You don’t find a lot of retail businesses that officially turn away buyers. But when I visited the John Jovino Gun Shop, the city’s oldest, the mildest inquiry elicited a swift and gruff response. Show me your police identification, I was told, or goodbye. The store does not sell to civilians.

Among the reasons this policy is remarkable is that it isn’t actually true. John Jovino does sell to civilians, as a subsequent phone call confirmed. But apparently it is not eager to do so.

To run a gun shop in this of all cities is to weather a great deal of regulatory  even hostile  scrutiny. In 1993, John Jovino in particular proved that there is such a thing as bad publicity, when a Columbia professor linked its wares to nearly 1 percent of the gun crimes in the city. Since then, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has made the tightening of the city’s gun-control laws one of the proudest hallmarks of his administration. Last week, he redoubled his efforts to export them to the rest of America.

The laws on the city’s books are just part of the story, however. And the several months, and several hundred dollars, that it takes to get a permit are just the beginning of the challenge for those New Yorkers seeking the added confidence  or risk  of a handgun beneath their pillow.