A tale from the gunshop (Now with MOAR straw sale attempts!)

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JAG2955
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A tale from the gunshop (Now with MOAR straw sale attempts!)

Post by JAG2955 »

The story you are about to read is true. I have not embellished a single item. Things in quotation marks "" are as they were spoken and heard by me. At least three of my co-workers can corroborate my story.

Okay, so I've been working at the shop for almost a month now. Below you will read a story of such insanity that you may not believe me. We've all heard about the "tall tales" or "odd balls" that seem to visit gunshops. I've spent enough time in a gunshop over my life that I thought they were a myth. I've never even met a single SEAL/Ranger/Recon/Pararescue/Space Shuttle Door Gunner. Yesterday I had my first encounter.

The time: 1700. A very busy Saturday. The place: An unnamed gunshop in a certain Texas metropolitan area. So an older guy walks in, probably late 50s, early 60s. He's wearing a STIHL hat and some overalls. I make a whole 1% commission, so I'm pretty proactive about talking to people.

I greet him, and ask him if there's anything that we can do for him. He wants a trust made and to purchase a suppressor to beat 41F. Sorry. Can't do it. You're too late. But don't worry, we'll help you to make it easy post-41F. He's not interested. Bummer.

So he starts asking about various guns on the wall. Looks at a few longer-range guns, and a SIG 716. I show him a used Winchester model 70 in .300WinMag that we have listed at a good price. Nope. Apparently off-the-shelf hunting guns aren't accurate enough for him. He shoots 1500 yards regularly. So I let him know that we also have a Savage 110BA in .338 Lapua that he may be interested in. Nope, he already has two of them.

My BS detector goes off. He then tells me that he only uses Nightforce Scopes, and each one of his many rifles has one.

BS meter at full, Captain.

I agree, because hey, I love me some Nightforce too.

He goes on about how his 6.5 Grendel would only shoot 12" groups at 100 yards until he replaced the upper receiver. Claims he spent $600 on the barrel alone, but a cheap upper receiver made his gun inaccurate until he replaced it. Now it's a 1/10 MOA gun. Sure. I'm still totally trying to sell you something. Please look at these available rifles here on the wall and stop talking. He wants a KSG. We sold two of them in the last 3 weeks and don't have any. None to order, either.

Ah well.

So he walks a bit away and starts talking about dogs to the manager. He has six puppies at home, and they're the best guard dogs ever, except this one time.

Your brave narrator takes a deep breath

So he was headed to town to pick up some kolaches. For some reason, he left a high-definition voice recorder on in his double-wide. I guess that's something that normal people do. He was gone for 20 minutes. When he came back, he immediately knew something was amiss. He knew that he was visited by the invisible Russian military guys because he found one of their "diving-type helmets" in his den. His friend, a deep-sea diver, identified it as a "Mk 26-2c helmet".

See, the Russians have over 1 million troops here in the US undercover. The most elite of them wear "invisibility suits" that allow them to move around undetected. You can't see them with thermals, or any other kind of detection equipment. "One of them could walk in between you and I, stab me in the neck, and you wouldn't see a thing!" Apparently, regular knives aren't Tier 1 enough for the Russian Invisible Battalion. They have to be invisible knives. Or something.

So we ask him about the diving helmet. That's the one that they use on their invisibility suits. They have some kind of "re-breather" installed. I guess that Russians can't handle air filled with freedom like some form of shitty aliens from an M. Night Shamalamanayan movie. Of course, we'd totally be interested in seeing it! Oh wait, it wasn't left there, but the noise that he heard on the recorder was from that same "Mk 26-2c helmet". His friend could totally tell by the *psshhhhh* noise it made when the Russkie broke the seal.

Alright, so his dogs, normally the world's best guard dogs, were silenced by "an ultrasonic device" that the Russians have to neutralize dogs. Did I also know that there are 10 Chinese military bases in Mexico? He assures me that they do. So the old "ultrasonic-dog-silencing-device-equipped-by-invisible-diving-suited-Russians-trick" is what tipped him off to these guys. He's even fired a shot at one, as he was running across his field while turning invisible. Only he didn't hit him, though all of his guns are accurate to at least 1/4 MOA, because he just wanted him to let him know he knew that he was there.

Oh, and then this other time, he found out about "acoustic bullets." See, his friend was at his house, and all of a sudden, he heard someone say "listen to me." But then he turned his head, and NO ONE WAS THERE! ERMAGERD! Obviously, the invisible Russians have these "acoustic bullets" that allow them to talk to you. Or something. It's now the excuse that I use when I don't hear what my wife is telling me. Damn Russians aren't letting me hear her. I think that the bigger question is, how do the Russians fire these things so quietly, and how can they not hurt? Do they just throw them? Or are they leaps and bounds ahead of us in silencer technology while being super far behind in terminal ballistics?

But he swears up and down that this is true. "With an army of 10,000 invisibly suited men, they could crush any country in the world" was repeated at least a dozen times. But he did splurge on about $600 worth of random stuff, like cleaning patches, a BCM AR-15 grip, some ammo, and a Sig Romeo4 red-dot sight. Which I guess works on invisible Russians, or maybe he just gave up trying to kill them and has accepted them as a part of normal life. But he's not affected by the mind-control radio waves, because he "sleeps behind four layers of aluminum foil."

So...it was a day of legends. Invisible men, invisible knives, ultrasonic dog mesmerizers, and acoustic bullets. I haven't laughed that hard in quite awhile, and I finally have seen one of these guys in the wild. I hope that he doesn't come back, but in the meantime, I'll keep an eye out for some invisible Russians.
Last edited by JAG2955 on Mon Jul 25, 2016 3:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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JustinR
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Re: A tale from the gunshop

Post by JustinR »

Wow.

