I've been through this one before and decided to do a little educating.
I stuffed Larry into my pickup and took him to my friendly, local neighborhood Class 3 dealer who has been in the business for decades, mainly selling regular firearms. He rarely transfers a machine gun.
Now Lou is a pretty good guy and when I told him I was educating someone he took an interest. Business was a little slow and his #1 assistant could hold down the fort.
We decided to run with an M-16 which we discovered on line for the paltry sum of $32,995 and my companion grew very wide-eyed at the price. Then Lou started to walk him through the paperwork and pointed out he'd be lucky to take possession of the damned thing in sometime between 3 months to over a year and $200 later depending on how smooth things go through BATFE and how backed up they are these days.
He looked a bit stunned.
Then he asked how much hassle goes through a basic hunting rifle and he ran him through the process and he looked a bit surprised. He was unaware of having to go through the background check.
Larry pointed to a couple of ARs on the wall and asked what about them?
Lou explained that those were not machine guns and then shouted to his #1 man, "We still got that mini 14 in back?" Number one said he thought so.
Lou went in back and came out with the mini 14 and went back into the back room again and came out with a couple of uber cool tactical stocks for the mini 14.
He yanked the action out of the mini 14 and put them into the uber cool stocks that turned a simple utility rifle into an Evil Black Rifle and pointed out that the ARs were pretty identical in function.
Larry's eyes opened a bit as he realized what he was seeing.
A customer that had been in ahead of us was taking possession of a shotgun and he had been run through the process in about 20 minutes as I guess things were just slightly backed up. I believe the customer had no criminal record of any kind because there were no real delays. I told Larry to take notice of that.
Lou then handed him a paper 4473 and my companion read it and we explained what the process was on line as Lou runs his through on line.
We left after thanking Lou who was glad to help educate the public. I did see a brick of .22 LR and bought it on the way out.
On the ride home Larry said he was unaware of the procedure to purchase a firearm. His wife had told him that machine guns were over the counter cash items.
I asked him where she heard that and she said it was from Delores down the street. I know who she is but have never talked to her.
We traced back the story to some mother's anti gun group member friend of Delores.
I didn't let Larry completely off the hook.
I pointed out that both sides lie like rugs to further their cause and use all sorts of disinformation and backstreet gossip to influence others. Then I said to him that now he has seen things first hand he can make an informed decision. I suggested he do a little research on his own before believing the 'I heards' or 'somebody saids'.
Then I offered to take him to a shooting match if he wanted to watch one and maybe ask a few questions.
Update. I wrote this a couple of weeks ago and ran into Larry yesterday afternoon. He asked me about guns and kids. Seeing he has a couple I asked him a few questions about them. The youngest is ten and I explained to him that it's a lot easier to gun proof one's kids at that age than kid proof one's guns.
I doubt that anything will come to fruition in the very near future but I believe his attitude has changed. Time will tell.
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