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I admit I haven't done all that many FTF's from the NWFA classifieds, but ran into something today that threw me off a bit and wondered if there was some etiquette issue I am ignorant of.

General info: I met up with a person to make a non FFL purchase A public parking lot, and granted, it was a fairly valuable item, but I was asked to show I wasn't carrying before approaching. I declined... and the person decided he didn't want to continue with the transaction. I figured that's his choice so I just left.

My thought though, if I'm the one who has obviously just showed up with a wad a cash, shouldn't "I" be the one concerned about being jacked??

I'm a clean cut average every day fellow and my vehicle is clean and certainly no clunker (newer model F250 deisel). The person has nearly 200 positive feedback, no negatives, and there was no prior notice not to carry during our transacton.

That leaves me to wonder if I missed something somewhere in the "rules" that councils not to carry during FTF transactions... or... what's up with that?? Me personally, it's never even occured to me to even ask if someone is carrying or not. I mean... NWFA members... more than not, I'm going to assume they are and have absolutely no problem with that.

I respect someones right to feel differently, but the request made me extremely uncomfortable.
 
That's weird. I expect people to be armed when we meet. No such rule exists and I would ignore if it did. I've had a gun (or two) with me on every FTF transaction I've made. Don't like it? Would like it a lot less if ya got stupid.
 
That's weird. I expect people to be armed when we meet. No such rule exists and I would ignore if it did. I've had a gun (or two) with me on every FTF transaction I've made. Don't like it? Would like it a lot less if ya got stupid.
Totally this.
It would be good to know who it was so no one else wastes time trying to deal with them. Maybe leave appropriate feedback to inform others.
 
Totally this.
It would be good to know who it was so no one else wastes time trying to deal with them. Maybe leave appropriate feedback to inform others.
Well. The person has a ton of positive feedback with no negatives so I wanted to first clarify if I wasn't somehow missing out on some rule or unspoken etiquette issue before doing anything to tarnish their rep.

I know I can be a little oblivious at times and don't have many FTF's with folks from this community under my belt.

I guess it's possible he recently had a bad experience and his request is "new policy" for him(?) He simply forgot to mention it to me before meeting up... honest mistake(??) Kinda strange to have all that feedback with no one mentioning it before. I can't imagine at least some others wouldn't feel as uncomfortable as I did being asked to show, though.
 
That's weird I just assume anybody I meet off here is carrying. An armed society is a polite society and there's a reason shootings happen in gun free zones. And since you have several positive feedbacks it makes it even more weird. I will say there are strange ducks everywhere even in our group when Covid first started early on before the mask mandate when nobody was wearing a mask I met a member at a ffl who showed up in a full face military respirator/gas mask and basically refused to take it off until the store owner said he wasn't gonna do the transfer if he didn't.
 
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It would be good to know who it was so no one else wastes time trying to deal with them. Maybe leave appropriate feedback to inform others.
^^^This, it could even be neutral if you didn't want to leave a negative, but the bottom line is this person wasted your time. If they didn't want a firearm present at a firearm related transaction (like a weirdo) they should have said so prior to arranging a meeting at which point you could have declined without the drive and loss of time you'll never get back.
 
I'd be mighty suspicious myself if I was bringing a wad of cash to buy something and the seller wanted to make sure I didn't have a gun first... why would they want you to not be armed? So you can't defend yourself?... maybe its a stretch but I'd of told them to F* off just for asking.
 
If I'm meeting a stranger with a valuable item or a lot of cash, you can assume I'm going to be armed. Furthermore, there is no way, including stripping all the way down, to prove visually that you aren't armed.
 
That's extremely weird, IMO. It's never occurred to me to ask whether the other person was carrying, and no one has ever asked me. It's a safe assumption that nearly 100% of the other people were and that 100% of the time, I was as well… which is exactly how it ought to be.

I have to imagine this has to be a recently-adopted personal policy for the user in question… hard to imagine someone could've accumulated a 200 feedback score with that sort of rule.
 
I admit I haven't done all that many FTF's from the NWFA classifieds, but ran into something today that threw me off a bit and wondered if there was some etiquette issue I am ignorant of.

General info: I met up with a person to make a non FFL purchase A public parking lot, and granted, it was a fairly valuable item, but I was asked to show I wasn't carrying before approaching. I declined... and the person decided he didn't want to continue with the transaction. I figured that's his choice so I just left.

My thought though, if I'm the one who has obviously just showed up with a wad a cash, shouldn't "I" be the one concerned about being jacked??

I'm a clean cut average every day fellow and my vehicle is clean and certainly no clunker (newer model F250 deisel). The person has nearly 200 positive feedback, no negatives, and there was no prior notice not to carry during our transacton.

That leaves me to wonder if I missed something somewhere in the "rules" that councils not to carry during FTF transactions... or... what's up with that?? Me personally, it's never even occured to me to even ask if someone is carrying or not. I mean... NWFA members... more than not, I'm going to assume they are and have absolutely no problem with that.

I respect someones right to feel differently, but the request made me extremely uncomfortable.
Never heard of anything like that. It's his right to ask I suppose but I've never heard of anything like it. I would expect any responsible gun owner to be carrying and they should expect me to be. Meet in a public place. Its mutual respect. It's not like you are meeting some hood in a back alley or something. Weird.

I like the idea of leaving feedback that someone mentioned above. It will save the rest of us time by not having to go through the same experience you did.
 
I'd add that I agree with the people that have said it's probably worth a neutral or even negative feedback. It's fine for someone to set all sorts of terms for a sale/trade: you could refuse to sell to Ducks fans, or anyone with a goatee, or Mustang drivers, or whatever else as long as that's understood ahead of time but it's in really poor form to surprise someone with previously undeclared terms once already at the meet-up.
 
I'd add that I agree with the people that have said it's probably worth a neutral or even negative feedback. It's fine for someone to set all sorts of terms for a sale/trade: you could refuse to sell to Ducks fans, or anyone with a goatee, or Mustang drivers, or whatever else as long as that's understood ahead of time but it's in really poor form to surprise someone with previously undeclared terms once already at the meet-up.
Well said! If you know about it ahead of time and are ok with it that's one thing. But surprises are no fun for anyone imo.
 
as long as that's understood ahead of time but it's in really poor form to surprise someone with previously undeclared terms once already at the meet-up.
This is it. Would be negative feedback from me. I've done over a hundred FTF transactions dating back to around 2004 with members from every firearms forum existing (some no longer with us, most transactions with the old SGO and SGN forum members) -- and being unarmed was never, ever mentioned -- dunno why it'd even be brought up since this is an RKBA community. Maybe a few times the question came up, "So what do you carry?"
 
Ridiculous request, if you're armed, I'm keeping mine.

At the very least, seller must be upfront about it so I can tell them to sod off and call off the transaction.
 
I'd add that I agree with the people that have said it's probably worth a neutral or even negative feedback. It's fine for someone to set all sorts of terms for a sale/trade: you could refuse to sell to Ducks fans, or anyone with a goatee, or Mustang drivers, or whatever else as long as that's understood ahead of time but it's in really poor form to surprise someone with previously undeclared terms once already at the meet-up.
Agreed, personally I'd go auto-pilot on WTF is coming?
 

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