See, I would have been tempted to go talk to a co-worker, just inside his earshot, and randomly intersperse Russian vocabulary slightly louder and see what happens.
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HTRN
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Re: A tale from the gunshop

Post by HTRN »

He's crazier than shit house rat. :shock:
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Netpackrat
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Re: A tale from the gunshop

Post by Netpackrat »

Sounds like a roommate I had my sophomore year at college, with a few more decades worth of crazy under his belt.
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FelixEstrella
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Re: A tale from the gunshop

Post by FelixEstrella »

>> So he was headed to town to pick up some kolaches.

Was he Czech? Could have been my dad. He also goes on about Russians and conspiracies .... must have been something in the water for that generation.
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Kommander
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Re: A tale from the gunshop

Post by Kommander »

FelixEstrella wrote:.Was he Czech? Could have been my dad. He also goes on about Russians and conspiracies .... must have been something in the water for that generation.
Of course there was. Fluoridation has corrupted their precious bodily fluids.
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Windy Wilson
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Re: A tale from the gunshop

Post by Windy Wilson »

From what I read about Stalin spying on the British and the Americans during WW2 when supposedly at the time the Germans were the greater threat, I don't think Czech or Romanian or Polish paranoia about Soviet spies during the Cold War is particularly far fetched.

Now Invisible Russian special forces, invisible knives, acoustic bullets. . .
That's right up there with talking about good molecules and bad molecules as a basis for what happens to you. :o
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Termite
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Re: A tale from the gunshop

Post by Termite »

Know what's scarier?..........

He can vote.......... :shock:
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JAG2955
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Re: A tale from the gunshop

Post by JAG2955 »

More tales, not as epic, but much shorter.

Tale #1: A guy comes in, looking for a quad rail or some other piece of crap for his junky AR. We're showing him what we have, but he doesn't want to spend that much money. So he's talking to an employee, and I'm listening, about ten feet away.

"I've got a 1-6 power scope on it, an offset red dot, a flashlight on one side, a laser on the other, and a grip pod on the bottom."

The manager, who likes to egg people on, says "Wow! You're ready for war!"

The guy replies "Yeah! And I hollowed out part of my stock, attached a holster, and I put my little pistol in there, so when I sling it, I can draw right from the stock."

Then he mimes doing it. The manager and I made eye contact, and both started to laugh hard enough that we couldn't contain it and had to walk into the back room while the poor, hapless employee was stuck dealing with the guy.

I haven't laughed that hard in awhile.

Tale #2, hilariously true.

Guy comes in on Thursday, wondering if we had any Saiga shotguns. Nope, but I can get you a VEPR, they're better in every way (or something). I didn't make him put any money down, because we can sell them pretty easily. When it comes in, I call him, and he says that he'll be there Saturday.

I was out on the range, training some newbies, so I didn't see the exchange, but this is the following story.

Dude comes back to pick up the VEPR. "Wait, I don't want to do any paperwork."
Us: "You have to, it's the law. It's just a background check, there's not any registration."
Dude: "I'll come back later."
Us: *Whatever*

Dude returns 30 mins later, along with a 70-year old woman with a walker.
"Hey, I still want that shotgun, my granny is going to co-sign for me."
Us: *awkward silence* "We can't do that, it's a straw sale."
Dude: "No, um, it's for her. What I mean, was, um, it was at a gun show, I saw it, and knew that she'd like it. So I wanted to see it...uh, it's for her."
Us: *more awkward silence* "Um...fill out this paperwork here...ma'am. Can I see your ID?"

So our brave employee disappears into the back room, surfs the net on his phone for 15 minutes, then comes back.
Us: "Sorry, you got delayed. This happens all the time. You'll be approved eventually. Don't call us, we'll call you. Bye."

This was the second guy we've had in a few weeks who was super-shady. Dude last week came in, started off cool. Afterwards, I'm showing him a few ARs and some pistols. He goes back and forth between comically bad gun handling and good presentation stances. Finger always straight and off the trigger. All of a sudden, he's like "I'll take the Glock 17". We had decided not to sell to him by then, via text messages. So I have him fill out a Form 4473, and I pretend to call in to NICS.

"Aw man, their phones are down! Sorry, can't sell to you, don't call us, we'll call you." Dude then flips out because I've got a copy of his driver's license. Sorry, this is government property now. (We lie all the time) He immediately gets on his cell phone and starts texting. We filed a suspicious person report on him, it was so odd. He obviously had some training, probably former military, but was trying super-hard to not act nervous. He kept up a steady stream of talking to himself while operating the AR and Glock. Unfortunately, the cops wouldn't do a background check on him because there was no probable cause.
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Jered
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Re: A tale from the gunshop

Post by Jered »

JAG2955 wrote: "Aw man, their phones are down! Sorry, can't sell to you, don't call us, we'll call you." Dude then flips out because I've got a copy of his driver's license. Sorry, this is government property now. (We lie all the time) He immediately gets on his cell phone and starts texting. We filed a suspicious person report on him, it was so odd. He obviously had some training, probably former military, but was trying super-hard to not act nervous. He kept up a steady stream of talking to himself while operating the AR and Glock. Unfortunately, the cops wouldn't do a background check on him because there was no probable cause.
umm...what?!?!?

The cops don't need probable cause to do a background check (eg run criminal history) on anyone, at least not for any rule that I've ever heard.

If you really want to know...

http://www.txcourts.gov/

You could look there.

I work at the border, so, my 4th Amendment authority includes oranges. :P
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