MarkNoble wrote:The events in Boston this past week were quite senseless and tragic. I was walking back from the gym a few minutes ago and saw this in a store display... I couldn't help but think that this is what is wrong with this world. The suspect that they have arrested is 19 years old. When did he start playing with guns?

Mark every kid I played with growing up in Canada played with toy guns before getting real ones. None of them have gone off the deep end! Islamic extremism, political extremism and mental health issues are not a result of toys.
Had a great day today, went to the range did some tactical training with an old friend and a new friend. The new friend was from Boston, lives and works in Calgary these days. He use to be employed stateside in the firearms industry. He was familiar with Uechi-Ryu. Probably no surprise coming from the hot bed of Uechi on this continent. He had trained some MCMAP with some marine buddies and was aware of Uechi's influence on their program.
Always fun to run and gun with people that can walk the walk. Van I mentioned how painful it was to dump 25 guns from my collection....well it turns out all gun enthusiasts feel some pain sharing their old toys. The lad from Boston sold off 117 rifles and 47 pistols before moving to Canada a year ago. He had not shot in a year!
My regular shooting friend is an Bosnia and Afghan Vet. Van you remember the friendly fire incident ten years ago (17 of April) when a national guard pilot dropped a 500 lb bomb on some Canadians on a range? My shooting buddy was one of those guys. He lost 4 friends and saw 8 others wounded that night. That was the beginning of the tour. He lost a lot more buddies after that. He has a firm grip on what reality is in a gun fight. We fit well as training partners.
He met a Bostonian on a gun forum and found out he had been not shooting for a while. He invited him along to kill some paper terrorists today. He was a fine shot, he fits too!
We got bored at some point and started shooting at small targets from 50 yards. I was shooting the SBR on the bottom, stag lower RRA piston upper.

I shot okay!
We started shooting coins...toonies we call them.
That went okay! I popped a few polar bears. I was pleased with the accuracy of my new room clearing weapon. I didn't expect an 8 inch barrel to shoot that well.

My new American friend put his fist shot thru the center of his first toonie. At the end of the day he looked at his queen with a shot in the middle and said to the two of us. You Canadian's sure love your queen neither of you shot her!
Shawn started babbling something about not being tight with the monarchs, when I interrupted and said. Dude we both swore an allegiance to the crown when we served, we don't give our word lightly. Did you notice that we taped our coins to the targets with the bear as the threat and this yank put the women front and center.....is their anything you want to tell us son do you have a problem with the ladies?
We had a good laugh....but damn he was a good shot!
Fun day look forward to the next one....hope it's not still snowing tough to shoot polar bears and monarchs in snow storms.
Hey last week we had a British solider in the mix. He was a good lad too. The group grows life is good!