Hunting For the “Grail” Gun In the Modern Era

Above, the gun department at the Albuquerque Cabela's. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

Since I moved to New Mexico eight years ago, I have purchased three firearms. Two were shotguns and one was a rifle.

The shotguns were a Remington 870 Express purchased at a Lake Havasu, Arizona gun store and a Winchester Model 12 purchased online through Guns.com. The rifle was a Winchester 94 (now my favorite gun) from a gun store in Albuquerque, New Mexico. If one could call the Winchester 94 my "grail" gun, that would be an accurate description. I had been on the lookout for a pre-64 rifle for a while. 

These days more people are making good use of the Internet to find that one (or more) firearm they've coveted. 

The NRA's American Rifleman online magazine posted an article on hunting for the "grail" gun in the modern era. 

They begin it with:

There’s accumulating guns—and then there’s collecting. The thing that distinguishes the latter from the former is that there’s generally a theme to a collection. It’s not that one’s better than the other, and there’s often a fair bit of overlap, but collectors generally have a running list in their head of desired acquisitions; the next “Grail gun” to add to the safe, if you will.

This used to be more difficult in the olden times. However, along came the various web forums, whether brand-centric, themed around a certain type of shooting sport or hunting or specific to a state or other geographic location. Collecting, say, Rugers or Smith & Wessons became a lot easier when you could peruse the buy/sell/trade board on a Ruger or Smith & Wesson fan site.

Then came the auction sites. If you weren’t aware, in its earliest days, eBay actually allowed the listing of firearms before getting cold feet at the regulatory and political morass and pulling out in 1999. The market vacuum was quickly filled by specialized firearm-auction sites. These days, if one has a sufficient bank balance and some leisure time to surf the internet, a lot of the drama and suspense has been taken from the previously intriguing hunt for the next piece in a collection.

While this is convenient, it somehow feels less than—well, sporting.

To read more, go here. 

Why Nobody Shops At Gun Stores Anymore

Why Nobody Shops at Gun Stores Anymore video from Ivan's Journal.

Summary:

There's a fellow who runs a little shop up near Providence who told a reporter something that stuck with me. He rang up more gun transfers for guys who bought their firearms somewhere else than he sold guns off his own shelves. His cut? Thirty dollars. And his own sales were down about twenty-three percent from a couple years earlier.

In this video:

The number that breaks the easy assumption: roughly fifteen million firearms sold last year, down five years running, but only coming off the historic 2020 buying spike, not a collapsing market

Why the number of licensed dealers still dropped from just under 53,000 to about 46,000 between 2021 and 2025, more than a thirteen percent decline, even while total guns sold stayed enormous

What sites like GunBroker actually changed: not shipping guns to your door, which federal law forbids outright, but stripping local dealers of the pricing information advantage they used to hold

The federal law fact that flips the whole story: every online gun purchase still has to route through a local licensed dealer for the background check and transfer, meaning the customer never actually left the shop, the shop just lost the sale margin down to a flat transfer fee

Why the explosion in licensed manufacturers, more than doubling to over twenty thousand in a decade, makes it mathematically impossible for any single shop to stock what buyers now want

How Dick's Sporting Goods and Walmart pulling back from firearms removed the casual, low-commitment on-ramp that used to bring first-time buyers into gun ownership at all

The real history most people miss: the corner gun store already died once, in the early 1990s, when licensing fees jumped twenty-fold and kitchen-table dealer numbers collapsed from over 240,000 to around 80,000 in just a few years, decades before the internet had anything to do with it

How rising state-level licensing and compliance costs are squeezing today's independent dealers hardest, since thin margins mean any new fixed cost disproportionately hurts the small shop over the chain

Why the January 2026 suppressor tax stamp elimination distorted late-2025 sales data, with buyers simply delaying purchases rather than abandoning the market, followed by a post-cutoff surge in applications and sales

The practical case for still using a local shop: fit and feel you can't get from a photo, the used rack for real bargains and hands-on inspection, gunsmith relationships, and honest math showing that once shipping and transfer fees are added, online savings often shrink to almost nothing on common guns

The important legal distinction between firearms, which must pass through a dealer, and ammunition, which in many states can ship directly to your door with no transfer required at all

The gun store didn't become obsolete. Its job changed, from seller to gatekeeper, the one place the law says you have to pass through. The owners surviving are the ones who stopped trying to beat the internet on price and started charging fair for what only they can offer: the transfer, the used rack, the smithing, and advice from someone who's actually handled ten thousand guns.

What's your local shop charging for a transfer now, and is it still worth walking in for more than just the pickup?

Note: When I bought my Winchester 94 at Ron Peterson's Firearms in Albuquerque in 2019, there were about 15 customers in the shop.

Turner's Outdoorsman

Above, Turner's Outdoorsman Reseda, California store. 

During my last few years of being a resident of Tarzana, California, my go-to gun store was Turner's Outdoorsman in next-door Reseda.

Specifically, Turner's address is 19329 Vanowen Street, Reseda, CA 91335. 

