Gun Show sexism

[Outlaws]

Are we talking about someone being vocally rude, or just assuming that women don't know what they are talking about? IMO there is nothing wrong with a firearm salesman talking to someone like they don't know jack until that person starts to talk the talk. Then it can be moved to a mature firearm conversation.

Now if after she starts talking the talk, and the seller doesn't move the conversation to the big kids table, fine, he is a jerk. But until a woman (or anyone really) shows they know what they are talking about, I think its fair game to start the conversation like they don't.

I got the impression from the OP's post that they just walked away right when the first assumption was made she wasn't knowledgeable about firearms.

 

[Officers'Wife]

Hi Titan,

Nice to see another officer's wife that shoots Enfield's

I didn't have any choice in the matter, it was the first 'long range' rifle I was allowed to use. I do like the Enfield for a variety of reasons, accuarate, easy to clean, and a good choice of bullet weight & configuration.
(Also if you know a handloader they can go up to 3000 fps. )

Selena

 

[Officers'Wife]

Hi Outlaws,

The true jerks make the assumption you are either incapable of using what you want or in more extreme cases there is something wrong with you for wanting to try.

In one instance, I went to buy a bow with a 55 pound pull. The clerk, a pus gutted couch potato that looked like he couldn't bench press a pepsi bottle without sweating and panting, informed me that was 'too much bow' for me and I'd never be able to handle it. Mind you this guy didn't know me at all and had no idea what I can and cannot do. The next day I took my brother in with me and all of a sudden that bow was perfect for me. Go figure.

Selena

 

[Just Jim]

Ahhh yes old "Pus Gut" funny how we put ourselves into a position that we have to ask old puss gut a question. If people knew what they wanted before they went in then old puss gut wouldn't have the power over us to make us uncomfortable.

This sexism to me seems a bunch of crap. Knowledge of a subject is the only true equality and the knowlege of what we speak varies on any subject. Most women don't shoot nor have little to do with guns so yes they have little knowledge. To go into a store with a minumum wage idiot and ask them about guns is the act of someone with very little knowlege or understanding of the subject.

Chuck Taylor writes several good books on different weapons. Any of the good shooting schools can take what you have read and turn it into useful information. Information that will put you miles ahead of Puss Gut. It isn't Pus Guts fault that people who are uninformed come to him.

jim

 

[Outlaws]

Ahhh yes old "Pus Gut" funny how we put ourselves into a position that we have to ask old puss gut a question. If people knew what they wanted before they went in then old puss gut wouldn't have the power over us to make us uncomfortable.

This sexism to me seems a bunch of crap. Knowledge of a subject is the only true equality and the knowlege of what we speak varies on any subject. Most women don't shoot nor have little to do with guns so yes they have little knowledge. To go into a store with a minumum wage idiot and ask them about guns is the act of someone with very little knowlege or understanding of the subject.

Chuck Taylor writes several good books on different weapons. Any of the good shooting schools can take what you have read and turn it into useful information. Information that will put you miles ahead of Puss Gut. It isn't Pus Guts fault that people who are uninformed come to him.

So true. The only thing that should be left when entering a gun shop is to physically handle the firearm. All knowledge of which is does or can do should already be known. The internet is a wonderful thing.

 

[Officers'Wife]

Hi Jim,

You don't understand, I knew exactly what I wanted and why. He made the decision that because I'm 5'6 and weighed 120 pounds I wasn't capable. It wasn't based on my knowledge but on my plumbing.

Selena

 

[Outlaws]

You don't understand, I knew exactly what I wanted and why. He made the decision that because I'm 5'6 and weighed 120 pounds I wasn't capable. It wasn't based on my knowledge but on my plumbing.

Or on physical size. Sorry, but women are not as physically strong as men, and compound bows can be task to use if you don't have the strength. And 5'6" and 120 pounds would generally put you in that category, even if it was a man with that height and weight.

 

[Titan6]

This is not just confined to guns though. When we last bought our set of motorcylces I scouted out the shops in advance. I was helped the minute I walked through the door. The wife came in later to make her choices. Three shops would not give her the time of day. Since there was no material difference between the bikes we bought at the shop where the sales guy was not afraid to talk to the woman with two young kids. Too bad for the others for driving a $30K sale out the door.

 

[Outlaws]

Just remember that while you judge this guy to be a fat slob who would sweat lifting a pepsi bottle, he judged you to be too weak to accurately hold a 55 lb draw. Do unto others...

 

[brighamr]

Julie Goloski

What's interesting is that this whole sexism issue was recently addressed on Sighting in With Shooting. They now have S&W professional shooter Julie Goloski as a pro-tips feature. Your girlfriend (who you should marry asap )should watch this show, and wear some shooting related gear to the next show. She might get a different response.

