By 505mark,
“My wife has decided she wants to own a gun.” Really? You still talking to her, the salesman asks. “Yeah. So I’m looking for something that she can handle.” Salesman shows a couple of reasonable options in 9mm. “No, something smaller. I want her armed, but not that heavy.” Hmm. You aren’t talking about something like a 22, are you? “Of course not! But I was hoping you had something maybe in a .32 auto.” Salesman briefly eyes the customer’s open carry 1911. John, I know you are a big bore guy, so why are pushing her into something so small for defense? “Hell, man, I want her to be able to protect herself, but if she opens up on me I want to be able to survive, don’t I? . . .
—– / / —–
Eye contact with salesman who knows my taste in guns. He nods and makes a come-hither finger move. You have to see this, he says. He lays a CZ 75 Cold War Commemorative on the pad on the counter. Just got it in yesterday, he says. I pick it up and shiver. Then I giggle. The Cold War? I’m a child of that time. I giggle again. “We won that one, didn’t we,” I say laughing. Goosebumps on my arms. My wife sighs, knowing I am lost. Salesman is pointing out the retro hammer, CCCP in the serial number, full sized 16 round magazine… “Stop,” I say. “Bitch, you had me at CZ.”
—– / / —–
“No, you don’t understand. I need a deer rifle with more umph, more stopping power! Something punishing. I want a rifle in at least .300 Win Mag.” Salesman politely points out that deer are not that particularly hard to kill and recommends a .243 or .257 Roberts. “Hell, son, I’ve got those already. Fill my tags with them every year.” So, why the desire for a howitzer,” the salesman asks. “Damn friend of mine always bad mouths my rifle, so this year I’m taking two. That prick will want to show he’s better than me with my own rifle, so I want something that will take him down a notch.” Well, then, the salesman says, picking a $1,600 rifle off the rack, how about a .300 Weatherby Magnum? “Now we’re getting somewhere,” the customer says, smiling. “And I want six boxes of ammo as hot as you’ve got and I don’t care what it costs.”
—– / / —–
During a slow time in the store, I approach a huddle of salesmen and favored customers, all true gun nuts and reloaders. “No, you don’t get it,” one of them is saying. “I’m telling you that the Laser-Cast will absolutely keep them down. The alloy used is like 5% silver. True Ag. They don’t say 100% silver in the books or movies – just silver. No undead or were-whatever will get up from a couple of 44 Magnum rounds topped by Laser-Cast 240 grain SWCs.” Indeed, I thought. Makes sense to me.
—– / / —–
“No, you don’t understand. I want a handgun for self-defense that can be accessorized! You know, lights, lasers, red-dot sights, special grips for holding spare batteries… maybe a bayonet.” Ah, the salesman says, putting the M&P Shield back into the glass case. You want a tactical self-defense handgun. “Exactly,” the 20-something eager young man says. “Well then.” the salesman says, “we don’t specialize in tactical weapons, just guns. But Store X, across town, they are specialists in truly tactical firearms.” After directions to that location (well known to the weekend-tactical crowd and assorted mall ninjas), the eager man hurriedly leaves the store. I make eye contact with the salesman and raise my eyebrows. “Guys like that just make my ass tired,” he says, and walks up to another customer.
—– / / —–
I hear a gleeful, “Oh my god!” and turn around. A soon-to-be happy customer is proudly holding aloft a Marlin 1894CSS (.357 Magnum lever gun in stainless and walnut). “You got one in!” Another man, who’d missed the new rifle in his perusal of the racks, exclaimed, “Son of a bitch!” and tries to talk the other guy out of the rifle. “No way, no how,” is the smiling answer. I watch as the happy man carries the rifle to the counter and starts the paperwork. The unhappy man is watching carefully about one foot from the other guy’s shoulder. “What are you doing?” the first man asks, as he feels the other guy behind him. “Buddy, I’m tracking you all the way to the register. Feds say no or your credit card is declined, I want to be next in line for a shot at that rifle.” “And I’m after him,” another guy says. It is a happy day to walk out of a gun store with a new rifle in a box.
