The Thrill of the Hunt

There aren't many female cops working undercover as gunrunners. In most people's eyes, gunrunning is a man's game. It just doesn't seem right for a female to be running guns, but that's what I do - or did. I went from uniformed cop to detective to undercover assignments in less than two years after graduating from the police academy, and stepped into my role posing as a gunrunner about six months ago. Guns have always fascinated me, maybe because I grew up around them. My father was a small arms instructor in the United States Army, and he taught me how to shoot when I was twelve years old. Before then, actually. By the time I was in college, I could hold my own with anyone, male or female, on the rifle or pistol range. Not only did my father teach me to shoot, he taught me how to reload my own ammunition using his equipment. Shotguns, rifles, handguns, I could reload any ammo made. Maybe it was that interest in guns that led me to a career as a policewoman, and more specifically, to an undercover role as a gunrunner. Seems there are more women involved in serious crime today than ever before. That's why some of my supervisors, who thought that my being female might make potential gun buyers less likely to think that I was a cop than one of my male counterparts, believed I could get away with passing myself off as a gunrunner. I thought their reasoning was seriously flawed, but it was their call, not mine. I'd give it a try. One thing that was in my favor, though, was that posing as a gunrunner was not my first undercover assignment. While I was training for that stellar role, I spent six months undercover in a sting operation as a buyer of stolen luxury cars. Before that operation was over, we'd shut down three chop shops and broken up two major auto theft rings. And I'd enjoyed every minute of it. Next, I spent a few months posing as a fence buying stolen art. That role proved to be an eye-opener for me because I'd had no idea how much stolen art was on the market. At any rate, it was after that operation shut down that I became a gunrunner. Of course, even with those two undercover assignments successfully completed, I didn't just step into the role of gunrunner without plenty of additional training. I made sure that nobody, and I mean nobody, knew more about guns than I did. That means I studied makes and calibers, wholesale and retail prices, and street values. I also consulted with anyone and everyone I could find who knew anything about the gun trade to learn which guns were most in demand and, most importantly, the ever-changing dynamics of the gun trade. The men in charge of the police armory taught me how to disassemble all of the guns I'd be likely to encounter. When I'd finished with those armory instructors, I felt confident in tearing down and reassembling most makes and models of guns, both of foreign and domestic manufacture.