first, understand: i don't normally participate in mass hysteria, preferring instead to watch and laugh from a safe distance.
and while i'm a staunch defender of the second amendment--if for no other reason than because of what history has taught me about what can, and often does, happen to populations who allow their governments to disarm them--up to now i've been perfectly content to allow joe bob and bubba over at the NRA to defend my constitutional rights in that regard.
sure, being from texas and all, i've fahred me a few guns--plinked at tin cans with pistols, blasted skeet with shotguns, that sorta thing--but they've never held any fascination for me, and i've always shied away from actual ownership. why? for much the same reason that i've never aspired to pilot an aircraft: i know myself, and unforgiving technology in the operation of which the least little slip-up could result in mayhem and death really has no place in the hands of someone so careless, absent-minded and possessed of a low danger-awareness threshold as your faithful blogger.
nevertheless, i've always known that my ever-darkening view of the world would require that i arm myself with at least a handgun one day, so over the last few years, whenever i came across someone who knows about such shit, i'd say, "look, i don't have the patience or interest to go out and test-fire a thousand guns to find the "right" one for me--gimme your best recommendation," and, over and over, one particular make and model kept coming up in these conversations. spendy, i was told, but well-made and worth it.
so i started idly shopping online, and they were plentiful--even used ones, at a good discount--and, satisfied that i could get my hands on one if and when i wanted to, i went on to other things.
and then sandy hook happened, and i went online a week later to find that they had all disappeared.
which brings us to today. after numerous calls, i managed to track one--their last one--down at a gun shop in burbank whose name immediately conjured up a ricky nelson tune i hadn't thought about in 40 years, and headed on over, singing
it's a--gun world
to myself all the way. i figured, middle of the day, everybody's at work, should be a quick in-and-out.
yeah.
picture a tiny shop designed to accommodate maybe three salespeople and a handful of customers, divided into two claustrophobic little rooms--ammo up front, the good stuff in back--and then picture a walmart 15 seconds after opening the doors on black friday. combine the two mental images, and that should give you some idea of what i elbowed my way into this afternoon.
the establishment, clearly unused to such crowds, had not yet devised a way to handle same--there was no "take a number" thing anywhere--so i just attached myself to the salesguy with the fewest people clamoring for his attention, waited my turn.
oh, and observed, much like an anthropologist who had just discovered a fascinating new subspecies.
i quickly divided the herd into two contingents--the seasoned pros in the front who had their arsenal already and were stocking up on ammo, cracking jokes with the clerk and rolling their eyes at the newbies pushing their way into the back who knew nothing about guns, but were determined to get 'em at least one before feinstein and obama showed up and locked the doors forever.
it was a cross-section of humanity, lemme tellya--toothless lowlifes commingling with prada'd soccer moms, all of 'em united by a common goal.
there was the kid who asked to be put on the waitlist for the outta-stock AR-15 assault rifle he'd seen in the movies, and, when told "you don't understand. there is no waitlist--those things are about to be outlawed, and they're all gone", looked like a six-year-old who'd just found out there's no santa claus.
and the ethnic-looking guy with the vaguely middle-eastern accent whom everybody watched suspiciously as he knowingly picked out his weapon of choice.
last but not least, the biker guy and his elderly mother--the salesguy kept shoving revolvers into her trembling hand in an effort to find one whose trigger was light enough for her arthritic fingers to operate. at last, click!--and with granny locked and loaded, it was finally my turn.
i told the guy what i had come for, and it was removed from its glass case and placed in my hands--a black 9mm SIG-Sauer P229 equipped with night sights (whatever the fuck those are)--and after hefting it for a minute, turning it this way and that, i handed it back to him, said, "yeah, fine--wrap it up."
and that's when the fun really began.
lemme just say that, coming from a part of the country where buying a gun is no more complicated than buying a pair of shoes, i was somewhat unprepared for the hoops the state of california was about to put me through.
"you've taken the test already, right?"
"what test?", i asked suspiciously. "nobody said anything about any test."
apparently, california has in its wisdom devised a test to determine if one is competent to handle a firearm responsibly. which worried my unprepared-for-this-development ass a little, until i actually got my hands on the test, which consisted mostly of questions of the
guns are dangerous weapons--true or false
level of difficulty. i sailed through it in about three minutes, picking the most screamingly obvious answer for each question, and scored a 98. [granny, on the other hand, who had started well before me, was still struggling with the thing long after i had finished. i couldn't decide whether i was rooting for her or not.]
and once that was done, there was the paperwork. lots and lots of paperwork. finally, exhausted, i was told that, assuming the background check panned out, i could pick up my new gun ten days from now, but would not be allowed to transport it to my home without it being confined in a locking safe, since my hatchback had no trunk in which to secure it.
i thought about telling the guy that if i had bought the damn thing in texas i coulda walked out with it right then, loaded it and tossed it in the glove compartment, but i really needed a smoke, so i just thanked him, grabbed my papers and pushed my way out. whole thing had taken three goddam hours.
so now i'm the proud owner of a gun i paid significantly more for than if i'd bought it a month ago. what am i gonna do with it? i dunno--maybe if i listen to that sweet hook a few dozen more times, ricky'll tell me.
