Friday, October 21, 2011

The Process of Buying a Gun in Las Vegas, and Other Assorted Musings: 30 Days of Blogging... Day 12-ish

So I've skipped a few days of blogging due to travel/being quite occupied in Vegas, so I'd like to offer my sincerest apologies for those who have been enjoying my 1-post-per-day shpeal.

Anyway--some interesting highlights from the first few days in Vegas. Most notably, my friend Dan, who recently moved out here, has decided to buy a gun, due to the fact that Vegas is a ridiculously dangerous city with a LOT of home break-ins. Given that Dan lives alone in a huge house not far from the Strip, he felt like a shotgun would be a wise investment. Now my opinion on guns is pretty indifferent, I don't really care about gun ownership one way or another, I think the chances of me ever owning a gun are pretty damned close to 0%, and I think that there should probably be a pretty high level of accountability when it comes to who can/can't buy guns. The process here in Vegas was just absurd, and I feel like many of my friends in Oz/UK are just going to be completely shell-shocked by this.

Basically, all he needed was an ID. We went to a place called "The Gun Store" (pretty hilarious/convenient name, must lead to an unbelievable amount of hits on Google), and Dan asked the guy behind a counter what type of shotgun he'd recommend. Within literally 45 minutes, we were walking out of this store with a shotgun and 30 shells.

The guy asked a few questions, i.e. where does Dan live, has he ever had a criminal conviction, and is his driver's license current. The answers "Vegas, no, and yes" were apparently sufficient, as he informed us that we could buy a gun and walk out of the store with it today. After going over the ins and outs of various shotguns, he had Dan fill out a pretty brief form, did a background check, and ohbytheway, at NO POINT DID HE ID ME AT ALL. Now granted, if Dan were buying the gun for me, or if I were a criminal or terrorist, I probably wouldn't walk into the store with Dan when he bought the gun. That said, you'd still think he'd at least make sure that I'm 18, or that I'm not a criminal/terrorist. But apparently not. A pretty absurd process if you ask me, but welcome to Las Vegas!

So apart from the gun-buying, it's been a fantastic 3 days of free alcohol and gambling. Currently have some good sports bets out, and was up considerably in poker before getting all-in last night with AT on a board of AT9 and having the guy call with T9 and catch a 9 on the turn for a boat. Got to love losing when you get all-in as a 90-something%, but at the same time what can you do. Have also been able to have some Raising Cane's chicken here, which is literally the best chicken in the world. Have yet to decide when I'm leaving for LA, probably Sunday or Monday, we'll see how things go I suppose. Flying to Hong Kong in 6 days, should be magnificent. Interesting to note that everywhere in Vegas has slot machines, including fast-food restaurants, the airport, and gas stations. Pretty hilarious. Also, there's an "Occupy Wall Street" protest going on at the strip here, a lot of people dressed like the guy from V for Vendetta. Definitely holding up traffic quite a bit. Today Dan is giving a speech at a math conference at UNLV, presumably I'll have a few stiff drinks and watch that this morning. Certainly I'll have no idea what he's talking about, given that I'm not at all familiar with high-level mathematics, but we'll see how it goes.

Generally speaking, things are going well, weather in Vegas is fantastic and again, getting ready to head off to Hong Kong. Will hopefully get back on track with the 1-blog-post-per-day goal, I suppose we'll just say the multi-day gambling/free alcohol binge which led to no blog posts was just a bit of a break from the writing. Apologies for anyone that was hoping for blog posts the last few days, see you all tomorrow.

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