What Working at a Gun Store Taught Me About Gun Ownership in America
The good, the bad, the ugly
As a 21-year-old college student, I worked for a year at a gun store in Southern California from 2013–2014. Full transparency, I’d never once considered working at a gun store, in fact, I knew pretty much nothing about guns or any gun-related topics at the time.
In fact, at this point in my life, I had just come down from my life-altering shroom trip (more on that here if you’re curious) and was trying to “improve my life” by finding a job that was better than scooping greasy Chinese food into plastic containers.
One of the guys in my fraternity at the time mentioned that he had just gotten a job at a gun store, and they were looking to hire someone else and would I be interested? I told him I’d happily take an interview, although I was sure I wasn’t going to be getting the job.
As a kid who grew up in Southern California in a liberal-leaning middle-class family I’d hardly had any exposure to guns in my entire life. In fact, my interview for the job went like this.
“So, what knowledge about guns do you have?”
“Well… uh… I play a lot of Call of Duty so I… you know… know the names of the guns and stuff.”
