Category: Allies

If you’re reading an article on this site, you almost assuredly have preferences of where you like to shoot. Indeed, a good range can be many things. It can be an oasis from the stresses and pressures of modern life, giving us a place to unwind and do some ballistic meditation.

It can be a place of growth, where we can train in ways that provide us with the skills and mindset to defend ourselves and our family. At other times, the shooting range is a rallying point for a larger community, bringing us into contact with all kinds of Second Amendment advocates and hobbyists.

Of course, most of us have also been to those kinds of ranges. A great many indoor ranges are dark, dingy, and disorganized — the air thick with smoke thanks to a ventilation system perpetually on its last legs.

Some are simply unwelcoming, staffed by armchair commandos more interested in establishing themselves as the smartest guys in the room rather than bringing new shooters into the fold. At the same time, I’m leery of outdoor shooting holes in the middle of nowhere — with the potential for a “laissez faire” approach to range management.

If you remember a time when a range trip or gun store visit made you feel intimidated or uncomfortable, you’re not alone — those were also the initial and unfortunate experiences of Range USA founder Tom Willingham. So, Tom decided to draw on his business acumen and create a better retail experience.

The results of those efforts resulted in Tom’s first shooting range opening in Cincinnati, Ohio back in 2012. The profits of that first location were reinvested into a second, and third, and fourth. Flash forward to the present, and Range USA is ready to celebrate the grand opening of its 50th gun store. Today, the company has the pleasure of calling itself the largest operator of indoor shooting ranges anywhere in the world.

To understand what makes Range USA different, I sat down for a conversation with Jimmy McManus, Range USA’s Vice President.

A Clear Difference

Jimmy was clear to explain that each of the 50 separate locations reflects Tom’s vision of what an indoor range should be. Facilities are clean, uncluttered, well-lit, and stocked with a wide variety of expertly maintained rentals and new firearms available for purchase.

Jimmy also highlighted a strong, service-based culture that differentiates Range USA as a whole. Hiring begins by selecting friendly folks who are used to greeting guests with a smile. Employees don’t receive paid commission, so any firearms sold reflect the staff’s best efforts to match the right people with the right firearms. Store leaders and assistant store leaders are promoted from within, which further reflects Range USA’s commitment to its staff and building the right energy throughout its locations.

What might be a little less obvious are the efforts Range USA has taken to mirror the “one stop” nature of some of America’s successful retailers. Through the Range USA website, customers can find more than 30,000 products in stock, including not only guns and ammunition, but also a wide selection of optics, accessories, and even suppressors. All items, even those requiring an FFL, can ship to the customer’s nearest Range USA location, minimizing the time between unboxing and putting one’s gear to use.

Range USA also has a wide variety of in-person training to match just about wherever a shooter might be in terms of skill level. Beginner handgun classes can show a novice the ropes, and dedicated classes for subjects like defensive shooting and concealed carry are available, often in both intermediate and advanced levels. Additionally, one-on-one training can be scheduled at a number of Range USA locations, depending on available staff.

Building Community

At this point, you might have arrived at the correct assumption that Range USA is well-stocked, well-staffed, and well-considered. However, when I was talking with Jimmy, there was one thought that kept running through my mind: these guys get it.

Specifically, Range USA understands where they fit in with respect to the larger landscape of the shooting sports and promotion of gun rights. “We’ve joked about having a statistic somewhere like a fast food restaurant,” Jimmy said. “In our case, over 10 million have shot on our ranges.” Last year alone, Range USA’s figures showed that 2 million shooters were served.

But here’s an even more eye-opening breakdown of that statistic: Jimmy estimates that 350,000 of their customers last year were first-time shooters with absolutely no experience with firearms or shooting in general. That makes Range USA one of the largest “top of funnel” firearms retailers in the United States.

In an effort to bring even more newcomers into the shooting sports, Range USA placed a strong focus on the needs of female shooters, a perennially underserved demographic. Here, their “Lady Sure Shots” program has been a roaring success. Held the second Saturday of every month, women get free rentals and free range time, are eligible for discounted monthly memberships, and facilities open 90 minutes early. The events not only attract a great number of women who have never shot a gun in their life, but they’re also a popular destination for many seasoned female shooters who are eager to make new friends and share their knowledge.

I’ve often wondered how many people never explored shooting as a hobby as a result of feeling like they were walking into an old boys’ club, were matched with the wrong firearm their first time out, or didn’t feel like they were in a safe environment. Range USA is doing everything they can to move in the opposite direction; great pains are taken to ensure that new shooters, specifically, have a nice time and come back again. One doesn’t need to have too much of an active imagination to realize what a boon that is to the Second Amendment.

Your Friends and Neighbors

Indeed, demographics are changing. Jimmy shared with me some of the research they’ve compiled with respect to something we’ve all wondered about: who represents the average shooter? The answer to that question has changed massively in the last four years, he said.

