Gun Store Incident - Some people are just WEIRD!

[ZeSpectre]

I swung by one of my favorite toy stores last night and had something really weird happened.

Standing around with the owner and a couple of other regulars when this youngish lady comes in and starts timidly looking around. We all look at each other and you know we're all thinking "oh, first timer, let's help". So the two of us back off and the owner (a super friendly and pleasant guy) goes into his whole "make the customer feel welcome and comfortable" routine (which he's very good at).

So the woman says she's interested in a gun and eventually she points to a nice pistol in the case and says "can you tell me about that one"?

So he starts telling her about the CZ line and so forth and the question comes up "so do you have a specific purpose in mind, target shooting or...." and this woman cuts in with "well I really need something in case I have to shoot my husband".

WHAT!

She wasn't making a poor joke, she was serious as a heart attack.

The owner kinda stumbles and says "I'm sorry, what?" and this lady says "well, my husbands getting kinda rough and I think I'm going to have to shoot him".

So the owner kinda stops for a minute and then says, very quietly, "Miss, you just basically told me you are planning to shoot someone. I can't sell you a gun."

(as you can imagine, we're all in HIGH ALERT mode by now)

She gets this weird about-to-cry look in her face and says "but I NEED one and soon".

The owner says "hey lady, I tell you what, I can call the police and you can wait here and when the arrive you can tell them what is going on". Well the lady FREAKS and yells some obscenities at the owner and storms out the door (leaving her purse behind).

So we're all kinda standing there in shock for a few minutes and then the owner says "the hell with this, I'm calling the cops". We agreed that was probably a good idea.

So he phones and tells them the story and that he still has the ladies purse with her ID. The cops say they'll be right over.

AND NOW IT GETS WEIRD!

No sooner does a uniformed officer arrive and start taking notes then this big ANGRY man storms in to the store DEMANDING to see the owner and raising six kinds of hell about how some SOB at THIS STORE refused to sell guns to his wife because she's a woman and that it was her GOD GIVEN RIGHT to be able to buy a gun and somebody better damn well obey the law or they were going to get SUED!

Yup, the woman had gone back to her husband (the one she wants to shoot) and told him some BS story about being turned away for being a female, etc.

So the cop takes this guy aside and gets him calmed down and sets the record straight. Then the guy basically says "Oh, I wonder if she's stopped taking her meds again".

WAIT, WHAT?!?

So this guy was coming in to demand that the owner sell a gun to a person undergoing psychiatric treatment who had expressed a desire to kill him?!? Oh man I can just guess what that household is like!

 

[RonE]

Once in a while, you get to witness the fact that it takes all kinds of people to make up our world.

 

[Funderb]

I see only good that came of this situation.
A gun was kept from the hands of a nut.

 

[wuchak]

If my wife was taking medicine that kept her from not wanting to kill me I would make REAL sure she took it as directed.

Now that I think of it maybe I should find out what she was on and slip some in my wife's coffee as a precautionary measure.

 

[Goblin]

That husband must love living dangerously!!!

 

[neviander]

Truth is, most certainly, stranger than fiction.

 

[Ed4032]

What happened to her purse?

 

[Yo Mama]

This doesn't bode well for our arguments against more background checks.

 

[Claude Clay]

on the positive side:
we should be happy; after all, they found each other

 

[Drgong]

Sounds like my old girlfriend who lost her battle with mental illness. She was always peeved that she got flagged and couldn't buy a gun, but for my safety at least, it was good.

 

[#shooter]

I wonder if this guy was trying to make a staw purchase and got caught.

 

[skwab]

Mental illness is a scary thing for all of us, not just the afflicted, and not even in regards to firearms, but in everyday life - driving for instance. You just never know what's going through the head of the person next to you on the freeway.

But I think this incident shows just how well the gun community can police itself as far as not selling a firearm to a person who is obviously not in their right mind - we don't necessarilly need a pile of laws dictating this.

 

[Halo]

I wonder if this guy was trying to make a staw purchase and got caught.

That was my thought as well.

 

[Elza]

Yo Mama: This doesn't bode well for our arguments against more background checks.

I feel just the opposite. The woman was engaged in conversation, checked out if you will, and a bad sale was prevented without any kind of government sanctioned check.

 

[FLORIDA KEVIN]

I would bet on it being a straw purchase ! But we will never know

 

[News Shooter]

If I were sending someone in to make a straw purchase I don't think I would instruct them to say the things she said. It makes no sense

 

[Sheldon J]

Yeah this almost sounds like a straw purchase to me too. My son used to work for Dunham's in the gun section and refused quite a few obvious straw deals.

 

[bogie]

Gotta love reputable dealers...

Now, a FEW folks would have asked her how big he was, so they could tell her 9mm or .45...

You know who you are.

 

[Eric F]

Well after reading this I must ask what the

what part of shall not be infringed do you not understand

folks think of this? This is my exact arguement for some gun control is necessary.................

 

[ZeSpectre]

You know, the whole straw purchase thing never even occurred to me. I really think the woman was just unbalanced.

 

[tinygnat219]

Wow... Obama supporters.

Very interesting. I once witnessed a Straw Purchase turned away. This attractive woman comes in on a cell phone and starts talking into it: Which gun? Which case? Ok. She hangs up the phone and asks a salesperson to see "That gun, right there". The manager asks her her name and then asks to see some ID. She hands him her Drivers License, and he copies down her information. Then he hands it back to her and states that her husband had been in earlier that day and was turned down on the background check and he was refusing a sale to her because it was a straw purchase. He then gave her a choice to stick around and wait for the police, or leave. She left, he called the cops and gave them the information he had written down.

Nothing other than that.

 

[highorder]

Quote:
I wonder if this guy was trying to make a staw purchase and got caught.

That was my thought as well.

I'll poke my "straw purchase" iron into the fire as well.

They together probably thought that the most normal reason for a woman to go into a gun store to buy a handgun was to protect herself from domestic abuse.

With a reason like that, the sale should be quick, with no questions asked, right?...

 

[Corporal K]

I worked at a pawn shop years ago for about a year. A nice lady came in, bought an inexpensive .25 and went home and emptied it into her husband.
He lived, but my co-worker had to go to court to testify.

Another time, another gal came in and asked me to show her some different guns. After she picked one she liked - a .38 I think - she said "This looks good. It'll kill that SOB!" I was like "whoa, hang on a minute" and went from gun seller to impromptu marriage counselor.

Weird.

 

[Wes Janson]

I have to disagree...there's no way ATF would concoct something that outlandish (in particular, by sending the guy in later to yell at them), and I don't see a straw purchaser saying things like that to a dealer. I've heard plenty of stupid things before, but usually they're based on some sort of rational thought process.

There really ARE people that messed-up running around out there. Baker Act and all that...

 

[Dr. Tad Hussein Winslow]

Clearly not a straw purchase - last thing on earth you would do is raise a red flag by saying something that stupid if you really want a gun.

Just a mentally unbalanced woman, or someone who genuinely fears for her safety and wants a gun to use in self-defense against him, and told him the sob story so that he would make them sell her a gun, so that she could later use it on him. He may be none too bright, but that's good ol' Darwin. She may have told him she wants a gun for target shooting or defense of the home, etc.