I'm no moron, but occasionally I like to play one at gun shops. I think some would call it "baiting". The urge to play stupid at a gun shop when the clerk doesn't know me can be a powerful force, especially if I haven't made up my mind if I like the place or not. It's really very easy: All I need to do is listen, make no comments to the effect that I have the slightest clue about the subject matter, and look awe struck with their every word.
This doesn't always work. I've been in a lot of shops owned or manned by first-rate people who are only there to serve my interests. It doesn't take long to tell, and it's always a pleasure dealing with upstanding folk. On the other hand...
Take this one place I wandered into. From the outside it looked very insignificant. Inside, I thought I had just walked into the arms room for a Chinese infantry division. There was more commie hardware in this place than I had ever seen under one roof. It was huge. The smell of Cosmoline was so strong it was nauseating. The resident "expert" was on me so fast I didn't have time to run. But he wasn't fast enough to keep me from being, shall we say, "uninformed".
I learned many new things about military pattern weapons that day. For instance, if a rifle wasn't made from stamped steel by slave labor that it was junk, Period. M1A's, AR 15's, FAL's, HK's, all crap. What I wanted was obviously what he was selling, as I did not object to his claims. It's fun to watch fools in action I think. He had AR's and HK's and the like, but he was going to save me from those crappy guns and fix me up with a nice SKS, one of the "greatest weapons ever made". I guess you had to be there, but it really was pretty funny. (At least to my sense of humor that is).
Now if he had said, "those AR's and M1A's are great weapons, but the SKS is a lot of gun for the money", I might have considered buying one from him just so I could run it over with my truck, or buy a crate of them to use as fence posts. But this was not to be. This BS'er just couldn't help it I suppose, and I couldn't help taking my business elsewhere.
What I don't understand is how somebody like that could stay in business? I mean this guy had an unbelievable inventory of guns, some actually worth having. He must sell a bunch just to make the interest payment alone. Maybe I'm not the only "stupid" person to walk into his store, or maybe he’s just living with a split personality disorder of some type?
Hmmmmmm...
Regards in the fun of this thread,
SM