Welcome to Nevada Rifle Shooter

Welcome to Nevada Rifle Shooter. As the title suggests, I live in Nevada and I shoot rifles. Not excusively, but fairly seriously. Despite the title,this blog is dedicated to all things shooting. I will admit to a significant bias towards rifles and the skill set required to shoot a long gun well, but I am an active shooter of virtually everything that goes "bang."

While the topics here will probably focus mostly on rifle skills and usage, I tend to be easily distracted and will almost certainly stray from time to time into only tangentiallyfirearm related areas of interest. As you can see from my profile, I am a small business owner and so most of my time is consumed in that pursuit. What free time I have is unevenly divided between my family obligations, general chores, a few outside professional pursuits and, ultimately, writing. And not just here.

Like many bloggers I know, I am an author (and sometimes lecturer) on firearms related topics, as well as having several dozen novels in various stages of neglect. Which writing project gets my attention is entirely a coin toss on any given day. This is my way of apologizing in advance if the flow of material here is a bit slow.

Because I won’t likely be very prolific (at least early on) I have selected several of what I consider to be the better firearms blogs out there for my blogroll. I try to read as many as possible in my available free time and I’m never disappointed at the insight I get from them. These blogs are also the reason I may or may not address certain topics, preferring instead to simply direct you to whichever one of them has already perfectly captured the gunny essence of a topic far better than I probably could have.

To begin with I am going to do a series of articles loosely titled "My Father’s Guns." Like many of you I was reared in a gun family and owe much of what I am today to my father. Certainly the basis of my love for all things outdoors and shooting related can be attributed to his direction to a small, curious boy. When other kids were playing with coloring books, or watching Buck Rogers, I was sitting with my father’s 1911 on my hip (unloaded) watching the evening news. I recall doing dry fire practice with a cut down 03/A3 (an absolute aberration today: the cut stock, not my dry firing at age 5) in the living room while Walter Cronkite read the latest Vietnam casualty numbers to the American people on the nightly news. Then, at age 11 , debating with my dad the relative merits of P.O. Ackley’s Improved case over standard cartridges when I began reloading for my own .308 Winchester. When he passed away in 2001 I inherited his firearms collection and integrated it into mine.

You will see a trend in my dad’s guns that is exemplified by his motto "It’s better to bite the bullet and buy the best so you only have to cry about it once, rather than crying over and over when it breaks." Unlike me, my dad did not get "gun crank" genes from his father. My grandfather had a .22 rifle for tree squirrels and rabbits, a .243 for gophers and a pump shotgun for birds. All were serviceable but none were fabulous. What he did pass on to my father is that firearms are tools, so treat them like a tool not a treasure. My father felt the same way and hunted with all of his firearms regardless of their value or collector appeal. I continue to use them the same way in his memory.

So for now, thanks for stopping by and I look forward to your return. The look of the blog will change over time as I get more proficient with the medium and have time to dress it up. Till then I hope you get as much enjoyment from the shooting sports as I do.