A Buyer's Market

Always in threes. When I tried to shoot like a normal person, I couldn't get more than two shots off before the recoil had kicked my aim all the way off the target. But when I turned my brain off, stopped thinking about the muscle movements and just tried to shoot on instinct -- like how I tie my shoes on instinct or throw a baseball without thinking about all the different arm and hand movements that come together -- three shots in a straight line.

I killed the silhouette guy at least 10 times.

"There's something I should probably tell you about myself," I said as Amy came back into the range.
"What?" she asked in stride, pulling one of the ear cups from away from her ear.

I looked at her flatly and calmly for a moment.

"I'm Batman," I said in all seriousness.

Amy made a face, "I thought you were a ninja."

I turned and looked at my perforated paper target, "Ninjas don't use guns," I said.
"Neither does Batman," Amy said while poking a fresh box of ammo into my chest.
"Oh yeah," I said after trying to keep my fictional vigilante ducks in a row, "well he should, they're freakin' sweet."
I moved Amy's free ear muff back to her ear and let off three more shots, this time with one hand.

She pulled one of my earmuffs away and said, "I think he got a bit turned off on them after his parents were shot in front of him." Then she let go of the earmuff and it sprung together and cupped my ear. Ouch.

"Ah yes," I said loud enough to breach our ear protection. "Dead parents, the great call to action."

Three more shots.

After about two hours altogether Amy had enough shooting, and by the male-female transitive property so had I. We went back into the store and returned the eye and ear protection, and set two emptied handguns on the counter.

"How was it?" the guy asked me. He was a portly guy, had a big gut squeezing between his two suspenders. Fifty, balding, uneducated.
"It was... the same as usual," I said when I remembered that I'd told him before that I went shooting all the time. Keep your lies straight.
"No, I mean the USP. It's a clean shot, isn't it?" His accent was a bit thick, didn't sound like Virginia. Georgian, if I had to guess. The state, not the country.
"Oh," I said, "Yeah, I took right to it." Amy smiled and walked past me to go look at the pocket knives. There was another customer, a guy wearing an orange camo hunting coat, looking at the knives as well, between squeaky drags through the straw of his Taco Bell cup.

The store owner wiped the gun I was using down with a rag, oiled the slide and cleaned the barrel, then affixed a metal trigger lock and placed the gun back in the glass case behind a tag that said,

USED
H&K USP
$580

"Is that cheap?" I asked the guy.
"Hell yes," he said in a snort, "new ones go for over a grand." I stepped over to look at the unused handguns and verified that.
"Why are used ones so cheap?" I asked, "Do they wear down or something?"
"Naw," the guy said with a wave of his hand, "People think they gotta buy new so it'll still be 'pristine' or whatever. That's bunk, though. It's just like buying cars. You buy a new car just so you can say nobody's driven it before, but a used car'll be broken in a bit. A brand new gun won't shoot as good as it could, it doesn't have the grease worked in and the barrel hasn't been set from the heat yet."
"Set?" I said, looking down at the used USP I was using. I wanted that gun.
"Yeah, set. The heat from cartridges firing will make the metal warp a bit, so a new gun is made with the intention of having it warp a bit. Like making a cotton shirt too big because they know it'll shrink."

"So there's no problem with buying a used gun?" I asked. Amy was still looking at knives. The Taco Bell cup guy was looking over at me now.
"As long as the gun is maintained and there's no defects. And trust me, I maintain all these guns like they were babies."

Sure, grease them down and scrape out the soot. Just like a baby.

"So..." I started, trying to shift back into the smooth guy who talked my way into renting a handgun while underage. "Could I buy this one?"

He frowned. "Did you happen to turn 18 in the last two hours?"
I frowned too, "Even if I pay with a lot of twenties?"
He laughed, "I'd love to, kid, but there's no way. The age limit for using the range is just a rule here, but the age limit for buying is the law. As lax as the gun laws are here in Virginia, I could still lose my store license or go to jail. Not happening. Shame too, because I have a bunch of accessories for this gun that're on sale this week."

