Boring gun stuff.

Sombody else's Springfield Professional.

Stolen entire from view from the porch. Except for the picture. I stole that from somewhere else.

Over in a discussion on the Book of Face, I had alluded to the fact that the main reasons I'd switched to carrying the M&P from the 1911 were convoluted and probably boring to anyone but me and nobody would read that post, but a Facebook friend said "I'd read it," and I'm hard up for material this morning, so...

The reason I ditched the hyper-expensive multi-kilobuck bespoke 1911s for carry and practice is because I was getting to the point where I was entirely too obsessed with the gun. My backup 1911 was a Pro that I'd carried for years; I'd switched to a bespoke gun whose build I'd specced out from the bare frame. I'd picked out the pins in that gun; they were the best 1911 pins...

I think the first crack happened when I had a trade offer made on my Springer Pro at a gun show, and my initial, internal emotional reaction was as if someone had offered to trade for my child. That started gnawing at me as I was walking through the parking lot. It was just a gun, and there were thousands more like it. There was no particular reason for it to hold any emotional significance to me; it's not like it had saved my life or anything. Did I own the gun, or did the gun own me?

And then I got to see real shooting. I watched Todd Jarrett shooting like a demigod in a class at Blackwater with a flippin' Painted Ordnance LDA Commander, guys at local bowling pin matches smoking pins with Glocks and DA Smiths, went to AFHF and watched Todd and the best shooter in the class crushing it with junky plastic LEM Kraut guns...

And here I was worrying about improving my performance by whether I had a curved or straight trigger in my special snowflake custom 1911? The variable here was obviously not the gun.

I decided to worry more about shooting than whose sear and disconnector I had in the gun. When I bought the used M&P, it was completely and solely because it was a better deal than the used Gen 2 Glock 19 at the same gun show. Would I prefer the Glock? Probably, but I've made my commitment to shoot the Smith. Maybe once I can shoot, then I'll consider switching, even if it will mean a fresh learning curve. At least it won't be as steep the second time around.

It's not so much that I'm all worried about my performance in some hypothetical gunfight that will almost certainly never happen, but because I like shooting, it's an activity I enjoy, and I was heartily sick of sucking at it due to obsessing too much over the less important half of the equation.

Because Tam. I don't know what half of her jargon means, but I got the gist of it.