Phantom of the Gun Shop™

Are you over 60 years of age? How about a serving member of the United States armed forces? A cop? If so, please skip this essay.

This essay is for the victims.

Victims?

I can’t speak for other gun shops, nor for the gun departments of any sporting goods stores, nor those of any of the discount houses - but we have never had a distributor - a wholesaler - offer to rebate a portion of our cost when we discount a sale to a senior citizen, a soldier, or a cop.

I’ll bet no one has ever received such an offer.

So how do other gun stores, et cetera, afford such discounts?

Isn’t it obvious? Can’t you feel that itching, burning sensation?

Other stores that sell guns can’t afford discounts - so they overcharge you. Young customers. Middle-aged customers. Customers not in uniform.

How do you like paying someone else’s bill? (Not talking about taxes, that’s a different essay.) No, I just want to know how you like paying higher prices in a store that offers discounts, so that the store can seem a friend to the elderly, or to “our men and women in uniform, blah, blah, blah…”

Do you really like paying a higher price so that some old codger can get a deal?

You don’t?

That’s what we thought.

I really don’t care whose plan gets passed and signed because, regardless of whose plan is finally accepted - except for one - they’re all bullshit soak-the-productive programs that will, eventually, destroy (a) health care in the United States and (b) its market therefor.

Health care will be destroyed because all incentive for any self-respecting humanoid to provide health care will be destroyed. The market for health care will be destroyed because (a) its consumers will come to expect less and less while (b) its producers become fewer and fewer.

Yes, Gwendolyn, I did mention an exception.

My plan.

My plan is absolutely fucking brilliant, guaranteed to come in within budget and stay vital. Providers will multiply, consumers will become responsible.

How would it work?

Not a fucking clue - except for one characteristic: we’d all be in the same boat. The Constitution prohibits the establishment of a privileged class in the United States, let’s put everyone - federal employees and elected officials included - under the same law. Same plan. Same deliverables, same options, same restrictions, same charges - for everyone.

Now, Congress has traditionally objected that they can’t do that (like they can’t put themselves into Social Security) - because of problems with defining their own compensation.

Bullshit.

Anything they do to regulate their health care (or pensions, for that matter) is bootstrapping, regardless. So that dog don’t hunt: they have no damned business setting up programs that exclude those of us who suck not at the teat public. If we pay for it, God damn it, we should be eligible for it.

Or no one should.

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This essay edited Wednesday 27 January 2010 at the behest of an anonymous reader who objected to the writer’s choice of words. For further comments on the subject of such editing, see the Weblog Page entitled “Adults Only” (to the right).

According to CNN, today was the day we commemmorate the “fall of the Berlin Wall”.

Why? Hell, if the thing was so poorly-built that the measly little earthquakes known in that part of the world were able to make it fall - well, who cares? Just because “fall” rhymes with “wall”?

All right, yes, I am spoofing. With an ax.

The fucking wall did NOT just “fall”: hundreds of Germans, fed to the back teeth with the arrogant, tyrrannical limitations on their freedom ATTACKED the wall with picks, hammers, crow-bars - Hell, they probably rammed trucks and bulldozers into the damned thing… and then vandals, bless their anarchist little hearts, came along and finished the job. Mostly.

No. The Wall never fell. The Berliners heeded the call of a pathetic superannuated madman and they tore the motherfucker down. God bless them, God bless the madman - and God damn CNN for trivializing a major event in human history, damn them for watering it down, for making it sound like a minor natural catastrophe, instead of a grand destructive act in the drama of human freedom.

Piss on ‘em.

Today a new Family Member came in to pick up his new pistol he’d bought from a company whose website’s name implies that they make no profit - that they sell guns for the same amount that they pay for them.

Well, either that company needs a new wholesaler - or they made about twenty-five bucks on the sale of that Sigma to Brother Steven. Thus, the implication that they are liars.

