Introduce Yourself

Hi all, Pete here in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where the Amish buggies roll ;) I wasn't in the service, but lived abroad for 14 years not far from where Putin is trying to prove his manhood. I got back into shooting after many, many years this last summer with pistols (I had never shot them before, just rifle, shotgun and bow) and my quest for good information led me to Graham's channel on youtube. Definitely one of my favorites, but I blame him for at least two of my purchases at this point 🤣 . What I appreciate most is Graham's technically oriented take on firearms which matches my general approach to any tool I get (I work in construction). Politically, I suspect a lot here would consider me a black sheep - registered (D), gun owner, who supports 2A rights. There are actually a lot like me out here, but a lot keep their mouths shut about it - it's just easier that way. Other than my newfound hobby, I make pretty good espresso and scale models. I've translated military history books for a publishing company called Kagero in Poland and one of my life achievements was the translation of a book on the PZL P.24 fighter plane written by one of the design engineers who actually worked on it, Andrzej Glass who I worked with to make sure the translation was up to his standards. For the last 16 years since returning to the US, I've been working as an electrician. My goal with my pistol shooting is to get half as good as the people I watch online. Yeah, wish me luck.

Hello, I go by Usziel most of the time. It's a pleasure to meet the forum lurkers and posters here. I did a short stint in the Army in '90 but was booted due to a previously unknown health condition. So much for my career as a helicopter pilot. I've only ever purchased a handful of used firearms in my life until very recently. In November my spouse of 20 years and I decided it might be a good idea to come up with an evacuation plan just in case things went pear-shaped in Ukraine. That included buying new guns. Fortunately, things went apple-shaped in central Europe instead. Unfortunately, we were pretty easy marks for a less than scrupulous fire arms market out here in Salt Lake City. We live, we learn, we get knocked down, we get kicked in the gut a few times, we get back up and wonder what the hell just happened. I'm a jack-of-all trades type and my spouse is the Lord High God of Data at a local advertising company. We're looking to boogie on out of SLC in the next 2 years and find a nice plot of sub-rural, semi-farmland in either south central Illinois or maybe Oregon ... if we can something nice in the west under 2000 feet and under $30K. LOL, right? ~sigh~ I'm such an idiot sometimes ...

P.S. You wouldn't happen to know anyone interested in a 500 year old katana? Don't mind me, it's an inside joke ... :D

I come from Cleveland Ohio via 20 years in the USN. Retired and moved to Florida 28 years ago and worked with the County until I fully retired. Now I spend lots of time caring for the household and my grand daughter. In the Navy I was a surface warfare ship driver specializing in engineering and training. Shot the big guns in Grenada and in Lebanon following the USMC barracks explosion. Helped out in Desert Shield and Storm on the MidEastForce staff working with BB's, minesweepers, Saudi and Kuwait navy units.

Been following GB for a couple years which taught me about Grand Power pistols and have enjoyed them very much. I have discovered that holsters for the Canik TP9 DA fit the Grand Power K100 very well.

I'm Rick, Obviously I'm in Alaska, about 40 miles north of Anchorage (Alaska's largest city) I'm a former USAF Civil Engineer who deployed a bunch to Korea, Japan and Saudi Arabia and ETS'd after a decade of fun. I have worked in a few careers after the my military service ended and was a gear reviewer with Graham at www.loadoutroom.com, www.thearmsguide.com, www.paragraph4.media, and I wrote for a while before that at Sofrep.com under Force12Media & HurricaneMedia

After using my Voc Rehab I graduated from Bellevue University (Nebraska) with a BS in Project Management and put my skills as an CE Troop and schooling to use in my current role as an Emergency Manager (Think FEMA) where I work hand with locals, tribal governments and their agencies to respond to disaster and build things better than before or make them so they don't break essentially.

I'm a huge nerd about guns, hockey and photography. Glad to be here and yes I chat alot when bored or on too much coffee

There are a couple videos I want to share... please these are not fancy they are real. The first two are on UN 2030 and why our country is rushing headlong over a cliff... the third is from some time ago this explains why everyone is fat... and ill. This codex she refers to is a UN plan... . I went to the Sorbonne in Paris for university but my school was first in the medical then in the scientific schools... the law, social studies, liberal arts, and political studies were in a separate school but I had many classes there and know a lot of people around the world. This was talked openly about 45 yrs ago. First video is from Aaborg conference on Globalization about 6-7 years ago. This is a very liberal lady but was horrified... Rosa Koire exposes the UN Agenda 2030…
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqMe1DH3qrU

 New Video… Worse than I thought 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-xS44U2Oz0


