Susan Knox Wilson
Vaughn McDonald, owner, manager, and degreed gunsmith at Near & Far Gunsmithing and Chris Miller, the previous owner of Near & Far Gunsmithing and Firearms, will be the guest speakers at the PebbleCreek Gun Club meeting on Monday, Oct. 7, at 4:00 p.m. in the Chianti Room. The meeting is open to all residents of PebbleCreek.
Vaughn and Chris will talk about proper gun maintenance, best practices to ensure proper gun function, and the types of services professional gunsmiths offer.
Vaughn was raised in Arizona where his passion for firearms began as his family’s hobby was anything to do with a firearm. Vaughn graduated from Estrella Foothills High School in Goodyear and enlisted in the Army, where he served for six years. While enlisted as a military police officer and armorer, he was tasked to perform high security rail missions in Poland, Romania, and other parts of Eastern Europe. During that time, Vaughn handled and became familiar with both domestic and foreign firearms. He worked as an apprentice at a gunsmith shop for a year while finishing his Firearms Technology degree. He has become a skilled and proficient gunsmith during this time and enjoys calling his passion his career.
Chris is the previous owner of Near & Far Gunsmithing and Firearms. He opened the business at its current location in December of 2014 and, this June, sold the operation to Vaughn and his wife, Raquel. Chris learned gunsmithing at his stepfather’s knee beginning early in the 1960s. Chris’ stepfather was a Korean War veteran who served in the U.S. Marine Corps as an armory sergeant. Chris moved away from firearms as he concentrated on college. He was the Air Force’s lead project manager for the service’s implementation of the Department of Defense’s electronic health care system in the late 1980s and early 1990s before he separated from the service in 1993 after eleven and a half years. After the Air Force, Chris was a chief information officer (CIO) and an information systems strategic advisory consultant for the next twenty plus years. As this career began winding down, Chris once again turned to gunsmithing, which is a category of problem-solving and fixing things that he was always drawn to.
For additional details about the PebbleCreek Gun Club meeting, contact Mitch Counce at [email protected].