guns stay loaded at all times (mag full chamber empty, unless I have it on my person). I have always felt that an unloaded gun is just an awkward club, and why would I have club when I paid for a gun. Now when I say a problem I don’t mean that he, at any point found a firearm and picked it up. He knows better than that, but my pacifist mother convinced my wife that I needed a way to secure the guns, and after much discussion I relented. I don’t like gun safes, they take too long to open with a combo lock, and key pad models seem too hard to operate under stress, say when you would actually need to get to a gun. So after a ton of research and shopping (like 6 months) I found a safe that fit my need, it is a gunvault. It has a hand shaped key pad on the top that is easy to use even in the dark, it is fire rated but only for 30mins (which I am fine with as I live 3 mins. from a fire department) I can get all my long guns into it, am some of my pistols reside in the nifty door mounted cubbies. All in all it is the perfect safe for my current situation. I am not going to pretend it is large enough that I won’t outgrow it, but everything I need locked up is inside and it is lag bolted to the floor, through the floor joists, so I am not worried about it leaving. My one complaint it that it was not carpeted on the sides and some of my scopes show scratches from banging the sides. I have since used spray adhesive to attach black felt and mitigated that, but it sucked for a while. All in all I still don’t like gun safes, but this is a good one for me.

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