Codex

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DG62uCyxe7g&list=PLkyMeIW1gE7bYzLSfOr-1BTib7TXAzG0G&index=3

Hi, I live in Richmond, IN, and most of my career was in the American aerospace and military industrial complex. I am 70 yrs. and was raised in England as a little kid then Wyoming. As a little kid I was a year or more ahead of the others because I learned to read and write at 3-4 years old, some in my grade were two years older, as I started a year early in English public school (really private school).... you know the dress up school blazer, dress pants and shirt, tie, and heavy oxfords. Coming to Wyoming and being sent to school in my new but still English school outfit... I got in a fight every darn day. When you are smaller and younger and dressed different... with a different accent... hard; as soon as they come up to bully or not punch them or kick them in the balls so you don't have to fight on the ground... where you at a disadvantage. My fighting career ended when I got in big trouble about kicking, a kid 3 years older bullying me, in the balls and pushing him face down in a mud puddle, while I beat on him. By time I left at 18 over full year after H.S. that I graduated at almost 17 yrs., I had worked in the oil field, a service station, plumbing shop, and as switchman brakeman for 6 months. Been around my Scottish grandfathers various endeavors, in oil and construction. In the oil patch then things were rough and tumble. I delayed going to college as mom wanted me to go to the Naval Academy but no one appoints you if you are going to be too young, they think 17 yrs is too young. Then joined the Navy. As a child, I had gone on many hunting trips with my Scottish grandfather including a Bulga whale hunt in the high arctic at one of the eskimo villages that he employed for the 18 oil, various exploration camps, university groups, Army, and others his company had scattered around. It was spring and the ice melting, I was about 8 yrs old and never forget when he harpooned the whale... OMG bloody screaming mess. I also at 10 yrs. went to Africa with him on a hunt... almost got bit by a cobra snake, that I did shoot at about 6-7 feet, after it startled me raring up in front of me (terrifying); shot with my 30-30 Mdl 94 he gave me for my 7th birthday, though native tracker guys ran up hacked it in halve just as I fired my second shot... I was sure I might had accidentally hit the tracker as he ran up! Shot first off-center through the hood didn't do anything... got spit on, later got a little ill from that, but we didn't go back. The White hunter guy and my grandfather would often relegate me to the car where the trackers and others rode, and I would set between them with my gun in the front vertical rack next to the gear ship... but they always had the windscreen down and the top off, being red head... I hate the sun and heat. I liked riding in the lead car under with a top on it, but "talked too much and too many questions". Well one day about a week after the snake thing. I was allowed up in the front but had to leave my gun in the back car, not being allowed to shoot anything... except in defense. Anyway it was very dry, hot and we were going on a track though some think spikily thorns, not seeing until we were between them, we drove between a mother and bay rhino in a small clearing, our car made it through, but the second car was rammed and thrown about 12-15 feet in the air... the rhino look as big or bigger as the car. The guys scrambled out save for some minor cuts and bruises but the car landed on the end of my gun bending the barrel, receiver and breaking the wrist of the stock. I was so pissed... my grandfather gave away to one of the trackers... who bent it back and tied some wet hide on the stock to hold together. It was ruined, and I thought likely unsafe, but he was happy... I was not at all... but you had to keep your mouth shut and suck it up. Once I broke my arm out with him and spent 12 hours hiding it so he would not be pissed and "bitch and moan"... but I had luckily pulled it straight... never casted as doctor said too swollen... by time that went down bone was pretty well stitched together. My paternal grandfather was a doctor and later finished dental school all before WW1 and immigrated. Although still an English Subject, he was drafted and served as a Doctor in the US Army at Ft. Sam Houston and worked on cranial facial reconstructions, in trench warfare shots in the face are the most common injury, he continued this thought his life in private practice. My grandmother was also English and had many causes and organizations she attended to including at different times being the President of the US and British Presbyterian Ladies National Organizations. My father served in the US Army in WW2 in Battle of Okinawa, in the field artillery protective section. He was expert in pistol, rifle and machine gun. Later he served as an MP during the occupation. My material step-grandfather was Scottish and married my German grandmother after WW2, he was a retired merchant ships master and usually hosted the Commodore leading the convoys, one of the few of his contemporaries that did not have a ship shot out from under him. My grandmother was German as is my mother though they came to the US in the 1930s due to the extreme economic collapse. Mom and her side of the family was far more interesting, as a young woman when I was a kid mom reminded me of Vanessa Mai when she was working around the house sweaty but prettier singing... similar hair, same kind of outfit dress slacks but sleeved blouse always remember her like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2aoYikNFFI she had a twin sister both graduated college and my aunt had a masters she took a lot of abuse when we lived for long periods at my English Grandmothers house... all the English people did not like my mom, as many had bad experience in the Blitz. I served in the US Navy initially in training where my sole experience in Viet Nam was passing through about 4 hours, during which we had afternoon meal in Saigon at some little place... and remember needing to pee and being shown the alley... where they were also doing food prep and storing for the next meal serving. Then being flown to the Naval Air base at Cam Ranh bay... caught the mail plane then to a carrier then on that from about 7pm to 2am... then ferried after a Replenishment at Sea for the ship I was going to about 2am... door guy told me and the other kid to throw out our sea bags and jump about 12 feet down on the deck, totally covered in pallets of 5" ammunition from the replenishment the helicopters slung over, on a Destroyer Escort patrolling the coast for shipboard training. I was ok but he hurt his ankles... later being shown the engineering berthing though a hatch and down a latter... sounded like a riot in the dark down there... guy with us was going to show us to our bunks but upon hearing the mess he told us each to where to go and jump in a certain rack close the curtains tell mourning. So doing as he said I scampered down the ladder turned left went to the outer hull turned right and 2nd bunk down threw my sea bad up and scrambled up in the top bunk of three... tucking the bag between the bunk and the hull on a stringer... shut my curtain and went to sleep in the dark. This after 4 days no sleep, slept 3 hours... but my buddy got caught. On the other side of the berthing... was where the fight going on... turned out next day they had been greasing a new 6'4" 280lbs black guy who was a hull tech... he was backed between bunks fighting... punching... but they still greased his ass and molested him. He was a nice and kind man and the only one of them that worked, by the way. That