Prior to 2020, the answer was probably what you were expecting. “A lot of our marketing focused on a male head of household aged about 30 to 50,” Jimmy told me. “He probably lives in the suburbs, has an SUV in the driveway, and has a salary somewhere around $100,000. His reason for going to the range likely centers around the idea of protection, for either himself or his family.”

But, while Jimmy said that 21 to 35-year-olds made up only 18% of sales in 2020, that figure has since increased to 47% of Range USA’s business. Now that they’ve recently reached the legal age to fully participate in the sport, they’re eager to explore a multitude of categories and products. They track new releases, are knowledgeable about the latest gear and accessories, and — this is a big one — they view shooting as a social activity. Now, Range USA estimates that about two thirds of their visitors will come with at least one guest.

Guns Through the Eyes of Those Who Rent Them

If you want to know about the failure points of any particular firearm, talk to the men and women who rent them out every day. Consider this: if a rental firearm digests one box of 50 rounds every day, that’s a yearly round count of 18,000. After six years of rental time, that’s more than 100,000 rounds down the pipe. (Also, when you don’t see particular brands and models of firearms at a business like Range USA, you can consider that a clue.)

Jimmy agrees that we’re living in a golden age of manufacturing and materials science. There’s less “beta testing” foisted on the public with new releases. In general, guns fit tighter, shoot longer, and are offered at better price points than they were even ten years ago. At the same time, when a gun does go down, returns and fixes happen significantly faster. That’s good news for the industry as a whole — and for the consumers that support the shooting sports.

That said, I couldn’t help but ask Jimmy what they thought of the Springfield Armory product line specifically, and coming from the point of view of people who see them run hard every day. Jimmy noted that no brand in his estimation had a better product line, and that in his opinion, no other manufacturer had done as good of evolving its handgun line. “They’ve made a ton of waves in the last couple years.”

Jimmy singled out the Prodigy as a great example of a gun that catered to enthusiasts, and that the Hellcat enjoyed particularly strong sales and steady rentals at Range USA’s locations. He also said that when a product like the Hellion or the Kuna hits store shelves, just about everyone wants to give them a whirl — and comes to see that the hype was well deserved.

At the same time, Jimmy had a soft spot for Springfield Armory’s lines like the XD and Mil-Spec 1911s: affordable products that catch the eye of first-time shooters, allow them to shoot to the fullest of their potential, and hold up very well under repeated, sustained use.

A New Home Away from Home?

A good number of our readers will find that at least one of the 50 Range USA locations is local to them (see all of their locations here.) If they’re not already familiar with the organization, now is as good of a time as any to see what makes them a little different. Stop in, say hello, and see if you don’t agree that Tom Willingham has successfully built the kind of range and gun store we all want to see more of.

However, even if you’re not yet in the geographic area covered by Range USA, it’s good news that these guys are moving the industry forward. The next time you see a young man fully versed in what red dot optics are good choices for carry guns, or a woman quietly but confidently obliterating a bullseye, there’s a good chance they might have gotten into our corner of the world thanks to the experience they had at a Range USA facility. Where the shooting sports are concerned, an old saying has never held more true: the more, the merrier.

Henry Ford once bemusingly announced that his customers could buy his Model T in any color they wanted so long as it was black. While the car had previously been available in several hues, and polychromatic variations were offered later on as well, black was indeed the only color on the lot when he penned those words in 1922.

Black paint dried more quickly and subsequently offered faster, more economical production. Mr. Ford was all about fast and economical production.

Henry Ford introduced the world to the concept of the assembly line. His cars subsequently mobilized the planet while simultaneously making him fabulously wealthy. Ford contrived a reliable design and then optimized it for mass production.

For decades, something similar could be said of American pocket pistols. There was admittedly a modest selection of slim semi-automatics available. However, for the most part, if you wanted a decent backup gun, you could have anything you wanted so long as it was a .38-caliber revolver.

Snubbie Genesis

The world’s first snub-nosed revolvers were adaptations of the Colt Single Action Army in the late 19th century. These stubby variants were alternately called “Shopkeeper Specials,” “Banker Specials” or “Sheriff’s Models.” While their shortened barrels did indeed make the otherwise full-figured wheelguns more concealable than their service counterparts, the heavy chamberings and classic frame still lent the weapons a great deal of bulk.

In 1927, Colt introduced the compact Colt Detective Special. Typically sporting a 2-inch barrel and chambered for the then-novel .38 Special cartridge, this carbon-steel revolver entered terms like “snubbies,” “snub-nosed” and “belly gun” into the American vernacular.

The Colt Detective Special rendered fine service for decades as either a backup gun for uniformed police officers or as a primary weapon for plainclothes detectives. One of the local law enforcement agencies in my town still issues snub-nosed .38 revolvers as backup guns today.

The Colt Detective Special is a double-action/single-action (DA/SA) design that weighs 21 ounces unloaded. Variations were also chambered for the .32 New Police and .38 New Police cartridges, and there were versions with 3-inch barrels as well.

