Bags packed and ready for 'Show and Tell' at concealed-carry class

All loaded up and ready for concealed-carry class tomorrow. Range bag, check. Holster bag, check. Pistol bag, check. Revolver bag, check. I love show and tell time during the first two hours when I teach about various types of handguns and how to handle and shoot them safely. Then after two hours of teaching concealed-carry law, we all go shooting. Talk about guns and then go shooting, and get paid to do it. No job on earth is any better than this!

And tomorrow is better than usual. I have a couple of ladies signed up. Generally speaking they make better students than the men because they don't assume they already know all they need to know about guns, even when they're already experienced shooters. Plus generally the women shoot as well or better than the men.

And I particularly love it when a novice shooter, man or woman, "gets" what I'm teaching about how to safely and effectively shoot a handgun. Sometimes it's almost like seeing the light bulb start glowing in their head.

Big Taco's Sta-Tite Guide-Rod-Assembly stays tight in G20 under fire

My buddy Big Taco at Steyrclub.com has been making stainless-steel black-oxide guiderods with and without captured springs for the Steyr M and MA1 series pistols for quite some time. If you don't know what a Steyr pistol is, I'm not surprised. It's the best kept secret in the industry, that other pistol manufacturer in Austria. When Glock was still a yet-uninvented word in the 14th century, Steyr, Austria already had a worldwide reputation for forging the finest weapons of the day. The company now called Steyr-Mannlicher began making fine firearms in Steyr, Austria in 1864.

But enough history. Back to BT and his guide rods. In addition to Steyr guide rods, now he's expanded his fine work to include guide rods for Glock and S&W M&P and has plans to add other makes as time allows. I just got back from a trip to Pittsburgh and picked up a G20 captured-spring guide-rod assembly from Big Taco. It's his new Sta-Tite 2-Piece assembly and it's prettier than a speckled pup.

The stock G20 plastic rod and spring is at left in the photos and BT's Sta-Tite rod-spring assembly is at right in the first photo, then installed in the second in my G20 slide. Third photo is the rod installed with the slide jacked back.

Shortly after installing BT's rod, I took it out for a function test and his Sta-Tite stayed tight as expected. I've got my G20 loaded up with 17 rds. of Winchester JHPs ready to go to work at the gun shop with my G29 as backup. If I need more firepower than that at the gun shop, it'll be time to call in the Marines.

If you want more info about BT's Guiderods, go to his site. He's even got a video explaining how the Sta-Tite series works. Works for me.

I wonder why more manufacturers don't give you a stainless-steel guide rod instead of plastic? They aren't that expensive and it's one of the best as well as cheapest upgrades you can make for your pistol to improve its reliability and function.

I just bought a .38 Super slide for my EAA Witness-Polymer (fourth and fifth photos) and the Wonder-finish slide came with a stainless-steel barrel and stainless-steel guide rod. I've heard some bad raps about EAA being cheap, but if they can afford to offer stainless rods, why can't every pistol maker?

I got a new Sig P229 SAS Generation 2 just recently with all the bells and whistles: Night Sights, Short Reset Trigger, Sig-Anti-Snag melt treatment on the slide and frame, stainless-steel slide with two-tone frame. But for my nearly $1K pistol, I got a plastic guide rod! What's up widdat?

I'm hoping Big Taco will find the time to add Sig guide rods to his line-up of offerings soon. And I need one for my CZ 75 P-07 too. At least my two M&Ps came with stainless rods, but not captured springs, so I'll be upgrading with BT's Sta-Tite assemblies for those two as well.

BTW, Big Taco's a friend of mine and a shooting buddy, but I paid for my Sta-Tite rod and this is my unpaid endorsement of his fine products. Give his fine work a try and you'll be glad you did.

Two full-size pistols depart, two compacts arrive

The new small guys are in the house and the old big guys are almost all gone.

At right is my new-to-me EAA Witness-P Compact .45 ACP, which arrived today. It has a 3.6" barrel with a polymer frame and a set of mahogany grips cut and glued on with something called Gorilla Glue by the previous owner. It's not the neatest glue job I ever saw, but the wood does look nice. And it's definitely better looking than the plastic polymer grips underneath, plus the wood grips fill my hand pretty nicely.

