What I did when the annual gathering of Gun Nutz 'R' Us came to N.C.

So what did I do when the biggest national organization of Gun Nutz 'R' Us (AKA the NRA) held its annual meeting in my state? I had plans to go to Charlotte to become one of the 100,000 or so at that celebration of our Second Amendment rights.

But then my daughter called and said let's go shooting. So that's what we did, her, my grandson, shown shooting my S&W 22A-1, my son's father-in-law Steve and me, having fun in my son's backyard shooting into the woods. My son was at a ballgame with my other two grandsons. That's Steve in the red shirt holding his Kimber CDP II Ultra .45 ACP and me in my shorts and Crocs, watching my grandson shoot. Big dude burned up about 200 rds. of .22LR ammo and I loved every minute of it. Loaded his own magazines and every now and then announced he needed another box of ammo. Warms the cockles of a grandfather's heart to see another gun nut growing up in the family.

I hate I missed the big NRA doings, but actually shooting with friends and family is way better than just looking at guns and stuff and talking about it. Maybe the next time the NRA is in driving distance I'll go.

Anyway, a fun time was had by all.

My daughter was interested in a home-defense handgun to go with her S&W 638 .38 Special with Crimson Trace Laser Grips, so she tried out my Taurus 65 .357 Magnum and liked it. It's been slicked up by some unknown gunsmith with a bobbed hammer, a very slick trigger job, custom wood grips and a ported barrel. The porting certainly helps with recoil and she tried it out with some Hornady Critical Defense 125-gr. .357 Magnums and declared it about the same in recoil and manageability as her S&W 638.

So she's happy and I'm happy that the Taurus has now changed homes and hopefully will get the job done if something ever goes bump in the night at her house.

And I finally got the chance to try out my new Sig P220 Compact Elite, which I picked up almost a month ago and couldn't find the time to shoot it.

The P220 Compact is a special Single-Action-Only limited edition that I got from CDNN with  ambi safety for this lefty, Elite high beavertail frame, night sights, aluminum grips and perhaps the Sig Short Reset Trigger. I wasn't sure about the SRT until I shot it because Sig's labels on their factory boxes are pretty short. If a pistol has more than one or two extras, it doesn't print on the label, it just runs off the end unseen.

But now that I've shot it, there is no doubt whatsover, this Compact P220 definitely has the SRT. I fired a few double taps and a fast string and that trigger can reset way faster than I can shoot it. Yowza!

I even compared it to what I previously have said is the best compact .45 ACP I've ever shot, Steve's Kimber Ultra CDP II. I shot them both back to back and honest to God, I'd hate to have to live on the difference between the two. They're both the very best of compact .45s on the planet, IMHO.

And the P220 Compact shoots with typical Sig accuracy with 230-grain loads, for which the sights are dead-on. At one point in slow fire, I put two .45 slugs overlapping the same hole in the red bull of an 8" target at 10 yards. Woulda took a photo but I left my camera at home.

As usual, it ran without a hiccup and even passed my ultimate test for an auto-loader, an 8-rd. magazine of four different hollow-point loads mixed up. Like Sig says, reliability to hell and back, it ate the whole magazine without a stutter. I have yet to have a jam with any of the four Sig pistols I've owned thus far (not counting the .22LR slide conversions). It's hard to complain about a record like that.

I put about 75 rds. of hardball and about 25 rds. of mixed hollowpoints through it and I pronounce it now ready for carry duty. I suspect it's gonna be first on the duty list henceforth when I load up for work.

I only have one complaint. Those 6-rd. magazines for the Compact P220 are just way too short. And same for the 8-rd. magazines. I take a shot or two or three and all of a sudden that darn slide is locked again. Is that six already? Or eight?

I gotta get me some of those Sig 10-rd. P220 magazines.

Two Wessons and a stainless Taurus 65 go shooting on a chilly day

My sympathies to all my fellow gun nuts who live in the snow belt, which this particular Saturday seems to stretch from coast to coast but mostly north of the Mason-Dixon Line.

Here in the almost-sunny South it was mid-40s and with a bit of wind felt like 30s, but most certainly not too cold to go shooting for the first time in more than a month. I did wear gloves, but other than that, it was fun as usual.

The wimp who runs the outdoor firing range I usually go to didn't open up today, but here in the gun-friendly South, there's a place beside the road nearby that locals call "the clay bank" which never closes and is also free.

At right are three new-to-me pistols which I shot for the first time, starting bottom left, S&W 469 Mini 9mm, bottom right, Dan Wesson 722 .22LR revolver and top, Taurus Model 65 stainless .357 Magnum with concealed hammer, 2.5" ported barrel and custom wood grips. All three did fine.

The Dan Wesson was the only hiccup of the day. I discovered it to be the first .22 handgun I've ever shot that does not like CCI ammo. I've got a pair of .22 pistols, S&W 22A-1 and Sig P220 Rimfire, both of which are quite picky but love CCI and have never failed with either standard or high velocity loads. Both are not fond of Remington or Winchester .22 ammo.

But the DW didn't like any of the above. I tried two Remington loads, Golden Bullets and high-velocity, Winchester Super-X high velocity and CCI Mini Max, all of which had one dud per chamber load of six. Not acceptable.

