The Gun Store
Retail Nostalgia
It’s been a while since I’ve been in an honest-to-goodness gun store.
I don’t mean a retail establishment selling firearms and accessories. Those places are pretty common. In fact, most towns with any sort of population will have a gun seller. What I’m talking about is an actual, gen-u-wine old-school “Gun Store.”
The differences between a gun store and firearms sales establishment are as obvious as night and day, or the difference between politicians and normal people. I also find it sad so many youngsters today have never been to a place selling guns, let alone a real gun store.
On the off-chance a young person has wandered into this space and hasn’t been frightened off yet, I’ll share my remembrances of these legendary establishments, which are fast disappearing from the landscape. Without installing a machine to make oat milk extra-foam sugar-free chai cappuccinos, gun stores might be doomed
A Different Kind of Profit & Loss
Making a serious, concerted effort to sell firearms is one of the official criteria nowadays for obtaining a Federal Firearms License — you must make a legitimate attempt to turn a profit in the course of your business. But how silly is that? Don’t the folks in Washington understand what a gun store is really about?
Back in the old days, defined as anything prior to Al Gore’s Internet, a profit was one of the last things a gun store owner worried about. Oh sure, the proprietors wanted to make enough money to keep the doors open another year, but when you got down to it, profit was a minor inconvenience like a buzzing fly or the federal government. Far more important was making sure the coffee pot didn’t run empty.
You see, the gun store was really about establishing a community and offering a space where like-minded people could gather and argue pointlessly for weeks about grip angle, somewhere old men could hang out when their wives ejected them from the house before the bridge club luncheon. The gun store was effectively the center of life for the local shooting community. Commerce was merely the facade this collection of so-called humanity hid behind.
Field Guide
A real gun store was easily identifiable from the second you clanged the little bell hanging over the front door. The focal point was, of course, the sales counter. Cluttered high with old magazines, an ashtray or two, a greasy gun mat and perhaps a rifle bolt or scope, the counter itself was usually a recycled plate glass display case full of handguns. These were occasionally taken out to prove various points in the ongoing dispute of the day and sometimes to even sell! This was especially true when something new arrived — an event which happened like clockwork every month or so. You see, the local gun store didn’t turn the inventory over very frequently.
Behind the counter was a rack of long guns that reflected the local hunting opportunities. Shotguns predominated east and south, while rifles were most common west and north. There were generally one or two brand-new guns still sporting manufacturer tags, followed by a diminishing sequence of rag-tag firearms ranging in condition from “pretty decent” to “Where’d you get this? A lake?”
Somewhere in the shop were a few shelves groaning under a burden of ammunition. Here you’d find exactly two boxes apiece of the more oddball calibers such as the .17 Zipper or .375 H&H Magnum, along with several different loads for the more popular cartridges such as .30-06. The in-demand boxes stayed relatively clean while the others all wore a thick veneer of dust on their sightly dog-eared packaging after years of handling but no purchasing.
Dig hard enough and you’d also probably find a real treasure such as a box of .425 Westley Richards or the .219 Donaldson Wasp. Legend has it this last one was ordered for Teddy Roosevelt but he went west and never showed up to complete his purchase.
The other things in the store gave a clue about the owner of the store. If he or she was an avid reloader, you’d have bags of shotgun shell hulls, bottles of powder and boxes of bullets. If hunting was important, license holders and suppurating bottles of deer urine would be offered for sale.
The Crowd
Hand’s down, the most defining characteristic of a real gun store was the standard-issue collective of geezers sitting around the counter. In fact, this was so ubiquitous I sometimes wondered as a child if there was a federal law requiring a person in faded bib overalls to be sitting at a gun store counter during all business hours.
The thing was, it was literally impossible to escape notice from “the regulars” while making a purchase and it was considered an important part of the sales ritual to positively acknowledge their sarcastic remarks.
These fellows often reminded me of a flock of buzzards sitting around on an old leafless tree, waiting for something to pitch up dead. In the gun store, they sat around primarily waiting for someone to come through the door and either ask for a recommendation for purchasing a firearm or to try and sell something. Regardless if the person was a raw neophyte or a former Camp Perry winner, the geezers had plenty to say about the matter. During the hours a customer wasn’t present — roughly 11 hours out of a 12-hour business day — they argued among themselves about anything and everything related to firearms. If you had a sudden urge to get involved in a vicious verbal disagreement regarding the merits of Unique versus 4759, an old-school gun store was the place to go.
Now, when I say “Geezer,” realize I’m speaking as someone on the cusp of geezerhood myself so no slight is intended. In fact, I actually looked up to the herd of old reprobates sitting around smoking cigarettes, spitting and cussing all day. I couldn’t wait to become one myself.
And in a twist of irony, here is yet another example of the old truism, “be careful what you wish for, you might get it.”
But who cares about truisms anyway? Geezers are typically male, retired, range in age from 65 years to older than metamorphic rock, and spend inordinate amounts of jawing, drinking coffee and offering unsolicited advice to customers. From their well-worn perch on a stool at the counter, they can be a great source of information about vexing shooting problems or current game trends. However, you should always take their advice with a grain of salt since none of them have actually shot a firearm or hunted since the Eisenhower administration. They knew if they did, there was a chance they’d miss the latest dirty joke going around.
Shortcomings
In spite of my nostalgia for the old-school gun shop, there were downsides. As mentioned, product didn’t turn over very frequently so you couldn’t be sure if ammo you bought had been manufactured in the current century or the can of gunstock varnish hadn’t turned into a puck of yellow goo. However, the most endearing part of the gun shop was also its most aggravating — those regulars.
As mentioned earlier, you couldn’t purchase or even shop without some nosy Nelly(s) offering his advice on your choice. Most of the time, the commentary skewed toward critical if not outright hostile and sometimes a local gun store could almost seem unfriendly to outsiders. Don’t worry — it was unfriendly toward outsiders but most of the time they wouldn’t physically harm you. The damage was purely psychological.
However, despite the sometimes-unwelcoming atmosphere, the aged merchandise and non-bargain prices, an old-time gun shop was always one of my favorite places to visit.
Plus, whatever you need — guns, bullets, powder, primers or advice — you can always go to the one place where shooting supplies, information and opinions can be found in abundance. It’s a special world where you will find everything necessary for a successful day at the range or afield, or to simply revel in the shooting lifestyle.
It’s a place called The Internet.
