Supporting gun ownership and sportsmen's rights in response to the flurry of anti-gun and sport legislation under consideration in Congress and the Illinois State Legislature.

Notes from Arizona

I signed up to do some training near Prescott, AZ and, as luck would have it, was in downtown Prescott when McCain was giving his speech. We broke for lunch roughly 10 minutes after he finished and the fact that we were all open carrying pistols didn't get us hassled by anybody.

Open carry is a legal and much exercised right in Arizona... As long as you aren't going into a place that serves liquor, you're well within your bounds.

I bring this up because many folks unsympathetic to our civil right to keep and bear arms often don't look at the places where it is legally and, more importantly, social acceptable to exercise your rights.

If they did, they'd see that the people in those places are safe and still normal.

While down there, I also had the chance to stop by the Vang Comp store to pickup some shotgun parts (I've needed a bigger, more robust safety for my Mossberg for a while...) and while we were there got a chance to meet the legend, Hans Vang, himself!

In Front of Vang Comp

For those that don't know, Mr. Vang patented a system that incorporates forcing cone modification and barrel compensation to allow a shotgun to pattern a bit tighter than stock. Full jobs or government contract runs often involve modifying or replacing parts with more robust ones: think of the plastic Mossberg trigger group vs. a steel one.

Vang spoke to us for about an hour about our training, folks that we knew in common, and detailed a lot of his work. We ended up getting baseball caps from Vang - a small price to pay since I think he ended up getting a few future customers.

I'll one last thing and say that ~200' away from Vang Comp, around the corner, was "Chicago Hot Dogs", which made a superlative Chitown-style dog (and Polish too!). After eating steak after steak (it is ranch land, after all...), a bit of junk food was much welcome!  

Hot dogs! 

Posted 02:16PM Apr 11, 2008 by MCSA