first night finding my buddy he got greased molested and beat up! I never got it because they caught me in the shower a week later and one of the boiler techs heavy tough guy reached in and grabbed me by the shoulders to pull me out, but placed his foot and leg over the step ledge into the shower... I instinctively recoiled and stepped on the side of his knee, to keep from being pulled out, this popped his knew joint out really loud with the leg bent sideways. He was screaming in agony as I screamed my threats... "ok bring it on"... but I will be up mooning the captain and demanding court marshal for everybody here, ending it. Next day Bates one of the hull techs as I enter our shared shop threw his knife missing my nose by about 6" and it stuck in his wood target on the wall. Taking the knife, I walked over to hand back but put it in the work bench vice and broke the blade first. He threatened so I walked up to the Captain and told him the story, but he did nothing to rein them in. Oh, they were going to kill me. Bates spent the entire time I was on the ship 3-4 months sharpening his knife collection. But one time they came up behind me, and did throw me overboard at night in really rough weather, I caught my hands on the drain rail welded to the deck and yelled for the fantail observer... they ran off. The whole time on that ship it was the same. A group of guys in rather than jail were sort of running things... intimidating people out of money... molesting (for real guys) one new kid was raped every night for a couple months, beating people up... they hated me but I was pretty used to it in my other experiences. It was one of great failings, that I protected myself but did not go up the chain of command and get them punished and Naval Prison. After schooling and qualification my time in as a Nuclear Propulsion technician included at Knolls Nuclear Power Lab DIG prototype reactor, and later shipboard at one point being incharge of reactor plant electrical. I knew R.Adm. Rickover a little, having testified on a couple incident boards, and even once received a private note asking me to stay at Knolls. I was medically discharged, after a long period of board appeals my commander trying to keep me. During that time I served in the Naval Honor Guard as leader of a burial squad and various ceremonial functions. I presented the flag at about 500 funerals, of these 156 were men lost in action... always very sad. After visiting my English grandmother... I served in the French Army Légion étrangère for a time but did not complete my full time, serving about a year and a half... long story. Initially my training was during the winter on Corsica... fait leur instruction à la citadelle de Corte (2° RE - G.I.L.E. - 2° Cie)... [Now a museum of Corsican History... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ6KbcHiiNk ], here is the GILE or basic training group of that era [a favorite marching song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMnDyJZ2ygw ) it was largely bitter cold and like the Alps in winter, marching through the mountains, etc., the barracks at the citadel had no heat or hot running water... push button showers... always cold... with little food but lots of wine (I really never liked wine). Later I servered for awhile with the band playing clarinet but for a time begged my way out of playing dirges (really slowly playing everything). Our Major (senior warrant officer) was a friend, he was German and lost his entire family to suicide at the end of the War like the aviatrix Hanna Reitsch. Why his industrialist father was the primary funding source for the beer hall boys in the 1920s through early '30s. He literally had set on uncle Adolf's lap many times when he was over or dinner asking for help. Very refined and educated man. Was almost 60 yrs and facing mandatory retirement in the Légion. He knew Johnny Stark the impresario so I got to know Mireille Mathieu a famous french singer when assigned to Aubagne and the band, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BDoS52NPeQ song written originally for her by Francis Lai and Catherine Desage but they held back the french release because of the Love Story movie ]. Johnny's vacation retreat house was on the southern edge of Roquefort-la-Bédoule walking distance to the base [perfomance a year before Johnny's death for the 1988 Olympics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjkNi-hNfwE - some about Johnny «thank god for Johnny»... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAdLnolPFo4 - very famous song originally written for her but she was a too young and Johnny rejected so Claude redid the parols to reflect his abusive relation with his wife... english rights sold to Paul Anka... he redid the lyrics but his manager would not let him do it either so they sold it to Frank Sinatra's manager... though Sinatra hated the song, it was his big comeback and famous song... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JzAVBkqSbw ] One last on Mireille this song she originally as a kid performed for the movie Paris «brûle-t-il?» now - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zKfI_wUW_M then - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciPZWnbMkzk }. Eventually, I returned to 2° RE Corte (Corsica) being deployed to Chad and in reconnaissance... which we mainly did on horseback. I have been in intense combat. The worst was having to put down my patrol horse Odé coco tattoo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrZk9NwF-Vk ... but in the Légion orders must be followed, there is no illegal order, and at that time it could be rifle butting muslim insurgent kid in the face, and knocking teeth out. Fighting involved a muslim insurgency by Col. Gaddafi. I did have some time back at the main base in Aubagne before I was let go. Later I went to school for a couple years in Minnesota, then transferred to Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie (UPMC), also known as Paris 6 a medical and research university, undergraduate in evolutionary/biological anthropology, then engineering electrical too, and finally masters in physics. I have most of my career in aero-space and the military industrial complex. Lots of real interesting things, mostly classified. Everything from stealth planes to special forces stuff... including like working with the 160th at Ft. Campbell... though I am not enthusiastic about flying in helicopters... and related Air Force stuff... well let say I have seen exotic aircraft being built in dirt floor barns with tarps laid down and the aircraft supported on cribbing made of rail road ties, in middle of horse pastures. Been the only civilian on missions from the Arctic in winter to the desert as a technical observer. Then consulting engineering in L.A. Ca. on lots of interesting projects, and finally took up my own projects as to small micro aircraft types of flying wing... including lifting body machine gun rounds... though I was not an fluid dynamist I have done much with inventions on flying wing aircraft and the leading authority on control of these small aircraft... my last work was with the Air Force Security Forces and the Army at Picatinny of adapting one of my inventions into machine gun ammunition for the Mk19. Ended badly as most things with Picatinny. Technically a major success, but economically ruinous, and I ended up refusing a $50 million dollar type classification contract and licensing as they would put it to "no good use" see I am fine with population control like defending soldiers in Afghanistan but not so fine with using military population control weapons on US citizens, and other bad or illegal uses like violating Posse Comitatus Act... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act

