About Us

In a universe of firearms sites, what is one more? Well, I’m doing one and it’s pretty lightweight, so it’ll be around for awhile.

Why Regular Guy Guns?

“RGG”, if you will. The idea is to present reviews and information on firearms and related gear from the perspective of the “regular guy”. Now, this doesn’t mean the site is exclusively dedicated to self-defense pistols and hunting firearms. Far from it, actually.

Anything interesting to myself will be profiled and presented, from the perspective of someone (me for now), who is a “regular guy”. I’ve never served in the military, and I have no law enforcement background. However, I have many friends and acquaintances in those sectors, and I hope to be able to bring them in for commentary as we go on.

I’ll review/demonstrate any piece of gear, whether it is a simple pistol such as the GLOCK 30 compact .45 ACP, or something “exotic” such as an Heckler & Koch submachine gun. Yes, the latter may have limited utility to the “regular guy”, but let’s be forthright, select-fire weapons are cool and any day you get to try one out is a good day.

Who are you, Pod?

I’m the “regular guy”. For now, I think I’ll keep my RGG venture separate from the other things I do, but it’s probably not too hard to figure out who I am if you stumble across this site. Thanks to a “feature” that Instagram rolled out today, it’s even easier to figure out who I am. If you know me and want to learn more, drop me a line. I’m always available for real friends and those genuinely interested in the world of firearms. If you find yourself overly critical of my interests, well then we should probably part ways. Don’t let the door kick you in the ass on the way out. I have my beliefs. Respect them.

What is your background in the firearms world?

Well, as I’ve been saying - I’m the “regular guy”. I shot my first gun when I was 8 years old. It was a .22LR Remington that belonged to my uncle. At the time, I was living in Upstate New York (way before the SAFE Act and most of the onerous laws in the Empire State with regards to guns) and he took me on a hunting expedition one afternoon. We only had the .22, so our take was a squirrel and a few pieces of plastic and cans. Nonetheless I thought it was a complete blast. Unfortunately, my immediate family weren’t “gun people” so I never really got a chance to go out and shoot for awhile, since my uncle was relocated to the West Coast as part of his career in the US Navy.

Regardless, I always had an interest in firearms, even if using one was impractical due to my location and situation. When I was 18, I made my escape and got down to that sunny-place-with-shady-people - Miami FL, ostensibly for school. “Gun Culture” was very much evident, of course. Belatedly, I realized New York was definitely out of the norm in it’s regard of guns. Friends and acquaintances had pistols and rifles of all kinds. A brave new world, indeed.

However, it did take some unfortunate incidents to trigger (no pun intended) my interest in procuring firearms of my own. Fast forward many years later - one such incident concerned a friend of mine, where one day, “trouble found him”. In a nutshell, he was having lunch at a local fast-food joint, and that day, the place was held up by two armed assailants. He, being a longtime gun advocate and concealed carrier, realized the threat, and took action. He stood up, drew his pistol from concealment, and demanded the assailants cease their attack. They responded by opening fire. Though my friend was hit (twice if I recall correctly), he succeeded in neutralizing the threat to him and his fellow customers. Thankfully he survived the encounter.

His incident inspired me to look into what it would take, aside from money of course, to sufficiently arm myself for defensive use. Thankfully, being in Florida, there weren’t too many hurdles to legal firearms ownership, and there were no pointless bans on firearms type and capacity, within the bounds of federal law. This was in 2011, long after the AWB had sunset, of course.

I have a tendency to obsessively research anything I’m interested in, whether it’s photography, videography, or guns. I didn’t just jaunt down to the local gun store one day and pick up a GLOCK or a Taurus. Before I even ventured out, I started the ball rolling to get my concealed-carry permit - CWFL as it is known in Florida. A friend of a friend was offering classes at a nearby range, so I availed myself of his services and got down to it. We spent many hours discussing the law (you are not truly armed unless you know the law), and of course, some time behind the gun (we used his Ruger SR9) to make sure I at least knew the basics of real gun safety. Of course I was rusty, having barely touched a gun since before then.

