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Our family gun shop is located in a small town about 50 miles from Las Vegas. Within that small town there are around five actual brick and mortar gun shops - four of them are decently located in high traffic areas on main roads... And then there is ours; well off the beaten path built on the back portion of my Mom's residence property. No one finds us "by accident". Had a 94 year old gentleman come to our shop yesterday to consign some firearms with us. No big deal - we get a fair number of consignments. But this gentleman was consigning his life long collection with us - including a fairly large collection of new in box unfired Colts. He had never been to our shop before - didn't live in Pahrump. We asked him, "Why us? Why not a shop in Las Vegas or one of the other shops he had to pass to come to us?" He responded that he was 94 years old and wanted to ensure he was treated fairly and if he happened to pass before his collection was liquidated - he wanted to know his wife would not be cheated. He had asked around and apparently our name kept coming up as a good choice. So a man we had never met - traveled an hour to a little shop in nowhere Nevada to entrust us with well over $20,000 of firearms in the first batch - simply because of we are known for doing people right. It is nice to have a good reputation.

Today was day one of my first shoot after 3 years of watching our son shoot. Thought I was prepared. Read first stage over and over again told myself I had the sequence down. Got online first shot with rifle……. yup you guessed it wrong target. Started day with a “P” and several misses. Looked back after finishing stage and saw the ear to ear grin on my son’s face. Wish I had started shooting with him sooner. Had a blast and cannot wait to go back tomorrow and finish last 4 stages.

Mrs. Lose thought I needed to get away for awhile this afternoon so she told me that if I went down the hill to Escondido with her that she’d buy me dinner at our favorite hamburger joint. Well I needed to mail a package at the post office down there so I agreed to go along if we could stop and mail it. The date was made. Mailed the package and get back in the car and I said where to? and she said ALDI she needed to do some shopping. I’ve driven by Aldi many times but never been in one. We parked and crossed the parking lot to the front of the store and I turned into the cart corral to get a shopping cart and this scruffy looking guy pushing a shopping cart asks my wife for a quarter. She digs around in her purse and hands the guy a quarter and starts pushing his shopping cart and he walks off. I have no idea what’s going on and she says it’s so that the wheels don’t lock up on the shopping cart. She points to this gadget with a little key thing on a coiled cord and a coin slot with a quarter stuck in it. I said why didn’t I just get one of the other carts instead of using his and she said because I would have had to put a quarter in the slot and I said but it still cost us a quarter. Anyway we go in the store and that place looks like a bomb went off. She’s looking for large tomato’s over in the tomato section and I find large tomatoes over with the apples and oranges. I’m looking for bananas and she told me over by the lettuce and cabbage. She wants some sweet onions and the sign says $1.94 per bag but all of the sweet onions are loose not in a bag, so I get a bag and fill it up and she says that’s too many onions and I said what difference does it make? So she puts most of the onions back and we keep shopping. I’m looking for some BBQ rub and amongst the seasonings is a bunch of energy drinks. It just seemed like whoever was stocking shelves just put stuff wherever there was a space. I worked in a grocery store in my younger days and would have been fired if I stocked like that. So we get up to the check out stand and there is no greeting from the clerk, no thank you, no communications at all except for the total that we owed. As we’re walking out my wife recognized the security guard and stopped to say hello. I walked out with the cart and this, I guess you’d call her, statuesque good looking blond lady is walking up to the front entrance and I asked her if she had a quarter. Well I guess that was the wrong thing to ask her because she asked me why I’d ask her for a quarter and just then my wife walks up and asks me if I asked that lady for a quarter. I admitted to it because based on the guy who got her to fork over a quarter on the way into the store I thought it was the thing to do. As I’m getting the “You don’t just ask any body for a quarter” lecture there’s another guy pushing a shopping cart back to the cart corral and asks this lady looking for a shopping cart if she had a quarter and she dug around in her purse and handed him a quarter and takes off with his cart into the store. Well we went to eat at the burger joint and there was another rather nice looking lady that showed up at the counter as I was ordering and I was really tempted to ask her for a quarter just to see what would happen, but I didn’t.

