MacGyver

Depending on where you are going to be in Atlanta, Atlanta Cutlery has a bunch of military surplus, along with new production stuff. Atlantacutlery.com Edit - too late, just saw your last post.

Brigade is only about a mile off I-75. You can check them out before you go, too at actiongear.com. Growing up, getting their catalog in the mail was my equivalent of the Sears Wish Book. Good memories.

There's not much selection on that stretch of I-75, really. Probably the best selection is Brigade Quartermaster on Barrett Pkwy as you come through Kennesaw approaching Atlanta. If you've never been, it's worth stopping in.

I fly with mine all the time, and have never had to take it off - even with the buckle. It won't cause an issue with screening. If they ask you to take it off, just send it through.

If it's the one I'm thinking of, it's kind of a suede version of an uncle mikes. I'll still stand by my earlier statement that being able to put your weapon away safely is just as important as being able to get it out. For your safety, it may be more important.

Man, I'm watching this thread for pictures. It's hurting me almost as much as it's hurting you. I'm in the process of having Marty and the guys at Teppo Jitsu build me an upper. I know that's going to be a while, so I'm wanting to see someone else get theirs.

You're right. Think forward to a potential scenario when you've had to employ that weapon, and the ability to reholster becomes really important. If you start fumbling with your holster/weapon the situation could change against you very quickly. What if you are hurt? What if law enforcement shows up? What if you have to aid someone else? My first pistol was a Sig 230 for which I originally bought an Uncle Mikes holster. I was 22 years old, had a new permit, but had no idea how important the total system was to be able to safely carry the gun. Turns out I never carried that Sig in that rig. The gun fit the holster great. Only problem was it wouldn't stay put. Since I was new to carrying, I carried it around the house unloaded in the holster. I carried in the small of my back, would get up out of my chair, and my pistol would be in the chair as opposed to the holster. I couldn't get to where I felt the pistol was secure, so I never carried it in that holster. I learned quickly that a good holster is really important. Same with a good belt. As much as you want that belt to hold your pants and pistol up without sagging, the other end of the spectrum is more important. If you have to deploy that weapon, you want your belt to actually hold your holster down in the same place while you draw. With a non-gun belt, if you have to draw in a hurry, you're likely to be up around your ribcage before your pistol finally clears the holster, assuming it clears the holster at all. Try it with am unloaded pistol (triple check) and a cheap holster/belt combo, and you'll find that if you try and draw quickly, more often than not, either the holster/belt hangs up and keeps you from drawing, or just goes comes out right along with the pistol. You don't want that happening in a fight. I trust my life to good equipment. I recommend three manufacturers - all small shops. 1. Raven Concealment. Their Phantom Light Carrier holsters are the best of the best in my opinion for strong side OWB/IWB carry. They are kydex, allow me to carry a light on my pistol, and stay put. 2. DM Bullard - Leather Holsters and Belts - I've got two of his leather belts, and feel confident that they will last me the rest of my life. I wear a suit almost as often as I wear jeans, and they are great with either. I also really like his tuckable and dual tuck holsters for IWB carry. Again, they allow for one handed reholstering, and stay put. 3. ARES Gear - If I know that I'm going to get dirty or play rough, then their Ranger belt is as good as it gets. This belt is double thick 1.5 inch SCUBA webbing and absolutely does not move. You definitely pay for good gear. But, you know that it's going to work when you need it, and you only have to buy it once. Good gear should last a long time. And don't worry, we all need to hear this from time to time. Myself included. It's easy to think, "I just spent all this money on this pistol, I don't want to spend that much again on accessories." It's a weapon system, though. The pistol is only a part of it. Case in point - the guys down at Hero Gear made me a great deal on a new Gen 4 Glock 19 earlier this week. Since that time, I've spent as much on three accessories that make me feel better about carrying that Glock - TruGLO TFO sights, a Surefire x300 light, and a Raven Concealment Phantom LC holster.

