I got into building MRC Tamaya 1:35 scale military models of WW2 figures when I was in 6th grade. That developed a big interest in the weapons of the second world war. My dad was always a shooter and hunter, and for years had subscriptions to both Guns & Ammo and Shooting Times. Being a WW2 buff, especially as far as 3rd Reich firearms were concerned, I squirreled all the issues with stories like '9mms of WW2' or 'Guns of the Wehrmacht'. I knew how to field strip a luger when I was a early teenager simply by digesting articles on these guns, replete with photos. I started collecting the non-firing replicas and practicing on them. When I went out to 'play war', I was decked out with an MGC 68 MP40, a realistic Luger with matching holster, and a K98 bayonet my granddad gave me. At one time, before my house burned while I was in college, I had collected an arsenal of these non-firing replicas from Collector's Armory, etc. Skip forward a few years, and after a long time of being primarily interested in bands and playing guitar, I finally decided to get my C&R license and start obtaining the 'real deal' that I used to dream of as a kid. I had developed a love for these old guns you couldn't imagine, but had no outlet to obtain any of them, we being on the bottom of the middle class rung. I was lucky to get to shoot; my dad was/is an avid reloader, but everything he had was geared towards hunting. I have always been a military/police type of aficionado when it came to guns. Now, I've got a decent collection. Not because they're cheap, or cheap to shoot. That ain't always the case. Not because I like to hunt. I can't stomach it, and have never been a hunter. No, I'm a collector now, what I always was at heart when i used to sit for hours and paint those models, and pour over those magazine articles. And I'm a shooter. I guess I'm in love with the designs, and with the history, of these very interesting arms.
