Category: All About Guns
The year 2020 has been a notable one. In just the past few months, several million Americans have become first-time gun owners. If ever there were a circumstance under which the wisdom of the Second Amendment was made patently manifest, it is this.
But how about those of you who do want to get your first gun, but find the whole process utterly baffling? The vernacular, customs and variegated regulations associated with gun ownership can indeed seem daunting. As a result, we here at The Armory Life thought it might be helpful to create a basic primer on how to buy a gun in America.
Not unlike finance, plumbing, computer programming or brain surgery, once you get the hang of it the whole system will seem fairly straightforward. But we understand how intimidating it can be to dive in. So, let us help you learn the process.
Intro to American Gun Culture
This process typically begins at your local gun shop. The archetypal gun shop employee is some large hirsute ex-Army Ranger covered in tattoos who oozes scary attitude. He’ll have a gun on his hip and look like he munches pea gravel for breakfast. But looks can be deceiving.
On the other hand, a dear friend of mine owns the coolest gun shop in the world (Mississippi Auto Arms in Oxford, Mississippi). By contrast, he employs a petite and inoffensive young lady. She is engaging, knowledgeable, and disarming. That guy is brilliant, if you ask me.
The bottom line is, chances are if you head into a gun shop, you’ll leave with a gun, some valuable information and a new friend.
Can You Own a Gun?
In general, you need to be a U.S. citizen with a clean criminal record. The document used to manage a firearm transfer is called an ATF Form 4473, and it asks a series of questions about your criminal, military and mental health background. The form is three pages long, but the first page is the only one of consequence to the prospective buyer.
The dealer is going to verify your information using the NICS system, which stands for “National Instant Criminal Background Check System.” Your responses must therefore be truthful.
NICS is usually, but not always actually, instant. If the system is backed up or you have a really common name, you may have to wait a couple days for the check to come through. If you aren’t sure whether you’re eligible, just glance over the questions on the 4473.
Some states have extra restrictions over and above what is required by the federal government. In freedom-averse places like New Jersey, Illinois, New York and California, some of those restrictions can be quite onerous. Across most of our Great Republic, however, gun ownership is fairly straightforward if you are a citizen with no criminal background.
Is There a “List”?
All commercially purchased guns must be physically transferred through a dealer with a Federal Firearms License (FFL). Your gun shop will have one of these. Some other businesses like hardware stores may maintain FFLs as well.
The regulatory system governing the national network of gun dealers dates back to 1968 and is actually quite elegant. When you buy a gun and fill out the 4473, that form never leaves the dealer’s premises. NICS checks that are approved are automatically purged every 24 hours. NICS checks that are denied are essentially maintained forever, but that doesn’t apply to you if you have a clean criminal record.
If a crime weapon is recovered, the ATF will trace the gun via its serial number starting with the manufacturer, through the distributor, and then on to the individual FFL dealer. The dealer will then produce the form 4473 that identifies the final purchaser. This decentralized system very effectively prevents anyone from maintaining a database of American gun owners, something that is expressly forbidden by federal law.
Just Amazon It?
You cannot legally buy a gun directly over the internet. That’s just an anti-gunner talking point. And buying a gun illegally is one of those crimes that Uncle Sam typically takes pretty seriously.
There are lots of places to buy guns on the internet, but they will all have to be transferred through your local FFL dealer. That FFL dealer will usually charge a modest fee to do the transfer. Google can help you find an FFL dealer locally. Call the dealer in advance and they can tell you what their fee is. $20 to $50 is pretty typical.
Want a great place online to find your next gun? GunsAmerica.com is like Craigslist for guns and features fixed prices. GunBroker.com is more like eBay with an auction format. Countless other businesses like Mississippi Auto Arms sell guns online. Once you’ve purchased a firearm online, contact your local gun dealer and they will submit a copy of their FFL to the seller. The gun is then shipped to the FFL’s business premises where you then go undertake the transfer, submit your form 4473, go through a background check, etc.
Ruminations
There are nearly 400 million firearms in circulation in America among some 328 million citizens. Gun buying may seem intimidating at first, but it’s really not difficult. If you’re a first-time gun owner I’d strongly recommend you seek out a training course to help familiarize yourself with your new firearm. Your FFL dealer is a good place to start.
Responsible gun ownership is the cornerstone of American freedom. That freedom is what makes America different, more productive, and frankly better than the rest of the world if you ask me. So, go out and exercise your Second Amendment rights. And we hope this guide makes the process a little bit more clear.
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Jeremy’s Vaquero, customized by Hamilton Bowen and the star of many adventures.