I’m pretty sure they are liars. No one can buy and sell for the same price - not unless they’re standing on a street-corner, with no real estate, no employees, no shipping costs, no utilities - well, you get the idea.

So, remember - if someone tells you they’re selling guns for cost - they’re liars, out to exploit you.

The legislature in Sacramento has been doing some dynamite shit lately, and the most recent result takes effect in February. Head Doper In Chief Ahnuld signed it a few days ago.

The free market in ammunition is being discontinued. I’m guessing an Ammunition Buyer ID Card will be created; the new law requires fingerprinting - which would be problematic at the dealer level, so I’m guessing at the ID card. Sales to unregistered persons will be illegal, and sales records for ammunition will become permanent, unpurgeable, requiring dealers to build or lease new storage facilities for those receipts.

Cheaper Than Dirt? Hah! Mail-order will no longer be legal in Kalifornia - although how this will be enforced except by frequent spot-checks of UPS terminals (and similar establishments) is anyone’s guess.

Private sales? Joey the Ammo Guy who comes in twice a month with a U-Haul van full of ammo? A black market, in other words? Obviously. Ditto for Joey getting into shootouts with Luigi from Reno, over sales territories, ditto for counterfeit ammo of questionable quality (and safety), ditto for SWAT teams rampaging through the homes of innocent victims of informer error - Hell, wasn’t the insane War on Drugs bad enough, that Kalifornia had to invent its own equally psychotic variant?

And few will move out of the state, for many good reasons: (a) can’t sell the house; (b) can’t afford to buy another house; (c) can’t find a job elsewhere that will let us move…. and on and on and on…

Kalifornia, you have a million street-lamps - what’s the problem, no one remembers how to tie a noose? 

Last week, I obliged a neighbor, Sister Donna Carte Vert, who asked me whether I could find (on line) and print some sort of study-guide for the INS Citizenship Test. I promised to try, and found just the thing, with the help of Google. I printed two copies and kept and read the other one.

Friends and Family Members, John Ross (in Unintended Consequences) was right. When he wrote his magnum opus, the giraffes were attacking freedoms almost as soon as the last old geezer who remembered “how it used to was” died. Now, applicants for naturalization have to stand up and declare with conviction “The Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves”.

Apparently, the giraffes of the INS are still laboring under the delusion of the Tyrant, who told himself that the Confederate States of America was not an independent nation, and that they still groaned under the boot of Northern imperium. The truth is that, as soon as they passed their individual state Acts of Secession, none of the Confederate States regarded Abraham Lincoln as anything but an arrogant blowhard, and the United States as a hostile neighbor. Why would a Proclamation of the Northern Tyrant matter to citizens of the Confederate States?

Thus, the EP freed no one in the Confederacy and - look it up, read it - no one in the Union, either. Slavery in the United States was just fine with the Tyrant and, while he pretended to hate it in the Confederacy, he had no authority there.

Could Abraham Lincoln have issued a Democracy Proclamation, requiring an end to the monarchy in Great Britain? Of course not: Great Britain was - and is - a foreign country. As was the Confederacy.

Regardless of the continued crack-dreams of the INS. Or any other giraffes.

It was brute force, the blood-red iron of the United States Army, that ended slavery in the Confederacy - along with any remaining vestige of state sovereignty - along with any real concern for the consent of the governed.

Your ancestors’ tax dollars at work.

We had a visitor in The Shop today. I call him a visitor, rather than a Family Member, because of the question he asked. He asked it in a tone that suggested that he might only be interested in philosophical dialogue, and might only be playing Devil’s Advocate - I hope that was what he was doing.

He asked “Why should private citizens - not police, not military - be allowed to own handguns capable of firing more than three shots?”

I dearly hope this posting generates some comments; I’ll start it off with the two answers I gave The Visitor:

First, and most important - great and despicable evil is committed when we leave all the good guns in the hands of The Bad Guys.

