Where to keep a rifle?

The last time we saw our intrepid young marksman, (me), he had found a place to shoot around his new home in Chapel Hill but was trying to find a place to keep his firearms because his apartment complex doesn’t allow weapons.

Ugh.

One idea was to keep a rifle in my car (appropriately locked and cased in the trunk). That’s fine on regular public streets, but then the second I drive onto campus (no guns on school grounds), I’m committing a crime.

Or I could break down the rifle, keeping the barrel in my apartment (no weapon there – just an inert metal tube) and the other assorted bits and pieces in my car (a rifle stock with no barrel is as impotent as a knife handle with no blade).

Then I’d be driving onto campus without a gun, but with an assortment of nuts and bolts that would probably still weird out a few folks. And raise some questions if I ever got pulled over….

Honestly, from what I know about guns, what the law considers a “weapon” (yeah, I’ve spoken with a cop or two), and what I know about UNC’s published weapons regulations (yeah, I’ve read them, including the old ones which specifically allowed us to have weapons for ROTC training), my idea would be kosher.

But imagining trying to explain my high-minded reasoning late one night by the side of the road as I feel the cuffs going on…. I thought I’d look for a better place to keep my guns.

I did speak to one of my law professors about this. She is actually a shooter herself, as she announced to the class one day when we were introducing ourselves and our particular talents.

My prof’s quite an accomplished marksman and passed me along to someone with police department connections, who passed me along to… who I never heard back from….

So finally I worked it out with a buddy of mine who’s a competitive marksman that I keep my gun safe in his basement and just give him a call any time I’d like to go out to the range. So I’ve got a pretty good arrangement.

I’m headed out this week for my first range time in ages, and I’m really looking forward to it.

For a sneak peak into next week’s column, pay a visit to Muzzleloadingforum.com. I’ve got a post on there right now under the “General Muzzleloading” section asking fellow marksmen what they’d like to put in a column about tradition ML.

I look forward to their thoughts….