As usual, my near-daily trips to "my store" always brings enlightenment, if not some new swag. Some days, the sales floor is empty, but there are tons of new shooters waiting to get on the firing ranges. Typical reaction coming off the firing line, "OMG, I just shot up the box of ammo I bought for this gun. Where can I find some cheap ammo?" I've been sorely tempted to say, "move to New York state, where, by law, seven rounds are all you need, and all you can have". But then I decided that there's no place for smart-assery in a gun store. I've already hit the floor a couple of times as some noob walks in with a weapon, being too stupid to read the warnings about stuff like that when entering the store. Let them get themselves "thinned-out" somewhere where I'm not.
On the positive side, I did score another CZ, this time a CZ75D (decocker) Compact in 9mm. Here it is with the slightly more showy, and slippery, CZ75B with traditional safety.
It has an aluminum frame, rather than steel, and along with two fewer rounds in the magazine and a shorter barrel, and is several ounces lighter while still feeling like a fine piece of machinery. The "D" has a working job waiting, as soon as I can get close to the range to spend a bit of quality time with the new toys.
I also have high hopes for finishing my CZ handgun collection in a short while. They make dozens of variations, but I only need a couple more for a representative population. The good thing is that "my store" decided a year ago that they wanted to be a volume CZ dealer, and ordered accordingly. The bad part is that CZ only sends a few items every week, with no idea of what's in the box of chocolates until they open it. Last week it was six CZ75Ds, which lasted a total of twelve hours spread over two days in inventory. Mine was sale number four of the first day.
Still, I took a hugh amount of smug pride when I said, "wrap it up, and throw in a half dozen spare mags, too". The store had the foresight to order a very large assortment of Mec-Gar aftermarket mags (the company also makes the OEM mags for most European brands, too), heavy on the ones for CZ. When the newbies figure out that an extra magazine, and extra box of ammo, are nice, I now buy six extras. My ammo supply isn't bad, so I can keep looking for bargains that still appear every now and then.
This is almost like a gold rush. Even "sane" people that never owned a gun, or maybe figured that grandpa's rusty .22 pump was "enough" started buying more respectable hardware. They've gone through most of the existing supply pipeline, and are slowing down simply because so much of the "tacticool stuff" is hard to get and expensive. But for the old time prospectors who keep working their little claim by the river, a little bit of "color" in the pan still turns up often enough to keep them interested and busy. Just a shame what all the "gold fever" gun buyers did to the pretty scenery when they stampeded through here not so long ago.