or a coffee pot in the customer area.  The place I worked at had that and you'd have blow hards hanging around all day with free coffee.  Not spending any money, just finger banging and yakking.

Well, every gun shop within a 25 mile area of my home has closed within 5 years except for 1 which is owned by an ex-cop and makes most of his money as a local gun and reloading supply distributor for all the other gun shops.  Total it has been 9 that I can remember in the past 20 years.  Gander Mountain tends to get a lot of gun sales, God only knows why with their prices, and Dick's has now started carrying handguns which surprised the hell out of me when I went looking for a baseball bat for my nephew.

The old saw is "I can tell you how to make a million dollars in the gun biz"




(Start with two million!)


Your competition will be huge conglomerates like Cabellas , bass pro and on line outfits like Bud's gunshop . They all have more money than you

Your other competition is the old guy down the street that just needs something to keep him busy and help him spend his police or army pension.
His inventory is all ready paid off.

The gun business is a hobby business , when the economy sucks folks don't spend much buying themselves toys

It can be done by a smart business guy who comes to the table with a pile of cash and works his but off but then again that same guy could likely make more with a dunkin donuts or a sub shop.

Actually, I'm skeptical that either Bud's or KGC sells "THOUSANDS" of guns every day. I'd be surprised if any distributors do that volume consistently.

I considered a shop some time ago but in the end the "Gander" quandary is what made me walk away from the idea.  In my area there are a handful of shops with a decent selection and significantly lower (20-30% in some cases) prices within 10miles of our local Gander.  Despite that, every time I stop by Gander there are several people actively purchasing guns.  I just couldnt wrap my head around it, if people dont give a shit about price nor service, there is no way you will survive.  Said gun shops all have decent service and friendly employees.

People will go out of their way to save one penny a gallon on gas, but still over pay $100 for a Glock.

What sort of mark-up do you imagine gun shops make on ammo? How often do you think they turn their inventory? I look at the walls of ammo at a well-stocked gun store and just shake my head. I can't imagine what kind of investment it takes to keep a good selection in stock. Just stocking the common stuff would be bad enough but my local shop has all kinds of weird odd-ball ammo. It's got to take a staggering amount of money to do that.

In my area Dick's/Gander are all in fairly large malls or new shopping centers, while the non-chain store B&M FFL's are in the lower-rent areas.  Those guys in Gander are buying b/c their spouses are next door at Target or Linens n Things getting stuff for the house & kids, they've got "permission" to buy a gun, and they're getting it before she changes her mind...

There was a local guy here who did the same sort of thing
Snowmobiles, 4 wheelers, and a small gun shop off in one corner of the building
They eventually got broken into and a bunch of guns stolen.
That prompted them to close the gun shop up
There was a real shortage of even tabletop guys around here in the late 80s early 90s after the only full time gun store closed up and some of the other general merchandise retailers like KMart, Woolworths etc closed up or scaled back their gun sales



My slow time is January
The holidays are over, people blew their wad on gifts so no money for guns or ammo
It's winter, so most of them aren't out shooting
Used guns, meh
I never got into the consignment stuff at all, but this year I've been handling some stuff for guys who are fleeing NY
People wanting to sell guns want top dollar for their used guns, and the guys looking to buy want to pay bottom dollar
I sort of feel sorry for the full time pawn guys trying to make a buck off guns

Not that I'm the norm, but in my years as an FFL, the only good year I had for the  ammo on the shelf was the panic a couple of years ago
Guys were coming in and cleaning the shelf off of a particular caliber because the brick and mortar places were stripped bare by then
Then I eventually couldn't get what I needed to re-stock for the longest time. Did my best to, though
Even with the SAFE act cutting off mail order ammo, I suspect many shooters are having ammo mailed elsewhere out of state and picked up or are buying in bulk out of state and bringing it back
Or they've simply moved. I don't see a lot of the old regulars anymore. Some I know have moved. Some have moved on to other hobbies because Cuomo is doing his best to kill the gun culture in this state....


And what they DO have, their listed quantities are in the single digits
I love the guys who call up for a price check, tell me they want to "think about it" and are mad a month later when the item they price checked weeks ago is out of stock.
With inventories being what they are now, there should be no involved thinking about it
If I can find you what you need and its only showing a handful of units in stock, jump on it because odds are it wont be there tomorrow, let alone a week or a month from now.

Or it's $50 higher... and still out of stock.

$50 NFA transfers. Do you want to hold somebody's merchandise for 4-6 months, deal with the paperwork headaches, and accept responsibility for suppressors and machine guns worth thousands for only $50? I sure wouldn't.

ALL excellent points

Good feedback. My SOT, an arfcommer, does my NFA transfers for much less than that