The perfect wife comes with her husband to the gun shop

I met the perfect wife yesterday. This guy who's been a regular at the gun shop brought his wife in for the first time. He bought one pistol and was looking at another. He asked my advice and though it was a brand name I never heard of, Hawes, it's a Single-Action-Army Colt clone in .22 Magnum/.22LR and on the barrel it said "J.P. Sauer & Sohn" and "Made in West Germany."

J.P. Sauer is the German firm that merged with the Swiss firm of Sig to form Sig Sauer, and neither Sig nor Sauer ever made anything but excellently engineered and manufactured firearms. There's another J.P. Sauer single-action .44 Magnum in the counter that will be my first single-action pistol if it's there long enough to get to the top of my buy-me-next list.

Anyway, I recommended he buy it. He turned to his wife and said, "What do you think? Should I put it on layaway?" His sweet wife didn't pause a second. "If you want it, go ahead and buy it."

Now fellas, that is the perfect wife. I can't even get my wife into a gun shop.

When we first married, she wasn't shaping up so I told her, "You've got three days to shape up and show me some improvement or ship out!" For the first two days, I didn't see a thing.

Then on the third day, I started to see a little ... after the swelling went down in one of my eyes.

New, improved, resdesigned site for my gun shop is 'live'!

The new, improved, redesigned website for the gun shop where I work is live, finally, after dorking around with Network Solutions (a pox on their house) for five business days.

In my so-called spare time, I am also a web designer and it was truly a labor of love to redesign and relaunch the rather atrocious company website that we formerly had for the gun shop. Good riddance.

Village Pawn & Gun Shop of Wadesboro, NC, is a small family business but a pretty big player among gun shops here in North Carolina, with more than 1,800 guns in inventory at present.

The first photo is the cluster of handgun counters at one end of our store with long guns on the wall behind. That's Jonathan and Wes at the counters.

Second photo is the shop crew, from left, Wes, Dorothy, William, Jennifer, Jonathan and moi, John.

We attend every gun show of almost any substance here in NC and almost always have a bigger presence there than any other gun shop attending. So far, yours truly has managed to evade duty at the gun shows as I not only savor my weekends at home and church, I am of sufficient advanced age as to plead senior citizen status. Well, the two senior members of the family that owns the shop, William and Dorothy, are my age and they both go to all the guns shows. But as the country song goes, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. I'm too old for guns shows.
But my hat is off to the gun show crew which labors long and hard on Saturdays and Sundays and not only sells sometimes hundreds of guns, but brings home some real beauties which end up in our baby doll counters and even occasionally going home with me when I can afford one.

I don't think I've written about our baby doll counters here before. That's where we keep the like-new and near-perfect condition Smiths, Colts, Brownings, Rugers and other rare handguns.

The next three photos are the baby dolls, first the classic Colts, the second is classic Smiths, Rugers and others, and the third is reserved for all the boxed-presentation handguns.

Almost all of these baby dolls are priced way out of my reach, but they are nice to look at and handle lovingly and I get the pleasure of keeping these counters arranged as newcomers arrive and current occupants are sold and shipped out to new homes.

In fact, stocking and restocking the baby doll counters is perhaps the best part of my job. But of course, what's not to love about the job? Talking guns, selling guns, teaching guns, even shooting guns, and doing it all for a living. Getting paid doing what you love is the best of all worlds.

Why I'm glad Friday was a stressful day at the gun shop

I realized while I was laying around resting up yesterday that I should be honored that Friday was such a stressful day for me at the gun shop. With most of the crew off setting up for a gun show, the Griffin family owners trusted me to run the gun shop while Mama Griffin handled the pawn business.

Daddy Griffin came strolling in about noon, which is usual. Why not? He's the daddy rabbit who started the business 20-some years ago. He can work when he wants to, or not. And after arriving, he stayed in the back office unless he was needed. And their daughter took the day off almost completely, coming in at 4 p.m. with her little girl.

So I handled the gun business solo virtually all day, fielding local calls and calls from gunbroker sales all over the country, plus helping in-store customers select and purchase guns, ammo, whatever they needed.

And the main job is just being vigilant. Believe it or else, there are some hoodlums dumb enough to try to rob a gun store. It happened at our store recently when Mama and Daddy Griffin were there alone one Saturday night. They were loading up some extra guns to take to a gun show. Daddy Griffin was unlocking and locking the door as he loaded guns in the back of his truck.

The store was obviously closed at 9 p.m., but two hoodlums tried to barge in anyway. Daddy Griffin spotted them sprinting across the highway, heading for the door as he went back inside. He didn't want to be caught fumbling with the keys as they arrived, so he left the door unlocked and retreated inside while drawing his Glock. The two hoodlums came in with the one in front not showing a gun.

Our video surveillance system showed the hoodlum behind him was drawing his pistol while hidden behind the one who came in first. Daddy Griffin greeted the two hoodlums with a Glock .40 and a few choice words. They suddenly decided they had urgent business elsewhere.

We told law enforcement about the incident and were able to identify the pair as two local hoodlums, 18 and 19, who were out on bail after being charged with a home invasion-robbery nearby.

I'm honored that the Griffin family will trust me to get the job done alone in the daylight hours.