Friday, March 18, 2011

Buying your first gun in Pakistan

Below are guidelines for anyone day dreaming about buying his/her first handgun in Pakistan.

Saving the money: This is the first stage, it can range from a few months to several years. Your saving target keeps on running away from you due to two reasons - you keep on liking one gun after the other or the gun you want to buy is becoming expensive.

Getting a licence: A very easy step if you believe in the instructions written outside the office of license issuing authority, but will become a very difficult step the moment you will start following the instructions.  

Buying the gun: You have bought it.

Your gun is clone: Almost everyone in your circle of friends would tell you that your gun is not original but a clone. This thought would give you sleepless nights. A friend of mine had a sleepless night, when someone told him that my friend's Stoeger Cougar 9mm, is a clone. The person who would say that has never owned your gun.

Buying the ammunition: In Pakistan, most of the gun owners save a lot of money to buy their first gun. They completely ignore the ammunition. Ammunition is getting expensive day by day. I know a lot of people who have bought expensive guns but can't afford to buy ammunition. Their guns have no other work except to be shown off to friends in drawing room and to prove how reliable and durable the gun is, the owner often shows his friends youtube videos of the gun being fired in some other place on the planet.

Functions of your gun: You will keep the cardboard box of the gun with as much care as that of the gun's because the new owner will not give you good rate if he didn't get the cardboard box.
You will put less ammo through the gun than lubricating oil. Ammunition is expensive. Many gun enthusiasts in Pakistan fulfill the hobby just by cleaning their gun.
You will not go to firing range because there is no firing range in you area or the ammunition is so damn expensive. 


Free advice: Buy an entry level gun and purchase a lot of ammunition and practice your shooting. Two things will happen, either you will develop a strong passion for the sport or will leave the hobby altogether.

Personal experience: I bought a handgun first - a 15 shot tokarev (TT). It was a good entry level gun. I am glad I didnt invest a lot of money on buying it. The price of the ammunition fired from the pistol outdid the handgun's price.
I then bought a shotgun Baikal MP 153 and fell in love with shotgunning. My handgun started collecting dust in the cabinet. I gifted it to a friend. On the other hand, my shotgun accompanies me regularly on clay shooting and it regularly eats ammunition boxes.

3 comments:

  1. i hope you did not mention me here.
    apalo.

    ReplyDelete
  2. hahaha, you are mentioned as a rich friend who buys a new gun after every six months, in some other post.

    ReplyDelete