Pawn Shops

Spokane is filled to the brim with pawn shops. The only other city I've seen with this many pawn shops in it has got to be Reno, Nevada. I enjoy rummaging through these places looking at what people have ditched in an effort to generate a little extra dough in hard times. On one hand it's kind of exciting when you're browsing around the glass cases and racks of stuff, but on the other hand it's depressing when you realize most of the items for sale are there because someone couldn't pay their rent or get something to eat. In a way I think you can gauge how economically depressed a city is by how many pawn shops they have. Man there's tons of them here.

I've never owned a gun before or even really seriously considered buying one. Most of the pawn shops in Spokane have healthy sized gun collections. Lots of handguns are on display in glass cases. Some shops have quite a few rifles behind their counters as well. I've been drooling over a variety of pistols but I have no idea what they are for the most part. I really like the way those World War II German Lugers look. I've seen a couple of them for sale. I am content for now to look at them behind the glass and wonder what it's like to shoot them. I bet it's fun. At one pawn shop I asked the guy behind the counter what was needed to purchase a weapon in Washington. He said I needed to have a Washington state ID or driver's license. For a moment I thought I would maybe go to the DMV here and say I just relocated into the area and get a Washington driver's license but then I thought again and decided I was too lazy to do it. I didn't need to be spending the money on guns anyway.

There's a pretty cool military surplus store I've been going to every couple of weeks. I think they get large amounts of good stuff thanks to the close proximity of Fairchild AFB. This store seems to have a bunch of neat equipment and bits of military gear in excellent to near mint shape. I can spend too much of my time wandering around poking at stuff and checking everything out. I'm particularly interested in their collection of live ammunition. In one of their counter cases they have a decent stockpile of tracer rounds. Each round is overpriced though so I'd never bother to buy any of them. It would be a total rip off. Some of the rounds are green tipped or bright red tipped so they must be either bright green or red. Those look really cool when you're shooting them off at night.

Slobbering Mouth Kid was bragging about a 9mm semi auto pistol he bought illegally up here a couple of weeks ago. Someone here sold him this handgun under the table for too much money. I laughed at him. I wouldn't be surprised if the gun is hot. Anyway the dimwit has been telling everyone about it at work and has been showing it off to anybody who wants to check it out. He showed it to me even though I didn't ask to see it. I really wasn't interested and I thought he was a total fool for telling everyone about it. I mean, if it is stolen or something that's a great way to advertise who has it and maybe get busted. The guy doesn't have any brains in that stupid looking head of his.