Man receives a gun over the counter at a sporting goods store, loads it, and pulls the trigger

That’s a scene where the gun really should have misfired with all the mixed up parts.

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Good. Maybe the trick will work again on the next one.

My guess is they may have a few dummy bullets so customers can get the feel of loading, and cocking, but without the bangy bit. If the customer had bought their own ammo, things might have gone differently.

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Florida Man found at the wrong end of the country?

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I had the same exact image pop into my mind. I recall the clerk saying something like “Jeez, I might close early today”.

I imagine that a lot of non-murderous people with bad gun training/etiquette routinely go into gun stores and do dumb things you shouldn’t do with guns in guns stores, such as pointing at people, practicing fast draw, putting ammo in to feel the weight, etc. Most employees assume, correctly, that the person doesn’t know what he’s doing, and pulling a gun on them or shooting them is bad for business. The time to notice he’s not just being a regular idiot and revealing himelf to be an atypically murderous idiot is pretty brief.

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You take it off when you take it out of the store. If you have the wherewithal to buy a gun, you can find a pair of scissors at home on your own.

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Unfortunately background checks are largely crap due to NRA meddling. Which is why straw buying/interstate smuggling is the primary way illegal guns hit the streets

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My point was, crap or not, even if the guy has the “death sentence on twelve systems”, you wouldn’t know he was restricted until he was at least run through a NICS check - which wouldn’t be done until he said he wanted to buy something.

The NICS system is largely automated. It is an instant system that returns back whether you are a restricted person or not. It isn’t perfect, of course, but they did pass the Fix NICS act of 2017 that is supposed to make sure all federal, state, and county authorities are reporting back to NICS if someone has done something that means they are restricted from owning firearms.

The lack of funding and antiquated system is why the ATF takes so long to do NFA background checks for restricted items. Those can take 6-9months, but they are much more thorough than a NICS check. Thought they did recently get a system upgrade that allows digital filing that is supposed to make it easier for them.

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Point well taken and especially “liked” for the Star Wars reference.

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Or you can retrieve that pair of diagonal pliers from your hip pocket and distract the clerk for two seconds.

“What’s that big rifle on the wall over there?” Snip.

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Its not 100% foolproof but it is cheap, easy and effective against morons. Which is at least better than nothing at all.

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Tuco did the same thing in “The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly” almost 20 years before “The Terminator.”

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An acquaintance’s son actually suicided in this manner, asking to look at a pistol and slipping a round into the chamber before the staff could react. I don’t recall if he had brought the ammo with him or got it in the store, although the father subsequently worked on legislation to improve security/separation of display guns and ammo in stores.

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Just like on that Halyna Hutchins film?

Wonder how long until someone decides to bring a mag clip into a shop and unload it on the staff? Since they frequently will hand customers a handgun with an empty mag for testing handling it would be pretty easy to swap them out when someone wasn’t paying attention.

I have never seen a shop use inert rounds in the store. That is just asking for trouble with a mix up (even though they are usually a different color, made of anodized aluminum or plastic.) Best practice isn’t to have any ammunition with firearms.

See my comment above for the top 3 reasons of why it didn’t go off.

Certainly testing the function of a firearm is something to consider. People who have hand strength or grip issues can not manually manipulate some firearms to load them. Some stores allow dry fire, and some do not, but the trigger pull can be a deciding factor on firearms, especially ones made for target or competition. But a dummy round wouldn’t be something that would be needed for anything like that.

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Ah. I live in the Rubbish Isles, and guns are no part of my life. I have no idea what the inside of a gun store looks like, or what people do in there. This is probably obvious to the other readers, but I like it that way.

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Arguably the problem is just slightly different than that: the element of surprise has given whoever has it the upper hand, at least briefly, at least as long as behaviorally modern humans, probably longer; and making non-state-sanctioned killing sufficiently heavily penalized and investigated has been a priority for most nation states that aspire to a monopoly on legitimate violence since the beginning of such nation states.

The American pathology seems to be that we have some strong, contrafactual, beliefs about those things: the idea that victory in firearms is awarded to a combination of virtue and skill rather than shooting first and dumb luck; the (related) misconception that adding one or more guns to a deteriorating situation with guns will make things better as long as it’s a ‘good guy’; the enthusiasm for running around and hoping to have your day made rather than the objective being driving the risk of someone opening fire as close to the noise floor as possible; that sort of thing.

If our beliefs were actually true we’d still be a barbaric blood-and-honor culture surrounded by blandly effective law enforcement technocrats; but at least good guys with guns would be a scourge upon the bad guys with guns.

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Is that another name for the UK?

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