Guns in Georgia: A user’s guide
Funny thing happened in Georgia the other day. I held an assault rifle like it was no big deal, as the sales clerk explained its only real practical use would be to fell a dinosaur (should they come back to life). And, I’d be able to do it from a few miles away, which is probably handy.
We don’t have a lot of gun shops in Toronto, at least not that I’ve noticed. And I don’t really get why people would want to own a gun, but I get that it’s important to people here. So I entered the gun shop/shooting range with a pretty open mind. It was in a strip mall, kind of hidden in the middle of empty shops. But there was no hiding it – the pop of pistols was deafening as customers tried out guns in the store’s shooting range.
The walls were covered with rifles, display cases held handguns. A pretty kickass one costs about $600. I asked about the most popular model, and the sales guy said a bunch of stuff about different types of guns for different customers and I kind of lost the thread. One woman was buying what I think was an automatic pistol of some sort – the point was she wouldn’t have to reload until she got off enough shots to kill the bad guy coming through the bedroom window.
I asked her why she needed a gun, and she said she had to “protect her babies.” Fair enough, I guess. And she was good in the range, I watched her shoot holes in the target. Right through the forehead. Killed it over and over, stopping briefly to reload before shooting it in a different vital organ.
They knew I wasn’t from around them parts, and were kind of interested in the fact that I’d never shot a gun (which was a bit of a lie – I shot a rifle in the air on New Year’s in Witless Bay, Newfoundland when I visited the island with a friend. It knocked me over, and I never talked about it again. It wasn’t a very macho moment.).
So they offered me a choice of any gun in the store to kill some targets with. I scanned the models – pink-handled Smith and Wesson pistols, all-black shotguns – and wimped out. I just couldn’t muster up enough hate for the targets. “Just as well,” the clerk said. “I’m not clear on if you’re even allowed to be shooting around here. But you should learn – what if you run into some zombies?”
He’s got a point. Do we still have a gun registry? Cause if not, I’m loading up before I get on the plane.
PS: I’m down here working on real stories, not just sill y nonsense. But I can’t resist the allure of random roadside stops, hence the blog posts.