Making sure it does what you want it to? Do you really think the slide is not going to close? Does it prove the gun is going to fire?
Actually, yes. I have released the slide on a pistol once and it did not go fully in to battery.
And after reassembling a Glock one is encouraged to perform a "function test" by racking the slide and pulling the trigger (on an empty chamber of course) to ensure correct reassembly.
If 50 people a day walked into your house, grabbed your gun out of your safe and started slingshotting it a hundred times would you appreciate it?
If I were trying to sell the weapon to one of those 50 persons, then no, I wouldn't mine one bit.
After all, it will do no harm to any of my pistols.
And if it gives them peace of mind before buying then there's no problem whatsoever.
Makes a new gun, used in a matter of two days. Sometimes we have to sell the gun right off the shelf and it is not fair to sell a firearm that has been handled in that manner to a guy thinking he is getting a brand new gun.
Again, for the vast majority of modern pistols, it does no harm and does not age he weapon in the least.
As the customer you should not "need" to rack the slide like that. Quite frankly it is rude. It is not your property and the guns are there to look at NOT for people to come in a treat them like their own. We put them out for you to see if the fit and finish is what you are looking for.
No, it is not rude.
If you are trying to sell the weapon you must expect that potential buyers (and possible future owners of the weapon) will want to handle and manipulate the weapon.
The guns are not there to merely "look at"....it's a gun shop, not a museum.
If someone told me "No, you can only LOOK at these guns. If you want to manipulate and work the gun then must go to a shooting range that rents guns", I would take my business elsewhere, and I would also tell all my family and friends to avoid that particular store.
If you need to slingshot the slide and just close it for no good reason as hard as you can then please do not come into our shop. We have a ton of money invested in these firearms and most people that handle them really have no intention to buy them. They are just "looking".
That's just the price of doing business.
If you really don't want folks handling the merchandise then you should just sell online and get rid of the brick and mortar store altogether.
You would save on overhead too.
The best part is when a customer comes in after slingshotting the slide of a gun and then says he wants to buy the gun. His question is "do you have a brand new one in back?" Even though he was the only one to handle the firearm we put out that morning. So that just goes to show people look at the "shelf" gun as used even if it has never been touched.
Some buyers are just as ignorant as some sellers.
It is bad manners and is not the way that the firearm is truly intended to be used.
No true in all cases.
Some weapons, like Glocks and M&Ps and XDs, are designed so that releasing the slide on an empty chamber does no harm whatsoever on the weapon.
I think anyone reading this if you had invested hundreds of thousands of dollars to have people treat your stuff like crap you would also be mad
Since when is merely releasing the slide on an empty chamber the equivilent to treating a gun like "crap"???
This is not handgun abuse.
It's merely doing a function check.
We want people to come check out the guns, if one of our customers racks the slide, and we ask them not to and they do it again, as the owner I will ask them to leave.
I'm honestly surprised that you're still in business.