For acting, I find it important to study different types of people.

In the past in this blog, I've mentioned early morning Day After Thanksgiving Shopping as a fantastic opportunity to observe different personality types in semi-extreme situations. But I hate getting up that early in the morning.

This weekend, I found another venue for character study -- gun shops.

The particular store I visited Saturday (McBride's Guns Inc.), was absolutely slammed (evidently there was a minor gun show in town), providing a large variety of people.

Like most gun shops, there was actually a dearth of "stereotypical rednecks" -- but they were there... and entertaining.

There were also business people; Joe Average (and his 10-year-old, General-Jake); and more interesting characters.

There was a guy that looked like a chicano version of one of the goth kids from my high school.

There was a rockstar who was on his mobile telling a friend from out of town he couldn't hook up with him because he had two parties that night, and was currently at the gun shop "playing with guns", while talking to a salesman about buying a $2,000 reproduction 1800s six-shooter, while he popped the cylindar in and out while mashing lips with his girlfriend (dude was talented, if irritating).

There was even an understated, black-trenchcoated counter-culture looking guy, with facial hair, long black hair, tiny black glasses, and looking at the gun we'd come to check out -- a Heckler and Koch (HK) Universal Self-Loading Pistol (USP) Tactical handgun.

Nice gun.

And remember, guns don't kill people. Bullets kill people.

Unless you're pistol-whipped to death. Then, technically, the gun killed you ...