On Saturday, I enjoyed meeting several of the Knoxville area bloggers at Coal Creek Armory for friendly fire and some eats afterwards. It was really nice for me because I've just started this hobby (both the blogging and the guns), whereas some of these folks have been doing it for years. It was an interesting experience in that I had never met them in person before, but I felt like I already knew them through their blogs.
Attendees and their reports (in bold):
Les Jones - Notes from the Blogger Gun Bash
Linoge (plus Better Half joined for lunch) - After Action Report
Lissa
Liston Matthews (dropped by at lunch)
Rich
Michael J. Mollenhour (also joined at lunch)
The gathering also let me try out a few different guns and let others shoot mine. As you see in the post above Les liked my Kel-Tec. He didn't mention it in the post, but he was not a fan of the trigger on the CZ 75 SP-01. We also thought we had a problem with my P22, but it actually was working as intended - you can pull the trigger and the hammer will fall while the safety is on, but there is a block that keeps it from actually firing.
I shot a couple of wheel guns, which was a new experience for me. Les and Linoge told me the models I'm sure, but I didn't catch them in the heat of battle. I also shot Rich's Bersa 380. We had a couple of problems with that one. I had a failure to feed while I was trying it out. A neigbor of mine also happened to be in the lane next to us, so I got to try out the S&W Bodyguard 380. I wanted to fall in love with it, but I didn't. He said it was hard for him to shoot accurately and I was way low and left with it - even with the laser (which probably needed to be adjusted since it had come back from S&W). He had another buddy shooting high right. I'd like to blame the gun, but that's some odd data.
The highlights for me were Linoge's PPS and Les' Browning Buckmark. I shot my Kel-Tec PF-9 pretty well that day, but I'm still looking for an alternative. I really liked the PPS - it is a good size and the manual of arms is very similar to the P22 that I like. This meet-up may end up costing me some money if I decide I need one of those. And thanks to the Buckmark, I now know what a really good trigger is like. Les had some work done to the .22 and it has really paid off. That thing was smooth as silk. The fiber optic sights were a nice upgrade as well.
Thanks to everyone that showed up and shared guns, ammos, and stories.