I saw the two green points shining back at me in the beam of the headlamp I’d just turned on — but it wasn’t until I made out the dark bulk behind them I realized what was on the side of the trail ahead. Living and hiking in the mountains, I’d seen this shape before. “Bear,” I thought to myself. Not good, but not the end of the world.
Then, in the bluish light of the LED, I saw a black catlike form scramble up the tree behind her. I can see it now, still hear the scratching sound her cub’s claws made on the bark as it clambered up — whether it actually made such a sound in the moment or not. What I don’t remember is pulling out the big stainless sixgun or laying the wide Bisley hammer back over a cylinder-full of 335-grain hardcast solids.
A Rock And A Hard Place
It was my first time out bowhunting and when darkness caught me miles away from my car, I’d disassembled the takedown recurve and stowed it in my pack. I then walked down the closed gravel road in the dark, the gray of the road and the dark blue of the sky standing out enough from the black woods to keep me headed the right direction without a light. I’d hiked quite a bit in the dark and except for my family giving me a hard time, I’d never really given it much thought. At least until a little voice in the back of my head — you know, the one telling you you’re wrong — told me to turn on the light.
I backed off to give Mama Bear room and considered my options. There was a trail behind me splitting off to head north, the wrong direction, and dead-ended several miles away at a state road on the far side of a mountain. I looked at my phone: no service, no way to call for a ride even if I hiked the several miles uphill to get there.
Ahead of me, the ground fell off downhill to the left side of the road — where she was — and rose steeply, impassable, on the right. There was one way out and it went right past where Mama Bear had staked her claim.
The Gun
I bought the Old Model Vaquero almost 20 years ago when it was just a Vaquero, alongside my old college shooting buddy who bought its twin from a gunshop whose doors are now closed. Polished stainless steel, with 4¾” barrels, faux ivory grips and chambered in .45 Colt, the two sixguns were one digit off from being sequential serial numbers. Close to broke, we bought a single box of 20 cartridges and split them. I promptly took my new thumb buster — loaded with the last six rounds from the box — with me to Mississippi when I went to see my grandfather.
Grandad
Born in California to a veteran of the Spanish American War, my mother’s father was raised in a rambling way, growing up in Kentucky and Florida before settling in Mississippi, but he never lost his love of the West. His house — more specifically, his studio, where he painted and where my cot was usually stationed when we visited — was fascinating from the powder horn and barbed-wire collection on the wall, to his oil lamps and the Winchester I always begged him to show me. I don’t remember what he said about my Vaquero but I know he approved.
If I have any doubt about it, I can look around my own office at his Stetson up on the top of a bookshelf or the couple pairs of rattlesnake rattles and a foil-wrapped packet of .30/30 cartridges I inherited from him.
Nonetheless, the Vaquero remained a bit of a novelty for a few years while I mostly shot M1911s until I snagged a writing assignment on Bowen Classic Arms and dropped the Vaquero off with Hamilton. Returned with a fine, brushed finish, the newly lightweighted gun now had a 4″ barrel, useable front sight and a low, fast-cocking Bisley hammer. The grips were replaced with Persinger ebony grips made in El Paso and fitted to the newly decked frame. It was almost too pretty to shoot.
Almost. I put several hundred rounds of Black Hills and Hornady through it but never quite mastered the gun. What I didn’t understand at the time was how much grip consistency affects accuracy with a single-action, where the gun is recoiling through your hand as the bullet exits the barrel.
Grip it hard, the bullet goes low; loosely, it goes high. I finally learned this about 10 years ago, when I made the decision to put a thousand rounds each through three guns I didn’t shoot all that well. After enough weekly or twice-weekly trips to the range, depleting the large stock of ammo a friend had loaded for me on his Rock Chucker, I could finally hit consistently with the big Ruger, gleefully slamming 255-grain SWCs into my steel spinner until it cracked. At the insistence of another shooting friend, this one from law school days, I shot my first cowboy action match with it. I placed an enjoyable second to last, just ahead of him.
Loading Up
By then I wasn’t afraid to scuff the Vaq up anymore and after a couple less serious encounters of the ursine kind, I decided the extra power of +P .45 Colt rounds was preferable to the .45 ACP I usually carried in the woods. At Bowen’s advice, I stoked it with Grizzly Cartridge Company’s 335, which I chronographed at a freight-train like 1,089 fps.
And there it was, in my hand, cocked. I was the most scared I’ve been in my adult life, more scared than riding shotgun at Road Atlanta in a Porsche racecar dropping down Turn 12 at a buck-twenty, more scared than when I was serving legal papers on people, alone, in downtown Atlanta as a law student, more scared than walking down the stairs in the dark for the first time holding my newborn son.
