It's my father's fault...

Like all red blooded American boys, when I was younger I was obsessed with all things dinosaur. I had plastic dinosaurs, rubber dinosaurs, model dinosaurs, dino books, dino records, if it had teeth, scales, and was from the Cretaceous period and earlier...I loved it. I was obsessive. I knew what they ate, when they lived, where they roamed, who discovered their fossils...everything. I learned to read at an early age, and I was voracious. By all accounts, I was on my way to being a Paleontologist....then something happened.

Being a voracious reader, by about my 6th birthday I discovered my dad's bookcase. In that case were books about his interests...namely books about war. There were Ballantine's Illustrated Histories of WW2, There were books on infantry weapons, and planes, and tanks, and great naval battles, and...wow....this stuff is great! And suddenly, I wasn't going to be a dinosaur hunter...I was going to be a fighter pilot, or a Marine, or a Navy captain, or a spy or...well...you get the point. As my interests suddenly changed to all things martial, my toys needed to change. To that end, I embarked on what can only be described as a quest to own every toy gun know to man. As my mother once remarked when I winced at a gift from a well meaning family member "Maybe he'd like it if it had a gun drawn on it....". I collected cap guns, and disc guns, and ray guns, and light guns. I had a toy chest 8' x 3' and it was overflowing with toy guns, swords, spears, knives, shields and helmets. I had the biggest toy gun collection on the block. I had the biggest GI Joe collection on the block (real 11-1/2" GI Joes....not the little mini versions that my brother collected...). My parents, and especially my dad enabled my obsession basically because I was good kid and I was their only child. Add on yearly trips to Aberdeen Proving Grounds??? Hmmm....

My father had two firearms during this time, a Mauser HSC and an Enfield No.1 mk5 Jungle Carbine. Once in a blue moon I was allowed to handle said items, and climbing behind the buttstock of the Enfield and working its mightly bolt, I could imagine shooting Japanese soldiers out of the trees in New Guinea. I loved that rifle, even though I had never fired it. But sadly, there was a storm a-brewing...my mother became pregnant with my brother and in a swell of maternal instincts, she insisted dad sell both guns...

My brother was born, and my toy allowance decreased. Luckily that coincided with my new interest in sports; first football then baseball, basketball, tennis, golf, etc. I was going to be a professional athlete now.

Flashing forward, my next exposure to guns was when I was 12 or so. I had a friend and we became woodland terrors. We built campsites, fished, shot small game with bb guns and cooked it....in short, we were outdoorsmen. Now I wanted to be a pro fisherman or maybe a big game hunter. His dad had a collection of hunting guns, and among these was one that was Kevin's: a sporterized No. 4 Enfield, referred to as the British 303. This was the first centerfire rifle I ever shot, and man, it was great. At Scout camp I took Rifle & Shotgun Merit badge courses and became a CIT working at the range, handing out .22 LR to the shooters on the line. Once again, my thoughts turned to firearms.

In my mid to late teens, Miami Vice and Magnum PI were the hot shows on TV and both featured gunplay. I was sure at this point that I wouldn't be a professional athlete, but instead an undercover cop or maybe a PI Hanging out with a couple of other friends, they showed me their gun collections, including AR-15's, CZ-75's, Sig Sauer pistols...all the good stuff from TV. I needed a gun. I needed a shotgun to hunt, a pistol to practice my shooting (as Crockett and Tubbs were amazing shots), and a rifle to repel zombies. I'd consistently ask for a gun for Christmas, and my parents would never get me one. Didn't they understand that I needed a gun to prepare for my "career"???

When I was 18, I got a birthday present that was nice, but I'd never use it. It was a long leather duster that was very expensive, but not my "style". I took it back and found myself flush with cash. I promptly went to "The Sports Authority" and bought a Remington 870 Wingmaster. My parents (mainly my mom) were not amused. To this day, I have yet to fire that shotgun. It's sitting on the rack right behind me...20 years later. My next gun would be a totally covert purchase....a pistol. On my 21st birthday, I returned to the sporting goods store and bought a Ruger P89DC. I hid it in my room. I didn't tell my parents about it for almost a year, and I got the mom style "What on earth do you need a pistol for???" Honestly, it wasn't for my career anymore, as I had decided to be a rock star and spent the next few years playing music every weekend. Guns, eh? I had two. I was good.

In 1995 I took a job in another city. One of my coworkers was very much like me...we had the same interests, sense of humor, etc....his dad owned the company. We discussed the "new" concealed carry law that was passed in NC, and my coworker, another friend at work, his dad, and his mom all went to take the CCW course together at company expense. We were al CCW licensed in short order, and needed to buy a CCW gun. We did some work for a local firearms distributor so we ended up buying Glocks at distributor pricing. We went to gunshows as the Alpha group, and all 5 of us roamed around looking for the cool new pistols.

Eventually, I moved down east, and while there, in possession of my "arsenal" (Ruger P89, Remington 870, Glock 23, Ruger Mk. II, Colt Detective Special), I went to a local gun shop to buy ammo. Well, well. There was a Russian SKS on the rack there, and I asked a few questions of the owner. He explained the Clinton ban and said that there would likely be no more semi auto rifles EVER. I bought the SKS.

The fledgling internet taught me about the SKS, and a couple years later, whilst reading Rec.Guns newsgroup, I heard of a cheap .45 pistol that could be delivered to YOUR HOUSE!!!! See, there was this thing called a C&R license, and with it, you could buy this pistol...and they'd actually mail it to you!!! Well, that was for me all right, so in 1999, I applied for a C&R and my first purchase was an Argentine Sistema Colt. My source for C&R information at the time was the defunct Cruffler.com and the C&R mailing list. Through a post on the mailing list, I found this site, and gunboards in 2000. It's been all downhill from there. I've purchased enough guns and ammo to outfit a third world country. I've gotten my brother into collecting. I got my dad into collecting. I got my mother to buy my dad a Yugo SKS for Christmas one year. Now my mom wants her own gun!

Yup, it's been a long road, and I could blame it on Marx toys, or Combat! on TV, or the internet, but I think I'll blame being a gun nut on my father...he made me a history buff, and paved the way to my becoming the guy living in the ammo fort