Harry Tuttle
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Doug Grow: Lover of birds, seller of guns
Doug Grow,_ Star Tribune
September 16, 2004
http://www.startribune.com/stories/465/4983632.html
I go through life constantly being surprised.
Tuesday evening, for example, I stopped by Koscielski's Guns and Ammo shop on Chicago Avenue in south Minneapolis, figuring there would be a big truck backed up to the door, with suddenly-legal weaponry being lugged into the store.
I figured that everything from grenades to machine guns would be available to the gun crowd, given the fact that our stalwarts in Washington allowed the federal ban on assault weapons to bleed to death as of Monday.
"So what can I buy here today that I couldn't buy last week?" I asked Mark Koscielski, the owner of the shop.
(Koscielski, it should be noted, is the man who coined the phrase "Murderapolis," a label that stuck for a painfully long time after it showed up in a New York Times article about our fair city in 1996.)
Koscielski laughed at my question about what's available. He reached for an ammunition magazine, which holds 15 rounds.
"Last week, I could get $189 for this," Koscielski said.
"Since the ban died?" I asked.
"About $39," he said.
During the decade-long ban, new magazines could not hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition. Gun dealers, however, were allowed to sell higher-capacity magazines that had been manufactured before the ban went into effect.
The limited supply of the old magazines had driven up their price.
Now magazine capacities are limitless again, meaning if you own a knockoff U.S. Army rifle, you can buy a magazine that will hold 30 or more rounds. Those rounds can fill the air as quickly as you can pull the trigger.
"Magazine capacity is the big difference now that the ban is gone?" I said, incredulous.
"That's it," he said.
Our conversation was interrupted by a shrill "arrrrk!"
"Oh, Toto, it's OK," said the gun dealer. "He's a nice man from the Star Tribune."
This is where the serious surprises started for me.
I had come to the store filled with perceptions about gun-shop owners. I'd also come to grill Koscielski about our country's inability to put reasonable limits on weaponry.
But here I was, confronted with a guy kissing a bird.
Between smooches, Koscielski explained that he defends the rights of hunters but that he's no fan of hunting.
"Toto and I don't like hunting, do we, Toto?" cooed Koscielski.
"Arrk," responded Toto.
Toto, an eclectus parrot, has a lovely green head but a scrawny, featherless body.
"No sex," said Koscielski of why his bird has no body feathers.
Koscielski got the 12-year-old bird because its original owner had died and the parrot was going to be destroyed.
"Why should the bird die just because the man dies?" the gun dealer asked.
He rescued another bird, Lenny, in much the same fashion.
Lenny's not so demanding as Toto. When not eating the egg rolls Koscielski buys from Sam's Club for the birds, Lenny likes to march up and down a ladder of spent cartridges hanging from the gun-shop ceiling.
This was all very weird. Berettas. Smith and Wessons. Ammo. Bayonets. And birds.
When Koscielski was not kissing the featherless Toto, Barb Bergstrom, Koscielski's assistant, was trying to get her bird, Petrie, to make the sound of gunfire.
"Pa-shooooe," Bergstrom would say. "Come on, you can do it. Pa-shoooe!"
Is this gun-shop woman a violent person?
Well, she does love guns. But she dislikes hunting, despises the state's new dove season and volunteers at a wildlife rehab center.
"I try to fix the ducks that hunters hurt," she said.
At times, Koscielski and Bergstrom sound like they belong in PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), not a gun store.
"These guns are for competition and self-defense," Koscielski said.
What's post-ban America going to be like? Even more violent? More dangerous?
Koscielski scoffed at the notion. The ban was largely meaningless, he said.
Of course, there's another way of looking at this, said Kate Havelin, president of the Twin Cities chapter of the Million Mom March, one of the scores of organizations that unsuccessfully fought for the ban to be extended.
Even limiting the ammo capacity of magazines was significant, she said.
"It took so much effort to get what we had," she said. "It made a difference. But now, even that's gone."
Clearly, the fact that not even a limited ban can survive points to the stranglehold the gun crowd has on pols.
On the other hand, the gun crowd isn't an NRA-created monolith.
The words I'll remember from my conversation with Koscielski came as I was leaving his store.
"Oh, I love you, Toto," the gun-shop guy was saying to his bird as I stepped out the door.
