Thursday, September 24, 2009

Which blogs did you stumble upon?

All of you reading this at one time sat down at a computer and thought, “Hey, I like guns. I wonder if there is anything on this here internet that I can find and read about related to guns?” And then you stumbled upon gun blogs.

Do you remember what you first ran across?

I do. At first it was a mere handful. A google search lead to Alphecca, Armed Canadian, and Ten Ring. From them, Kim Du Toit and Tam’s View from the Porch.

It just snowballed from there, but those were the originals. They popped my cherry. And you know what? They were gentle. Like they knew it was my first time. And I appreciate that.

Not stopping it after that. Snowflakes, Uncle, and the rest just started poring into view, then others, all up and over the transom, until the bilge pump got swamped. It got to the point I needed to start my own blog just to keep my favorite links straight. (I HAD run across Uncle earlier from a connection with a local blog-TV-news personality named Brittney. But she {or the people around her discussing it} made it seem like Uncle was a bit of a local Tennesee right wing wacko, and that he should be dismissed from my mind. How long will blogs last, after all? So I didn't keep following Uncle, then.)

Canadian and Ten Ring still post, but less frequently. Kim is gone. Alphecca, my first, and Tam are still going pretty strong, posting daily. Uncle and Snowflakes, too...


I wonder if I’d been much different, being a new shooter looking for info, stumbling over blogs… if they had been DIFFERENT blogs?...

6 comments:

Jay G said...

No love for your brother-from-another-mother MAhole, eh?

I see how you are...

You hit most of my first gun blogs, although I also waded into the local gun boards as well. Unc, Tam, Kim, Jeff; all are (were) daily reads.

As for how would it be different, well, hell - tell me everything you don't know... ;)

New Jovian Thunderbolt said...

Sorry JayG. Through no fault of your own, you were late to the 'me clicking on you' party. But if it had been YOU I found first...

I'd have a Saiga 12 gauge now. And a Colt revolver. And one of them Glock things...

Another Gun Guy Brian said...

A google for a S&W revolver question->Tam->Uncle->Steve (Firearm Blog)->Carteach0->Robb->Tbolt->Borepatch->Snowflakes->hellinahandbasket->Breda->Marko->Joe Huffman->Chris Byrne->Linoge->JayG

I had to figure out how to use Google Reader just to keep up.

Windy Wilson said...

This was back in late 2003, and IIRC it was Jamie Mangrum's Surplus Rifles first, then the Swissrifles.com, and Colonel Cooper's commentaries, THEN Kim Du Toit. He had the most varied and nutritious postings, and from there it was Anarchangel, Firehand, and Madogre, among others.
Surplus Rifles and Swissrifles are responsible for my first centerfire, Kim and the Anarchangel for the rest.

Seth from Massachusetts said...

I once worked for a library. One day we received a reference question on guns from Clayton Cramer. Since I was the one and only gun guy there, it was handed to me. Out of curiosity I checked his website, and, as they say, the rest is history.

Windy Wilson said...

And incidently, didn't the gun at the top of your webpage used to be an M1 Garand? I've resisted buying an M1A, mostly because of lack of money (almost completely due to that), so I was wondering what you thought of the M1A and how it compares to the Garand.