Unchartered Territory, Part 3: Queen of the Rifle Racks

While out shopping my wife and I stop at a local sporing When I first step foot into the designated firearms area of the store I was impressed by how organized and varied the display were: four long glass display cases chock full of scopes and pistols, a variety of taxidermied animal heads (moose, fox, deer to name a few), and rack upon rack of rifles. Now, just because I deem them to be "rifles" doesn't mean that's "officially" at the are as the racks were further organized by purpose (target, hunting), caliber and barrel... and possible other criteria for organizing weapons. Best as I could tell at first glance was that I should stay away from the "pretty" colored ones (pink, purple) as they were in all likelihood intended for use by ladies.

In an effort to be fashionable, I should probably mention here that I had worn a t-shirt depicting a number of different Marvel superhero faces on it. This is important as it provided an icebreaker prior to asking about "guns."

The lone woman working at the counter complimented me on the t-shirt, thus striking up a conversation,"I like your shirt, it's only the second one I've seen like that, my son has one and I made a small one for his son to wear..."

"Thank you, Karen" I responded after making note of her name as it appeared on the tag. Karen appeared to be about fifty years old, and had a pleasant, if slightly too zealous, air about her. (In retrospect, she had a sort of Palin-esque vibe to her--very approachable and confident.) I immediately felt comfortable talking with Karen so I asked, "I was wondering if you could answer a few questions about guns... rifles... shooting?" I had little handle of the proper "gun-speak," and accepted the reality that I would likely sound like I didn't know what I was talking about because, well, I didn't! "I don't know much about firearms, but I was wondering how you would suggest getting started?"

At this point, Karen came out from behind the display case and we (my wife and I) began drifting with her towards the rifle racks as she explained a little about herself and her experiences with guns, "Well, you can do a lot of different things with guns, myself--you know I owned a gun store for twenty years before working here--I used to love skeet shooting, it was so much fun and its something the two of you could do together, that is if you weren't interested in hunting..."

Karen continued to speak with us in long uninterrupted chains of phrases and anecdotes about guns. She was in my small world the "Queen of the Rifle Rack," dispensing words of wisdom about how licensing rules were different from county to county opining that there were no more gun safety classes offered at this store location store because some government entity or other was "giving them a hassle" over this or that.