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Thread: Stories from the other side of the gun counter...

  1. #1

    Stories from the other side of the gun counter...

    So...

    I know gun counter guys have a reputation... and it is generally pretty well deserved.

    Since I retired from the Marine Corps back in 2021 I've been assistant managing a buddies gun shop here in Jacksonville NC, Kinda fell into the job and the discount is nice ya know.... End up giving most of the paychecks back for ammo, trade in revolvers, 1911's and other stuff that me and like three other people on the forum would want. Yesterday someone traded in a 6 inch Ruger Security Six in 90 percent condition, Leather holster, two HKS speed loaders and leather Aker double loader pouch. He got a PSA Dagger in trade.... Heathen. But he was happy, and I got a security Six for a little over the cost of a PSA Dagger... Win.

    Anyhow, as you can imagine, "interesting" interactions occur with the public when you are behind the counter. The employees of my buddies shop and I try to be the anti gun counter guy, I personally spend a inordinate amount of time talking people out of the dumb purchase they originally came in for and steer them towards actual useful things... sometimes it works...

    What follows are some of the more amusing stories from behind the counter. Others who know the pain of A&D logs feel free to chime in as well.
    "So strong is this propensity of mankind, to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions, and excite their most violent conflicts." - James Madison, Federalist No 10

  2. #2
    I'll start with this short one.

    Guy comes in the shop, wants to buy a pistol, tells us he has around 200 dollars to spend.

    We had fortuitously just received a shipment from Amchar that included a bunch of old evidence guns. We paid like 25 to 100 bucks per pistol depending on type and then had gone through them all to make sure they still worked. All the finest things in evidence lockers across the country right...

    After showing this guy a bunch of them he choses a Cobra 380... I know...

    It came with one magazine, guy asks if we have any more?
    I go in the back to check my giant pile of random old mags from a old gun shop we bought out a few years ago, find a few and he get two spares as well.

    Also buys a box a 380 ball, he wanted hollow points but I told him I was honestly not sure if that gun would reliably feed them.

    We get to the paperwork part, no issues there, valid ID's and all.

    I run the NICS check through the computer, comes back delayed, not a huge issue, happens a lot, guy doesn't seem to worried or put out about it.

    Ring him up, tell him we will call as soon as his background check comes back approved or if he doesn't here from us for 5 days then he can come back and pick up the pistol as the brady law does not prohibit us from transfering the gun after that. Guy pays, takes his spare mags and box of bullets home and I put is pistol in the safe and paperwork in the delayed file. Get him out the door for around 140 bucks.

    5 days pass, no contact from NICS.

    Guy comes back, we check NICS one last time, no change in status, print that out and put it in with the 4473, have him re sign the 4473 certification and give him the gun.

    The next night there is a shooting here in the county, some dude has his rear door kicked in and two guys barge in waving pistols and shoot the homeowner in the arm. He also shoots back, hitting one of the invaders twice in the gut and the other in the shoulder with .380 ball, Home invader shot in the gut DRT in the living room.

    Sheriffs' come, take the guys gun as evidence, and take him to the hospital.

    Next day we get a call from NICS, telling us our guy is a Deny for the transaction and asking if we had already released the gun?

    I tell the lady from NICS "I think you know we did, It's been more than 5 days..." She tells us that not a problem and there are no issues there.

    Guy comes back in a hour after the phone call with NICS and wants to buy another gun, has his arm all bandaged up. I have to tell him that I can't sell him another as he just came back denied for the last one. He looks at me a says " I'm just glad I had that one the other night" and turns to leave.

    A buddy who is now a DUSM but used to be local police here in town comes in the shop a little latter and I ask him about the shooting as he still works this area. He tells me the victim was a low level drug dealer and the guys doing the home invasion were a rip crew that had been doing this stuff all over the area recently, The guy who got killed was pending somewhere around 10 different felony counts at the time and that him being in the morgue had just cleared 7 cases for the SOD guys here in town...

    Told my buddy about the gun the homeowner got from us and he said "Well, that guy did us all a favor."...

    All in all I'm glad that guy had that shitty little Cobra that night.
    "So strong is this propensity of mankind, to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions, and excite their most violent conflicts." - James Madison, Federalist No 10

  3. #3
    This one is from a bit ago. This was back when we still had the NC purchase permit requirement for pistols on the books.