—– / / —–
“I’m telling you, the country is going absolutely to pieces! More gun control won’t do crap. Sliding into complete socialism! Makes me so mad,” the counterman proclaims to any that will listen. “So what are you doing today,” he asks me as I’m picking a couple of boxes of .44 Special off the shelves. “I’m going shooting,” I say. “Yeah,” he says with a nod and a small smile. “Yeah, well, there’s that,” he says.
—– / / —–
“I want to buy a handgun for my son. He’s in the Air Force, stationed in Massachusetts. Their gun laws up there are stupid, so I want to buy him a gun and ship it to him. He lives on base so it has to be something that he can tuck out of the way in his room.” The salesperson, a young woman who is very knowledgeable and a competitive shooter, just stares at him a few seconds. “Sir,” she says, “I just don’t know where to start.”
—– / / —–
A passionate young customer is detailing exactly what he’d do with his latest Kimber .45 if anyone had the gall to kick in his front door at home. The salesman – a new guy – behind the counter is trying to look attentive but is failing miserably. The customer is going on and on, clearly demonstrating to all within earshot that he is a serious student of the gun and is up on all the latest self-defense DVDs. I am about 20 feet away, browsing the surplus rifle rack and one of the older salesmen passes behind me. He has on a well-worn, beat-up Government 1911, in a faded, stained, and creased open-carry holster. I hear him mutter, “He won’t do shit until he learns to shut up and actually practice,” as he walks behind me toward another customer.
—– / / —–
An agitated, middle-aged woman approaches the counter. “I need to know something,” she says. “How many guns does a man really need to own?” The salesman looks a bit confused and clearly has no idea how to respond. The woman continues, “I mean, what’s reasonable? Ten? Tweny? My husband keeps coming up with reasons why he needs more guns and I just don’t get it!” A saleswoman gently slides between her co-worker and the woman and begins gently talking with her.
She walks her slowly down the aisles of used rifles and shotguns. Fifteen minutes later she is walking the woman in front of the glass cases full of handguns. She points and talks. Moves on. Points and talks. I overhear an explanation from the saleswoman, “For men, it’s sort of silly, I understand. They need to have a different gun for every purpose. But to be fair, it’s sort of like how we think about handbags and shoes. You have to have options or you just have nothing to wear…” The now-mollified wife of a gun nut eventually leaves the store. Sometime later that next week a large sheet cake from Kroger’s was delivered to the store with a big ‘Thank You!’ in the icing. I got a free slice, too, on my next visit. Quite tasty.
—– / / —–
“No, nothing that small. My boyfriend says I need a .45 for self-defense,” the young woman says to the saleswoman. “I’ve tried to convince him my .380 is enough, but he just makes fun of it whenever we go shooting,” the customer says, and her eyes brim wetly. The saleswoman eyes up the boyfriend, who is playing with a pump shotgun about 20 feet away. She takes in the bad-ass cut of his eyes, the carelessness with which he sweeps fellow customers with the muzzle of the shotgun, and his heavily tatted up arms and neck. The saleswoman leans forward and says, “Sweetie, you don’t need a different gun, you need a different boyfriend.”
—– / / —–
There’s always some cantankerous old coot at most gun stores who has forgotten more about firearms than most of us will ever know. He doesn’t work for the money anymore, just for the entertainment value. Old Coot spies me across the crowded store and yells out, “Hey! You there! I thought I told you to not come in the store anymore!” The whole world pauses.
“No!” I shout back. “You said I can’t come in unless I let my parole officer know first!” A couple of chuckles and the store volume picks up again. Several people nervously eye me as I walk to checkout. As I approach the register, the cashier is still grinning about my interactions with the Old Coot, who in the background calmly places a couple more boxes of precious 5.56mm onto my pitifully small, rationed stack of ammo. He winks and walks on.
—– / / —–
I am aware of yet another (senseless) debate going on at the counter involving 9mm vs. .45. Each of the passionate debaters keeps trying to drag the salesman, a young man who I’ve chatted with at the range, into the argument. I’m browsing the used racks carefully that day, so the argument must have gone on 20 or more minutes before it broke up. I chat up the salesman. “How do you stand that,” I ask. He calmly lifts his smartphone out of his pocket. It is only then that I notice that he has one earpiece tucked in his left ear and the cord disappears into the neck of his shirt. “iTunes,” he says straight faced, and cruises away to help another customer.