Doug Grow is at [email protected]
Doug Grow,_ Star Tribune
September 16, 2004
http://www.startribune.com/stories/465/4983632.html
I go through life constantly being surprised.
Tuesday evening, for example, I stopped by Koscielski's Guns and Ammo shop on Chicago Avenue in south Minneapolis, figuring there would be a big truck backed up to the door, with suddenly-legal weaponry being lugged into the store.
I figured that everything from grenades to machine guns would be available to the gun crowd, given the fact that our stalwarts in Washington allowed the federal ban on assault weapons to bleed to death as of Monday.
"So what can I buy here today that I couldn't buy last week?" I asked Mark Koscielski, the owner of the shop.
(Koscielski, it should be noted, is the man who coined the phrase "Murderapolis," a label that stuck for a painfully long time after it showed up in a New York Times article about our fair city in 1996.)
Koscielski laughed at my question about what's available. He reached for an ammunition magazine, which holds 15 rounds.
"Last week, I could get $189 for this," Koscielski said.
"Since the ban died?" I asked.
"About $39," he said.
During the decade-long ban, new magazines could not hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition. Gun dealers, however, were allowed to sell higher-capacity magazines that had been manufactured before the ban went into effect.
The limited supply of the old magazines had driven up their price.
Now magazine capacities are limitless again, meaning if you own a knockoff U.S. Army rifle, you can buy a magazine that will hold 30 or more rounds. Those rounds can fill the air as quickly as you can pull the trigger.
"Magazine capacity is the big difference now that the ban is gone?" I said, incredulous.
"That's it," he said.
Our conversation was interrupted by a shrill "arrrrk!"
"Oh, Toto, it's OK," said the gun dealer. "He's a nice man from the Star Tribune."
This is where the serious surprises started for me.
I had come to the store filled with perceptions about gun-shop owners. I'd also come to grill Koscielski about our country's inability to put reasonable limits on weaponry.
But here I was, confronted with a guy kissing a bird.
Between smooches, Koscielski explained that he defends the rights of hunters but that he's no fan of hunting.
"Toto and I don't like hunting, do we, Toto?" cooed Koscielski.
"Arrk," responded Toto.
Toto, an eclectus parrot, has a lovely green head but a scrawny, featherless body.
"No sex," said Koscielski of why his bird has no body feathers.
Koscielski got the 12-year-old bird because its original owner had died and the parrot was going to be destroyed.
"Why should the bird die just because the man dies?" the gun dealer asked.
He rescued another bird, Lenny, in much the same fashion.
Lenny's not so demanding as Toto. When not eating the egg rolls Koscielski buys from Sam's Club for the birds, Lenny likes to march up and down a ladder of spent cartridges hanging from the gun-shop ceiling.
This was all very weird. Berettas. Smith and Wessons. Ammo. Bayonets. And birds.
When Koscielski was not kissing the featherless Toto, Barb Bergstrom, Koscielski's assistant, was trying to get her bird, Petrie, to make the sound of gunfire.
"Pa-shooooe," Bergstrom would say. "Come on, you can do it. Pa-shoooe!"
Is this gun-shop woman a violent person?
Well, she does love guns. But she dislikes hunting, despises the state's new dove season and volunteers at a wildlife rehab center.
"I try to fix the ducks that hunters hurt," she said.
At times, Koscielski and Bergstrom sound like they belong in PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), not a gun store.
"These guns are for competition and self-defense," Koscielski said.
What's post-ban America going to be like? Even more violent? More dangerous?
Koscielski scoffed at the notion. The ban was largely meaningless, he said.
Of course, there's another way of looking at this, said Kate Havelin, president of the Twin Cities chapter of the Million Mom March, one of the scores of organizations that unsuccessfully fought for the ban to be extended.
Even limiting the ammo capacity of magazines was significant, she said.
"It took so much effort to get what we had," she said. "It made a difference. But now, even that's gone."
Clearly, the fact that not even a limited ban can survive points to the stranglehold the gun crowd has on pols.
On the other hand, the gun crowd isn't an NRA-created monolith.
The words I'll remember from my conversation with Koscielski came as I was leaving his store.
"Oh, I love you, Toto," the gun-shop guy was saying to his bird as I stepped out the door.
Doug Grow is at [email protected]
