Times Change

Times change.  I started working at the Armory in August 1999, mostly because I liked guns, was single, had free evenings during the week days, and the store’s hours on weekends still fit in with my lifestyle and the store was flexible with my hours whenever I had to go out to sea (or in later years, move overseas and deploy).  As time moved on, I picked up a little IPSC shooting and Service Match (I competed in college and strayed for a few years).  Somehow I’ve spent more time deployed to deserts in the Navy than deployed on ships and add in a family and the time to shoot and my consistency working in the front of the store has definitely shrunk.  Three more years and I will finally transitionfrom full-time Sailor to full-time gun junkie. Click READ MORE for the rest.

With lots of free time in the evenings during SHOT Show 2001 in New Orleans, I started populating content on the original website.  We could not have predicted how much of Pandora’s box we were opening at the time, but it is undeniable how much the internet has changed business in such a short amount of time.  The vision at the time was a niche:  “your friendly neighborhood gunshop on the internet”.  It was a place where if you wanted to order a single pack of Hoppe’s cleaning patches, Butch’s Bore Shine and a box of Federal Hydra-Shok along with some milsurp ammo, you could do it.  We used to fill orders in the retail store during the slow periods during the day.  As time moved on and our popularity grew (of course, I was living in Japan at the time and only caught a grumpy earful from everyone when I called home), our small store (only 400 square feet of retail space back then) was just too small and we grew into a full-time warehouse crew just to cover the internet orders.  Many thanks (or for the Hawaii Ohana from my time out there: Much Mahalo) to our customers over the years who shopped with us both in the store and on the internet and spread the word to their friends.  We are still very much the same mom and pop store that we started out as.

Other than time marching on, how have things changed at the shop?  Now with truly skilled young guys like Pat and Ron working on the website, The Armory website will finally get a chance to mature into something more user friendly and helpful while still keeping the sharp prices customers have come to expect.  Plus you get to hear from me on our blog from time to time (soon to be from exotic Saudi Arabia).  Many of the old faces are still around as well.  The number of employees have grown, but so have our families–as a family business, there’s about a 50/50 chance someone you talk to at the store is related to someone else working at the store.  We are family-friendly so please don’t feel the need to leave the family at home.  We remain a pro-military shop in a military-town.  Mostly Navy vets, you’ll find Ralph, Bill, Dave, Mo, Mary and Ernie, but you also find representation from the other services.  After serving in the Navy, Ernie dedicated some hard years to the Virginia National Guard, deploying to Iraq.  Steve served in Marine Corps.  For Tim out there serving in the Marines:  we still have your job waiting for you whenever you get back to town!

Our families have changed as well.  I went from the energetic single Sailor to getting married to a feisty Thai woman when I was in Japan.  This weekend was probably one of the most enjoyable in my days as a father as we grasp those fleeting moments before I head to Saudi Arabia for a year.  After a grueling Saturday at Busch Gardens (they do a great service for military families in providing up to four free daily tickets per year), we spent Sunday at a friend’s farm and my soon to be five year old daughter, fired her first rounds.  She was a little intimidated at first and didn’t want to shoot the .22 pistol (an old High Standard I found used at a gun shop in Poulsbo, Washington).  She just wanted to sit in daddy’s lap while daddy was shooting.  Then she went away and played with horses for a while and came back when the rifles were out.  It wasn’t the GSG-522 or the Beretta ARX-160 .22s that she wanted to shoot, it was my friend’s black-synthetic stock, stainless steel Crickett single-shot rifle.  The stock was still too long for her, so she couldn’t even get her head down low enough to use the sights properly and I had to aim from over her head (poorly at that since I only managed to hit a paper plate from 50 ft just once, but the worms were sure scared!).  But she figured out how to work the bolt and squeeze the trigger (still not strong enough to cock it).  What really made me proud was that she knows and remembers to only handle a firearm when daddy is with her.  Whether she sticks with guns in the long run, only time will tell, but for now, the tradition is getting passed on:  first to my wife who never shot before me and now loves her 20 gauge SIGARMS Aurora TR-20 (discontinued, but it’s a good looking gun) and more often that I would like to admit, has beaten me on the sporting clays range (I’d say I am probably handicapping myself with a 16 gauge pre-World War II Belgian Browning Auto-5, but she’s shooting a 20-gauge).  Perhaps four years old was a little young for my daughter to learn to shoot, but it was getting to be time.  She spends lots of time around the shop and she’s starting to get curious and wants to play with toy guns.  While most of my guns are not accessible to my children, those that could be are either my carry guns (usually a Walther P99 in .40 S&W and a Kel-Tec P3AT while are holstered), or my nightstand gun (an H&K P7M8).  As time goes on, the nightstand option will probably change into a digital keypad safe, but for now, my daughter still can’t squeeze-cock the P7 and my son is even farther behind.

Watching my daughter smile with her first shots made me reflect back to when I first learned to shoot.  I started “hunting” yellow jackets with a Crossman BB pistol when I was ten years old and we just moved to Clearlake, California (rural) from Santa Rosa, California (suburban).  Going from an apartment to running around on a acre (and several acres in the walnut orchard behind us and the field across the dirt road) was big change for me and the yellow jackets at the spigot became my nemeses.  I heard tales of my dad and his first cousin growing up and shooting and despite my mother’s objections, I wanted a real gun.  The Christmas after I turned 13 was met with a Marlin Model 600 (the “golden” edition Model 60) and 500 rounds of CCI Mini-Mags.  I still have Marlin to this day.  My first time at the range was with my Dad and his cousin Roy and I couldn’t even hit a five-gallon bucket from 25 yards.  It was frustrating.  Eventually Roy let me try out his Luger he won in a poker game when he was flying with the Marines during World War II along with every thing else in his collection.  The bug had bitten at that point and my lifelong pursuit of firearms began.  My 16th birthday present was a left-handed Remington 700 BDL (still have it) in .30-06 and Christmas that year was a Sears/Boitto 12-gauge Over/Under (while I had it for many years, I didn’t shot it for many years since it was fixed chokes and heavy for a shotgun, so I sold it to someone more deserving who would appreciate it a little more).  It’s hard to believe how much times have changed–I kept my semi-automatic .22 rifle in a case under my bed from the time I was 13 until I could later afford and had the seasoned wisdom to want a safe.  In my high school, you knew who was going hunting after school by those who had rifles in the gun rack.  Guns weren’t unusual or out of the norm.  Hopefully, my children will grow up to both respect firearms and also understand that they are perfectly “normal” tools used by people and normal to have around.

Today, I will be taking a new shooter to the range.  First I’ll size her up for something that she might like and then she’ll try out some pistols and revolvers in different calibers to get a feel for what works for her.  She’s not the “normal” profile shooter–single mom and one of my wife’s Thai friends.  Her boyfriend is leaving for deployment and she wants something to protect her and her children both at home and while carrying out and about.

So plenty to discuss on my mind today:

– What was your first shooting experience?

– How did you and how old were your children when they learned to shoot?

– What were your first guns?

– Have you noticed how things have changed?

– What have you done to promote the tradition

–have you made any new shooters/gun owners?

– What’s on your mind?