Your firearm is just a single part of a larger weapon system that also includes the holster, the belt, your attire, accessories and ultimately the operator. So often, people buy a really nice firearm, only to cheat on other parts of the system, which ultimately makes the whole weapon system much less reliable. If you've made the decision to carry a gun, as each of us have, then you have to ask yourself daily when you strap on that weapon whether you are an asset to society or a liability. It's a huge responsibility to carry a weapon. My personal opinion is that if I am going to accept that responsibility, then I need to do so by being able to deploy it as effectively as my circumstances allow. My biggest issue with a soft holster is retention - there isn't one made that retains a weapon authoritatively. Right behind that is being able to reholster the weapon one handed, and being able to do so without looking at and fumbling with my holster. A good holster and a good belt are two essential investments that any gun owner needs to make. Honestly, once you spend the money, you'll wonder how you lived without them before. They are worth every penny. Right after that, you should invest in some good training. It's another part of the weapon system that once you go through it, you'll realize how badly you were cheating yourself and your loved ones before. The old saying is accurate that in a defensive situation, you won't rise to the occasion, you'll default to your level of training. You're carrying a gun to be able to defend yourself and your loved ones. I know that when I do the same, I want my entire system to function exacty like I need it to. As they say, if something goes wrong in a gunfight, you have the rest of your life to get it figured out. Invest in a good holster and a good belt. It's worth it.

I'll merge the two threads when I'm not on my iPhone. Bonus points for the people who can name the primary author of the competing economic theory. Here's a hint. He shares a last name with another favorite on this site.

My first indication would be a mag problem - Probably deformation of the feed lips themselves. I've got a friend who went through a Defensive Pistol class last year (1000 round class) with a SW9VE. Most, if not all of the stoppages that he experienced were magazine related. As a first step, I would mark your magazines and see if the errors occur with just one of them, or multiples.

Good to hear! We're planning a quick weekend trip in the next month or so just for that. With the Westin next door at $89/night, I figure that is a huge win from my kids' perspectives.

147gr 9mm has a bit of a stigma attached to it from its underperformance when it was first introduced and used in applications other than what it was intended for - which was subsonic SMg deployment. There are certain articles that you will stumble across on the net where the authors express their unmitigated hatred of the round. That said, its early issues have been addressed, and modern 147gr stuff performs just fine. All I shoot is 147gr - primarily due to the improved recoil management in my case. I've shot at least 2000 rounds of WWB 147 JHP this year out of multiple weapons, including a 1000 round weekend in CIS's defensive pistol class. I've yet to have an issue.

It's not a criticism by any stretch, just simply wondering what the general feeling was here on a gun board. I carry a gun pretty much everywhere I go. In my line of work, I certainly know that bad stuff can happen. I wonder though if the tradeoff is worth it. If somehow, what we are taking from our kids in the name of making them safer, isn't robbing them of some of the important things you need to learn as a kid. Stuff like learning to solve your own problems, sticking up for your friends, watching your friend's back and knowing that he'll do the same, learning to judge risks - and experiencing the freedom that comes from being a kid. I know kids in middle and high school whose parents have made every major decision for them, and will likely continue to. I have a colleague who had a recent college graduate's mom show up at the interview with him. It's ridiculous. Kids learn through experiencing the world, and experiencing the consequences of their choices. We all do. I wonder if by sterilizing our kid's childhoods, we don't also somehow sterilize our children. I do know that there is evil in the world, and that bad things can happen. I will never knowingly put my child or anyone else's in danger. That said, my kids will get to trick-or-treat by themselves when they are old enough. Assuming no one calls DCS, they will wait for the bus by themselves, and know what to do in the case of an emergency. I will let my kids be kids.

A little update via RYP's facebook page and bladeforums. LionSteel has given a ship date of December 10. Here is a pic of an unfinished prototype without any scales: [ATTACH=CONFIG]339[/ATTACH] Also, to anyone thinking of picking one up, it's being said that these are going to be made in lots. That is, they are making them for the dealers who have people who pre-ordered, and after that, it may be a while before more hit the street.

