It's National Training Week

Some doods somewhere (actually a bunch of doods) declared this to be National Training Week, a time to take your gun to your local range, while you still can. 

So the lovely but deadly Mrs. Graybeard and I loaded up a few guns and headed to our favorite range, for a few hours of shooty fun this afternoon. 

When we dove into the new "gun culture 2.0 movement" and applied for our concealed carry permits, the post-election frenzy was in full swing - March of '09.  After doing a bit of reading, and trying a few different guns with our instructor, we settled on a pair of Springfield XDms, the original models, in 40S&W.  They were our only handguns for many months as we got a better idea of what we like and don't like and got some training.  By now, we have a good couple of thousand rounds through each gun.

Now XDms are excellent pistols; they're as reliable as anything, but they're a full-sized service pistol, not a small, easily concealed gun.  While I can carry it in the winter, I've changed my "EDC" with weather/season a bit - these stories are in the history of this blog.  Here in the Silicon Swamp of central Florida, it's getting to be the time of year when you can melt lead on the sidewalk (melting aluminum comes next month), so vests and even big, baggy shirts are tough to wear.  Most of the year, I carry an XD subcompact in 9mm, and as I sit here, I have the TCP .380 auto in my gym shorts pockets (sorry - too much information - you'll have to get your own brain bleach to get that image out of your heads).  The two of us were sitting around a few weeks back and started trying to remember the last time we shot our XDms.  We decided it was a long time ago.  Needless to say, that was the purpose of today's trip.

Both of us found that the XDm performs exactly like the XD subcompact.  You pick it up and it's like you never put it down.  What's that old line the commercials?  "No muss, no fuss, no bother"?  We also brought our .22s.  A few boxes of .40 and as much .22 as you want. 

"A splendid time was had by all".