Money, Time and Blood: Life of a 3-gunner
This was originally published in the Canadian Firearms Journal July/August 2019 edition. This was intended as a humour article, I hope you like it. I had a shortage of appropriate photos for this story, the drawings of me were created by the owner of https://www.canadiancutthroat.ca/ I highly recommend going and having a look at his website.
Getting into the sport of 3-gun can be daunting. There are a lot of rules, a lot of gear, and you preform in front of a group. However, do not be dissuaded. The rules are pretty intuitive once you get into it, they’re all safety and common sense oriented. Don’t sweat embarrassing yourself, everyone eventually does and they all seem to have a pretty good attitude about it. As for all the gear… it only costs a small fortune.
If you are thinking of getting into 3-gun, or any other shooting sport, you should start by asking yourself these few questions:
Do I have too much money?
Do I have too much free time?
Do I see my family too often?
If you said yes to at least two of these, 3-gun may be right for you. The simplest way to get into it, is to go to a match. Contacting the league beforehand is a good idea too. Sounds simple, but social media is littered with people who are stockpiling and perfecting their gear to be all set to someday go to a match. Show up with what you’ve got, if anything, and some boxes of ammo (9mm, .223, and 12 gauge). I guarantee someone with lend you gear. My first match was quite the swap meet. I was borrowing holsters, guns, mags, and belts from five different people, but they cobbled something together for me. Be prepared to lose that first match. Go slow and try not to get disqualified for a safety violation.
Immediately after that first match, while you’re still flying high from all the fun. Go home and research some entry level guns and gear and write up a budget. Show that to your spouse and get approval… now when they look away, add a zero to the end. You won’t spend that now, but you will. Allow me to explain.
You’ll probably start with a basic AR, like a Norinco or M&P, a basic 9mm like a Glock or M&P9; and just whatever shotgun you have… and, of course, you’ll need a bunch of magazines, I like to carry 40 rounds for both my rifle and pistol. Next, it’ll be a belt, a holster, magazine pouches, and a few shotgun shell caddies. You’ll see the cost of the caddies and nearly cry… Before you ask, no there are no cheap caddies and they almost never show up for sale second hand. This will land you in your original budget, get your foot in the door and get you doing matches in the limited division. You’ll likely run a season or two this way. Then you’ll need an optic, and those don’t grow on trees and of course, you will want a good one, a cheap one might lose zero with all those barrel dumps. If you want to stay in limited you go with a red dot; if you want an actual scope, that will put you into Tac-Ops. If you’re getting that into it, you may as well upgrade that old pump action shotgun of yours to a semi, but due to Canadian law and weird capacity loopholes, you need one that takes 3.5″ shells, but will reliably cycle 2.75” target loads. Its also around this time that some folks, such as myself, begin to try to do their own gunsmithing. You take a Dremel to your new shotgun to open the port and a soldering iron to it for stippling. The there’s the rattle can paint job so your gun stands out a little on the rack. Just a heads up, if you don’t paint it a masculine colour, some people will act personally offended… guess how I know that.
After a season or so the cost of ammunition will start to get to you, so now its time to get into reloading. Since volume is the name of the game, you can hunch over your old single stage endlessly or you get a progressive press, and a good one, since a squib or double charge could be dangerous. Buy once cry once right? Congratulations, your reloading setup now cost almost as much as your original 3-gun budget. That’s ok, it’ll save you money on ammo, have to think long term here.
All ammo costs you now are components, your evenings, and usually a dedicated room in your house. At least you can now store all your other gear in that room, too.
This fancy hand loaded ammo combined with your optic will really show you how limiting your AR is, better upgrade that barrel and that trigger. While you’re at it, keep your eyes peeled for a sale on a handguard, you’ll probably try two or three with various types of vertical and angled grips. In the end though, that super expensive ultralight one will probably be the answer.
Another great way to save money is to start volunteering for the league, that often gives you free entry to the matches. You now also get to design stages, help more with setup, and RO… but that’s just an extra few hours a month, right?
A common route guys go to get free gear is to get some form of sponsorship. Of course, to do that you will need to get good, which means practice. Good thing you have that fancy reloading gear. It’s also a good idea to do a lot of dry fire practice every day. This isn’t to make you a better shooter, this is just to post to Instagram to help you get followers.
Since companies that sponsor you want you to use as much of their gear as possible, you may as well go to open class so you can put an optic or two on everything. At which point you will need to go to a magazine fed shotgun and a custom tuned “race pistol”, to stay competitive. Once you’ve started spending all your time posting to social media and spent all your money on gear, you just might get a sponsorship deal, which might help you get a discount on gear, which is now redundant. But now you can brag that you are sponsored. You’ve even got that fancy jersey (that you bought) to prove it! As a sponsored shooter, you’ll be expected to attend as many matches as possible, which means no going to your in-law’s family reunion “Sorry honey, can’t miss The Battle of Alberta.”
All along the way, you will be doing this so you can spend 14-hour days getting sunburn, windburn, frostbite, or just downright soaked in the rain. Oh, and don’t forget the sprains, the cuts on your hands and knees, and the occasional bit of lead ricochet. I once caught a small piece of lead in my hand while filming another shooter. My doctor had to dig it out with a scalpel. Before that day, I had never seen a medical profession giggle. It was clearly the highlight of his week.
But on the plus side, you get to go fast and shoot a lot… for about four minutes, total, per day. It’s kind of like golf, the better you are at it, the less of it you do in a competition. If you are looking for something less damaging to the body, the wallet, and your family, I would suggest either gambling or the rodeo circuit.
For me though, if I am going down in a blaze of financial ruin, it’s with an AR in my hands and hot brass falling down the back of my shirt. If you want to join me, www.3gun.ca lists most matches happening in Canada. Let me warn you though, there’s a lot of running.
Posted in Marksmanship, Published Work and tagged 3-gun, firearms, shootingwith no comments yet.
Leave a Reply