Saturday, July 21, 2007

The story so far...

...on the gun I gushed about on Sunday:
So - I had left the gun store Sunday with a promise from the clerk that he'd get word back to me on Monday, one way or the other, and I was in a pretty giddy mood.
Monday morning rolled around... no call.
10am - I decided to call him. No word from the big man yet, says he.
2pm - still nothing, so I called him again. Still no word. If he didn't hear anything today, he'd let me know Wednesday, the next day he worked.
AAAARRRGGHHH!!!
I don't handle suspense very well.. so - I called around. One gun store said sure they could receive the guns, so I called DSA. They said it would be 12-14 weeks to get an STG-58 out here.
Hmpf... that's too long, especially knowing that there's SIX OF THEM CHILLING IN A WAREHOUSE 15 MILES AWAY!
My mood had gone from a giddy high to a pretty despondent low. Why hadn't I heard? Was the guy just trying to blow me off? They really weren't going to sell me that gun. It's obviously too good to be true - this is California, after all.
Tuesday I was considering alternatives like the M1A (which I would still have needed to save up a few hundred for, and I'm a bit suspicious of the quality of the "Standard M1A" compared with the really high dollar ones) and precisely how I wasn't going to shop at their store any more if they were just going to knuckle under and refuse to sell the gun, despite the fact that the DOJ agent had written them a formal apology about his actions.
Wednesday - I called right at 10am again, expecting to hear "no".
The clerk said, "Just got the OK from the boss to sell, but I have to remove the pistol grip first."
"What?" I asked, "Does that mean this gun is illegal with the grip in place?"
The clerk assured me that it was not - they had sold plenty of these already, and they are still selling the Bushmaster Carbon 15 "flip-top" ARs with the pistol grip (blechh), it's just that the boss man was making a further attempt to cover himself I suppose.
Sensing that I needed to act before this dude changed his mind, I took a long lunch break, dashed to the bank, grabbed my cash, flew over to the store and paid for the gun. There was a little bit of a delay since the guns were not automatically available to be released in the system, but a call to corporate cleared that up, and everything else went smoothly. Now the wait... 10 days in California, which means I can pick up the rifle on Saturday the 28th - sans grip, which I will have to order from DSA...
So the bottom line is I'm happy to have been able to buy this gun, but the way these guys are acting about it makes me a little uncomfortable - I hope it's worth all the hassle once I finally have it...

2 comments:

NotClauswitz said...

Congrats on the 10-day wait~!

phlegmfatale said...

Congratulations on having the patience to survive all the gun store's wrangling about. They obviously didn't want you to be able to get a grip, but you kept your cool. We'll look forward to a full report.