Second - suppose there are two or more BG attacking you? How good a shot are you? How many misses can you afford? When the adrenaline is pumping and tunnel vision is setting in and your fine motor control leaves for someplace else - can you do The Job in three shots?

We specialize in specialties.

What in Hell is he talkin’ about?

Let me explain.

You go into Wal*Mart, pick out an 870, fill out the paperwork, then - assuming your DL and your CPL were accepted - you start to leave. Then you stop and ask the “associate” how much they charge for use of FFL, on an Internet transfer.

“Huh?” is the intellectual response.

Wal*Mart, you see, generalizes, specializing only in monopolizing retail within the ZIPcode.

We specialize in specialties.

We don’t carry a variety of Remington 870s; have you any idea how many variations Remington offers? No, we order the one you want. (Be persistent: sometimes the boss is in a lazy mood. Talk to the guy by the front door: I’m lots more adventurous. Greedy, too.

We don’t just sell guns, either: we repair guns, we install accessories, and sometimes we even buy guns.

Our gunsmith specializes in a variety of types of modifications, and generalizes in repairs to a variety of makes and models.

Do we carry a complete variety of all makes and calibers and sizes of ammunition? Hell, no! We have neither the room nor the budget.

But - if you want a reliable source of CorBon 10mm ammunition, let us know how much and how often, and we’ll do our damnedest to take care of you.

(At a Wal*Mart price? Hell, no!

No, we can’t do everything; we can’t carry everything.

We specialize.

Keep an eye on the website; you might be surprised at what you find.

I really do need to pay a longer and more-studious visit to www.madd.org. I checked in, over there, tonight, and was very surprised: there was no mention on the home page of the big campaign MADD was planning to exploit the death of Dead Teddy in a specific commentary on the case in 1979 in which Teddy, drunk on his fat ass, sloshed away from his crashed Olds where a young woman, innocent of anything except, perhaps, ambition, was drowning after the Deader drove off the Chappaquiddick Bridge.

Nothing, though. Not a comment - not even a link.

What is this - “common decency”? Was Dead Teddy acting with anything remotely resembling common decency when he drove that young woman to an early death?

There must be something of a sort of reference on MADD’s website - or they really are worthless.

More, later; stay tuned.

It was another beautiful summer’s eve in Ville de Lapin when Brother Adam came across some poor misguided heathen who seemed to think he could “steel” a young lady’s favors. The knife was ready; so was Brother Adam. A moment to comprehend the scene, then the Taurus came forth and spoke - two 185-grain doses of Guardian Gold +P jacketed hollow-point changed the knife-wielding rapist’s plans for the evening.

 He died the next day.

Brother Adam’s 24/7 was returned a week later: no harm, no foul - and The Armed Citizen prevails again.

Seen anything about it on the news? What does that tell you? Maybe a citizenry that can take care of itself is nothing newsworthy…

Well, fuck ‘em. We know - don’t we?

It was on 11 June 2009 that Edward “Dead Teddy” Kennedy passed away; 76 days later, his associates finally noticed the fact. Kennedy (and everyone unlucky enough to be associated with him, starting with his mother) had plenty of experience with such mix-ups, starting with his birth: he was born dead, but no cared enough to dispose of the cadaver, so Joe and Rose just took it home and treated it just like it was their son - in other words, poorly.

Dead Teddy did not disappoint his father as much as his elder brother, Joseph did; at least Teddy never stepped forward and volunteered to defend his country, let alone die in its service. As a former bootlegger and eventual bureaucrat, Joe Senior found such behavior inexcusable; should anyone dare to exhume Joe Junior, he will discover that Joe Senior had the young man buried upside-down in a leaky coffin, so annoyed was the older Kennedy that one of his sons had turned out to be worthwhile.

Dead Teddy’s other two brothers, of course, had enough character to get murdered for their political value (one for the benefit of the military-industrial complex, the other for the benefit of the police-state), and this must have nettled the poor cadaver, but, lacking brains - not to mention character - Teddy ignored his inability to get shot for his party and just ambled along, pissing in punchbowls both figurative and literal.

