speaking of guns

This is at least a decade old by now, but I’m still as shocked by it today as when first reading it. It’s the transcript of a conversation between an undercover U.S. federal agent and a gun dealer:

Agent: Okay. Um, and so you say they’ll go up through six inches of steel — they’ll penetrate…

Dealer: Hm mmm.

Agent: … at a thousand yards?

Dealer: At a 45 degree angle at a thousand yards.

Agent: Okay. So for sure then they’d go through an armored limousine?

Dealer: Oh, yeah. (laughing)

Agent: No question about that, right?

Dealer: No question, fifty will go through any of it…We’ve played with stuff. I go through four inches, five inches of steel up here easy.

…

Agent: Yeah, because, I mean, it’s very important for me to get this, because there’s going to be some day when I am going to need this ammunition, because I’m going to be — I’m going to need to defeat an armored-type vehicle someday, I know that…

Dealer: Well, then, when them cattle carts come running down your drive, you’d better be able to stop it. [“Cattle carts” are slang for the heavily-armored tanks used by the ATF at the Waco compound of David Koresh]

Agent: Exactly, but you know, you can think who drives in armored limousines, that’s why I’m going to need it someday, those people in armored limousines.

I can’t find the whole of the original story anymore, but the federal agents did all sorts of tests to see if gun dealers would ever refuse to sell to them.

At the moment I can remember two, both from the suburban fringe of Chicago. In one case the agent went in dressed as a street gang member and said he had “a score to settle in the city.” Instead of saying no, or reminding the “gang member” that gun laws are much tougher in Chicago than in its suburbs, the dealer said: “I recommend this type of bullet. It won’t go through your target and hit the little girl down the street.”

In another case several agents went in dressed in flagrant neo-Nazi garb and started denouncing minorities. No problem with their purchasing anything they wanted, either.