Goofy Things Said At Gun Shops

I once had a guy ask me to order blanks for him. Why? He was concerned about the mental stability of his elderly father, who kept a revolver in the house for protection. The idea was that junior would surreptitiously replace dad's live rounds with blanks.

Boy, did I get a ration of grief for refusing that one.
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Why did you refuse? I assume you know nothing about their situation.

We had (probably still have, actually) a similar situation with my 93 year old, schizophrenic, WW2 vet grandad. I don't know all the details of his condition but he talks about seeing things that aren't there, supposedly he's seen utility workers at the edge of his property and mistaken them for Japs attacking, etc.

My dad's entire family family is laid back and non confrontational so no one is willing to just take the guns away and deal with his reaction. I told them to sneak the guns out and have a smith remove the firing pins, but they hemmed and hawed and never actually did it. It didn't cross my mind but blanks would be not complete solution, but an improvement to the situation...
 
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Why did you refuse? I assume you know nothing about their situation.
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Don't mean to speak for Tom but blanks can kill if fired too closely to the (human) target. I can understand not wanting to be part of that.
 
Why did you refuse? I assume you know nothing about their situation.
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Worst-case scenario is that dad might need the gun for self-defense, and he'll get killed trying to use it when it fires blanks. Part of that would be on me.

Best case is that I'm simply not meddling in someone else's family drama.
 
His face started to turn red as he spoke "I wish all you old guys would quit coming in here asking me if I have any single actions. All yer going to do with it if I did have one to sell you is go to the river, walk around drinking beer, hualering Yeah Hah while you do yer fast draw and shoot dead trees.
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Where is this jerk? I gotta go show him "Maurice the FrankenRuger" (New Vaquero in 9mmPara, magazine fed and auto-shell-ejecting, up to 14rd capacity with no reloads) just to make his head 'splode.
 
i was just browsing one store when an older customer walked in and started talking to the clerk, a guy in his early 20s. The old guy wanted to see a "real" employee, It is just me here the guy answered and said that he would take a look at the rifle, and said loud and clear that they don't buy rifles but cosign (correct word?) and only take a fee for selling them for the customer

but the old guy just wouldn't let up, call your boss, really rude I've am gonna spend tons of money here (which eh wasn't he was "just" going to buy a tikka.

the real comment just bugged me like hell. he wouldn't work there if he didn't know his stuff
 
jon erik hexum....

If you want to learn more about how dangerous handgun blanks can be, read about actor; Jon Erik Hexum. He was an actor on a CBS tv series. Hexum fooled around with a S&W model 29 revolver on a set. The .44 had blanks. Hexum put the model 29 to the side of his head & pulled the trigger. The blank round caused major damage & he died in a ICU a few days later.
Id add that I once saw a young security class student load 9mm rounds backwards into a Glock on the range. I explained how to load a pistol correctly.
The guy scored 240/240 too. :rolleyes:

CF
 
Had a different kind of situation last week:

A couple came in together. The man walked up to my coworker, and politely asked if we had any .380. My buddy went back and grabbed a box for him. As they were ringing the transaction, the woman loudly declared that firearms were a waste of time, because they require ammunition. As Dom and I exchanged puzzled looks, the man turned and said, "Not now, please." She apparently took this as a challenge. She said, "Just give me a knife and a (toma)hawk, and drop me off in the woods! I can hunt and kill a man with a 'hawk! I don't need no gun!"

She looked like she last exercised some time in the 80s, but this woman was very confident in her physical prowess.

Of course, this woman may have a cannon growing out of her shoulder, and the hand-eye coordination of a ping pong champion. Maybe the joke is on me.
 
She said, "Just give me a knife and a (toma)hawk, and drop me off in the woods! I can hunt and kill a man with a 'hawk! I don't need no gun!"
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I had a co-worker once who kinda followed this train of thought. He once told me that "Firearms are 'easymode' and tools of the weak. It doesn't take any skill to pull a trigger and hit something."

My speechlessness morphed into a mighty facepalm.
 