 

[Tokugawa]

I think a gunstore directly aimed at females could do well. (and bike shops as well) .

 

[Just Jim]

You don't understand, I knew exactly what I wanted and why. He made the decision that because I'm 5'6 and weighed 120 pounds I wasn't capable. It wasn't based on my knowledge but on my plumbing.

Selena

Selena

I really doubt he was being a sexist, just stupid. It's obvious by the way you communicate you have a great deal of intelligence so I imagine when you asked for the bow he was all a google about your intelligence and your plumbing Really these guys are paid to sell stuff to the public and damn few are paid well enough to know anything.

Sorry the exspearience wasn't more pleasant. Next time ask old Puss gut to draw the bow back and hold it for a bit to show you what he means.

jim

 

[Werewolf]

To the Original Poster:

1. Welcome to the REAL world. People's attitudes about women and weapons have been pretty much the same since God was a baby. For most folk women and weapons don't go together. There are of course exceptions, your sister is one. There are not enough exceptions to change the prevailing attitudes. I don't see that changing in the near future.

2. Gun Shows are really crappy places to buy guns. Most of the dealers there are transients. Many of them are the epitomy of the stereotypical view that anti's have of gun owners. And the days when you could get a better price than buying from a local are long gone.

 

[Just Jim]

It isn't because of sex that someone thinks you have no knowlegde of a subject, it is because you came to them. Gunshows are just for gun sellers to sell their guns. None of them know everthing about every gun so they go to a book. Too bad they don't read about human nature as they would sell alot more guns.

jim

 

[Titan6]

That is very strange werewolf. I finnally found a post I disagree with you on. The last gun show I went to I saw many friends and neighbors (including both next door neighbors with booths) both buying and selling. Also I am not sure what a stereotypical gunowner is but it does not sound nice.

 

[jdc1244]

Does anyone even go to gun shows anymore?

I was at one yesterday (11/17/2007). I don’t know how shows work in other sates or parts of Florida but the gun shows here in West Central Florida are more like a gun shop GTG. About 60 percent of the vendors at the Lakeland gun show were established area gun shops.

Gun Shows are really crappy places to buy guns. Most of the dealers there are transients. Many of them are the epitome of the stereotypical view that anti's have of gun owners. And the days when you could get a better price than buying from a local are long gone.

You should at lest qualify that with ‘for the most part.’ The venue I visited yesterday was clean, well lit, and a very comfortable browsing/buying environment. There were many good deals compared to prices I’ve seen online and in gun shops for the same firearms.

…when was the last time you saw a female vendor at the gun show with only other females or by herself... selling real guns? (not toy guns or beat up surplus gear)

Again, yesterday, selling CZs, Brownings and Mossbergs.

As for the thread topic, I’ve seen vendors be rude and moronic to both sexes. To ensure the sale a vendor should treat all potential customers with respect. Selling guns should be about making money, mot making social comment. You’re the customer, the vendor made you feel uncomfortable, that’s all that matters. The customer is always right – even when he’s wrong. A skilled salesman (or woman) can guide a novice to the correct decisions in a polite and professional manner.

 

[Officers'Wife]

Hi Outlaw,

but women are not as physically strong as men, and compound bows can be task to use if you don't have the strength.

Everything equal I would agree with you. Let me give you my background though.

A year after my Mom died my Dad (then Mom's cousin) got custody of me and I ended up on a dairy farm in the armpit of Indiana (I was almost twelve.) Second day there, Dad sits me down in the living room and gives me standard lecture #1- "Everything on this place can and will kill you so starting here and starting now you will learn how to safely use each and every tool for your own protection."

Add my Uncle (Mom's other cousin) to the mix- his great uncle was Sioux Indian and he insisted I learn- among other things - how to construct a bow and arrows then use that bow to kill a deer. Just as all four of his children had been forced to do.

They both took it apon themselves to 'train' me in the use of firearms. Both are veterans of Vietnam, both Special Forces and both make the average 1st Sargeant seem like an understanding and sympathic soul that would never raise their voice.

Item last: Dad's favorite punishment was to give me an axe and force me to cut trees out of a fence row. In all honesty I am stubborn, mouthy and have a bad temper. I spent most of my teen years cutting hedgeapple trees with that **** axe. One of my many chores was bottle feeding calves. That included carrying two five gallon buckets of milk replacer about 50 yards to the calf pens. As you may or may not know milk replacer weighs 8.25 pound to the gallon.

The clerk, from his pallor got outside with this walk to the car to go to work and his walk to the store when he got there. My strength level (as a guess) would have been at the least a factor of 1.5 to his.

So, I repeat, it wasn't a matter of ability it was a matter of plumbing.