Best of all, it's an EAA so I can buy a .38 Super slide for it and shoot not only .38 Super but 9x23mm in it. I shot both in my briefly owned Lone Wolf G20 "experiential" conversion barrel, that wouldn't feed right. That's another story that didn't end well. But both .38 Super and 9x23mm are improvements over standard 9x19mm and I'm a guy who believes more speed and longer bullets are better than slower, shorter bullets. That's why I love .357 Sig and 10mm as well as .45 ACP and 9mm. IMHO, .357 Sig is a really fast 9mm and 10mm is a really fast .45 ACP. Kinda sorta.

I know 10mm is not a .45, it's really a long .40, or more accurately the current .40 S&W is a short 10mm. But what I'm driving at is that 10mm was initially developed as an alternative to .45 ACP, a larger than 9mm round that had faster ballistics than .45 ACP. The "experts" thought it would replace .45 ACP. Shows how wrong "experts" can be. But I still love 10mm for the same reason I love .357 Sig. It's faster than .45 ACP with close to the same grain weight slugs and the foot-pounds of energy delivered are higher. Same is true with .357 Sig over 9mm, it's faster with same grain weight slugs and the foot-pounds of energy delivered is way higher. Plus both 10mm and .357 Sig are flatter shooting at longer ranges than .45 or 9mm.

And I like .38 Super and 9x23mm for the same reasons, speed and energy.

So I have carry pistols in all my favorite calibers, 9x19mm, .357 Sig, 10mm and .45 ACP and as soon as I can afford a new slide, .38 Super or 9x23mm.

I've got a Lone Wolf barrel in 9x25mm for my G20 and I could get one for my G29 too, but even I gotta admit 9x25 is way too much overkill for a carry pistol. It's so freaking loud I'd be deaf to shoot it in self defense without hearing protection. Walking around with ear muffs ain't an option.

Over at gtalk, one poster reported using 9x25mm on a deer and he said the round literally exploded inside the critter. I can see me sitting on the stand in court trying to explain why I used such a huge overkill round in defense.

So I acquired the EAA .45 ACP/.38 Super/9x23mm as a swap for my formerly owned GKK-45, the next photo. It's a great shooter, but being all steel with a 5" barrel, it's not a good candidate for daily carry unless you're big as Godzilla. I'm a pretty large guy, 6' 3" and 265 lbs., but I ain't big enough to carry that monster around.

Next photo is my new CZ 75 P-07 Duty, showing off its replacement ambi-safety levers. The gun shop guru changed out the decockers for safeties so now I can carry the P-07 cocked and locked, which is my personal preference over using a decocker.

Essentially I purchased the P-07 with the money I got for the sale of my Steyr M357-A1 .357 Sig pistol, but it's more accurately the replacement for my soon-to-be-formerly-owned CZ 75 SP-01 Custom, which is the last photo.

The SP-01 Custom has been sold through gunbroker with payment scheduled to arrive Thursday, upon which I will ship it out. It's a full-size pistol like the GKK-45, with a 4.7" barrel, being replaced by the 3.6" barrel P-07, both being 9mm.

And technically speaking the aforementioned Steyr M357-A1 has already been replaced with another .357 Sig, a Sig Sauer P229 Custom Shop Sig-Anti-Snag Generation 2, next photo.

The Steyr MA1 has a 4" barrel and the Sig P229 has a 3.9" barrel so both are compacts, but the issue here is reliability. As good as my Steyr M357-A1 was and still is for its new owner, it was not 100% reliable. More like 98 or 99%. Not bad until you compare it to 100%.

And that's what my formerly owned Sig P226 .357 Sig was for me and what the new Sig P229 has been so far. The Sig P226 was the first of my full-size pistols to be sold and the CZ SP01 will be the last to leave. And that's what my other two .357 Sig pistols have also been, 100% reliable, a 4.25" barrel S&W M&P and a 3.5" barrel M&P. So that made the Steyr M357-A1 my fourth-most-reliable .357 Sig pistol and it had to go.