Shaken But Not Stirred
Scared, but not shaking. With no other option, I breathed a prayer, short and packed with condensed intensity, and began my one-step-at-a-time trip past Mama Bear, now out of sight on the other side of the brush lining the road. Desperately not wanting to shoot this bear, I had decided if she charged I would fire a warning shot first to try to turn her. Considering the extremely short distances involved — 20 feet or less — the decision likely would have cost me a mauling, if not my life.
She let me pass, but followed me through the dark for a hundred yards. At some point I’m sure I gently lowered the hammer and re-holstered but it was no time soon. In the car on the way home, I called my mother who’d long been worried about my hiking habits. “I think it’s time to re-evaluate my decision-making paradigm,” I said drily.
Still Here
The old Vaq is still loaded with 335s, their big, broad meplats almost flush with the end of the cylinder — fresh ones, of course. There’s a little play in the cylinder now, which is striped with irregular lengthwise scratches from many trips in and out of its holster. There are some fine cracks in the grain of the ebony, too, and if you look closely I’m sure you can find a dull red speck or two in the crevices of the dovetailed front sight where it’s hard to wipe the moisture out. This after all the times it’s been rained on, alongside with me.
Sometimes when I pick it up, I think of my grandfather long since passed on to his reward, or my other friends — the one with its partner who moved to Texas and largely out of my life, the other who had lost his vision and with it his dreams of cowboy shooting.
And those two bright green eyes — I think about those a lot.
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Dating an Italian Firearm
She was & is one of my all time favorite Actresses. From The Avengers to her final performance in Game of Thrones. She was smart, classy and tough as nails. I will miss her! Grumpy
Hands down, the .45 Colt is my favorite handgun cartridge. You know this! Sure, I love other cartridges too, fickle as I am, but .45 caliber cartridges just grab my attention, mainly because of the way they grab the attention of anything shot with them. The “grand” father of .45 caliber metallic cartridges, the .45 Colt, started many love affairs with sixgunners, including me. We’re going to discuss how to make your .45 shooters more versatile, by shooting .45 ACP and/or .45 Auto Rim. Pretty nifty in a .45 caliber kind of way, eh?
Here’s Tank’s Ruger Redhawk. You can see the slight machining on his cylinder,
allowing the use of moon clipped .45 ACPs from TC Custom. Other feeding utensils
include a speed strip and speed loader with .45 Colt ammo.
Ruger’s Redhawk
I love my Ruger Redhawks almost as much as my Ruger single actions (SA) but love them I do. Double-Action (DA) advantages? They allow the use of speed loaders during hot tactical reloads, and of course double-action shooting, which is simply pressing the trigger as smooth and fast as possible. For precision work, you can cock your hammer and shoot SA, if it works for you. Pretty handy, I’d say.
I have a 4″ Redhawk originally chambered in .45 Colt. Wanting to make it more versatile, I had TC Customs alter the cylinder so I can shoot moon clipped .45 ACPs in my gun. I love the added ability of shooting more efficient .45 ACPs, while still being able to shoot heavy .45 Colt handloads. TC Custom simply mills the breech side of your cylinder a few thousandths to allow your moon clipped .45 ACPs to chamber in your cylinder.
Better yet, you only need to send your cylinder for the alteration, not your whole gun. TC even has videos on their website showing how easy removing your cylinder is. You can alter your S&W .45 Colt too, making it more versatile with moon clip .45 ACPs.
The S&W Model 25 shoots both moon clipped .45 ACPs and .45 AR splendidly!
S&W Model 25
You have two options for feeding your .45ACP wheelgun. Obviously, .45 ACP is the first, utilizing moon clips, or you can skip the “moonies” and use .45 Auto Rim (AR) brass, which is simply .45 ACP brass with a rim, so cases will extract when you pound your ejector rod. Moon clipped .45 ACPs will drop right in your cylinder, and you can use either a speed strip, or speed loader, with the .45 AR.
Comparison of moon clip and speed loader for size. Both work wonderfully.
Ruger Blackhawk .45 Colt/ACP Dual
Single actions chambered in .45 Colt sometimes come with auxiliary cylinders in .45 ACP, allowing you to swap cylinders, depending on what caliber you feel like shooting that particular day. But you need to swap cylinders to do it. You’d think our friend, the .45 AR, would be perfect for the .45 Colt cylinder, but you’d be WRONG. The .45AR will not fit in a .45 Colt single action cylinder! The rim is too thick! It’s too thick for the .45 ACP cylinder also.
If you wanted, you could have your .45 ACP cylinder milled, allowing the .45 AR, and it would also be able to shoot .45 ACP, since it headspaces on the rim. I just might do this alteration to allow full versatility with my .45 Colt/ACP dual’s one day.
