All, Glock has a thing called the GSSF and it involves a competition of sorts for any owner of any of their guns all across the country (and I believe international, too). It's not the most demanding shooting competition and anybody can sign up and shoot it with no "serious" training involved. It's more of a fun shoot to get people involved in shooting their new Glocks some place other than a static range. It's an interesting shooting challenge on its own level. This is not to say it's not competitive. They give away lots of guns, awards, money, memberships, etc to the top people and a lot of randomly selected prizes of guns, money and the like. I know several people who have won guns at these things and have never placed in the top 100 in any event!! With that preamble, I'd like to repost an email I sent out to a lot of my shooting buddies about an interesting event that happened to me yesterday at the St.Petersburg, Florida GSSF shoot. The email follows....................................................... Guys, Well, today was the first GSSF shoot (Glock Sport Shooting Foundation) of the year and I did it last year with a fair performance and I figured I had practiced those damn plates for a year, so I SHOULD do better this year. I least that was the plan and it was going really well. I ran the “5 to Glock†thing a few seconds faster, but much more accurate this year. I ran the “Glock M†course with good times AND no misses, so that’s good. Now, on to my nemesis group. The dreaded “Glock the Platesâ€. It’s a simple course. You look at 6 plates and shoot them all down. You do it four times and call it a day. Now I was shooting “MajorSub†so I only had 7 bullets available for each of the groups. Four groups of 6 for 24 plates total. Not a problem. Like I said, I’ve been shooting those damn plates for a year in order to do better than my dismal showing last year. I should breeze right through it this year, right? Well, hold it right there. Seems I put myself on the squadding board and got put right in front of world famous gun author, instructor, and all around World class gun guy MASSAD AYOOB. Yes, me and him were yakking up a storm, talking about the weird airplanes flying over the range, the rain, the lack of women and guns. What has turned into a simple shooting of 24 plates has my knees shaking because Massad Ayoob is standing RIGHT BEHIND ME watching the whole thing unfold. I choked. I should have easily gotten 24/24 but I wound up 22/24 with two misses ON THE FIRST SET! Even the range officer told me to just settle down and they’ll start falling again. I slowed down a bit and knocked down the next 18 without a problem. Massad Ayoob says “Nice Shooting, Andy†(he must have missed that first set) as I collected up my bag and moved smartly out of the area. I wish I had brought one of his books with me to autograph! (How tacky). How embarrassing. Shooting in front of one of the most famous firearms guys in the world, and I choke on a stupid metal plate!!! I think I’ll take out my frustration on LaGrand this Monday night and really kick his butt. AD (at least I did beat last year’s time by a good margin)
WOW! Able to meet the gun God Massad Ayoob and talk with him too. Your a lucky man AD. It also sounds like you had a good time and did well despite 2 misses, yeah 2 measly misses under that kind of pressure is pretty damn good in my book. I wish I had the talents that you do as well. These shooting sports you participate in sound pretty damn fun. I can barely get enough range time to work on point and shoot. Costs me $20 a day to go to the range. Anyhow I digress, it sounds like you had a great day and a good time.
Hey! The GSSF shoots are only $25! It's a good way to try out an easy type of competition without spending an arm and a leg for super equipment. By the way, that "MajorSub" category is tailor made for that new Glock 30 you just got!! AD
That sounds like a lot of fun. I will have to see if it ever get this way and try it. I need to find a place with the plates to practice though. I've yet to get to fire my Glock 30 but I look forward to it this week God and money willing.