So all the swapping and selling is done, or will be done on Thursday when the payment for the SP-01 arrives and it ships out.

So come Saturday, I'll be shooting my new-to-me EAA .45 ACP compact and my brand-new-in-the-box CZ 75 P-01 Duty 9mm. C'mon Saturday!

A Steyr departs the fold and a new CZ comes home

Working in a gun shop is so much fun I almost feel guilty about getting paid to talk about guns all day, show folks how they work and sell them whatever they want and need.

But as it sayeth in the King James Version, when it comes to exercising fiscal responsibility with my money, it sucketh. As soon as I get some free cash in hand, zoom, out it goes and another new firearm comes home.

This was a really good week. I sold my Steyr MA1 in .357 Sig, which if I was a fiscally responsible person, would have meant I could use the cash to pay off a good chunk of the credit-card debt I ran up buying a new Sig P229 SAS .357 Sig that I special ordered.

It was supposed to take weeks if not months to arrive from the Sig Sauer Custom Shop, but instead it came in on the Friday following the order going in on Monday. That has to be a record for a Sig Custom Shop order. They musta had some free time on their hands or had one already built waiting.

So I had to use a credit card to pay for the Sig. But the same week I sold the Steyr, lo and behold what comes in the shop but the newest product from CZ, the new P-07 Duty compact 9mm.

It's a traditional Double-Action/Single Action pistol, which I prefer over Double-Action-Only, though I own and carry both. And it has ambi-decockers, which works well for me, being a lefty. It's small but not too small, it's light, but not too light. It's just the perfect balance of size and weight to make it a good shooter and a good carry pistol. It's a bit ugly but...

I took photos of this nasty, brutish-looking critter for gunbroker so I could post it for the shop and got the page up on Wednesday. Then today I bought it myself and brought it home.

It may be ugly the way a Glock is ugly, but it's pure CZ engineering, which IMHO is the best grip angle in the industry and truly great all-around ergonomics. If it shoots as good as my CZ 75 SP-01 Custom (which cost more than twice as much) I'll not really be surprised at all.

The P-07 has only a 3.7" barrel vs. the 4.7" barrel in the SP-01 and it has a polymer frame vs. the steel frame of the SP-01, so it may not be quite as sweet a shooter. But I fully expect it to be a very good one and it's a whole lot lighter and more compact, which it's supposed to be as a carry pistol.

I've never heard anyone describe the SP-01 as a carry pistol, but it's not designed to be one. But that's exactly what the P-07 is designed for, daily duty, hence its name, the CZ 75 P-01 Duty. It's a CZ 75 under the skin, one of the most copied pistol designs in the world, second only to the John Browning's 1911 .45 ACP. And it's a 9mm, so it doesn't need a heavy steel frame to be a good shooter. And the best part is the price. I brought it home for well under half what I shelled out for the SP-01, nearly $1K, that I'm now trying to sell.

And the P-07 has one design feature that allows it to be set up like the SP-01 Custom. The P-07 comes with dual decocking levers installed, but the good folks at CZ also include dual-safety parts in the box so you can swap out the decockers for genuine ambi safeties. That allows you to carry the P-07 like John M. Browning's 1911, cocked and locked. How sweet it is!

Maybe when the SP-01 Custom sells, I'll pay off that credit card balance. And maybe not... Who knows what will come along to tempt me next? This job may sucketh when it comes to being responsible about where my money goes. But in ever other way possible, I love it!

If the Good Lord's willing and the creek don't rise, I'll post a P-07 range report tomorrow evening. Is there anything better than a Saturday at the range with a new pistol in hand?

P.S. Feeling like I been rode hard and put up muddy today. No range trip. Maybe next Saturday. I sure hope this ain't a bug that's got me feeling like the south end of a northbound mule. I hope it's just being 61 years ancient and struck with B.B. King Disease. I'm T-I-D-E! Say it out loud and you'll get it.