An acquaintance of mine bought a
very expensive pistol from a local gun store -- the kind of pistol that has a price basically set by the manufacturer and you can only get them by contacting a place that has them. I knew exactly what he'd paid for it and it was jaw-dropping what he wanted me to give him for it. He'd never fired the pistol.
I bought it simply because I knew I could turn the
profit I'd make on it's sale in to a handgun I really wanted. I did, and more. Just the profit, mind you, the principle went right back to where it came from.
The pistol had obviously been test fired at the manufacturer, as are all the guns they ship. It had that wear on the breech face -- as if someone took a new gun and fired half a box of ammo through it... and then they shipped it out for sale without cleaning it. If I had run even a dry patch through the bore, it would have come out with powder residue on it.
But it was sold to him "NEW", and that means (in my opinion anyway) that it was sold in what we refer to as "unfired."
My goal was to get good money for it, and I thought my best method was going to be to also offer it as "unfired." Would have been a slam-dunk to send a mag or 3 down range and nobody would have been any wiser, but I'm on a first name basis with
gun karma so that was simply not going to happen.
I owned it for more than half a year, sold it, made a lot of money on it, and never shot it. In fact, I never even field stripped it.
I wish I had sold it to a friend...who would have THEN let me send a mag or 3 down range with it.
But I didn't, so it's gone. Zero regrets.
I suppose the point of my story is that there is a whole world that exists outside of the energetic little proclamations that are simply varying degrees of "I won't OWN any gun that I don't shoot!" and variations on that theme.