Well, I hate to pass up a sale. I thought, maybe Amy was 18 now and I could give her the money and she could buy it. I called her over and asked if she was 18 yet.

"No.." she started.
"You're 17 still? Damn." It was a really pretty gun.
"Actually, no. I'm 16 still," she said a bit sheepishly.
"You're sixteen?" I said a bit too loud, then quieted down. "How are you a senior, then?"
Amy sighed, "My birthday was like the day before the cutoff and when I changed school districts in 7th grade I'd already had a bunch of classes from the 7th grade here, so they put me in 8th."
Huh.

The store owner looked a bit annoyed by now. I shrugged at him, and headed for the door with my rolled up paper target. "We can take these, right?" I asked as I was walking out the door.
"No matter how old you are," he said with a grin.

In the parking lot, we both walked toward my car when over my shoulder I heard someone call, "Hey, kid." It was the guy with the orange hunting jacket, he'd replaced his Taco Bell cup with a lit cigarette he was puffing ably from. Amy and I stopped, without thinking I moved my arm around her waist and edged her around so she was behind me. "What?" I said.

"You said you wanted to buy a used H&K?" he said, then gestured with his head over to his beat-up pickup. I handed Amy my keys and our rolled up target sheets and told her to put them in my car. She looked up at me with concerned eyes for a moment, then took the items from my hands and backed toward my car.

I crossed the parking lot toward the orange jacket guy and when I was close enough said, "Yeah, why? Are you selling one?"

He smiled, "As it happens, I am. I have a USP about two years old that I was going to try to sell here, but he told me he wasn't buying any because he had one already and didn't think it'd sell. I was hoping you were going to buy it in there so he'd take mine finally, but I figure if you want one so bad you could buy mine."

He opened the drivers side door of his truck and pulled a metal case from under his seat and unlocked it with a key from his chain. In it was a retail box with an all-black USP printed on the lid.

"It's black?" I asked, trying to keep myself positioned so I could run or kick this guy in the gizmos if he did anything weird.
"Yeah, black so it doesn't catch the light if you're trying to be sneaky, I guess," he said, took a drag from his smoke, and said, "but I just used it for target practice, of course. Cleaned and oiled it regularly. Great gun still, I just don't use it very much because I like Sigs and wanted to trade it in for a P226."

He took it from the foam fitted box and handed it to me, unloaded. I looked it over, it was just as slippery as the one I'd used. The sights were in fine condition, and there was no rust under the slide. I dropped out the magazine and pulled the trigger, it clicked normally. The serial number wasn't scratched off either.

"Hasn't been used in any shootings?" I asked.
He laughed and said, "Nope. I told you, I'm a Sig man."

It felt the same as the gun I'd just fell in love with, it just didn't have the movie-riffic silver slide.

"How much?" I asked, trying to imagine how much cash was in my wallet.

"How much was the one inside?" He asked, looking at the store's door.
"Four eighty," I lied.
"Then how's four fifty sound? He was only going to give me $400 for the trade in anyway."

"Does it need a registration or permit or anything?" I asked, hesitating.
"No, man. This is Virginia. Don't need a permit to carry, a license to own, or a registration to buy. Just need a concealed weapons permit if you intend to walk around with it tucked in your pants or something." What a great state, I thought.

I paid him, took the gun back to my car and avoided all of Amy's questions, then walked back into the gun store as the truck was pulling out.

The door chimed behind me as it closed, the owner behind the counter looked annoyed again to see me.

"You said you have USP accessories on sale now? How about I buy some while they're on sale, and when I come back next month when I'm 18 I'll be all set."

Ten minutes later I walked back to my car with a plastic bag filled with five boxes of low velocity hallow points, three extra clips, a cleaning kit, and the graphite-handled five inch pocket knife Amy had been looking at, for the hell of it.