Whew! Recently got back from three and a half weeks on the road. Court stuff, teaching stuff, and the occasional pistol match thrown in, for several thousand miles.<\/p>\n
Significant Other and I had seven handguns with us, six of them \u201cplastic\u201d 9mm semiautomatics. I needed a Glock 19 as an exemplar for one of the shooting cases, in the event that we needed to do any testing\/replication demonstrations once trial was underway. That didn\u2019t turn out to be necessary, but the little 16-shooter did double duty as a regular concealed carry gun for much of the trip, which encompassed several states.<\/p>\n
It was a \u201cGlock month\u201d for me, and I had a couple of Model 17s along. The 17 is half an inch longer in barrel and slide than the 19, proportionally longer in the butt, and carries two more cartridges. One of the 17s was set up for match shooting, the other for concealed carry. The match gun was used once in a tournament, and so was the carry G17. I also had the subcompact version of the Glock 9mm, the 11-shot Model 26, along for a backup on the Tulsa leg of the trip, but it never got touched off once.<\/p>\n
The Evil Princess has lately become a fan of the Springfield Armory XD(m) and brought two, one tuned by the Springfield Custom Shop (she used it to place 3rd, beating most of the SWAT cops, in the house-clearing test at the National Tactical Conference), and another with standard trigger pull that she wore as her concealed carry piece in an Aker holster in all but two of the states we traveled through.<\/p>\n
Of the seven guns we had with us, the only all-metal one was my little J-frame S&W snubby revolver, a comfortable lightweight backup gun that I keep loaded with +P .38 Special.<\/p>\n
Having six of the seven guns the same caliber was convenient, since with shooting on the menu we had shipped one case of ammo to Tulsa and brought another in the van with us. That allowed us the same sort of logistical commonality that makes armies standardize on a single cartridge. It seems to work in microcosm, too.<\/p>\n
Plastic handguns came into being during the last quarter of the 20th Century, and the quintessential \u201cplastic rifle,\u201d the AR15, has been with us for half a century now. Light weight is good when you\u2019re covering lots of miles. AR15s win rifle matches at the National Championships at Camp Perry, and the Glock is the dominant gun in street-relevant \u201ccombat pistol matches,\u201d proof that plastic doesn\u2019t necessarily degrade performance.<\/p>\n
Besides, light weight is good when you have to lug all the damn guns in and out of the hotel daily\u2026
\nAm I the only one who sacrifices love of blue steel and walnut tradition sometimes, in return for the functional convenience of modern gunware? Let us know your thoughts here\u2026<\/p>\n
Gail puts her first shot center; muzzle of XD(m) is still on target for fast follow-up as spent 9mm case clears ejection port. Plastic does not degrade performance. Scene is the Polite Society national shoot at Tulsa in April.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n
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