Selena

 

[Officers'Wife]

Hi Jim,

Next time ask old Puss gut to draw the bow back and hold it for a bit to show you what he means.

To what end? Humiliating people just creates more friction. I've learned to my sorrow the only course is to either consider the source and move on or buy enough stock in the company to be in a position to fire them.

Selena

 

[Just Jim]

To what end? Humiliating people just creates more friction. I've learned to my sorrow the only course is to either consider the source and move on or buy enough stock in the company to be in a position to fire them.

Selena

This being the modern age society tends to not communicate in the old ways. Humiliation is a serious learning tool and it seems your clerk needed an education. Spare the rod and spoil the child but since all we have are words to increase learning then the feelings that come with the words will last when it includes humiliation.

I find it awful that you would take away a clerks millstone just because you got an uneducated clerk. You must be a young person We have turned from a society that interacts with each other to a self centered bunch that fails to understand what we are doing.

You know we go to a doctor to save our lives and if he is good he is paid to know how to do it. Yet when it comes to a gun to save our lives we go to a minimum wage clerk for information. We can do better than that.

jim

 

[Barbara]

People who do that are just stupid. I went into a gun shop last week to buy a new holster for my G19. Guy started out telling me 9 mm was worthless as a self-defense caliber scrutiny and then allowed as how it was ok since I probably couldn't handle anything bigger and it was better than nothing.

My response? I told him I didn't buy from idiots and walked out the door.

Went up the street to another privately owned gun store (ain't competition grand?)

Folks there welcomed me, asked about my missing rifle, told me I could duck into the restroom to try on the IWB holster if I wanted, commiserated about the cost of ammo with me, and then tried to sell me a shiny new (and overpriced ) 6920.

Guess where I ended up spending a bunch of cash..and who sits around and complains about the big name gun stores stealing all their customers?

You can't fix stupid but eventually, you can drive them out of business.

 

[Officers'Wife]

Hi Jim,

I find it awful that you would take away a clerks millstone just because you got an uneducated clerk.

Could you translate that to Russian, quite frankly I'm not following your English very well.

You must be a young person

Non-sequitur

We have turned from a society that interacts with each other to a self centered bunch that fails to understand what we are doing.

I'm like this for religious reasons. Everybody has a God-given right to frick up their lives as they see fit. That clerk is no different. Pride in craft dictates he would educate himself. If I were to do so for him would rob him of his duty. Not my place.

Selena

 

[Officers'Wife]

Barbara,

You can't fix stupid but eventually, you can drive them out of business.

You are my new best friend!

Selena

 

[jakeswensonmt]

Some females are willing to handle quite heavy rifles. She's 5'2" and 115lbs, and yep that's an AR50. She also burns up my .45acp like it was free.


The gun show vendor was a fool if you asked me. The only thing that should have mattered to him was the color of her money.

 

[BridgeWalker]

Or on physical size. Sorry, but women are not as physically strong as men, and compound bows can be task to use if you don't have the strength. And 5'6" and 120 pounds would generally put you in that category, even if it was a man with that height and weight.

I too call BS on this one. Women are not as physically strong as men in kinda' the same way women are shorter, lighter, and prettier than men. Doesn't always work. Often works, often doesn't.

Heck, I can draw a 55 pound bow and I'm going on about 1-1/3 shoulders here. Not my first choice, because of the bum shoulder, but I can do it fairly easily. All thing being completely equal, most men have more upper body strength than most women. Little things like exercise and training, general wellness, and technique tend to switch up that advantage quite often.

And yes, a man with that height/weight might also be not terribly strong. But at this point I'd love to introduce you to some Japanese judoka of my acquaintance.

I can also fire my Mosin quite easily, and have about umpteen times the recoil tolerance of my husband. But that's not the point. What is the point is that neither Selena nor I are particularly unusual. (And I suspect I'm in nowhere near the shape Selena is in, nor is there anything wrong with my husband, I just learned a few things about strength and balance when I was doing judo regularly).

What is also the point is that gun vendors do no one any favors when they decide to be the judge of who gets to fire what. He thinks just by looking at a woman he can assume she can't handle the gun she wants to buy? Fine. Whatever. He should keep his mouth shut.

 

[mp510]

ME: While looking at a Mosin Nagent "Neither one of us have one of these, I should get one for us to use out in the woods"

HER: Pretty sweet but very heavy, I dont think I would like it.

GUY SELLING GUNS: "Ma'am you dont want to start shooting with something like that it will scare you too much and then you will never want to shoot a gun again"

To be fair, I know grown men who find Mosins and .45's painful to shoot. They don't know your girlfriend, but they do know that many women don't like being battered with recoil.