All, Here's an update on the GSSF shooting in Florida. There are basically two of these down here each year. One in January in Tampa and one in February in Orlando. I just came back from the Orlando shoot. I finally got all of those damn plates down with a bullet to spare!! Also wound up bettering my time from last year by A LOT and also beat last month's identical shoot by almost 40 seconds of scored time!! In fact, this was my best time ever in these events. So, I'm thinking about getting a hat made that says "Plate Master" or something equally obnoxious to rub in my buddies faces on the Monday night shoots. AD Plates Fear Me
All, Well, if it's January that means it's time for the annual GSSF shoot in St.Pete, Florida at the Wyoming Antelope Club. Nice venue, but noisy as all get out due to shooting outdoors, but inside large "caverns" that are bunkered nicely. VERY LOUD. Anyway, the interesting anecdote for this year was my registration. They generally get 300-400 shooters each year and I tend to pre-register at the same time that I send in my annual GSSF membership dues. So, lo and behold I show up today, get my print labels for the shooting stages and look what my registration number was!!! I'm Number One!!! You would think I would win SOMETHING for getting that honor, right? AD
All, As long as I'm doing the "Glock Report" today, I may as well toss this one in too. One of the things you get with a GSSF membership is the availability of a factory Glock armorer to look at your firearm and fix or replace anything that's wrong with it (or worn out in my case) for free. Absolutely, 100% for free. I had heard about this program for the last few years and as I'd never had any problems with any of my Glocks, I never bothered to check out this particular program. Well, at today's Glock Shoot, I was walking inside the range trailer to get something and the armorer was sitting there working on a guy's gun and giving him a ration of crap about how "over-lubed" the gun was. I said if that gun was bad, he's gonna just fall over when he sees mine. I am the walking definition of "over lube" with my guns. Well, the guy ahead of me has a Glock 19 and has done some trigger work, springs, connectors and all kinds of stuff, to include filing some "important" stuff to make it smoother. The armorer goes through the thing and does a 100% detail take down of it, all the while mentioning the amount of oil in the gun. (I am so going to be in trouble). The reason the guy brought the gun in, in the first place was because his trigger wouldn't reset like it's supposed to. When the Glock guy got all done with it (very impressive cleaning job) he did the usual tests on it and discovered that the gun would actually FIRE by simply releasing the trigger!! All of us in the room were taken aback by this. He demonstrated it time after time. Yep, something was messed up big time there. Took it apart again and asked if the trigger safety had been filed to smooth out the reset. Yep, but just a bit. A long discussion and explanation of why that was a bad idea ensued and pretty much all of the modified parts got pulled out and stock parts put back in. Crisis with gun firing solved. Reset trigger solved. Gun squeaky clean. No charge for the parts, the labor, the lesson or the coffee. Such a deal! They were talking about a lot of modified parts of some really "Big Name" parts makers and we were kind of surprised at what was found in the gun. OK, he goes away and it's my turn. I hand over my Glock 30 and he just looks at the slide and then back to me. He opens it up and announces "The Exxon Valdez has hit my table!". I took it in the humorous way it was meant and then we got down to business of cleaning, lubing and explaining to me, step by step, what I need to do and what I DON'T need to do. It was a revelation for sure. I told him I had 5000+ rounds through the gun and it was stone stock. He said they routinely just replace the guide rod around then, just because. My old guide rod was the original plastic rod with steel spring. The NEW one he put in is the very nice captured steel rod and dual spring. No charge, of course. He then proceeded to detail out the gun. If it could come out, it did. He showed my WHY I didn't need that much oil in there and the reason why it's supposed to be dry or at most, a very slight film on the mating surface, especially in the rear of the slide by the trigger and safeties. Once again we dove in and looked at the barrel (too much lube) and then started "etching" out the crud that had collected "out of sight" deep in the gun. I was about as embarassed as a gun owner could be, but I was learning a whole lot at the same time. He did say the barrel looked good as did all the other mating parts, it was just the crud that couldn't escape the gun BECAUSE OF MY OVER-LUBING that was filling up the innards! It was about this time I noticed that he was much dirtier from working on my gun as compared to the first 10 guys that came through there. I sheepishly mentioned that in spite of my dereliction of duty with the gun, it had performed flawlessly for all those rounds. Somebody else in the room said "Well that's why you bought a Glock, right?" Very clever. So, to end this, I got a good 90 minutes of education between my gun and the other guy's as he took them both apart, detail cleaned them, replaced what needed to be replaced and put it all back together with the "proper" amount of lube. Total cost? My hour or so of sitting there and watching the whole thing unfold. I learned more about my guns today than in all the books and videos in the last two years. It was well worth the "effort" to hand the Glock over and say "How's it look?" AD
