Firearm BS thread

I am almost 60 and still can not figure it out. All the gun counter staff at my Local Academy sports are rude and or know everything. Not a very good selection but the counter is three people deep most of the time. While the Family owned LGS is less than 5 miles away with better selection and better service. and very close to the same pricing.

 

Ask Questions, Ask Questions, Ask Questions!!! Understand that many customers are simply ignorant, as no now has ever informed them of the many advantages and disadvantages of various firearms and their abilities. You can always make a sale on your customers wants, but you'll only develop a clientele by knowing your customers needs by asking them questions.

So many people come in without knowing a damn thing about guns. This is coming from experience before I built my arsenal. Every whole behind a gun counter talks about carrying a 1911 and nothing else. Growing up hunting and fishing I had no experience with anything outside my .12, .20 and .410 ga and my Winchester 30-30 lever action.

When I went for my first CC I listened to the jackhole bloviate about the only thing to carry is a 1911 and nothing else. I knew a 1911 was way too damn big for my size to CC. I tried the typical Glack 17, but the Gen 3's were too big for my hands, so I settled on an XD-9. Sad thing in those days they didn't have ranges around here where you could rent multiple guns to try out before you bought them. I soon realized that I had to dress specifically to carry the XD-9, as I'm not a big guy. The SW Bodyguard came out and I said, "By god that's the perfect pocket gun for me. It's even small enough to hide behind my small hands." Little did I know that it's got a ridiculously heavy trigger. I went to the range with my buddy and his M&P 40. Wholly crap, I could send 5 down range in the same amount of time that it took me to squeeze one off from the BodyGuard. Springfield came out with the XD-s and I said this is the best of both world of the XD and the Bodyguard, but the damn thing was a hand cannon and no fun to shoot. Since then I've bought a variety or Kel-Tec's, AR's, SPR's, PR's, etc. and after buying a Gen4 Glock 22 to match by Sub-2000, I finally bought an M&P Shield as my EDC along with my Zero Tolerance. Had I had a salesman that walked me through the pros and cons and sized me with a gun that was right for me in the first place, he would have had a customer for life.

Now when I'm out and look around and concerned with my situational awareness I look at the guys wearing the Safari vests and know their packing 1911's, the guys with the fanny packs have their full size Glocks and the guys wearing their tacticool shoulder bags have their mini arsenals and I can only look at them and think, you've made yourself a target for anyone that knows anything about CC. I purposefully dress as not to telegraph and most people are dumbfounded when they find out I'm carrying. Setting people up with guns so they have to dress to carry them telegraphs their disposition and makes them a target.

 

When I walk into a local shop, I want to be acknowledged, but not stalked. I probably know everything about what I'm looking for, so don't BS me if you don't know about the particular model I'm after. If I ask about a particular cartridge, don't tell me so-and-so is a better choice. I understand you can't have everything in stock, and usually don't expect to find what I'm looking for, so offer to order it for a reasonable price. Mostly, act like you want and appreciate my business and we will get along fine.

I like odd stuff, and it's your job to sell it to me. Not talk me into something else on your shelf. If I want a Cooper in .250 savage, I don't want the M700 in .308 you have in stock. Don't try to push it on me. Definitely don't bad mouth the .250 if that's what I want.

 

Seriously.

You mentioned ammo earlier too, its pretty hard to beat internet prices. Maybe stocking some niche stuff in various calibers would be good? Match grade, special purpose, hunting, etc.

When i bought my savage 223 bolt gun i bought 2 boxes of ever match 223 option they had. That way i could figure out what it liked best.

 

Nice! Thanks for posting, watching this video put a smile on my face. Can’t wait to teach my kids.

 

Congratulations on things moving forward with your store. In your sales? Are you also going to be selling medium to higher end scopes?

 

Have you considered joining Davidson's dealer network? That way your business will show up on gallery of guns website and people can essentially put a deposit down on a gun, it ships to you, then they pay the rest of the price.

 

With the current online market and from the lack of options in your area it sounds like focusing on FFL transfers is a great way to start. I use a pawn shop that is local to me for the majority of purchases now. They carry a small inventory of guns that they have pawned but they do a large volume of FFL transfers. The 2 things that stand out to me about them are that they keep their transfer fees lower than anywhere else around which I think is because of number 2, every time I pick up something new they seem just as genuinely excited to open the box and see what's inside as I am. Where some places around here, especially gun shops that carry new inventory, act like doing an FFL transfer for something shipped in is an inconvenience or taking away from their business and even charge more for it as a result, this shop has made it their bread and butter and embraced the way the market is operating while making it a good experience.

 

I'm sure I'm the minority but I really lean towards practical vs tactical. I like bolt guns and revolvers and shotguns and .22s I no its not as popular as ARe and semiautos with 30 rd extended mags. There is just something beautiful to me about simplicity and these guns (even though they are mass produced) seem like there is still almost a craft in them instead of just a cookie cutter modular block... This got kinda rambley but surely I'm not alone in this

 

I started out probably like everybody else in the more simplistic set up’s then gravitated towards the bling bling and now have gone back home to the basics and now is what I call purpose buying. If I didn’t have a direct and specific use for the item I don’t buy it. So I guess you could say I’ve come full circle!

 

FIXFY

I've got much of the same in my safe, but I got hooked on the AR's and have bought little else in the last decade. I think it's because they are more like Legos to me than a modular block very few of my AR's look exactly the same.

 

I was talking about handguns with extend mags haha

 

Agreed. For me, I buy very little that I can't get at least 10% off whatever the market price is. I always look at the total OTD price when comparing various deals. I've got a local guy that does FFL xfer for half what the other shops do. So I tend to buy more internet sales than anything else today. When I was up in WA I used to make the rounds to all the local shops, until I figured out which ones consistently offered the better prices or were willing to deal. When I discovered that Ft Lewis had an FFL on base and I could order just about anything or buy online and save the sales tax I was in heaven.

 

Murcia

 

A buddy of mine that owns a shop down here says he makes most of his money off ammo sales.

He buys thousands of rounds at a time and moves some serious amounts of ammo.