July 17, 1944. Dale Evans stands barefoot on a dusty Los Angeles soundstage, taps the heel of her Gibson guitar twice for invisible count-off, and belts the first verse of a song she wrote on butcher paper while frying eggs for her son the night before. Nobody knows the tune yet—“Happy Trails” is still a scribble—but Republic Pictures suits lean in like prospectors hearing gold under shale. Three decades earlier she was Frances Octavia Smith, a shy red-haired farm kid who eloped at fourteen so she could escape cotton rows and taste city air; the marriage lasted less than a harvest, but the freedom stuck like prairie burrs. She waited tables in Memphis through the Great Flood of ’27, sneaking onto WMC radio after closing shifts to sing jazz standards under a fake name because minors weren’t allowed on the late-night frequency. A program director finally asked her real handle; she invented “Dale Evans” on the spot—“Dale” after a favorite cowboy serial, “Evans” because the script needed symmetry. The new persona unlocked doors. She became Chicago’s “Queen of the Air,” cashing twenty-five-cent requests while studying arrangement theory by transcribing Benny Goodman solos at half speed. Hollywood followed, and so did heartbreak: studio press agents wanted a glamor doll, so she performed vocal warm-ups inside a mop closet to avoid gossip scribes who mocked her Oklahoma vowels. Yet she weaponized those vowels, turning rustic honesty into a brand. When wartime producers begged for a duet partner to tame Roy Rogers’ rambunctious fan base, she brought her guitar, one coffee-stained lyric sheet, and the nerve to insist on equal billing. Roy nodded once and never looked back. November 29, 1952. A stiff breeze lifts the canvas walls of a makeshift tent hospital in Seoul, and Dale—clad in USO khakis stitched with a hidden pocket—slips harmonicas and peppermint sticks to wounded infantrymen who think she’s there only to croon. Between sets she scribbles prayer notes for mothers back home, then mails them from a Taiwan layover because Pentagon censors can’t track foreign postmarks. Returning stateside, she discovers her newborn daughter Robin has Down syndrome. Studio publicists urge silence; instead Dale writes the bestseller “Angel Unaware,” funneling royalties into scholarships for special-needs kids long before the term existed. She and Roy adopt four more children—two mixed-race, two war orphans—defying sponsors who warn it could “confuse Middle America.” She shrugs, records a Christmas special emphasizing family is chosen, and ratings jump twelve points. In 1969 she testifies before Congress, slipping a harmonica to a bored page boy and telling senators that inclusive playgrounds cost less than wheelchairs. During breaks on the “Roy Rogers Show” she sketches prosthetic-saddle designs so kids with cerebral palsy can ride horses; ten prototypes later, a San Bernardino ranch teaches therapeutic riding nationwide. At seventy she earns her pilot’s license, flying rescue dogs from hurricane zones because “trail bosses don’t retire, they reroute.” She dies at eighty-eight with boots by the bed and a half-finished lyric about Martian cowgirls grazing red-dust skies—a reminder that imagination’s horizon always shifts. The Friday after her funeral, children at a Phoenix rehab center strum borrowed guitars and shout her unfinished chorus. The staff hears something familiar: two heel taps, and a melody that still promises happy trails. #cowgirl #happytrails #trailblazer #usousa #texas dale evans hidden stories queen of the air roots angel unaware legacy roy rogers duet origins cowgirl innovation tales

Long guns shall have their actions open with chambers and magazines empty and muzzles pointed in a safe direction when transported at a match. SHB p.18 Action Open (lever & pump action long guns) – BOLT not closed completely. Action Open– (SxS & single-shot firearms) – functional firearm that opens without manipulation of the release mechanism (e.g., top/side lever/button) SHB p.43 HOWEVER! At the very first TG Summit a proposal was accepted for Match Directors to add "...unless enclosed in a case or scabbard" to their Range Rules. It was decided to NOT CODIFY that exception...and it was NOT RECORDED in the meeting minutes. If/when allowed, due diligence at the unloading table was stressed (as well as at the shooter's vehicle pre-match). That exception has since been applied (by some Match officials) to include long guns transported in fully enclosed gun carts. Always check with Match/Range officials to verify their policy regarding long gun transport requirements.

