Gun sales is a tough business. Our social decline and out of control torte system have shackled sellers.
Buying a gun without handling it first makes it almost impossible to weed out the poorly built ones.
On the other hand, such policies have probably reduced the number of non-buyers wanting to come and just paw the merchandise.
At my preferred local gun shop they have display guns they will show customers, but when you purchase one, they get one from the back. I assume they open the box to confirm the serial number when they log it into their bound book, but as far as I can tell they don’t thoroughly inspect the gun, and that’s consistent with some obvious issues I’ve seen on display guns that indicate they don’t thoroughly inspect them either.
The end result is that I’ll see how a display pistol or long gun strikes me for fit and features, but when they bring out the one they actually plan to sell me, I carefully inspect it before I buy it.
That’s the major benefit of buying from a brick and mortar gun store. It used to be unnecessary back in the day when reputable gun shops thoroughly inspected every firearm on arrival and returned anything that was second rate to the wholesaler, most of which ended up in big box stores that didn’t inspect and both bought from the whole sale and sold to the customer at a discount. You got what you paid for.
Now stores like Academy don’t offer any advantage other than having the item in the store for immediate purchase, and local gun shops no longer provide a final QA check.
People buy guns every day on auction sites and forums like this without “trying the trigger”. Granted, you can pay to ship it back with all the attendant hassles where most big box stores won’t do a return on a used gun.
It used to bother me, now it doesn’t. I do welcome all the “I’ll never buy there” types, as it leaves more for me.
The rules aren’t aimed at you. They are aimed at the crazies, as is the case with most laws and rules.
It is amusing that the trigger lock rule extends to cap and ball revolvers.
“Trying the trigger” is a bit of a misnomer. I advise new shooters interested in purchasing a handgun to buy from a local gun shop precisely so they can see if a particular model of handgun fits them properly, in terms of both grip and slight alignment when they bring it up into their sight line. Dry firing and literally “trying the trigger” isn’t part of that process.
It is however something that encourages shooters to buy at a local gun store rather than saving a few bucks buying on line.
The inspection process is important at well for experienced shooters. For example, I bought a used PT-58 once from an Overton’ store just after they had been acquired by Camping World. Their new store policy didn’t allow for slide removal for a thorough inspection. Sure enough, when I got it to the range it would not fire as the lever that activated the firing pin safety had been broken off. They had however agreed to accept returns if there were any mechanical issues. I returned it and it ended up being the last gun I bought from them. I did go back a few months later and they no longer had an FFL.
It was unfortunate as Overtons always had a nice selection of surplus handguns in stock and it was a great place to find things like early CZ-75s etc.
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I understand that store policies are the result of knee jerk responses by attorneys who are by nature hard wired to the safest possible response to an event.
But those crazies are literally 1 in a million, and there are other ways to address the issue that don’t impede the other 999,999 people in that million.