As of 2021, it takes between 14 and 90 days (wild, huh?) to receive your permit in the State of Florida. By law, they are obligated to have shipped it to you by day 90 after receipt of your application. Mine took about 30 and change. This was during a quiet period, when the government wasn’t overtly threatening firearms rights.

Now why did I get my CWFL prior to getting a gun? Simple, here in Florida, as it is in many other states, your concealed carry-permit simplifies the purchase and possession of a firearm. It’s not ideal from a Constitutional standpoint, but it is the hand we’ve been dealt for now. However, even after getting the permit, I did not carry full-time til I was confident I could utilize my firearm in a competent manner. That first firearm was a Beretta Px4 Storm subcompact pistol. It was my first gun. My first solo trip to the range, 100 rounds through the gun. I could hit the paper at 7 yards consistently. But from then I was hooked.

After that, as they say, it was all over. I ran that Px4 2 or 3 times a month. Soon after, I went the Black Rifle route and got my first AR, a Colt LE6920. After, I started looking into more rifles, shotguns, other pistols, accessories, NFA items, and beyond. I soon married my love of photography and video to guns, and contributed to a lot of firearms forums and blogs.

Finally, all this obsessiveness led to Regular Guy Guns.

Today, on an unofficial level, I’m the “gun guy” of my peer group.

What is your stance on the Second Amendment?

No gun blog is complete without knowing what the author/staff thinks about the Second Amendment. Simply put, I’m a bit of an absolutist. I do think gun control efforts have accomplished little. The main victims of these laws have been legal firearms owners, while criminals continue to misuse firearms on a daily basis. Sure, violence is on a downward trend in our nation, but that trend is not tied into any past or current gun control efforts. I believe in attacking the crime issue by providing education and opportunities to people (whether that’s for the government to handle is outside the scope of this discussion) and also strictly enforcing laws concerning attacks against people and property, regardless of the tool used.

That being said, I do live in the real world and realize that combating senseless gun control laws is an ongoing battle, and that in reality, we’ll most likely be stuck with NICS checks, the NFA (at least for machine guns), and constant harassment from “the other side”. I’m not happy with the status quo in certain regards, but do realize that we have it really good as compared to other developed nations. Aim small, miss small.

However, to keep the focus of this blog tight, I will try to keep the politicking to a minimum (2021 update - yeah right!) My goal is to provide information to all, and I can’t do that if half the articles are political diatribes.

But politics and guns go hand in hand in this country!

Yes, they do. But many other blogs cover that in detail. I honestly don’t care if you are a Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Green or independent. If you have an interest in guns, I hope this blog helps you out somehow. Being competent with firearms is an apolitical issue in my opinion, anyways. You should know how to use one, and not be fearful.

You do make political posts on occasion.

Yes, I do. Sometimes issues cross my desk which I think everyone needs to know about. I’m not going to go on extensive analyses of SCOTUS decisions, but if it’s a major issue we need to rally behind, I’ll stand up and post about it.

What do you think of the NRA?

I think the NRA is great when you really get into what they do. The NRA-ILA tends to hog up all the news, but the actual NRA side of the organization provides quality instruction and some great reading material on their blogs. I hope to become a certified instructor soon. And let’s be honest, when “Uncle Wayne” rolls up in his SUV, Washington takes notice. He might be a little bombastic, but it beats the alternative.

What do you currently own in terms of guns?

I’d rather not reveal my full inventory for security reasons, but I do have the basic spectrum of common pistol and rifle calibers handy.

What brands do you endorse?

I’m not a professional shooter, so nothing right now. I have go-to brands, and brands I avoid. However, for the purposes of this blog, I’ll talk about anything I can get my hands on. If this progresses to the point of endorsements and such, I’ll follow the rules and state as such.

What would you consider your skill level to be at?