...... HAPPY BIRTHDAY U.S.A. 🙃

My second oldest granddaughter (18) graduated Saturday from the Montana Youth Challenge Academy in Dillon - think voluntary military school, light. She's a different person than she was 22 weeks ago, with a new sense of direction, self-worth, confidence, and self-respect. She's lived in numerous hovels on the Flathead Indian reservation growing up, comes from a broken home, was very withdrawn, a lot of emotional abuse from her parents, and she's still got some work ahead of her to finish high school or equivalency, but I think she's gonna be OK. Brigadier General Trenton Gibson, the Adjutant General of the National Guard, addressed the graduates, as did the past adjutant, Major General John Hronek, four Montana state legislative Representatives, proxy speeches from Senators Daines and Sheehy, and a few other dignitaries. https://www.mycacademy.org/ Salute to Cadet Reum from a proud grandpa.

YES.

On this day in 1787, the Constitutional Convention is underway. A small state delegate stands up and addresses the large state delegates in the room. Actually, he didn't calmly address them so much as he *blasted* this statement at them! Can't you just imagine the tension in the room when he was done? "I do not, gentlemen, trust you. If you possess the power, the abuse of it could not be checked; and what then would prevent you from exercising it to our destruction?" This may be one of my favorite quotes from the Constitutional Convention. It summarizes, so succinctly, the fears felt by the citizens of so many small states at that time. How can America be self-governing, but also ensure that the large states do not constantly trample and abuse the small states? As you know, the Convention ultimately worked out many compromises. Our Constitution is full of many checks and balances that work as safeguards for our liberty. Just another reason to celebrate during this long Independence Day weekend. #TDIH #AmericanHistory #USHistory #liberty #freedom #ShareTheHistory

Picked these up for 2k all 3. Pretty stoked!

This box turtle has been under foot around our buildings for at least 20 years. He(or she) is unique with a hole in its shell in lower left. It would come out in our sawmill and munch up night crawlers that would come out of the rich soil of the floor. Somehow it has survived thousands of trucks and other traffic on our farm. Although I've not tried to handle it, it is comfortable with me being close. It doesn't pull in or try to run away.

First shoots are something to remember with humor and hold as a benchmark for seeing how far you have come a year or so down the road!! Never mind the grin on the kid’s face!! Check the one on yours!! You’re gonna find that you are happy just to be among folks like yourself who enjoy what they’re doing and want to share it with everybody!! WELCOME!! Now you have an excuse to spend your kid’s inheritance!! 🤣 BE SAFE! HAVE FUN!!!

Let’s talk about a little Southern word that packs a whole lot of mystery: “directly.” Now, if you’re not from around here, you might think “I’ll be over there directly” means immediately, like someone is dropping everything and heading your way at lightning speed. Oh bless your heart. You sweet, literal thing. But in the South? “Directly” is not about time. It’s about intention. It’s a soft promise. A gentle nod. A “soon-ish, maybe after I finish what I’m doing, but don’t rush me” kind of word. My Grandpa used to say it all the time. “Grandpa, when you coming in for supper?” “I’ll be in directly.” That might mean five minutes… it might mean when the sun goes down and the garden’s watered, the dogs are fed, and he’s had time to sit on the porch while watching the squirrels fuss at each other. And yet we never doubted him. We knew he’d be there. Just not right now. See, “directly” in the South is a lesson in patience. It’s a little time cushion wrapped in charm. It tells you someone is coming, but on their own time, and you best not rush em. It’s polite procrastination with a drawl. So no, maybe not everybody says it, but down here, it stuck. It became part of the rhythm of life. Like sweet tea and slow sunsets. Like sitting a spell or fixing to do something. When my Grandpa said “I’ll be over there directly,” it didn’t matter how long it took, he always showed up. And that’s the thing: It’s not about the clock. It’s about the follow through. And that’s the kind of Southern I hope to always be. The kind that may not rush, but always shows up. #SouthernSayings #DirectlyMeansEventually https://www.facebook.com/share/1Aapgfsv9q/?mibextid=wwXIfr

I love staying at home most of the time. If you can swing retirement, do it as soon as possible. It minimizes contact with jerks.

