Blog 1: Project Desires and Buying the Base Handgun
When thinking about the seemingly endless competition pistols that are out there, there's some that may ring a bell sooner than others.There's the CZ Shadow 2, the Taran Tactical Combat Masters (like theor G34) and of course the STI 2011's. These handguns have all sorts of modifications that are supposed to make you a better shooter. We're talking slide cuts, barrels, guide-rods, trigger jobs, grip changes and a partridge in a pear tree!
These guns are so beautiful, it’s enough to easily instill some gun envy in any of us. But they come with a hefty price-tag, too.
Now, I'm a Glock man. No hiding that... Been a lover of these Austrian work horses since I purchased my very first one: a G27 back in the 1990's! So I took a look at the JW Combat Master Package for a G34 by Taran Tactical found here. You can send them your Glock and pay ~1500 bucks for their modifications. As tempting as that is, where is the fun in letting someone else do all the work??
I already had a few Glocks, and I wanted to start from absolute zero on this project, so I set out to find a great deal on a used Glock 34 on armslist.com without much luck. Sure, there are plenty of handguns on armslist.com & I would have been happy to own any of them, but I just wasn't seeing a "must-buy" deal on there. The guns were either already modified, or they wanted almost as much as buying one brand-new.
Also, I had these Cabellas gift cards burning a hole in my pocket, so I ultimately decided to buy a brand-new G34 MOS gen5 from Cabellas; however the only Cabellas brick-and-motor store near me is across the state-line in South Carolina, you cannot buy a handgun on their website if it is not delivered to a Cabellas store in your state & the closest one is a few hours away. No problem, Cabella's and Bass Pro Shops are the same company now & Bass Pro will take Cabellas gift cards. I don't know if you've ever tried to buy a firearm from Bass Pro, but (let's just say it was not a good experience) and I gave up.
So I called the Cabellas in South Carolina and made sure they had inventory that I was looking for. They said they had two in stock & come on in. When I got there, the store representative said they didn't have any, but I pointed to the two of them in the show case and asked about those. Long-story-short, the person behind the counter didn't realize that both of their inventoried items had been put in the case & gave me my choice of two identical G34s :)
My challenges with buying from Cabellas did not end there. They supposedly ship out of state all the time, and just needed the name and number of my FFL (Federal Firearms License) business to transfer the gun to. I gave them all the information in the world about Carolina Defensive Firearms Training & Sales, but it still ended up taking a few days for them to get it into their system properly. Had I wanted to ship it to Bass Pro, they could have done that very easily, but I prefer to use people I know.
Also, there appeared to be only one person in the entire store who could make gift cards work correctly. I spent a total of ~3 hours in the store to get the firearm purchased and walked out with my receipt and nothing else. All in all, the process took about a week before CDF got the G34 and I went over there the very next day fill out the transfer paperwork and retrieve my new G34.
I should have IMMEDIATELY taken pictures of the firearm so I had some better "before pictures" for this blog, but I unfortunately did not. The first pictures I took of this slick competition pistol was that afternoon when I went to test fire it at the range. See, Cabellas has a company policy that every gun it sells has to have a trigger lock on it, not just the gun lock that the state mandates they sell you with the gun, but their own trigger lock as well. Normally, I would have no problem with this. I'm all about safety, but when I get sent a gun without a key to unlock said trigger lock, that's when I get a tad annoyed. I essentially had to hack the lock myself with a pair of needle nose pliers and was overall not too thrilled with my gun buying experience from Cabellas. Oh wait, here are those pictures. When I took the gun out of the case, the rear site was also 1/2 off the slide, which must have happened in transit from Cabellas to CDF.
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