imported post
I will go ahead and disclose that this is the place where the barrel grab incident happened on February 7th, 2008. They must have gone downhill after that crap. I know anybody that knew anything about firearms that saw it knew I was in the right. But the problem is I don't think anybody saw it until he waited 10 seconds and then started yelling. So all they saw was him freaking out and me standing there looking at him and asking "is he joking?"
I can believe they closed that range too, I get the feeling that it wasn't ventilated properly and that the walls between each "booth" were not bullet resistant. Somebody probably got shot or very nearly did. I can't imagine what else would cause them to shut up like that about what occurred. I haven't been there since they pulled that crap on me with grabbing the gun and stuff.
The original story on the incident was written when I was still steamed up about it so it was kind of jumpy and didn't include the proper details in the proper order. Here's the short version:
Basically the gun was pointed about 20 degrees to the left of a really fat guy. A skinny guy went behind him and did something and then popped out from behind the fat guy. The gun I was holding was still pointed 20 degrees to the left of the fat guy. The fat guy grabbed the barrel at the same instant that I saw the skinny guy just start to come out from behind the fat guy. As soon as the fat guy grabbed it, he pulled it hard to my right. He jerked it right into the path of the skinny guy (Who was still about 19 degrees to the right of the barrel when the fat guy grabbed it) before I could move the gun up and to the left. The skinny guy would not have had the barrel pointed at him had I been allowed to react. It would have been much more intelligent for the fat guy to have reacted by stopping the skinny employee from walking in front of me by putting out his hand in front of the skinny guy's path. Instead he grabbed the barrel to make himself feel cool, like he "knew what he was doing" and to make it clear that I was just a novice with no clue.
He did a much more dangerous thing by grabbing the barrel and ripping it towards himself violently. Had my finger been on the trigger, I would have likely unintentionally pulled it due to the motion he caused the gun to make. The problem was also that there were too many people in the store at the time and the employees were in too much of a hurry. In retrospect, they obviously weren't paying attention to what they were doing. People were in front of this counter to my right and left all the way down the 40ft counter. The skinny guy walked a few feet, turned around, paused and stared at me for quite some time. He then screamed "DON'T POINT THAT AT ME!!!" a good 10 seconds after walking in front of the barrel so that everyone that heard it would turn and look at me. Of course, conveniently they did not see him standing in front of me anymore, nor did they see the other employee cause the gun to be pointed at him in the first place. Then as he sat down in front of two other customers he muttered, "Dumbass!" I immediately handed back the gun and never went there again.
Neither one of them wanted to admit that they had screwed up. The fat guy should have let me direct the barrel. If the fat guy wanted to act like a cool "I'm going to save the day" "firearms guy," he should have stopped the skinny guy from walking in front of me. Instead he forced me to point the gun at the skinny guy, who then yelled at me for having the gun pointed at him, which was the fat guy's doing. So basically two gun store employees screwed up and then blamed me for it and yelled at me, fully armed with loaded weapons of course. When I asked the fat guy if the skinny guy was joking (Because I didn't point the gun at him, the fat guy did), the fat guy said "well, you did point it at him." When in fact the fat guy is who did it, sure it was in my hands, but he grabbed the barrel and jerked it right into the guy's path. They thought they were big, bad and infallible like a lot of gun store employees I encounter think.