When using your .45 ACP cylinder, a convenient way of carrying and loading your SA is to borrow your 1911’s magazine and feed your gun straight from the magazine. You and your gun will love it!
Hard to beat a dual cylindered sixgun for versatility. Chambered for both .45 Colt
and .45 ACP, you can handle many of your shooting needs confidently.
Loadin’ Moon Clips
TC Custom makes the slickest nutcracker type tool for loading your moon clips. You can load while watching TV or enjoying a beautiful day on your deck. Some hate those clips, but being a tinkering kind of guy, I like ’em! I even like removing spent brass from those thumb-cuttin’ SOBs, as long as I have the right tool. Yup, TC Custom makes those too and they’re a joy to use. I give them two “cut-free” thumbs up!
Keeping The .45 Alive
To keep anything alive, it needs to be fed. I hope I showed you a few different ways of feeding your .45 wheelguns, whichever one you have. After all, everyone enjoys a varied diet, and guns are no different.
The NSSF estimates based on numbers from the National Instant Check System that 1,265,311 firearms were sold at retail last month. That’s a decline of 11.3% compared to October 2021, but it’s also the third highest number ever reported for October sales, trailing only 2020 and last year. A closer look at the data going back to the year 2000 shows that while sales are off of their two-year highs they’re still far above the levels we saw between 2000 and 2012.
NSSF director of public affairs Mark Oliva says the NICS figures “continue to reflect a steady interest by law-abiding Americans to exercise their God-given Second Amendment rights,” adding that “despite the claims of some elected officials that crime is not a national concern, these figures reflect the true sentiment of America. These gun owners are choosing to protect themselves.”
Despite the best efforts of anti-gun activists, I might add. On Tuesday, voters in Oregon will have the chance to weigh in on a ballot measure that would create a “permit-to-purchase” system for all handguns; one that would allow law enforcement to deny someone the ability to buy or possess a pistol even if they’re able to pass a federal background check. San Jose, California’s city council wants all gun owners to pay a fee to own a gun as well as shell out the money for an insurance policy before they can legally possess a gun inside the city limits. And in towns across the country anti-gun activists are trying to block gun stores from opening, explicitly trying to interfere with an individual’s ability to exercise a fundamental constitutional right.
Those are just a few examples of a much broader attempt to curtail our Second Amendment rights through legislation, regulation, and even cultural indoctrination, and yet month after month we’re seeing hundreds of thousands of Americans embrace those rights; many for the first time in their lives. Michelle McGhee is one of those folks. The Arkansas teacher bought her first gun two years ago, and recently spoke to NPR’s Scott Simon about her decision.
MCGHEE: I originally bought a gun – I was recently divorced and a single mom to a 17-year-old. And I wanted it for peace of mind and protection for my family. And also, I live in the rural area of Arkansas, and I travel quite a bit where there is not always phone service or cell towers. That was the main reason why I purchased my first one.
…
SIMON: Michelle McGhee, would you rely on the police if something – God forbid, some kind of terrible shooting broke out into your school?
MCGHEE: I think I would want to be proactive. I would also support doing anything that we needed to do to keep our kids safe and our colleagues and our faculty safe until police can arrive. If there is a – you know, a well-trained staff member who volunteers and would want to carry and our board supported that, then I would be I would be for that.
SIMON: Do you – and if you don’t want to answer, I am prepared. Do you bring your gun to school?
MCGHEE: I actually do not. I live in town. I’m about four minutes from my house to the school building. So it’s a straight shot. So I do not carry mine. But if the board approved and I decided that that’s a responsibility that I wanted to take on and if I went through proper training, I don’t think I would hesitate.
Personally, I’m glad that someone like McGhee is a gun owner, but I know that gun control activists don’t feel the same way. According to them we have too many guns and too many gun owners, and the only way to protect the public from violent criminals is to prevent people like Michelle from being able to protect herself.
Americans have been voting with their wallets, and on Tuesday I have a feeling we’re going to see that same energy directed at the ballot box. Gun control activists are already trying to provide a pre-election spin on what could be a disastrous evening for their movement, proclaiming that it’s now “safe” for Democrats to tout their support for gun control because public polling shows Americans want more gun laws. That argument flies in the face of the latest poll out of Oregon, however, which shows majority opposition to the magazine ban and permit-to-purchase system that’s on the ballot. As it turns out, the more voters get to know the devil in the gun control details, the less likely they are to back supposedly innocuous “gun safety” proposals. And of course, the more gun owners there are, the more likely they are to care about these issues. A million guns sold every month doesn’t translate into a million new Second Amendment advocates every four weeks, of course, but there’s a sizable number of voters who’ve become personally invested in protecting the right to keep and bear arms and I think their presence will be felt in the midterms.