    I had a guy come in acting generally weird and tell me he wanted to buy either a 9mm or .22 pistol, he didn't care what type as long as it was under 500 bucks... I took one look at him and decided dude wasn't leaving with a gun that night on a 4473 that I had signed out. So I ask him if he has a NC CCW or Purchase permit, pretty sure of the answer before I ask... Of course not, what's that??.. He looks frantically around and then leaves the store. Crisis averted, right?...

    Naaw, Two days later he comes back in the shop, opening the door with his shirt on the handle, looking around for cameras. I avoid him, he avoids me and gets another employee. He tells him that he wants to buy a M16.... Employee tells him that we don't sell those but what he probably wants is a AR-15... Guy says yep that's it....

    Gets set up with a Colt 6920 and red dot, wants a magpul drum and "armor piercing bullets" ,we don't sell those so he settles for 77gr match rounds because they are heavier... also adds a big fucking knife to the stack growing on the counter... The entire time just acting weirder and weirder. Like I started making sure my carry gun was still good to go weird, ya know....

    Then he asks if we sell body armor and helmets....

    No dude we don't, but this is Jacksonville NC, there's like 20 milsurp, gear and pawn shops around here, they probably have that stuff....

    He fills out his 4473, takes him two tries, He somehow passes the NICS check ( cause HIPAA is f'ing stupid in this guy's case...) and we quietly talk about ghost delaying him anyway but it's decided by the store owner to let him pay and take the gun. Not my vote but I'm not in charge... He fishes a bank envelope out of the shorts he is wearing under his pants and pays in fresh new bank issued 100's and 20's...

    The entire time we are in text contact with our ATF IOI down in Wilmington and the second he leaves we call JPD to put in a weird dude with a gun report.

    ATF puts out an alert on the guy, Turns out he left from us and went to a buddies militaria shop, weirded them out as well and left wearing an older IOTV and MICH helmet that he also paid cash for out of his under pants stash...

    JPD goes and picks him up at the address we gave him the next day, we find out from a few of the guys on the team that he had a manifesto all written out, delusional shit written on the walls inside his house, and according to the SWAT guys who arrested him, he was the creepiest dude they had ever dealt with.

    Turns out he has been in and out of mental health facilities several times and been arrested before but never convicted of anything so..... nothing in NICS to disqualify him.

    Thankfully he came to buy his shit from us and not one of the big box stores....
    "So strong is this propensity of mankind, to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions, and excite their most violent conflicts." - James Madison, Federalist No 10

  4. #4
    I Demand Pie Lex Luthier's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2015
    Location
    Northern Tier
    These are illuminating… and a bit frightening. Please keep ‘em coming!
    "If I ever needed to hunt in a tuxedo, then this would be the rifle I'd take." - okie john

    "Not being able to govern events, I govern myself." - Michel De Montaigne

  5. #5
    Can’t recall anything as exhilarating as those incidents.

    Had a couple come in to buy a gun last year. While running their background, get a call from NICS that dude has an active warrant out of Lake City, GA for armed robbery. So we call the PD, keep an eye on them while they’re waiting in the parking lot for their background to come back. They get snatched up without incident and had drugs in the car. The female had warrants too IIRC.

    December 2020 had a gentlemen get pretty worked up over getting a denial from his background check. Accused us of being racist, which is funny cause at least 60% of the customers are typically black. Dude didn’t want to listen to attempts to explain or de-escalate. Had my pepper spray in hand had he decided he wanted to try coming across the counter. Eventually he decided to get lost.

    Most other stuff was just super obvious straw purchases even Ray Charles could see and sometimes folks coming in reeking of weed so we’d have to explain why that wasn’t going to fly (most times they were trying to hit up the range).
    “Conspiracy theories are just spoiler alerts these days.”

  6. #6
    Years ago I worked the gun counter at a major outfitter chain, a gun range, and then a wholesaler, each ~1 year. Each was good for plenty of off the wall stories. The gun range, however, was outrageous.

    In hindsight, honestly, it's just like any other profession. Most are just there for the paycheck. Maybe they enjoy some of it but, unfortunately an increasing number of employees don't particularly care that much about being great at their jobs. For those types in gun sales or a gun range, it's amazing the amount of stuff happening in front of and around them that goes almost entirely unnoticed. For anyone that actually cares, the level of hyper-awareness and hyper-vigilance can leave a person exhausted in pretty short order. The handful of coworkers I remember who were good and switched on all the time usually burned out after maybe 6 months. Some of that probably more to do with shitty SMB business practices creating rough work environments. That's a hint for gun business owners, if they want to keep their good employees and avoid more liability...

