Last night, the guy shooting next to me had some sort of Mossberg bolt-action .22. Before we got started, he mentioned that he'd gotten it when he was a kid using S&H green stamps[1]. He walked into the store, gave them his book of green stamps, and walked out with a rifle. No background check, no concern that he was a minor, nothing.
This reminded me of the Andy Griffith Show episode where Opie tries to win something at the carnival using his shooting prowess. Here's a 10-year-old-or-so kid being handed a gun with lots of other people walking around, shooting targets, and handing the gun back to the adult. Nowadays, a 10-year-old with a gun on TV is fodder for after-school-special-quality morality plays about the evils of firearms.
[1] Boy, that took me back. I remember being a kid going to the grocery store with my mother and getting the sheets of green stamps and then later licking them and pasting them into the little booklets. I have no idea what we ever got with them, but I remember having them.
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Wow, I remember them too - and some other store had blue ones. I think we (Mom) bought more groceries, or a toaster or something.
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