Right now, I’m an ‘beginner intermediate’ who reads way too much. I have opinions on stuff. I know the basics of most of the major rifle platforms (I’ve never fired a Garand or Mosin-Nagant, for example…) and can at least get “minute-of-bad-guy” accuracy with them. About the same for most major pistol/revolver types. Don’t ask me about 1911s just yet. Or ask. I’ll just ask someone who knows and relay it to you. I have experience in select-fire weapons, but nothing beyond a static range setup.

I want your thoughts on xxxx item?

Please, send me your suggestions. I’ll try to figure out how to review it for you if I don’t own it personally.

Did you serve in the military? Were or are you a cop?

No and no. Just a “regular guy”, like I said. Did the college thing and somehow ended up doing this. I don’t operate, though I will gladly evaluate equipment for operators operating operationally. But from my perspective and use cases. Yes, I’m making lame excuses for you industry guys to invite me out to evaluate select-fire items.

I work in the industry, I like your blog, can we talk?

Definitely. I would love nothing more than to have people in the industry contribute their thoughts and yes, products, to this blog. That’s the whole idea, right? I have access to friendly FFLs to facilitate transfers.

What’s with this wacky blog architecture? It’s not Wordpress!

Nope, not by a mile. It’s called Octopress. It’s a toolkit for “writing and deploying Jekyll blogs”. Jekyll is a static site generator for serving up static pages such as blog posts and articles. I did some prior blogs in Octopress 2.0, but this is my first one in 3.0.

Fair warning, I may trash it and switch to something else.

Which I did.

01.14.2017 - RGG now runs on the amazing HEXO blog framework. Powered by node.js. Octopress was proving inflexible in some regards, so I needed to move. Well, here we are.

For now though it does the job of posting articles, enabling commentary (Got my Disqus going on!) and so forth. The advantage is that the architecture is pretty fire-retardant and not subject to the usual litany of vulnerabilities that make Wordpress problematic. It’s also cheap to run and deploy. Amazon is your friend. Well, except for Bezos. Not to knock Wordpress but I don’t have the time to maintain yet another Wordpress install. Besides, as Dalton said awhile ago - “I do things the hard way”, or something like that.

What are these ‘other projects’?

I’ll tell you when I feel comfortable doing so. It’s not a huge secret and it’s nothing controversial, but I am keeping RGG separate for now until I feel I can push it across everything I own. Well look at that, thanks Instagram. If you’re funneling in from elsewhere, welcome and pull up a chair. RGG is still alpha. Have fun.

Do you just obsess over guns all day?

I wish. I have a daytime job and work at night too on occasion. I also fret about photography and anything Apple. Though it all ties together if you think about it. Some of my day job crew are ‘gun people’, and I try to create all-original content for this blog using my photo & Apple gear.

Married? Single?

Engaged. Married. She loves guns too. She thinks I’m obsessive. I’ll get her to contribute for a female perspective. Civilian girl gun techniques could actually constitute a whole different blog.

What else are you into?

This isn’t eHarmony, dang it. But whatever. I take photos of things and sometimes record video of things. I like driving to far away places.

How do I get ahold of you?

Email me at dv at regularguyguns dot com. If you type it out I at least know you have something to say.

Something’s broken.

Something always is. And why the heck does the framework revert to French sometimes? Unless I’m reviewing an FAL clone (hint, hint…) I need this in English…

Support This Site

Operating Regular Guy Guns and bringing you quality content costs money, money that I am more than happy to spend. I’m not really sponsored yet, so I have to pay for pretty much everything. However, I’m only able to do so much at a certain pace.

You’ll see the articles peppered with affiliate links. I get a few pennies when you make your purchases via my links.

With that in mind I’m offering a whole spectrum of specialty t-shirts, stickers, and daily wear accesories with my own brand of low-key humor. Be a Second Amendment Radical In Style! You’ll also notice affiliate links throughout the articles on this site. Go ahead and click on them and make your purchases. A few pennies and forints go to yours truly. Especially ammo purchases. Stock up!

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