I'm with you on this. I've been thinking this morning, and trying to think of times when a parent did have to intervene in our affairs as a kid due to some safety concern coming from another person. I can think of two, but in both cases, we kids sought out our parents help dealing with this "stranger". We knew when something wasn't kosher and knew we could go not just to our parents, but to any of our friends parents about something we saw as a risk.

I really like the idea in the last sentence of her article, that by going outside, knocking on doors, giving out candy and meeting each other - we are building community, which keeps us safe.

So I'm interested in you guys take on Halloween from a different perspective than we've discussed so far. I remember as a child being able to trick-or-treat with my friends, and just my friends - with no parents tagging along. Certainly this wasn't as a very young child, but I know I did it all through elementary school. Yet, today it seems to be considered anathma to even consider letting your child do the same. It's not just Halloween, either. I'm amazed every morning leaving my neighborhood to see older middle school students waiting in their parents car at the end of the street for the bus. I know my parents were concerned about my safety, but we waited for the bus standing on the curb with our friends - rain or shine. My mom wouldn't have driven me to the bus stop at the end of the next street in a hundred years. Today, violent crimes against persons are at significantly lower levels than they were when I was growing up in the seventies, yet our kids are locked up tight. Here is an article to stir your thinking from yesterday's Op Ed page in the Wall Street Journal. It is by Lenore Skenazy, the mom who was both praised and accused of child abuse a few years ago for allowing her 9 year old son to ride the subway a few stops home from a department store by himself. Stranger Danger' and the Decline of Halloween No child has ever been killed by poisoned candy. Ever. By LENORE SKENAZY Halloween is the day when America market-tests parental paranoia. If a new fear flies on Halloween, it's probably going to catch on the rest of the year, too. Take "stranger danger," the classic Halloween horror. Even when I was a kid, back in the "Bewitched" and "Brady Bunch" costume era, parents were already worried about neighbors poisoning candy. Sure, the folks down the street might smile and wave the rest of the year, but apparently they were just biding their time before stuffing us silly with strychnine-laced Smarties. That was a wacky idea, but we bought it. We still buy it, even though Joel Best, a sociologist at the University of Delaware, has researched the topic and spends every October telling the press that there has never been a single case of any child being killed by a stranger's Halloween candy. (Oh, yes, he concedes, there was once a Texas boy poisoned by a Pixie Stix. But his dad did it for the insurance money. He was executed.) Anyway, you'd think that word would get out: poisoned candy not happening. But instead, most Halloween articles to this day tell parents to feed children a big meal before they go trick-or-treating, so they won't be tempted to eat any candy before bringing it home for inspection. As if being full has ever stopped any kid from eating free candy! So stranger danger is still going strong, and it's even spread beyond Halloween to the rest of the year. Now parents consider their neighbors potential killers all year round. That's why they don't let their kids play on the lawn, or wait alone for the school bus: "You never know!" The psycho-next-door fear went viral. Then along came new fears. Parents are warned annually not to let their children wear costumes that are too tight—those could seriously restrict breathing! But not too loose either—kids could trip! Fall! Die! Treating parents like idiots who couldn't possibly notice that their kid is turning blue or falling on his face might seem like a losing proposition, but it caught on too. Halloween taught marketers that parents are willing to be warned about anything, no matter how preposterous, and then they're willing to be sold whatever solutions the market can come up with. Face paint so no mask will obscure a child's vision. Purell, so no child touches a germ. And the biggest boondoggle of all: an adult-supervised party, so no child encounters anything exciting, er, "dangerous." Think of how Halloween used to be the one day of the year when gaggles of kids took to the streets by themselves—at night even. Big fun! Low cost! But once the party moved inside, to keep kids safe from the nonexistent poisoners, in came all the nonsense. The battery-operated caskets. The hired witch. The Costco veggie trays and plastic everything else. Halloween went from hobo holiday to $6 billion extravaganza. And it blazed the way for adult-supervised everything else. Let kids make their own fun? Not anymore! Let's sign our toddlers up for "movement" classes! Let's bring on the extracurricular activities, travel soccer and manicure parties for the older kids. Once Halloween got outsourced to adults, no kids-only activity was safe. Goodbye sandlot, hello batting coach! And now comes the latest Halloween terror: Across the country, cities and states are passing waves of laws preventing registered sex offenders from leaving their homes—or sometimes even turning on their lights—on Halloween. The reason? Same old same old: safety. As a panel of "experts" on the "Today" show warned viewers recently: Don't let your children trick-or-treat without you "any earlier than [age] 13, because people put on masks, they put on disguises, and there are still people who do bad things." Perhaps there are. But Elizabeth Letourneau, an associate professor at the Medical University of South Carolina, studied crime statistics from 30 states and found, "There is zero evidence to support the idea that Halloween is a dangerous date for children in terms of child molestation." In fact, she says, "We almost called this paper, 'Halloween: The Safest Day of the Year,' because it was just so incredibly rare to see anything happen on that day." Why is it so safe? Because despite our mounting fears and apoplectic media, it is still the day that many of us, of all ages, go outside. We knock on doors. We meet each other. And all that giving and taking and trick-or-treating is building the very thing that keeps us safe: community. We can kill off Halloween, or we can accept that it isn't dangerous and give it back to the kids. Then maybe we can start giving them back the rest of their childhoods, too. Ms. Skenazy is the author of "Free-Range Kids" (Jossey-Bass, 2010). She blogs at Free Range Kids.