    I remember one guy looking to buy a pistol of some sort but, we found ourselves in a weird situation. Valid TX CHL (that dates me) and DL. However, he marked "Yes" on question 21.L that he had renounced his citizenship. Turns out he was a draft-dodger during Vietnam, fled to Mexico, renounced citizenship. Later repatriated and somehow managed to get a valid TX CHL. Obviously we didn't complete the transaction.

    Another time, it was 30 minutes until close. Guy comes in with odd body language and demeanor. It was serious enough, my friend, who was on the other side of the store, and myself both locked eyes and immediately knew something was off. IIRC, there was 4 or 5 of us in the sales room at that time and we all honed in on this guy. He proceeded to systematically move to each of the four corners of the store (optics, pistols, rifles, etc) asking questions that effectively amounted to, "What's the most expensive of these and where are they?" without quite asking that blatantly. It's one of the few times I've had a gun in-hand, just out of sight, expecting the worst. Nothing happened and the guy left. Later we found out from a guy at APD about a break-in crew in the area that had already hit a bunch of businesses. Yeah, people are actually dumb enough to case a gun range for robbery.

    For a funny one, picture this. It's the beginning of deer season in Texas, and I'm the range safety officer this particular day. Old guy comes in and looks like the typical curmudgeon. Fills out his form for a bay, then proceeds to walk through the range door (indoor range) and walk down to his bay on the opposite side of the building. No ear pro. Everyone out in full force sighting in their .300WM's, .338's and other nonsense they think they "need" to take... whitetail here in the centex area. Guy sets his gear down then casually walks back off the range and just says, "That was dumb." We're in disbelief at how the guy's ears aren't bleeding but, I'm sure it hurt.

    Best I can tell, I think I've sold a few thousand guns on the retail side. Through all of that, I've found some of the biggest and most critical issues come from the ambiguous situations in between a straight denial or approval on NICS, or due to gut feelings. For example, guy gets approved but you have a really bad feeling, what do you do? I've been in a few of those situations, and some of my coworkers dealt with some that turned out more severe. Almost always, the gut feeling was the best call. In one situation, a coworker's gut feeling led to an APD call, guy texted his wife stating his intentions, and the day ended with a SWAT surround and call-out at his home that thankfully ended peacefully. Worst case, a would-be customer ends up pissed and never comes back. Best case, a shooting or national news gets avoided.

    I think the difficulty is most don't know how to say "no" when there's not a clear cut reason. So, that's an area I'd recommend any gun salesperson consider and maybe rehearse or plan some strategies to fall back on. In one case I remember, Escalade pulls up to the front of the gun range and parks there... in a non-parking spot, blaring conjunto music. Cute, young, scantily-clad Latina gets out, comes in, walks over to me at the rifle counter. She points to the Romanian WASR and says she wants to buy all of those we have in cash (I mean they weren't even trying LOL). Immediate response was, "We're out of stock. That's just the display model and we can't sell it. Sorry." Have fun with the bullshit and trust your gut.
    Administrator for PatRogers.org

  7. #7
    Abducted by Aliens Borderland's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2019
    Location
    Camano Island WA.
    I used to frequent a LGS back when everything was flying off the shelves. They had several employees who were open carry being legal in this state. I always envisioned a shoot out right there in the middle of filling out a 4473 while I was carrying concealed with a permit. I was always delayed. Come back next week unless we call.

    Now that there is an inspiring system of federal and state government controls.
    In the P-F basket of deplorables.

  8. #8
    Attempted robberies and Cartel purchases.... Oh boy....

    Bout 2230 on dark night a bit ago a car pulls into the parking lot of the shop, backs in right by the front door and three dudes get out quickly, while the driver stays behind the wheel with the engine still running... I'm sitting behind the register off to the left side of the shop facing the door doing final checks of the days 4473's and the A&D book before filing them away. A hang around buddy named Bo is over behind the counter pretty much in line with the door checking out the new stuff in the cases and another employee called John is over on the right side behind the counter cleaning a J frame. One other hang around known as Jimbo is in the back room area of the shop as well.