Speaking of pissing, Ted Kennedy was a major contributor to medical science, advancing medicine’s knowledge of the liver by leaps and bounds. For the last thirty years, he has had the top liver-transplant team in the country on speed-dial, to ensure that his drinking schedule would be disturbed as little as possible.

Kennedy’s legislative career has been a model of the heights to which a walking corpse can aspire, supporting educational regimentation that his own children would never need to endure, as well as Nazification of all health care in the country except that for government employees. And who can forget his support of gun legislation that he, himself, could ignore with bags and stacks of cash impunity?

Rumor has it that one reason acknowledgement of Dead Teddy’s final death was delayed so long was due to the length of deliberations by a blue-ribbon cabal junta committee of the Massachusetts elite, trying to decide whether to offer the vacant Senate seat to the late cadaver senator’s wife, or just to Saran-wrap the cadaver and let it occupy the seat in perpetuity. Another rumor contends that no such debate was needed, for who would be able to discern any difference, regardless?

Questions about Dead Teddy’s final resting place are easily anwered: his Massachusetts handlers, disgusted with his inability to give them another Kennedy martyr, are planning to have him dumped, naked and without ceremony, off the Chappaquiddick bridge. 

I am often asked questions with the preface “this may be a dumb question but-”. I recognize only two sorts of dumb questions: (1) requests for needed information that the customer doesn’t ask - and (2) questions a grown-up shouldn’t need to ask.

Welcome to Retailing 101.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Please extinguish all smoking materials, turn off your cell-phones, and turn to page 11 in your textbook - chapter 1, The Real World.

Gander Mountain is a national chain store, a highly-diversified sporting-goods store with hundreds of different product-lines, serving the practitioners of dozens of sports. The Mountain’s annual income requires more digits than I have fingers or toes (I suspect).

Wessel Gun Shop is a local independent gun shop with a few dozen product-lines, serving shooters of several kinds. The shop’s annual income would have paid my (former) annual gross salary as a mainframe computer programmer for about ten years.

Slight difference in buying-power.

I took a call from a fellow who wanted to know about ordering a .44 Magnum Desert Eagle. I was glad to offer any help I could, since I knew I had at least one wholesaler with a variety of the big pistols in stock. Presently, the fellow asked a dumb question: “If I was able to find a Desert Eagle at Gander Mountain for $10 or $20 less, would you match the price?”

First of all, if the man was planning to buy a $1,500 hand-gun, only one reaction is possible to his desire to save ten or twenty bucks on the deal: what a cheap bastard.

Next, as I mentioned above, The Mountain’s buying-power is ridiculously higher than that of The Shop. The Mountain can, thus, offer prices considerably more than a few bucks less than ours. We can’t even think about offering such prices - not if we want to avoid bankruptcy. It’s a simple matter of economics - whose principles our caller either never learned or has utterly forgotten - and, apparently, never cared about.

People who quote Wal*Mart’s ammo prices to us display the same lack of thought. I feel no embarrassment at all at our inability to match Wal*Mart’s prices: they buy direct from the manufacturer, avoiding one entire level of pricing that slaps us right in the face. Meeting Wal*Mart’s ammo prices is just as impossible for us as is matching Gander Mountain’s gun prices.

And I find such questions offensive, quite often. Many who customarily aid and abet Wal*Mart’s desire to put small businesses out of business have recently found their price leader out of stock - so then they remember the shops they’ve been ignoring and think that, all this time, we’ve been waiting with laden shelves, dusting less-low-priced ammo, eagerly keeping ourselves ready to serve the cheap bastards.

Running ourselves into the ground.

Firing the employees we can’t afford to pay because, to many, “always the lowest price” is more important than maintaining an economically-healthy community.

Fuck us, they say.

Well, the feeling is mutual. If price is all that matters - good luck to you. I can hardly wait to hear that your job has been eliminated.

Probably laugh myself sick.