You never forget your first gun....

I like to think back, 30 years ago, to my first gun purchase.  I had no idea what I was doing, or what I was buying.  All I knew is that I wanted to own a gun so I could shoot at the range without having to constantly rent a gun.   I was shooting down at Shoot Straight, (way back when there was only one Apopka store) and I knew I would not be able to buy there, but I had a friend at the local drug store (Walgreens I think, not positive) who told me to look there for a gun.  Yes, the local drug store back then sold aspirin, ace bandages, housewares and firearms.  Go figure….

Well I looked and fell in love with a gun there, was only $300 and was used, looked like a 1911 clone.  I bought it (honestly don’t think there was even a background check then either) and took it straight to the range to kill some paper.  That’s when I found out it was a 38 Super and how it worked.  Hey, it was my first gun and I was completely a noob.  Bought some rounds, and loved every minute of it.

After the novelty wore off, I realized that there was no way I could afford to keep up with my hobby as much as I wanted to.  $15 an hour at the range + $12 a box of rounds (x4) was pushing me over my budget every week, so I was faced with cutting back or trimming the expenses.  Shooting less rounds at a time was not an option, nor was shooting once a month.  So I began to look into reloading my own bullets.

After much research I found out that my beloved 38Super was actually rather expensive to buy ammo for and was not as cheap to reload for either.  What was cheap was reloading for 9mm.  So time to move to another gun.  I could not afford to actually own two guns, so I sold my 38Super at a $100 loss, and bought the only 9mm I could afford from Shoot Straight, a 9mm LORCIN.

WORST GUN EVER.  This thing was heavy, had no hammer (not sure it was striker fire either) and looked like it should be on sale at Toys-R-Us.  But it only cost $225 so I could actually own a 9mm for only $25 more than I sold the 38Super for.  That’s the only reason I bought it, price.  I truly regretted it after the first time I shot it.  It worked just fine, but accuracy was something this gun did not have.  Fixed sights and could not make a group at 7 yards to save my life.  I never took it back to the range a second time.

Months later, after saving and scrimping, I took this LORCIN back to shoot straight, traded it in and picked up a CZ-101 9mm.  Yeah, I only got $75 for that trade, and the CZ cost me $499.  I was not happy about that. 

But I was ecstatic about this new 9mm!  This had a great feel and shot really really nice.  It was fairly accurate in my hands and the more I shot it, the better I got using it.  By this time I was still feeling the pinch of the cost of shooting, so it was time to move into my next plan:  Reloading my own bullets.

This was about the time I had moved to using an IBM PC, and stopped using my AMIGA 3000 computer.  I had one great salvation; the AMIGA was still popular and I managed to sell my entire AMIGA system for $750.  I had already done my research and knew exactly what I was going to get: A Dillon Precision Square Deal B kit. (Only $712 !!)  So I bit the bullet and spent the cash on it.

Well, that’s all I care to contribute to this wall of text for now, Starting to reload as a beginner is a whole nother topic :P