i apriciate all the great help ya'll have been. it's great having a place to go with great people like yourselves willing to give your time and energy to help people like me with little knowledge and experiance in this.

thank you very much slee. I appriciate what you're doing here and at madigan. My son was born Dec 2nd 2003 1 month prior to my deployment. i'll keep you posted on when i start to get stuff put together it probably won't be until well into hunting season so i'll have a year to get ready for the next one.
you know trapper i was just thinking about pawn shops yesterday morning before i went to bed. i don't mind buying a used rifle but i do have a few things i would be worried about with a rifle purchased at a pawn shop.
1. was it stolen
2. how much has it been used/abused/misused
3. does it have any alterations (ie. new barrel something filed)
for the third one i don't really know what to look for. i know basic knowledge of firearms you know, exactly the things you need to know when disassembeling, cleaning, reassembeling, functions check, loading, firing, fixing jams, clearing, disassembeling and cleaning again. M16A2, M249, M9, Mark 19, M2HB,and M203, I only know these because i took a unit armorers course and that didn't teach me much except how to do it and hands on assembly, disassasembly, and functions checks.
So I wouldn't really know what to look for when dealing with the last 2 concerns on my list above.

oh yeah. now that my brain has started to warm up, what do you do for ranges? as in firing ranges. I was told we can't use the ranges on post for POWs (Privately Owned Weapons) i'll ask my squad leader when i see him again what he knows about it and try to find some other hunters here in Iraq that might know that kinda stuff. but how do you go about it? I went to a private range with my friends dad before but he never explained to me about that. he just said something about joining the NRA and you can use it but i can not be sure the truth of what i'm conveying. it was a long time ago.

thanks again for your help friends.