The cylinders held six rounds, and the sights were fixed and open. With the exception of a seven-year period between 1986 and 1993, the Detective Special was in production from 1927 until 1995.

There is a well-attended religion that orbits around the nuances of collecting old revolvers, and I am not qualified to expound on the minutiae that define that particular gospel.

Should I hazard such an attempt, I fear I might inaccurately describe some widget and find myself burned in effigy by angry Colt collectors incensed that such a rank amateur might ever have been unleashed behind a word processor.

The topic I am now fully qualified to orate upon, however, is what these delightful little guns look like on the inside.

Fixing a Colt Detective Special

When you write for gun magazines, there is this false assumption that you know everything there is to know about firearms. In this vain, a dear friend recently brought me a sick Colt Detective Special with a plaintive request to “fix it.”

The gun was produced in 1972 and was in splendid condition. However, the cylinder would not close. Upon closer inspection, the cylinder assembly had ridden backward ever so slightly on its axis pin and jammed the action open. Intrigued, I settled down at my bench, fetched my tools and performed a bit of mechanical surgery.

The fix was straightforward enough. A bushing of sorts had unthreaded slightly with repeated reloadings and allowed the cylinder to slide backward just enough to deadline the gun.

Absent the special wrench required to rectify the problem properly, I danced around this component with a pair of jewelers’ screwdrivers until I got everything back the way Colt intended. What made the exercise so interesting, however, was the subsequent glimpse into the way folks used to make these handguns.

The voluptuous curves of this tidy little pistol lack the harsh geometry of modern utilitarian service pistols. The engineers who designed this gun deigned to square a corner when something rounder and more elegant might do.

After a little research, I found that many of the parts on these old guns are not interchangeable absent a bit of hand fitting. These components were intentionally made slightly oversized and then hand-finished by professional firearms assemblers at Colt who had studied since their apprenticeships to build these revolvers.

While this approach would undoubtedly imbue Henry Ford with some post-mortem anger, the end result with this old Colt pistol is a fit and finish that exceed the capabilities of modern machinery to reproduce.

The bluing is deep and sensuous, and steel glides across steel like greased glass. The cylinder spins like it is magnetically levitated, and the action is inimitably crisp and sharp.

The firing pin is fixed to the hammer, and the SA trigger breaks like crystal. However, the DA trigger pull, while still glassy smooth, is long and heavy enough to make for safe pocket carry.

The little gun demands a certain intentionality to make it discharge, something that is immeasurably important for a deadly firearm that might end up loose in a purse or in a pocket alongside your most sensitive anatomy. (That’s why you always carry it in a holster!)

The gun packs a full six rounds in a geometric envelope not much larger than a competitor’s gun that carries five. To break open the action for reloading, the release must be pulled to the rear. Compared to the Smith & Wesson version that presses forward, this seems a bit unnatural. However, greater men than I have won many a gunfight armed with weapons so designed. Who am I to judge?

The ejector rod on this particular version is shrouded underneath the barrel. There are others wherein the rod is left free. Once the action is open, pressing this rod backwards drops the empty cases cleanly.

The rod is naturally spring-loaded and returns to its resting position automatically. I got familiar with that aspect of the design while I had the little gun dissected as well.

The Colt Detective Special shoots plenty straight for defensive use. I never can seem to drop my rounds to precisely the same spot in both SA and DA modes, but that is undoubtedly a training deficiency. I should always practice more. There are scads of holsters available that pack the little wheelgun into most every anatomical crevice that is geometrically large enough to admit it.

Modern CNC milling machines are great, and I drool over the latest and greatest in firearms just as much as the next gun nerd. However, they just don’t make them like the Colt Detective Special anymore.

There is a certain antiseptic sameness to your typical Glock, Sig or S&W service pistol. Fit and function are monotonously identical, and every single component will fit every single gun. Not unlike an iPhone or a Big Mac, every example of the species looks exactly like every other.

For an off-the-rack weapon used in combat, universal interchangeability is certainly a desirable trait. But for a time, mass-produced guns were still finished by hand. It was that final interplay between flesh and steel that made the gun perfect, polishing out its eccentricities and imbuing it with its own unique personality.

Such stuff as this brought us Georg Luger’s P08, the Mauser C96 and the Thompson submachine gun. Nowadays, this deep into the 21st century, more human beings around the world have cell phones than regularly use toothbrushes.

We expect our machines to take care of the monotonous things so we will have more time to do whatever it is we actually do these days. In a world awash to its gunwales in identical devices, it can sometimes be fun to tear down an old pistol like the Colt Detective Special and see how our forebears in simpler times skinned their cats.

Caliber: .38 Special
Barrel: 3 inches
OA Length: 6.75 inches
Weight: 21 ounces (empty)
Grips: Polymer
Sights: Fixed
Action: DA/SA
Finish: Blued
Capacity: 6
MSRP: N/A