Greg Welter, Gun Shop Volunteer

Name: Greg Welter

Age: 54

Occupation: Volunteer at the on Tuesdays

I’ve been buying guns from this store for 20-odd years. After I got to about $15,000 worth of guns, I was allowed to go behind the counter. Once I started going behind the counter I started helping people. Once I started knowing how to help people a little bit, it was helpful to be helpful.

Spend enough time in a gun shop. I learn something every time I’m here. Mostly I learn how little I know. I reprogram things I thought I knew. It’s educational to me along hobby lines: I don’t have any kids, my wife’s passed away, I have spare time.

You were talking to me a bit about California gun laws. Are they more strict in California? The biggest problem is that we have a lot of lawyers and legislators that have to justify their existence. There are a lot of nonsense laws. If we could cut out a lot of the nonsense laws, we could accomplish everything that’s being accomplished and cut about half the things in print. 

For example, if I take this pistol out of here today, brand new, after my 10-day waiting period if I go home and I come back tomorrow and I say, “I don’t like this — I want to sell it used,” I can buy one of these every thirty days. But if I put it over there in that counter, I can buy five in one day.

What’s the difference? It’s used. Now being used it’s reported that I bought more than one, but I can buy more than one. I can buy ten used guns in one day if I want. They will be reported, it will go to the state, but nothing stops me from doing it. I can only buy one (new gun) every 30 days, even if it’s the same pistol a day later. Tell me why that makes sense. It should be either yes or no, but it’s either/or.

It’s a series of unnecessary laws that make it sound like they’re making laws that are important, but really, we could cut out three-quarters of the laws and accomplish everything that the law wants now – still the waiting period, still the safety, etcetera. Just – people have to justify their existence. If they don’t make a law, they didn’t do anything.

Tell me an interesting story about working in the gun shop. If you go on Yelp, you’ll hear that there’s a Gatling gun that comes down from the middle of the ceiling here, for bad clients, and that we have a Navy Seal that lives in the back room. Neither of those things are true, but there is a gentleman who wears a black bandana who has been known to wander around the place carrying lots of guns, and I think he’s been looked at as the Navy Seal.

I came in here, I was looking for a pistol, twenty-two years ago. I said, “Can I fire this?”

And he () said, “No, you can’t fire that!”

“Wait a second,” (I asked), “Can I dry fire it?” which means without ammunition, pointed at the floor, pull the trigger.

He says, “Oh yeah.”

So it was a matter of me asking the wrong question. When I asked the right question, everything smoothed out and it was fine.

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