My dad and I had purchased a number of guns there over the years. The last being my Ruger P95 9mm pistol. 

Besides guns and ammo, Turner's also carries sporting goods such as archery, fishing, hunting, clothing  and training courses.

I had always received good service from them and those in the L.A. area would do well in visiting this store and others. Besides California, Turner's also has stores in Arizona.

To visit the Turner's Outdoorsman website, go here.

What States Have The Most Gun Stores?

Above, Bass Tackle Master in Lake Havasu City. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

Whenever I visit friends in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, I marvel at the number of gun stores in the city. They seem to be as plentiful there as nail salons in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles County. The city of Phoenix has the most in the state.

This raised a question: What states have the most gun stores?

24/7 Wall St. says that the state of Wyoming has the most. Arizona comes in at number 30.

They posted an article on this a year ago and it begins with:

The National Shooting Sports Foundation estimates America’s guns and ammunition industry directly generated over $60.5 billion in economic activity in the last two years alone. Much of that was fueled by record-breaking gun sales following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, as millions of Americans across the country – including many first-time gun buyers – flocked to firearm retailers. 

According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, there are over 56,700 federally licensed gun stores in the United States. Adjusting for population, this comes out to about 17 for every 100,000 Americans. 

In certain parts of the country, however, the concentration of gun stores is far higher than average. This is particularly the case in states with deeply ingrained gun cultures — where gun rights are well protected and where residents are most likely to have a gun in their home. 

Using data from the ATF, 24/7 Wall St. identified the states with the most gun stores. We ranked all 50 states on the number of federally licensed firearm dealers, including pawn shops, for every 100,000 residents. ATF firearm retailer data is current as of October 2023 and was adjusted using population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2022 American Community Survey. 

 To read more, go here.

Browning Brothers Gun Store

The following was posted in one of the Winchester 94 Facebook groups.

It is an interesting photo of the Browning Brothers gun store in Ogden, Utah. Many gun designs we use today were invented by John Moses Browning.

According to the post:

Browning Brothers gun shop, Ogden, Utah Territory, 1882. From left to right: Thomas Samuel Browning, George Emmett Browning, John Moses Browning, Matthew Sandefur Browning, Jonathan Edmund Browning, an unnamed dog, and Frank Rushton. Note the sign with the misspelling of “ammunition.” (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

The building still exists. Utah members of E Clampus Vitus should plaque the location if they haven't done so already.

Visa, Mastercard Pause Decision To Track Gun Shop Purchases

 

A victory for the Second Amendment came after Visa and MasterCard announced their "pause" in implementing the decision to categorize gun shop purchases.

While this is good news, this doesn't go far enough. They need to definitely end this categorization permanently.

From the Associated Press:

NEW YORK (AP) — Visa and Mastercard paused their decision to start categorizing purchases at gun shops, a significant win for conservative groups and Second Amendment advocates who felt that tracking gun shop purchases would inadvertently discriminate against legal firearms purchases.

The decision is, at the same time, also a defeat for gun control groups. There had been hope that categorizing credit and debit card purchases would allow authorities to potentially see red flags — like significant ammunition purchases — before a mass shooting could happen.

After Visa and Mastercard announced their plans to implement a separate merchant category code for gun shop purchases, the payment networks got significant pushback from the gun lobby as well as conservative politicians. A group of 24 GOP state attorneys general wrote a letter to the payment networks threatening legal action against Visa and Mastercard if they moved forward with their plan.

To read more, go here. 

Ammo Shortage Creating Long Lines At Gun Shops

The ammunition shortage continues.

I've noticed a drop in the sound of gunshots at the community shooting range lately. Granted, we've been having snowstorms coming into the area, but it is more likely that the ammo shortage is causing shooters to maintain their supply and not shoot.

The shortage is causing long lines at gun stores of people seeking ammo.

According to the American Rifleman (NRA):

The record setting pace of ammunition sales and resultant shortage is not slowing. In fact, Florida’s Fox35 News reported this week that people are camping out as early at 2 a.m. in front of an area sporting goods store to buy cartridges once it opened—despite a three-box limit.

“I just come here on Monday. Tuesday, I go to Buena Vista. Wednesday, I go to East Colonial. Thursday, Buena Vista. Friday, East Colonial. Sunday, I go to Millenia,” David Godkin told the reporter as he explained his methodology of staying supplied for his frequent range sessions. It’s enough to keep the avid enthusiast active at the firing line, but he’s also concerned the new administration may limit future purchases.

The situation’s similar out west. On Jan. 9, Orem’s KSL TV covered, “An amazing sight outside a Utah gun store as hundreds lined up to buy ammo.” There were 200 people waiting in a line before the store opened. News had spread that the company was getting a shipment of 5.56 NATO and .223 Rem. that day and the result was an early morning crowd willing to honor a 200-round limit. “We have seen a rush on guns and ammo before—but never in January,” store employee Chris Hansen told the reporter.

It is a good thing I stocked up on ammo before the shortage began and prices began to spike on what ammo is available.

To read more, go here.