TGO David

A Training Forum has been added to our lineup. Enjoy it!

I knew we did the right thing by including blackpowder discussion areas here! Glad to have you with us. Hope you visit often.

Very glad to have you here! Likewise very glad to see a public educator who is pro-firearm rather than against.

Very happy to have you here and to hear that TGO is filling a need. It's reassuring to me to see folks like yourself sign up so quickly. I couldn't agree more. I still track the Tennessee Firearms Ass'n for word on any improvements in that area, and it seems like there's not even any movement among our elected officials to remedy the situation. As you said, with this change of guard, maybe the situation will finally be addressed. Thanks for signing up!

May drop it down to 3 or 4. One character makes it possible for replies to be nothing more than a smilie or two. That gets really annoying over on Tennesspeed.

Welcome, Shay. Glad to have you here and we'll overlook the geographical differences. Well, no taxes for now at least. Let's hope that the old men on the hill keep it that way.

We've got an XD9 Service that I'll probably be shooting a lot more as time passes now due to ammo cost. I'd still like to keep shooting 50-100 rds of .45ACP at least once every week or two so that I don't become too accustomed to the lower recoil of the 9mm. Especially since the XD45 is my carry gun.

John, welcome to the forum! Nice to see some folks interested in reloading signing up. That's something that I'm afraid economics will force me into taking up myself before too much longer.

Welcome! Glad to see you here and glad to see that word is spreading.

Welcome to the zoo! We're hopeful that this forum really takes off and so far it seems that there was definitely a need for it. Glad you signed up.

This is unfortunately a problem that I'm aware of. Suspect it's a server caching issue on our side, but will investigate it further on Monday.

Thanks, I'd be interested in hearing what prices you find. I just did some checking around online and none of the places that I visited had brass cartridge FMJ .45acp for less than $130 per 500rds. That's more expensive than WWB at Wal-Mart. :-\ I may be naive about it, but I refuse to shoot Wolf or other Russian steel case ammo as it's just needlessly hard on the extractor mechanism of our handguns.

Welcome! Glad to hear that word is getting out.

I agree. Bass Pro is another alternative for us but their ammo has historically been $2-3 higher than Wal-Mart per 100rds. From what I understand, Academy Sports and Outdoors has good ammo prices but I've never been to check. Middle TN now has Dick's Sporting Goods stores, but likewise I haven't checked their prices either.

While buying our 22LR this afternoon, we happened to be at the Smyrna Wal-Mart sporting goods counter when their district managers and their store "buyers" (responsible for determining what goods are in what stores) were making their tour of the place. I spoke with the district manager and asked him about their plans to discontinue selling rifles in store. He confirmed that they are indeed doing this and that from now on only one store per district will sell rifles. The store for our local district is going to be the Wal-Mart Supercenter in Franklin, TN. I asked about ammo and he said that they have no plans to take ammo out of the stores at this time. Just rifles. I also asked if he realized that Sam Walton was an avid hunter himself, and he sort of sighed and said he knew exactly what I was getting at but his hands were tied as this is a corporate decision. Worth noting is that the 100rd box of Winchester White Box FMJ 45acp target ammo has risen in price from $22.xx to $26.xx This in the past week. :-\ Also worth noting is that back when I worked for Wal-Mart in college, they still sold handguns in the store. That changed in the mid 1990's and they said that they had no plans to remove rifles. Notice a trend? If you enjoy buying your ammo from Wal-Mart, you might want to write your store manager and store district manager a letter expressing your concern over this trend and ask them to please continue selling ammo. It's a shame that they won't be selling rifles as widespread anymore.

I understand. Would an "Events" forum be perhaps more universally beneficial? Not only notices about training but also notices about things like gun shows and such? I don't want to dilute the effectiveness of any forum so if that idea seems a bit over simplistic, please do not hesitate to say so. Also I would like to mention that anyone can add events to our Calendar. Once an event is added, a moderator will approve the event and it will then be listed publicly.

The bad news is, you can only choose at registration.

Just in case anyone was wondering, we ask for your Gender during the registration process because it is entirely possible that at some point in the future we will offer a forum strictly for women's carry / self defense / shooting issues and access to that forum will be based off of the answer to the Gender question when you registered. It's been my experience that women aren't as active on forums when men are allowed to mingle among them. Silly, maybe... but accurate none the less. Other than that, we really could care less what gender you are.

It seems that every gun forum has at least a dozen threads going on at any given time about holsters. Rather than do that here, I thought maybe we could just do a thread listing off your preferred holster(s) for your carry gun(s). I'll kick it off... My preferred holster to date is the Comp-Tac brand C.T.A.C. inside the waistband holster. I have one for both my daily carry gun (XD45C) and one for my Kimber 1911. I've been using the CTAC for a few years, previously for my Glock 23 and have nothing but high praise for Randy and the rest of the crew at Comp-Tac. They really do believe in customer service, which is rare anymore it seems. I'm fortunate that my workplace allows concealed carry due to the rather sketchy nature of our office neighborhood, so the XD45C quite literally goes with me everywhere I go anymore. I've found that the CTAC is very comfortable and makes the XD45C very easy to conceal. Lately I've been thinking about trying a Tucker Gunleather "The Answer" holster for my 1911, though. I don't carry that gun very often but do train with it and the XD every time I visit the range (about once a week it seems) so I'd like the option of carrying it if desired. For some reason, it just doesn't feel as comfortable in the CTAC as the XD does. Anyway, enough about that. How about you folks?

Get sober and then get active! Drunken posts are best kept on Tennesspeed.

Ok... let me ask a fundamental question about a Training forum: Is this a forum that would differ in some way from the Concealed Carry and Self Defense forum that we already have? My first thought is that sure it would. But then I consider that Self Defense really should start with good training and I wonder if the forums wouldn't be redundant or at the very least overlap quite a bit. Thoughts?

Just so everyone knows... there may be a day in the future where this site and the "other" site that I host are offline while I change to a different hosting platform. I'm confident than any speed issues that we have now will be resolved once I do that. We've got plenty of hardware horsepower under the hood for a dozen high-traffic forums. It's the server OS that is slowing us down.

Gotta admit, I like tight grouping... but you make a very valid point. I believe the Marines use the saying, "Train how you fight. Fight how you train." Loving your posts so far. Please keep it up!

What a tragic waste of a human being's life. And in front of his children to boot! Do you have any news on what became of his killer?

WOW... wish I could attend. I think I know what the family can get me for my birthday this year though.