You feel like an idiot. A sucker. You walk thru the park, feeling sorry for yourself. Hands in pockets, head down, moping behind your sad cigarette.
It is in the depths of this sour-mood that you come across a grade-school boy with a sling shot; he is plucking squirrels out of trees with well aimed shots, using naught but rocks he gathered. The veil lifts as a thought occurs to you!
You introduce yourself as a secret agent and you offer a straight trade: his slingshot for a REAL gun! You explain it jams often and all that, but the boy doesn't care, greedily accepting the trade. He runs off, hooting and hollering with joy. This will surely not end badly or come back on you.
With your new slingshot you can practice all over town without making loud racket certain to attract the police. Stealth violence. All the bang with none of the noise. Who is the idiot now? Not you!
It seems so fool-proof, even a child can master it. Alas, three days of constant practice later, you remain unable to hit even a single target with the stupid thing. Worse, as a final capping to all your indignities, the elastic pull band splits and thrwaps you in the eye, leaving it red and swollen shut. You are marked as inept.
Cursing the day you ever met that kid, you toss the slingshot into the trash.
Are you bound? Bound to be weaponless.
Some half-fist-sized rocks around the park will have to do. You pocket them, discretely. They are all you got now.