My wife and went to Wal-Mart yesterday to get nail repair on a tire. The tires were down to 2/32" tread remaining (federal standard; Idaho standard is only 1/32") so they couldn't repair it. Instead, we had four new tires put on. While waiting, I wandered through electronics, and bought socks made in the USA, and priced pretty close to stuff made in the Third World. At Wal-Mart? What's the world coming to when China-Mart starts selling American-made clothes?
Then I walked past the gun counter, and I was shocked to see my picture on the front cover of Shotgun News. I was shocked because this was the September 10 edition, and I am only published in the edition published first of each month (or so I thought). Anyway, it isn't everyday that you walk through a store and see your image there. I picked it up, and mentioned it to the guy behind the counter, and a customer who was standing there turns out to be a regular reader of my columns. "I mean, I know that the Shotgun News columnists have to live somewhere, but it didn't occur to me that you lived in this state."
I also noticed that in the glass were a bunch of AR-15s from various makers--which would have been unimaginable in a Wal-Mart in 1990. Hunting guns, sure, and in some Wal-Marts, handguns, but AR-15s? Wow. Even more wow was the pricing. I handled (and tried not to drool on) a DPMS collapsible stock, 16" barrel, flattop with the Picatinny rail mount--priced at $549. They apparently had at least one of these in .308 Win. in the warehouse for $895. Those are spectacular deals, probably driven by Wal-Mart's ability to buy 10,000 at a time--and be sure of selling of them in a few months through their national network. The temptation to reach into my wallet was very strong, but this has been an expensive month (emergency room visit bills showing up, paying the last semester of tuition for my son, my wife having to give up classes because of illness, four new tires), so I exercised great self-restraint.
