Let’s review your jabs at or about me in the order I see them posted:

1. “You don’t know what you are talking about.” Gee, this was a sweet opening, almost certain to forge a lasting friendship. Problem is, I do know what I’m talking about and you have the facts wrong.

2. “You are on the wrong track.” I guess you’re not vying for the diplomacy award, since it doesn’t seem to occur to you that a politer way to phrase this would be something like, “Perhaps you should try a different approach.”

3. The permit process is “getting easier and easier (for those who follow instructions well).” Actually, the law under consideration makes it a lot harder, so again you are mistaken, although I understand the parenthetical to mean that I can’t follow instructions, as if you would know. This is a real cheap shot,

4. “You deviated from the system. Trying to buy a gun privately or
import one is a futile attempt. Go to the store like everybody else.” Read charitably, as I was initially inclined to do, this is a nice ironic observation. The system does seem to be geared to gun stores. However, it shouldn’t be and this isn’t what the law says, and you’re wrong about “everybody else.” By this phrase you mean people like you, not most gun owners in CR. Are you this much of a conformist that you believe that a person who follows the law but does so differently is a deviant?

5. “Maybe they have been reading your rants here and just want to mess with you (I would).” Actually, you began trying to mess with me, a quite rude response to my initial comment (you were factually incorrect on top of it), and I can’t understand the source of your venom. What are you pissed at? I simply mentioned an issue about gun policy in CR that I believe is mistaken. You are free to disagree with me, but why attack me personally from your first post?

My advice to you is to put your guns in a drawer for a full month and navigate life without them. Most people after all go about life unarmed. I suggest this because in my experience gun guys sometimes use their guns to offset a deficiency in social skills. Unfortunately, this seems to fit you. You are very impolite, and when wrong, simply increase the insults. It’s as if you want to assert your superiority, even though it is unmerited, and I would imagine carry a gun to make sure you maintain it. Go ahead, I dare you: Go without a gun for a month and see if you can learn to interact with people based upon equality and reason. Heck, you might even learn some manners.

Mind, I could care less about you. We aren’t friends and never will be. All I care about is my community. Your presence in it worsens it, so it’s in my self interest for you to learn how to be a less offensive member.

As for the brothels, except for suspecting that it would diminish your prejudice if you simply knew a few hookers, even as I suspect that if you got out of the motor vehicle with which you delight in getting free parking it would help you understand the bulk of the population that doesn’t drive, I don’t give a flip what your judgmental prejudices might be. Unfortunately, I have yet to meet an expat (which I assume you are from your English) who isn’t part of the problem, but who knows, maybe you are the exception. If you are an exception, then far be it from me to question your ignorant aloofness. To my mind, people can’t be expected to dog every issue, especially those they aren’t a part of. However, again, most expats are part of the problem, and at minimum as members of the community might want to inform themselves about it.

Not least, I think this started with my mentioning that anyone who earns $14 a trick, and is usually raising children on that, might not be well served by a policy that requires them to pay a couple hundred bucks, give or take, plus make a minimum of five trips to various offices to get a legal gun permit, all before buying an overpriced gun, in order to protect themselves. Your counterargument seems to be that they’re drug addicts and the poor shouldn’t have guns anyway. This is your position (stripped of course of the personal insults), isn’t it? Let’s just be clear where you stand: You deserve a gun because you have enough money not to care about the costs; those who must care about the costs, don’t have your same gun rights.

Here’s a deal: If you want to insult me one more time, I’ll give you a free shot. Go ahead, post that I’m erotically attracted to goldfish–I don’t care what you say–and I’ll let you have the last word. Honestly, you’re not worth my time. There’s so much remedial instruction you need that I couldn’t begin to help you. So take a free shot.

Even enlist your friend Bob. Actually, he’s better at this than you, since he couches his insults in a kind of social-worker “can’t we all get along” therapeutic rhetoric. He comes off as a nice guy while being mean-spirited. I’ll give him a free shot too.

But if you want two free shots, take it off the posts. I have listed my email, go ahead and insult me there.

Or–here’s an idea–if you want to discuss the issues, feel free to post, and if I have thoughts to add, I’ll post them.

I’m just sick and tired of your uniformed and thoughtless arrogant insults.

Regarding bringing in illegally, you’re obviously on your own. My total sense from border crossings is that it would be a slam dunk. You could almost wear one on your belt and nobody would notice. However, don’t they have gun-sniffing dogs nowadays? And if you got caught, you might not like the consequences. I think this is one of those odds issues in which the likelihood of getting caught is low, but the penalties for getting caught are high.

Also, as far as street guns are concerned, you have to develop relationships of trust with street people first. I would imagine that Rochard has no such relationships, since he believes black market guns are more expensive than retail guns (they aren’t) but you have to be trusted by the guys who know the guys before they’ll risk selling a gun (unless I suppose you want to grossly overpay). So buying illegally usually takes some time and relationship cultivation. Ideally, of course, you’d cultivate the relationship anyway, and buying a gun is thus incidental.

As an aside, the best guys to have relationships with are either Nicas or Ticos from Limón. I don’t mean to disparage Nicas, but they are used to hustling to do “biznis” and with some it doesn’t hurt to have Sandinista credentials. You have to show you’re a “Nica lover” before they’ll trust you. The Ticos from Limón, well, many are used to the gun trade.

Also, I suppose, selection is more limited for street guns. It depends upon what the friend of a friend has or comes across. They don’t have display windows or receive shipments of the latest models.

Anyway, I don’t know your situation, but if guns are a main concern and you aren’t already a permanent resident or citizen of CR, you might want to look at Panama. You won’t be able to buy one legally in CR for many years, it takes almost as long to cultivate relationships with street guys to buy one illegally, and toting them across the border illegally could turn into a real nightmare if caught. The penalties are stiff, and you might go directly to jail.

Fair point about the cost of ammo (though the solution is obviously to lower the cost) and wanting those with guns to be sufficiently trained to be responsible with them. However, we seem to disagree over how to achieve this goal. You seem to be content to try to keep guns out of the hands of the poor, while I want to lower the barriers of responsible legal gun ownership for them. I think I win this debate, since as this story and lots of data show, high barriers to responsible legal gun ownership don’t prevent the poor from being armed but rather encouraged them to be armed with illegal weapons, no practice, etc.

As for counting every cent, your real transportation cost includes the cost of the vehicle, depreciation, insurance, etc. Mine are surely more representative of those paid by the poor and middle class, since they don’t own cars.

You are right, as I recall, that the gun shops only charge $10 for the lawyer, so my $75 lawyer fee was a lot higher. However, I was also saving $200 off the price of the gun and there seemed to be a fair amount of legal paperwork that the gun shops probably have ready and thus indirectly pass along to their customers in higher prices.