But thank God I bought a brick of American Eagle high velocity just because it was cheap. Because the DW loves AE. I shot a whole box of 50 and it never misfired once. Henceforth, it will be fed only AE, though I will try some Federal Gameshock loads too.

As you probably know, AE is the budget brand of Federal ammo.

Musta been a day for duds, I had one JHP fail to fire in the S&W 469, which wouldn't go boom even after I gave it a second chance. In all I ran six magazines through the 469, three 12s and three 15s, including one mixed magazine of four different JHPs. It fed them all perfectly and shot dead on with the sights, so I pronounce it ready for carry duty.

I'll be carrying it as backup in a Galco small-of-back holster with one of my revolvers as main carry, .327 Magnum or .44 Special Charters, S&W 65-3 .357 Magnum or the Taurus, once I get it paid off from layaway.

I've turned into a revolver guy of late both because I like to shoot 'em but also because you can't beat a revolver for reliability. It's gonna go boom almost all the time and when it don't, pull the trigger again until it does.

The last of the pistols I shot today is a quadruple new-to-me. It's another used pistol from the shop I got to try out before purchase and I love it. Its other three new-to-me counts are:

1) It's a Taurus. I am not a big Taurus fan for their virtually nonexistent customer service. But this one seems quite solid, plus it was customized by an apparently talented gunsmith with a bobbed hammer and a very slick trigger, also with a nice set of wood grips with no sign of Taurus logos.

2) It's a double-action-only revolver, which I have never owned before. But the slick trigger makes DOA shooting a breeze, easy to hold the sights on during the very smooth trigger pull.

3) It's also my first ported handgun with three big holes on top of the barrel, which I presume is more of the unknown gunsmith's talented work. I shot four different loads in it, CCI .38 Special +P 158-gr. and three .357 Magnum loads, CCI 158-gr., Winchester JHP 110-gr. and Cor-Bon JHP 140 gr. With the exception of the Cor-Bon, all shot every comfortably. The Cor-Bon was definitely more manageable than it is shooting in my S&W 65-3, but it is still noticeably hotter and harder shooting. I'll stick to the Winchester 110-gr. for a carry load, which shot to point of aim with the fixed sights, just as it does with the S&W 65-3.

It's no coincidence that the Taurus 65 is quite similar to the Smith 65 with the same model number, both are stainless .357 Magnum six-shot double-action revolvers. The Taurus is an obvious copy of the Smith but I have to say the DAO, slick trigger and ported barrel makes it a very good alternative to the Smith. The Taurus trigger ain't as slick as the S&W Performance Center trigger job on the S&W 65-3, but it's close, which makes it very, very smooth and slick.

According to Bluebook, the Taurus Model 65 blue or stainless was never offered in DAO concealed-hammer with wood grips and a ported barrel, hence my presumption of custom work.

Both Model 65s fit my new Bianchi shoulder harness rig like they were made for it, which will be my preferred method of carry for both these as well as the two Charter revolvers, which also fit the Bianchi rig very well. As Hannibal Smith used to say, I love it when a plan comes together.

Beware Taurus handguns: Where customer service goes to die

I learned one lesson about handguns shortly after I went to work in a gunshop in January. Leave Taurus handguns alone. I heard the owner getting irate on the telephone with somebody, which is totally unlike him. He's the most polite person with customers I ever saw, even when it's some idiot asking "duh!" questions. My gun shop is a family-owned business and we all work very hard at customer service, trying our utmost to please customers even when they are unreasonable.

So I asked Billy, the father of the family, who he was hollering at on the phone? He said it was his weekly call to Taurus customer service, demanding they fix or replace a defective revolver we had received broke in the box in September '08. The distributor refused to take it back, causing Billy to cease doing business with that outlet, and he was forced to send the gun back to Taurus, knowing their customer service is pretty much nonexistent.

Which proved to be true. He called once a week to raise hell with Taurus, always receiving promises that a new revolver was on the way. Finally a replacement showed up in May '09.

If that's customer service, you can call me Pope John. And how many customers are going to be persistent enough to call and raise hell every week for nine long months? Few to none.

So I was interested when I saw that at least one other gun nut agrees with us on Taurus pistols.

Here's an exchange I stole from Tamara's View From The Porch with her gun-nut buddy Caleb.

On Taurus semiautos:

Caleb: I also predict that in the comments, someone will accuse me of having a soft spot for Taurus…they would be correct, I do have an affinity for Taurus’ semi-automatic pistols.

Me: I have a soft spot for mentally-disturbed homeless alcoholic vets on the side of the road, but I wouldn’t bring one home.

I've seen PT-111 Millennium 9mm's with more frequent-flier miles to Miami than a Colombian cocaine mule.

I'm with Tamara. I won't buy a Taurus handgun myself and I won't recommend them to a customer. If they want to buy a Taurus I won't try to talk them out of it, but I will show them the Smiths and tell them they're worth the extra coin. And if that fails, I'll show them the Charter revolvers, which are comparably priced with Taurus and provide actual customer service.

I bought a Charter .327 Magnum that was one of the first 1,000 made and it developed a minor problem I decided not to ignore. I sent it back to Charter and they fixed it, free. Great service.

So if you're looking at handguns, buy a Smith. Or a Charter. Or a Ruger. Anything but a Taurus.