I am married with no children.  

My parents never kept guns in the house when I was a kid.  My uncles in Illinois all had rifles and shotguns for hunting.  None of them were avaid shooters; just a bunch of Elmer Fudds.  Dad used to hunt small game when he was a kid, so when we'd visit relatives in IL we'd sometimes go hunting.  

As a kid I had all the typical army men toys and a nice collection of toy guns.  I loved western and war movies.  When I got into my teens I bought a couple of BB guns.  The interest was definately there.  

It actually wasn't until I started dating my wife in 1993 that I became more interested in firearms.  She actually kind of pushed me into it by encouraging me to go hunting with her father.  Her Dad and her uncles are all big deer hunters.  At that time I was working with a guy who was big into firearms and he took me shooting at American Classic Marksman.  

That was the very first time in my life that I had been to an in-door shooting range.  

One of the first pistols I shot was a Ruger P93DC.  My friend had just bought it and it was the first time he had shot it.  I loved the pistol.  Apparently, he didn't.  About a month later he asked if I wanted to buy it.  It was my first handgun.  

After a little more encouragement from the wife, I went to Bass Pro shop and bought my first even bolt-action rifle.  I had spent a lot of time talking to my wife's uncles and trying their rifles.  I was determined to buy a Remington 700 and a Bushnell or Tasco scope.  The sales guy actually talked my into a Marlin MR-7 instead.  The rifle was a little cheaper than the Remington I wanted, but I took his advice.  

For those of you that don't know, Marlin made the bolt-action MR-7 for only a few years.  It was their attempt to get into the bolt-action centerfire rifle business.  They took the best features of the Remington, Winchester and Ruger bolt guns and put them all in one rifle.  Mine is chambered in .270 and it is a surprisingly accurate rifle.  Now, back to Bass Pro...

The clerk also talked me into a Leupold Vari-X II and Leupy base/rings.  Glad I listened to the guy.  So a few weeks later I took my first deer with that little Marlin.  Nice 6-pointer.  Meat never tasted so good.  

Over the next couple of years I acquired a couple .22 rifles, a Ruger Mark II, a Mossberg shotgun, a muzzleloader and, finally, my first semi-auto centerfire rifle - a mini-14.  My wife always encouraged me to buy firearms and ammo.  One year on our anniversary we took the day off to get our CCW permits.  How romantic!    Her permit came in the mail before mine did.  The day it arrived she bought me a Sig SHR-970 in 7mm Mag.

Sometime around early 2000 I was surfing the web (actually, I used to frequent a site called huntamerica.com) and I stumbled on a link to the Bushmaster site.  I instantly wanted one.  All those memories of me sitting in front of the TV with my toy AR pointed at the bad guys on the SWAT show came rushing back.  A few more clicks of the mouse and I found this place.  You guys are the ones that turned me into an addict.  Ya bunch of crack whores!  


Sorry for the long boring story.

Okay, one more small interesting bit of info.  Guess who taught my GA Hunter Safety class?  Our very own dnr212!  I met up with him at a gun show a year or so ago and he just looked way too familiar.  When I got home I checked my Hunter Safety card a found his signature on it.  Small world.  


(Don't tell dnr212, because he'll probably kick me in the balls, but I had already been hunting in GA for a few years before taking my Hunter Safety class.  I was hunting on family-owned land and my uncles told me a HS card was only needed to hunt on public land.  Of course, they were wrong.  Once I found out I had been breaking the law, I promptly got my butt into a class.  Scored a 100% on the test too.  )