And to add more proudness this was the first shoot where we shot the ammo we reloading. Everything went bang the way it was supposed to. Win win today.

So we sell and rent shipping containers for storage purposes. We have our own straight trucks and tractor trailers, Landall type trailers for moving containers. Now I don't claim to be a truck driver. I like to say" they don't call me a truck driver, but they do call me.....". So one day the phone rings and it's a Caterpillar employee on the other end. He says," do you remember that 45' container you sold us at the local mine? We have parts and shelving in it and need it moved to Missouri.. When can you do it?" Tomorow I say. So I winch it on a 50' step deck and head to a mine in Missouri. When I arrive and check in I'm told I have to be "underground trained". No sir, not me, I'm just here to drop this parts container. I know, he says, but it has to go to the underground shop. I say, I'm pulling a 50' trailer that has to be raised in the air to unload." No problem he says, "plenty of room. Here's your re-breather, it has to be in your hands all the time you're underground. They will lead you down.". I'm not bothered by underground, but I can't see my trailer. And we turn and drop and turn and drop, and it all looks the same, no landmarks. We finally get down to where the container needs to be unloaded . I find that it's very difficult to work the controls of my trailer and hold on to a flashlight and my re-breather . The floor is solid rock, but there's about 4" of dust everywhere and every movement raises little clouds. I get the container off, and they lead me back out into the sunlight without loosing any paint or causing a cave in. I turn in my re-breather and hit the highway for Southern Illinois. On my way home I think, well, that was pretty neat, but i don't care if I ever do it again. Two months later, the phone rings. Hey, you remember that 45' parts conex you took to Missouri? We need it moved back to the strip mine.!.....Yep, I went back and got it. Like I said, they don't call me a truck driver......

Whenever I see those guys out, I'll stop (if traffic allows) and thank them. Just after the Tubbs Fire, or in the last stages of it, I made a female PG&E supervisor cry by thanking her and praising the crews for laboring like super-Stakhnovites in the aftermath. Getting gas shut off, lines repaired, and back on. Clearing downed and damaged power transmission and distribution lines, replacing transformers, rerouting power to get as many people as possible up and running as quickly as possible. In 2018 some PG&E workers were on our cul-de-sac looking over my neighbor's place, puzzled. To get to the front door you have to walk half way around the place from the carport. It's not obvious. I went out to see what they were up to. In advance of possible Planned Safety Power Shut-offs they were checking on them because they were registered as having necessary medical devices and PGE was checking to make sure they could keep them running. They were a bit wary of me as I walked up to them, I think that they were bracing themselves to be yelled at. Nope. After finding out what they were doing, and pointing out how to get to the front door, and by the way, the neighbors were out, I thanked them. For being willing to work at a job with sucky hours and often miserable working conditions...on a pole in blazing heat or almost freezing, blinding rain in the middle of the night. Sadly, they had no idea how to react to being praised. They were used to having abuse heaped on them for the decisions of the upper management and accountants.

I added carpeting to the master bathroom a few months ago. I like it so well I'm thinking about running it all the way up to the house.

