An Enthusiast’s Pistol
Steve Johns has been a good buddy for more than 30 years. I still recall the first time I saw him at a match. Steve was right out of the super fast, athletic, rat-a-tat mold. He was also cocky, aggressive, with enough self-confidence for a dozen shooters. Steve absolutely blistered through the stages and would have won easily, except he still had to learn accuracy counts too. It was a lesson I had learned long ago. I won the match by a comfortable margin. One of my better memories is the look of utter astonishment on Steve’s face when he saw the results posted.
He exclaimed, “Do you mean to say the fat old guy beat me?” Since I wasn’t yet 40 at the time the “old” rankled a bit. On the other hand, since then Steve has called me “The FOG,” not a bad nickname and until now no one else knew what the letters meant.
Soon after, I arranged for Rob Leatham, who knows talent when he sees it, to do a training seminar for a few shooters at our range. I remember as we were driving home after the seminar, Rob warned me, “Watch out for Stevie. If he puts in some hard training and learns accuracy and discipline he’ll be giving you fits in a year or so.” Right both times, Rob!
The background reminiscing is included to explain why Steve’s enthusiasm for the X-Five P320 really got me interested. Steve can shoot, and he has campaigned some very fine custom guns over the years. Both of us need new knees and can’t compete with the youngsters in running and jumping, but we can still shoot!