One gun shop employee's verbal reaction, too what alot of ignorant "goofy" gun shop patron's do:

"If I had a dollar for every time I had a muzzle of gun pointed in my direction...I'd be a rich man."
 
The old guy wanted to see a "real" employee
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Even more annoying is when they approach a female employee and ask to speak to a male employee. I have that every now and then. The customer will approach the female employee with a question she's perfectly qualified to answer, but they just won't hear it from her.

My rebuttal is usually, "well, you might want to talk to her about X. I don't know much about X."
 
One gun shop employee's verbal reaction, too what alot of ignorant "goofy" gun shop patron's do:

"If I had a dollar for every time I had a muzzle of gun pointed in my direction...I'd be a rich man
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Sometimes, if a store is really crowded, I don't even want to fondle guns. The prospect of muzzle sweeping someone by acciedent is to much a PITA. I don't like doing it, I don't like it when it happens to me and then there are those who get extra crazy when it does happen to them.
What's slightly amusing is folks who will just walk right in front of you when you've shouldered a long gun in what *was* a safe direction. You just kinda wonder as to the amount of oblivous that takes...
 
Tom,

There is actually one store and it's the last time I ever went in there where I would have done that.

She was dressed like a mall ninja's wet dream. :mad:

The GS I usually go in, all the employees dress in jeans that fit, and polo's that are tucked in, including the ladies. That I find professional and have no issue dealing with either gender.
 
I went through firearms qual with a guy who put .380 in a glock 19. It even stumped the instructors...
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In the guy's defense, there are many shooters out there who don't realize there is more than one type of 9mm ammo. Some of these folks are inevitably thrown for a loop when they see European ammo packaging that reads "9mm Corto" or "9mm Short", even if the package also says "380 Auto" or ".380 ACP" somewhere on it.

I once had a conversation with a person who had a good deal of experience with deer hunting but not with handguns. He had shot a friend's "9mm" Walther PPK and was thinking about buying a Glock 19. To this day, I don't think he fully comprehended my explanation that the PPK did NOT fire the same cartridge as the Glock.

"It's a 380, but the 380 cartridge is also known as 9mm Short, which is why your friend's PPK said 9mm on it."

"But it said 9mm."

"PPK's are normally marked 9mm Kurz, which means 9mm Short in German. It's not the same."

"Curt who? It was a Walther and it said 9mm." :rolleyes:
 
Bluestarlizzard - I know how you feel...and I feel the same way. Since I'm a gun shop patron...I especially don't like gun shop patrons, who are at the display case, pointing a muzzle of a gun at anybody, including vehicular traffic outside a plate glass window. I like to handle guns at gun shops/gun shows, in a more elevated direction, with the muzzle pointed upwards.

I was browsing around in a gun shop a couple of years ago...when two guys walk-in, an uncase a muzzleloading inline rifle --- while asking for percussion caps to buy; that would fit it's nipple. While the employee went looking for the proper size cap...I ask the gun toting patron whether the gun was loaded with a charge? He said "it was loaded with powder an ball, but {without previously telling anybody in the gun shop that it was loaded with powder an ball} thought it was "safe enough" to bring the rifle into the gunshop. I did a double-take --- then gave them a verbal warning --- and I left the gunshop in a hurry.
 
One of the shops I used to frequent for reloading supplies told a customer he could substitute Federal 209A primers for the Remington 209P primers.
I looked at the counter guy and said, ''really''? The owner was close by and informed his employee, that was not a good idea.
 
I went to the range with a guy with a Browning BDM and a bag of 380. I explained why it didn't work.

Most people, in the gun world, bring knives to their gun fights.

I did hear the blank thing at Cabelas. Guy wanted a pump shotgun to scare away BGs with the rack. He wanted blanks as back up noise maker. The clerk suggested rubber buckshot.
 
One time I asked if they had a stock for an AK47 since they had a pistol grip for one (mine has the thumbhole stock). The guy behind the counter gets a $1200 Sig AR off the rack and goes to hand it to me, and says, "Well this looks kind of like a AR47." I was too dumbfounded to say anything and just walked away.
 
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