bp cowboy
By your statement, you walked over to another man's firearms, picked them up without permission and then called over an 11 year old child to do the same. I am a male in my 60s who has handeled firearms since I was around 10. I never saw my father touch another mans firearms without asking specific permission, and neither have I. Nowhere do you state you cleared the weapon you picked up without permission, or instructed your son to do so. I have been an armorer in the Army, a civilian range master, a scout instructor and I find your conduct reprehensible.
1 It is not your property
2 You are exposing and training a child (your son) in unsafe procedeures
3 You are teaching a child to blame someone else for your incompetnce
I think it might be somewhat dependent on what part of the country we are talking about. For example:
Nowhere do you state you cleared the weapon you picked up without permission, or instructed your son to do so.
At all gunshows in my state, all weapons on display must have their actions zip tied open. And to zip tie most of them, the action would necessarily have to be cleared. Still, I'll look in the chamber anyway.
I used to ask permission, but after a half dozen gun shows I got a feel for the "unwritten rules" in my state that seem to be understood by ALL FFLs, which go something like:
1. If the gun is on the table, out in the open and there are no signs stating otherwise, have at it.
2. If the guns are in a case, well, that's obvious
3. If there's a sign, obey whatever the sign requires
That simple. Roughly 50% of dealers at shows in my state do keep there guns in glass cases. I can respect that, I've heard of more than one horror story from an FFL of a missing gun at day's end.
They get hot, and I offer to buy the shop again, but only if he will sell the inventory for what it's appraised at... It's funny how I almost always get the chance to make that offer in an almost empty shop. (I've offered full asking price plus appraised inventory 4 times now, but the deal always breaks at the brokerage because he's such a curmudgeon, and worse yet, he thinks "his stuff" is special, so he won't sell it at appraisal. He's trying to sell the inventory of his business at full retail in the sale of the business... sigh....
Your position makes too much sense!
If his shop really is slowly "bleeding to death" and he keeps that attitude, the lein holder (assuming there is one) will determine the value of his inventory for him at auction, at I bet it will be a lot less than the appraised value.
The other seems to be, "People should have to earn the right to handle my wares. If they don't look the way I like, talk the way I like, don't look like they've got the money, or seem to be price-shopping, they ain't touchin' MY guns. And they'll get the message pretty darned quick that I don't want their type in my store!" And, to be fair, a lot of these guys have been in business for decades. 'The customer is always wrong' must be a valid business model for them
Now, if the appliance store treated their refrigerators and high-end ranges that way, we'd all applaud as they went right out of business. But gun shops have a certain odd hold on us. We almost expect a real gun dealer to be a crusty old jerk who is extremely annoyed to be bothered with our inquiries.
One other possibility is one I've observed with shops in my region. One gun shop in particular is owned and run by cranky old disrespectful SOBs, and the customers they attract are cranky old SOBs themselves. You know, the kind that can't stand children, no matter how sweet and respectful they may be? The cranky old customers that shop there can't stand the other "uppity" shops in the area that are run by folks who bend over backwards for there customers (and charge a bit less too). So it works out great all around, the polite folks have their shops and the cranky turds have theirs
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