    For some reason while the open light had been turned off, the front door had not yet been locked... mistake.

    Earlier that year we had tinted all the windows because as the sun set in the afternoons it would shine right through those big ass windows and the anemic AC couldn't keep up so it looked like the lights were off from outside...

    Lead bad dude grabbed the door handle and.... it opened, all three rushed inside what they probably thought was a empty or nearly so shop...

    I've got the register gun already in hand below the counter, John on the right is frantically dropping rounds into that J Frame, and all I can hear as Bo pleasantly asks what we can help these guys with is the Schitk, Schitk, Schitk of rounds being thumbed into a shotgun by Jimbo in the back. Everyone could hear it, It was the loudest quiet noise ever...

    I was in the Marine Corps with Jimbo, we were both instructors at the Basic School together, Jimbo got there as a new instructor fresh from Fallujah... Honestly he never really left Fallujah completely... I was suddenly more worried about Jimbo and his shotgun than the three dudes in front of me in the shop at that moment...

    Luckily those dudes heard it too, and finding the general vibe not to their liking backed right back out the door, got in the car and sped out of there.

    JPD arrived several minutes later....
    "So strong is this propensity of mankind, to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions, and excite their most violent conflicts." - James Madison, Federalist No 10

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by rcbusmc24 View Post
    This one is from a bit ago. This was back when we still had the NC purchase permit requirement for pistols on the books.

    I had a guy come in acting generally weird and tell me he wanted to buy either a 9mm or .22 pistol, he didn't care what type as long as it was under 500 bucks... I took one look at him and decided dude wasn't leaving with a gun that night on a 4473 that I had signed out. So I ask him if he has a NC CCW or Purchase permit, pretty sure of the answer before I ask... Of course not, what's that??.. He looks frantically around and then leaves the store. Crisis averted, right?...

    Naaw, Two days later he comes back in the shop, opening the door with his shirt on the handle, looking around for cameras. I avoid him, he avoids me and gets another employee. He tells him that he wants to buy a M16.... Employee tells him that we don't sell those but what he probably wants is a AR-15... Guy says yep that's it....

    Gets set up with a Colt 6920 and red dot, wants a magpul drum and "armor piercing bullets" ,we don't sell those so he settles for 77gr match rounds because they are heavier... also adds a big fucking knife to the stack growing on the counter... The entire time just acting weirder and weirder. Like I started making sure my carry gun was still good to go weird, ya know....

    Then he asks if we sell body armor and helmets....

    No dude we don't, but this is Jacksonville NC, there's like 20 milsurp, gear and pawn shops around here, they probably have that stuff....

    He fills out his 4473, takes him two tries, He somehow passes the NICS check ( cause HIPAA is f'ing stupid in this guy's case...) and we quietly talk about ghost delaying him anyway but it's decided by the store owner to let him pay and take the gun. Not my vote but I'm not in charge... He fishes a bank envelope out of the shorts he is wearing under his pants and pays in fresh new bank issued 100's and 20's...

    The entire time we are in text contact with our ATF IOI down in Wilmington and the second he leaves we call JPD to put in a weird dude with a gun report.

    ATF puts out an alert on the guy, Turns out he left from us and went to a buddies militaria shop, weirded them out as well and left wearing an older IOTV and MICH helmet that he also paid cash for out of his under pants stash...

    JPD goes and picks him up at the address we gave him the next day, we find out from a few of the guys on the team that he had a manifesto all written out, delusional shit written on the walls inside his house, and according to the SWAT guys who arrested him, he was the creepiest dude they had ever dealt with.

    Turns out he has been in and out of mental health facilities several times and been arrested before but never convicted of anything so..... nothing in NICS to disqualify him.

    Thankfully he came to buy his shit from us and not one of the big box stores....
    I've always understood that you could refuse to transfer a firearm to someone if you had reasonable doubts. I would think that would have applied in this case.
    Adding nothing to the conversation since 2015....

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by Dan Lehr View Post
    I've always understood that you could refuse to transfer a firearm to someone if you had reasonable doubts. I would think that would have applied in this case.
    Yes, The store owner made the decision and we made him sign the 4473 as none of us would. We had a come to Jesus discussion with him about this after it all went down. He can be rather myopic at times when it comes to certain things...
    "So strong is this propensity of mankind, to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions, and excite their most violent conflicts." - James Madison, Federalist No 10

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