Walnut Hill
The Perils of Shopping
column By: Terry Wieland | November, 26
On a subject totally unrelated to rifles, although I will make a connection, a few months ago I ordered a pair of boots online from Allen Edmonds, arguably America’s finest shoemaker. The company has actual stores, of course, but not one very easy for me to get to. So, I gulped, took a chance and ordered from their website.
When the boots arrived, courtesy of FedEx overnight, they were indeed beautiful but, alas, simply too big. They were the size I ordered, and the size I should have required based on other shoes I own, but every company has its vagaries, and this particular model sized slightly large. At this point, there were several possible courses of action, but I decided to bite the bullet, find the nearest real bricks-and-mortar store, and take them there to try on other sizes and, with luck, effect an exchange.
What I found when I arrived was a shoe store just like ones from long ago, smelling deliciously of leather, staffed by two friendly people who knew their business and their products. There, then ensued a delightful hour of trying things on, figuring things out, and settling on an exchange.
Yeah, yeah, you say, what does this have to do with rifles?
Well, it occurred to me on the way home that in exchange for the (often illusory) convenience of ordering online and patronizing UPS, we have given up a lot of the pleasure and social interaction to be found in walking into a shop and spending some time chatting, looking, handling and feeling stuff.
A good gunshop is much like a shoemaker’s redolent of gun oil, linseed oil and, if you’re lucky, Hoppe’s No. 9. If you’re even luckier, there will be an owner who knows his stuff, remembers you from previous visits, and is ready to spend some time discussing calibers, actions, fine walnut, the prevalence of perfidious synthetics (sorry, I couldn’t help myself) and any of the other myriad topics that make guns so endlessly fascinating.
Just for fun, I started looking around my various gun racks, tabletops and vaults, counting guns I’d found in gunshops I visited, guns I happened to see by chance, picked up, fell in love with and which led, ultimately, to long-time love affairs with a particular type or brand.
These included, but are not limited to, the Savage 99, High Standard Levermatic, Winchester 92, the original Browning Challenger and Smith & Wesson revolvers. If we throw in Rock Island, whose viewing room before auctions counts as hands-on shopping of a sort, we could include Stevens and Ballard target rifles, German Schützens, Remington pump guns, English dueling pistols and the Colt Woodsman.
Now, you might say, sure, but you could have done the same shopping online. To a point, you’re right. I have bought guns I saw on a website like GunBroker, become intrigued, and been subsequently hooked. But I have also had disappointments when the guns arrived, either not as billed by the seller, or lacking that special something that occurs when you pick up a gun that simply feels right.
This may draw a furious letter or two, but I am bound to say there is actually a benefit to the ATF requirement that a gun you buy by mail has to go first to an FFL holder, where you fill out a form and go through the background check. Most FFL holders are either gunshops or clubs, which means you have to visit that gunshop and spend some time there while going through the process.
[Editor’s Note: There is an ATF rule being implemented that will allow online retailers to ship firearms directly to individuals completing the sale online. This will bypass the necessity of shipping the firearm to an FFL dealer first. This will hurt the small gunshop owners. It is exactly what Terry is talking about here.]
I don’t know about you, but I can’t walk into a gunshop for any reason without running my eye down the used-gun rack, or looking to see what’s in the handgun display. It also means talking with the guy behind the counter, who may or may not be very knowledgeable; that’s a whole other discussion, but let’s assume he is. He’ll tell you about anything new that just came in, or a widow who visited and is going to bring in a couple of rifles, one of which “belonged to his grandfather.” If that doesn’t whet your appetite, you are not a true addict.
It’s well established that one’s sense of smell is the most evocative of the senses, more so than sound or even touch. The merest whiff of burning leaves on the October breeze can take you back to childhood like nothing else can. A sniff of Chanel No. 5, well, you know where that leads.
I don’t know what oils and solvents the Brits were using during the Edwardian era, but there was something very distinctive, and it’s always found in old English gun cases. Open the lid of one of Bryant’s heavy leather cases from back then and you will still get that scent. I got it first in 1984 when, my teenage infatuation with guns having been reawakened after a long sleep, I traveled to Vermont over Christmas to visit the Orvis gunroom. There, the manager indulged me endlessly, handing down this gun or that one, and eventually fetching an old leather case from the back room. It was, I remember distinctly, a J&W Tolley duck gun. To this day, when I get a whiff of that smell, I am back in Manchester Center, it’s Christmas, and it’s snowing: Currier and Ives, brought to life.
Don’t ask me why, but English double rifles have an aroma all their own, in or out of a case. It’s not Young’s .303 Oil, nor is it purely Rangoon Oil, both of which were mainstays in the English trade. Whatever it is, it permeates gun cases and stays with them, seemingly for life.
For some people, gunshops and gun clubs constitute their social life. This seems especially true of elderly people, and woe betide any shop that provides comfortable chairs. It can become what the hockey folks in Canada referred to as the Hot Stove League, or the loungers outside the general store in old westerns. Nothing wrong with this, unless you’re the shop owner who’d really like to make a buck now and then and not spend all day making coffee for this crowd.
Twenty years ago, in Canada, I knew two older guys who got together every Wednesday morning, visited two or three gunshops in order, then repaired to their favorite restaurant for lunch. It was like clockwork. Both are dead now, and two of the three gunshops are out of business. It was a rare Wednesday, however, when one or the other didn’t buy something, however small. Such steady dribbles of cash are important to gunshops. Just ask them.
The internet is changing the way we live in uncountable ways, large and small, some intentional, some not. Probably, the founders of GunBroker and GunsAmerica did not set out to kill the live, face-to-face interaction of guys visiting gunshops, but to a degree that’s what has happened. As we found out in Canada, as the screws get tightened down and drop-in crowds diminish, shops close their doors. Trading social life for convenience, which is what it amounts to, will not have a good end.
After an hour, I left the Allen Edmonds store. During that time, not a single other person had come into the shop, and I got the feeling the store manager, a lovely lady, did not want me to leave. At least, she kept showing me shoes in different colors and styles, and had I considered this one?
You’ve probably guessed it: I went in to exchange one pair of boots and left with two. It’s a good thing that shop’s a forty-mile drive through the Ozarks, or I might become a regular visitor. Actually, I might become a regular anyway, as my small contribution to the survival of society as we know it.
And there is, after all, a gunshop or two along the way.