I have a pair of old model vaqueros that are the blued/cch version, 4 5/8 barrels with Blackhawk hammers and a spring kit. Looks to be shot very little. Asking $1275 shipped to your FFL

Happy 99th Bday WWII Vet Mel Brooks! During WWII Melvin Kaminsky was sent to Europe with a field artillery unit, he thought he would be a radio operator. In need of combat engineers, though, the Army noticed the young private's military operational specialty the military service had trained him as an electrical engineer saw the word "engineer" and immediately reassigned him. Instead of receiving and sending coded messages, Kaminsky's new assignment was far more dangerous. His main responsibility would be to defuse land mines, but true to his nature, he joked about what possibly could go wrong. "I said, 'Oh, you don't really want me to do that, do you?'" he recalled in a 2022 interview. "'I mean, you know I'm liable to get blown up.'" Despite any misgivings about working in close proximity to explosive devices, Kaminsky survived, changed his name to Mel Brooks and went on to become the comedic genius behind such laugh-out-loud classics as "Blazing Saddles," "Young Frankenstein" and "The Producers." His sense of humor served him well during World War II as Brooks found himself far from his native New York where, as a teenager, he first honed his timing on stage while working as a comic during the summers in the Catskill Mountains and too close to the Nazis for his comfort. Brooks' military journey began when the Army drafted him in 1944. He was sent to the Virginia Military Institute, where he studied electrical engineering and learned skills related to his role as a cavalry officer. During those drills, instructors taught Brooks how to ride a horse and wield a saber, skills for which he didn't have much use while growing up impoverished in Brooklyn after his father died when he was 2 years old. Brooks' military education continued during basic training at Fort Sill in Oklahoma, where he learned the ins and outs of field artillery and "how to put Camel cigarettes in my ears. My ears are still yellow to this day." In November 1944, Brooks and his yellowed ears arrived in Europe as a forward artillery observer with the 78th Infantry Division before transferring to the 1104th Engineer Combat Group. Brooks participated in the Battle of the Bulge -- Germany's final major offensive on the Western Front -- but to his everlasting good fortune, he was not involved in the most intense fighting. Still, harm's way was never far away for the 1104th, which routinely dodged enemy fire as they worked ahead of the front lines; sometimes, they even engaged in close combat with German troops. Mel Brooks served as an Army combat engineer in Europe during World War II. Shown in this May 17, 2017, Mel Brooks served as an Army combat engineer in Europe during World War II. (Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP File Photo) The 1104th's role was crucial. When Brooks' unit was not building bridges over rivers or streams, allowing Allied troops to cross in their military trucks and tanks, or destroying pillboxes or clearing roads, they usually searched for land mines. To do that, they literally poked and prodded. "You would have to probe the earth lightly with your bayonet, and if you heard, 'Tink! Tink! Tink!' you knew there was something dangerous underneath," Brooks explained. "You had to be careful." When they discovered a land mine, one of the service members gingerly approached the explosive, deployed a whisk broom to remove any dirt from the area carefully and then disabled the lethal device. During these tense moments, Brooks said, others in the platoon hunkered down a (relatively) safe distance area away, their helmets offering only so much protection and praying the next sound they heard would not be: Boom! Not all mines were the same, either. Some were small and, unlike the larger ones, somewhat limited in the amount of damage they caused, relatively speaking. Others were more intricate, more deadly and involved tripwires; one that Brooks remembered in particular was the "Bouncing Betty," an S-mine that, when tripped, would bounce chest high and spew shrapnel in all directions. Then there were the booby traps, which unleashed their carnage when their targets least suspected it. Brooks said the 1104th’s combat engineers always were wary anywhere they went, even to the bathroom when pulling on the chain of a toilet could spring a booby trap. "To this day, even though I'm not a soldier and I'm not in Germany and I'm not in a war, if I enter a toilet with a pull chain behind the commode, I have a tendency to stand on the bathroom seat and peer into the tank above to see if there is a booby trap ... which hardly makes sense in a restaurant in New York," Brooks recalled to HistoryNet. Somehow Brooks, who saw only three months of combat, survived. Along the way, the born entertainer noticed some absurdities of military life, including his military job ("I was a combat engineer. Isn't that ridiculous? The two things I hate most in the world are combat and engineering."); how a soldier's food was usually served in one pile when they bivouacked, no matter what it was ("To this day, I'm vaguely nostalgic for some sliced peaches on top of my beef bourguignon."); and simply missing some things he took for granted as a civilian ("I'd never gone to the toilet before with 16 other guys sitting next to me. I would go crazy waiting for the latrine to be free of people so I could rush in, do my stuff and rush out. It took a lot of getting used to."). Brooks, who was honorably discharged as a corporal, remained in Europe after World War II, helping with the Allied occupation and, much more in line with his natural gift for comedy, telling jokes and emceeing talent shows for the remaining troops stationed there. That lasted until Brooks returned home in April 1946. When Brooks spotted the Statue of Liberty, he became emotional, appreciative for making it through the war safely as well as for what the military had done for him. "The Army didn't rob me of my youth," Brooks, who will turn 99 on June 28, 2025, said, "It really gave me quite an education. If you don't get killed in the Army, you can learn a lot." #WW2 #USMilitary #Melbrooks #Soldiers #USarmy #History #Militarylife #specialforces https://www.facebook.com/share/p/15wdgkrpku/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Even when I take my Grandpa somewhere and he tells me to use his handicap tag, I just drop him off as close to the door as I can get and then go park in the back. He is being driven around so he doesn’t need it and someone else could use that spot. I got legs that still work, I’ll walk from the back of the lot.