For everyday wear, I go with leather and use a DM Bullard 1.5 inch belt. I've got them in brown and black. I am confident that I could go the rest of my life and never need another belt. That said, if I know I'm going to be rough with my gear for whatever reason, I go nylon with an Ares Gear Ranger belt - also 1.5 inch double layered SCUBA webbing. Should they bury me in that belt, and by chance an archeologist digs up my remains 10,000 years from now, I'm pretty sure he would be able to remove that belt from my corpse and put it back into service.

I prefer Federal HSTs in a 147 grain round, but you can rest assured that so long as your weapon feeds Golden Sabers reliably, they will perform just fine. A whole lot of officers put their life on the line every day behind Golden Saber rounds.

Nice. Congrats on getting rid of a big nuisance. It seems to me that one that's willing to come onto a porch now is going to be a much larger problem later.

Glad to hear you like it. I love my PPS. Keep an eye out for magazines, as they are in limited enough supply that they tend to go pretty fast when they hit the street

Their assisted opening stuff works okay. I personally wouldn't buy based on that feature alone, but to each his own I guess. From my perspective, if I have to use the thumb stud to start to actuate it, why not just follow through with it? I know I am at least as fast, if not faster with my Spyderco Military. Hope you enjoy your new knife..

I came up blank on the Parablade - I'm assuming you meant the Paraframe I? For light use, you should be happy with it. They're not the greatest knifes you'll ever hold, but for most people's use, they'll do just fine. Gerber is a funny company. They've got some great ideas from a design perspective. For me, though, I think they could spend just a little bit more on materials and quality control and have A LOT better knives. I buy probably one Gerber a year based on innovative design, and am generally disappointed. The one exception I would add is their Crucial multitool. It's not great, but it's served me better than anything else I've tried including multiple Leathermans and a few SOGs. It has been in my pocket for a couple of years now. They don't need my advice, though, as they seem to be selling just fine. So long as you don't abuse the knive, or use it for things it wasn't intended, you should be happy. If you find yourself limiting your use of the knife based on the difficultly of the job, then you'll know it's time to step into a higher class of knife.

Great article.

Cool. I bet that was a lot of fun.