Want to expand? Consider a gun shop-plus business

Shooting Industry, Jan, 2004 by Massad Ayoob

When I was a kid in small-town America, there weren't enough people in the little town to sustain a full-time, full-service gun shop. If you wanted to buy a gun without leaving the community you went to Fox Hardware. The back portion of the hardware store was devoted to guns and fishing tackle.

The rifles and shotguns were standard, mainstream fare. There were Winchester, Remington, Marlin, Mossberg and Savage with its Stevens and Fox sub-lines. All were sporting guns. Back then, in that part of the country, dedicated defensive long guns were limited to 20-inch-barreled shotguns that only police departments wanted to buy. Most homes had a deer rifle, a shotgun and a .22--it was understood these would probably suffice for self-defense.

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Fox Hardware also did a brisk business in handguns. There were sporting sidearms, of course: Iver Johnson and Harrington & Richardson, Ruger, High Standard and, naturally, Colt and Smith & Wesson.

The latter two brands also were on display in the glass case in defensive forms. A customer would generally find a Colt .45 semi-auto displayed, along with Colt and a Smith & Wesson .38 snubbies, to give the purchaser a choice. Concealed carry was common, and the snub-nosed .38 in one of the two brands was what people carried back then. When one of the models was sold another one was ordered.

It was in that little shop that I first marveled at the feathery heft of an aluminum-framed revolver. My dad was a good customer and the clerk indulged his request to let me handle one.

Today, there are still gun departments in multi-business shops in small-town America. I think of Fox Hardware whenever I teach at the Firearms Academy of Seattle, located in the small Lewis County town of Onalaska, Wash.

It's a very gunfriendly area with a high density of not only gun owners but also gun enthusiasts. However, it doesn't have a huge population. Only a couple of gun shops have thrived there, and then only in the population centers. A monthly gun show satisfies collectors' urge to indulge themselves.

So, where do gun customers shop in Onalaska? At a little shop called Nylla's Variety. One corner of the variety store is the gun section. And, it does extremely well.