We began to take home an assortment of firearms catalogs from the display rack at the gun shop. It became apparent from the catalogs and from speaking with the owners of the shop that people who considered themselves firearm connoisseurs looked down on cheap firearms. A quality handgun costs around $800 dollars today, for that you get a shiny (or matte black) new pistol in a plastic carrying case, and perhaps a trigger lock. There are add-ons galore, with many small manufacturers machining little widgets and enhancements for people to put on their guns. The gun magazines are full of small adds for tritium night sights, red dot holographic sights, caliber conversion kits, you name it. The sheer volume of add-ons is staggering. It reminded me of one of those geriatric health care mail order catalogs, filled with balms, ointments, heating pads, knee braces, nose hair clippers and marital aids. If a person were to purchase a load of this stuff and try and use it all at once, they would be so bandaged, smeared, clipped and padded that they would be unable to move.
I imagined a handgun with all of these accoutrements, decked out like Marvin the Martian's laser pistol. Some guy gets accosted in a dark alley, turns and points his gun at the assailant, turns on his gun light, shines his laser, his face lit by the sights' greenish tritium glow. As the assailant advances, the man puts a bead on the perp, checks the distance to the target with his rangefinder, calculates his exact position with his pocket GPS and prepares to squeeze the trigger. His gun is decked with so much crap that from 10 paces, it looks just like a super-soaker, the assailant never even suspects that he is about to take a .50 caliber round from a Desert Eagle.
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