Just picked this up today to match my 5 1/2" Colt. It's the Great Western II Hand of God model with the gold cross inlay (which I don't really care for, gonna replace with Colt "eagle" grips). Supposed to have a real, sorta, form of case hardening and nicer blue. I can tell you it has the smoothest action out of the box I've felt, no aftermarket springs/tuning needed. Best part, it was less than half the cost of the Colt.

You Folks in Callifornia sure have alot of gizmos.....We're on the list for indoor plumbing, should, just be, couple years... Texas Red

Few years ago I read an article about "why Hollywood won't use Raven Symone anymore". If the name does not sound familiar, when Rudy got too old to be cute on The Cosby show Denise married a divorce father with custody, so they had this other little cute 5-year-old girl. And she grew up and went to work for the Disney channel. I think she was on The View for a little while. And then she just kind of - disappeared. She said there were three reasons why she had trouble finding work. She refused to say she was African-American. "I've never been to Africa. I'm American. So what if my skin is a little darker than yours. So what if my facial features are different than yours. So what if my hair texture is different than yours. I'm American. Not African." That's a big plus. Then she said that she refused to say that Cosby tried to molest her when she was on the show. She said he didn't. But because Cosby was "an evil sexual predator", the powers that be in the entertainment industry wanted her to jump in and say that he tried to do something to little five year old Raven. She said it never happened, and she wouldn't say it did. So that's two big pluses. And the third reason was she refused to get out and join with the gay pride and the lgbq whatever. Apparently the lady is a lesbian. But she said that who she dates, who she lives with, who she's married to - ain't nobody's business but hers. And she refused to join in to the "we're here, we're queer, get over it!" group. I thought all three of those reasons were excellent ways to think. And if it made it difficult for her to find a job, and she still has those ideas and reactions - more power to her.

I’ve got something none of you will ever have, that’s right I’ve got a son in law named Larry that’s 2 years, 247 days, 13 hours and 12 minutes older than me and very far left. He’s anti gun, anti woodworking (destroys trees), anti paper towels (destroys trees) anti paper plates and paper bowls (destroys trees), anti plastic silverware, etc.. family dinners are very tense sometimes as you can imagine. Not long ago he showed up at the weekly family dinners passing out cotton handkerchiefs demanding that we stop using Kleenex tissue to blow our nose on AND then he laid down a bunch of hand towels that he demanded everyone use instead of napkins or paper towels. Until my wife bought me the Grillbot I used wadded up pieces of old aluminum foil to scrub the grill with and it works really well. Larry’s so tight he refuses to pay for trash service at his house and has been using our trash cans for 30+ years and when he brings his trash over he thinks he’s got to go through ours to make sure we’re not throwing away something that can be recycled, like aluminum foil that’s been used to scrub the grill. He’s actually dug out that old used foil and straightened it out and washed it and told me that it was okay to use again!!! Well to shut him up I asked him if he kept his used toilet paper so that he could use the other side and my wife told me that that was a mean thing to say.