My Gun

Upon the recommendation of a friend, I bought a Smith & Wesson M&P through G&R Tactical.

For those who don’t know, yes you can buy guns online. The gun is then shipped to a Federally licensed firearms dealer (GT Distributors in this case, only $10, cheapest I found in town). Before they give me the gun, I still have to fill out all the forms, do the background check, and so on. So, all is cool.

I went with G&R because I knew what I wanted: an M&P in 9mm that did not have an internal lock, no magazine disconnect, no additional thumb safety, keep it simple. Plus, I wanted to install trigger parts from Apex Tactical Specialties, because that seems a must to make the M&P really shine. There’s something nice about buying the gun with the parts already installed by a gunsmith to ensure all will work well.

I’ll talk more about the gun later. This is about my experience with G&R Tactical.

I was able to place the entire order through their website, including a lot of additional magazines. After I put the order through I realized I forgot to order the Apex RAM. Some emails were sent back and forth between myself and G&R. I went ahead and placed a second order for just the RAM, emailed both invoice numbers to Grant, and it was basically a “no problem”.

With a few days I received an email saying the gun was being shipped. Wow. I did not expect such fast turnaround!

Gun is received, and while I haven’t taken it to the range just yet, dry firing the gun seems to be working fine.

I just wanted to publicly express my satisfaction in doing business with G&R Tactical. I goofed up my order, but Grant was polite and accommodating in letting me correct things. Turnaround was fast, and so far so good.

The Holster

As mentioned in prior articles, I’ve been reconsidering my carry holster options. That’s on the backburner now due to this M&P experiment, but I will eventually come back to it. That said, if the M&P is destined to be my new carry gun, I’ll need some sort of holster for it, if nothing else, to use for practice while I seek “the better holster”.

I’ve used Comp-Tac products for some time, with the MTAC being my current carry holster. Yes I hear good things about the Blade-Tech Eclipse and the Raven Phantom for the M&P, but let’s minimize the variables here. I went ahead and ordered another MTAC for the M&P; it’s a “known” and thus a reasonable place to start from.

When I placed the order I saw they now offered the leather backing in both black and chestnut. Black is new, and while that appealed to me, I wasn’t sure about the dye bleeding. I’ve had some supposedly quality leather goods bleed their black dye onto my clothing, which I’m not happy about. So being a little wary, I included a note in my order asking if the black has a chance of bleeding then to give me the chestnut. I expected the note would be heeded but silently so. I was surprised to receive an email from someone at Comp-Tac addressing my questions and there was even a little back and forth discussing it. Quite pleasing, and yes I’ll be getting black.

Comp-Tac has always provided me with good service. Even when there have been issues with the product, they’ve always worked to address things to my satisfaction. Can’t argue with that.