It is the only gun store in town where you are greeted by a stuffed lion immediately on entering, and the walls are covered with memories of African safaris gone by, both photographic and taxidermic.
While they have a few XD/Glock/USP-type pistols in the showcase at any given time, it's mostly a place to go look at fine fowling pieces, drillings, and cased double rifles and other things that I'd never need in a million years and yet which still make me happy by simply existing. I have no personal use for a handmade .450 Nitro Express double, but I prefer living in a world where someone took the time to handmake one.
Anyhow, some savages did the smash-and-grab routine there in the wee hours of the AM today, using a stolen SUV to yank the bars off the outside of the window. Initial reports from the yammerhead in front of the camera were that "some guns were taken" but I'm withholding credulity pending more concrete info based on two things:
- The owner didn't talk to the reporter, so the reporter heard this secondhand, and...
- The visigoths did not get through the inner bars on the window and there's not a firearm within ten feet of those front windows. About the only thing you could reach from those bars, unless they rearranged the shop in the last three weeks or so, is a table full of old police basket weave revolver leather, left-handed used Uncle Mike's nylon sausage sacks, ugly rifle slings, and ten-round Glock mags; you know, the detritus that accumulates on the "make an offer" table in any gun shop.
29 comments:
One hopes the surveillance system got some nice shots of 'em.
Yikes! $13,000 for a used Marlin lever-action .22? I guess that's a market that I'll never enter unless I entered and then won a lottery.
I'm kind of wondering what a shop selling firearms like those is doing in a neighborhood like that? You'd think with the level of merchandise they carry that they'd be in a somewhat more "upscale" location.
On the other hand, maybe the mortgage on the place is paid off, and they like it there.
It tends to be more of a case of the neighborhood transitioning around the shop than someone putting a shop like that in a iffy neighborhood.
"I'm kind of wondering what a shop selling firearms like those is doing in a neighborhood like that?"
Because they have been there forever and a day.
Shootin' Buddy
Perhaps it will do your heart good to hear about a smash-n-grab at a gunstore that went spectacularly wrong for the bad guys. Harry Beckwith Incident...outnumbered 7:1 the gun shop owner loosed 105 rounds at the bad guys from several firearms including some Class III toys. I visited his shop once, and indeed he had left all the bullet holes as they were to serve as warning to other would-be bad guys.
http://www.afn.org/~guns/ayoob.html
500 Guns had its own Beckwith/Repel Boarders incident in September of 1998.
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!msg/rec.guns/aw4XZuF0LHk/tP2Yma0QPH8J
The robberies of gun stores around Indy did not go well for the gangs so they switched to burglaries.
Shootin' Buddy
Perhaps the criminals had never been inside. It's not unknown for crooks to just take a chance based on signs.
OTOH, suppose this smash-n-grab HAD gone well for the Evil Gits.
Can you imagine the hilarity when they try to find ammo for whatever they swiped?
Noon news said "a woman or a child squeezed through the bars and took about 20 handguns."
Good heavens, let's just hope that they didn't snatch an empty AT-4 tube.
"BURGLARS STEAL ROCKET LAUNCHER FROM GUN STORE!"
"Yo, only ammo left on the shelf is .470 Nitro, guess we gotta go steal us some guns that shoot dat."
ThoreMo
Timing can be more important than location. Local gunstore was hit after midnite, IIRC, when there is only one person in the copshop, which is located NEXT DOOR!
They backed a van through the doors, and took all the high end handguns.
The few cops on duty were at the other end of town. They might have been at a donut shop, according to legend. This was some years ago.
I had rick's idea, only I was envisioning the aftermath when G-Homie stole a .470 Nitro double and some ammo and went to try it out...
That shoulder will grow back, right?
Somewhere in the wilds of Indya
Tam: I say, Shooting Buddy that SUV looks like is running amok. Hand me the big double and some solids and we will teach that little bugger some manners!
Shooting Buddy: Yes memsahib Tam.
Blam! Blam!
Shooting Buddy: Very nice shooting memsahib.
Tam: Not bad if do I say so myself. Take the horns old faithful SB and let the boys take what they want from the carcass.
Gerry
Gerry....
It makes me happy just imagining a world where that could be.
Thank you.
BGM
Ohhh, to be a fly on the wall when they touch one of THOSE off...hi-larity _will_ insue, I'm sure...
Don't handguns need to be secured inside a safe when the shop is closed? Or is just that my favourite local shop does that on their own hook?
Ygolonac,
There is no federal law or regulation requiring it of which I am aware.
Some shops I worked at locked them all up, some locked up only the expensive ones, some locked up only the 'scary' ones...
"Local cops are making noises about handguns being taken, since handguns are scary, even though the president says they're not as scary as assault weapons, and the vice president says they're not as scary as double-barreled shotguns, of which 500 Guns has aplenty."
I laughed. And laughed again. And I needed that. Thanks Tam.
No background checks were performed during that off-hours smash'n'grab acquisition of firearms, and it is doubtful that they will be distributed with any background checks.
From your description of the place, it's just as well that they didn't make off with any of those (doubtless classy and expensive) double shotguns.
I'd hate to imagine some Indy gangbangers strutting around with nice Purdeys or even classic Brownings crudely hacked down to derringer size with a hacksaw...
--Wes S.
I feel some animosity at all who are concerned in this thing; the perps, the cops, the shop owner, and the customers.
I mind the time I went into a gun shop in Buckhead (in Atlanta) to try to score some pistol ammo. They had some, and they sold me some, but made it plainly evident to me that I was socially inferior to their usual customers, they being an expensive-double-shotgun boutique.
If you're bored enough, go back there and check out that Winchester 69A for me. If you judge it meets my high standards, I'll send you the cash and we can play straw man with one another. :)
Mr. Thisguy,
"I feel some animosity at all who are concerned in this thing; the perps, the cops, the shop owner, and the customers."
What kind of knave feels animosity towards people he doesn't know, for imaginary qualities he is projecting upon them and which exist only in his head?
Why, a grumpy old misanthrope does. I am that kind of knave.
Mr. Thisguy,
Well.
since you are a grumpy old misanthrope who 'feels some animosity at... the customers' of that shop, you may stop reading the blog of one any time you wish.
I swan! You'd think you'd stop chewing when you got to the knee, but no! You keep gnawing away mechanically without a clue that anything may be amiss. Like a child smiling as it soils its didies, you really have no clue when your behavior is completely unacceptable for polite adult company, do you?
(And don't swing that "aspie" crutch: If I can figure out how to behave around grownups, you can too, provided you cared to try.)
Actually, I don't care to try; gave up on it forty years or so ago; my best efforts were not appreciated.
I am what I am, like Popeye and Jehovah.
I will, of course, continue to load your page and read it, because
a. I like your style, and
b. You post lots of useful information.
I hope and trust that the nose is healing perfectly.
Sorry about the sticky return key. I did not mean to leave all of that space there.
Sigivald: I'm imagining Homie holding the .470 nitro double sideways while firing it.
Or to follow up on Wes's thought: it would sure be a shame to hacksaw the stock and barrel down to create a .470 nitro double-barrelled derringer - and the guy will only get to fire one shot... unless he wants two broken wrists.
Post a Comment