I truly appreciate this!! Teya

Hi All

I've only been a gun owner since March of this year. Like many new owners, my motivation was the rioting that took place last year, some of which was very close to home.

I live in a northern suburb of Chicago, about 9 miles from the Wisconsin state line. Kenosha, WI, home to some of the worst rioting last summer, is a 25 minute drive from our house. We have family in Kenosha and have shopped and dined at some of the very businesses that were destroyed last year. It is very sobering to see businesses in your own town pre-emptively boarding up their windows, and to see friends and neighbors rushing to the grocery store to stock up before looting might occur. I felt very powerless to protect my family and knew the time was now to exercise my 2nd amendment right.

Illinois is a VERY blue state, so securing a Firearm Owner's ID card (FOID) took almost nine months, even though by statute it is only supposed to take 35 days. One benefit of this delay was that it allowed me to do quite a bit of research on what I wanted to buy. Of course, almost every gun owner I spoke to said to buy a Glock, but I wanted to get something different. If I was going to take the steps necessary to buy a gun, I didn't want it to just be an appliance. (No offense, Glock fans!)

Out of sheer boredom one day, I randomly clicked on an link for a Stribog on the Gun Broker web site. From there, I searched Grand Power on You Tube and came across Graham's "Wonderfully Different" series of videos. Having never owned a gun and never even picked up a Grand Power, I ordered a P1 Ultra online less than a week after my FOID card was finally issued. I'm officially a Grand Power Fanboy now!! 😀

Graham - Your low-key and fact-based reviews are really appreciated. It's been great seeing Teya get more comfortable in her appearances as your video library has grown. Congratulations on the new venture!