Gun Culture in Appalachia - Exploring Kentucky's Past and Present - Part 2
Gun Culture in Appalachia - Exploring Kentucky's Past and Present - Part 2
Bud’s Gun Shop and Range
Last month, GVPedia president and founder, Devin Hughes, took a trip to Kentucky for a crash course in the history and hypocrisies of one of the nation’s deepest gun cultures. This is part two of a three part series.
By: Devin Hughes
Our second Kentucky excursion was to Bud’s Gun Shop and Range in Lexington so we could see not only what the store was like, but to experience an hour of range time.
Bud’s had a massive variety of hunting rifles, shotguns, assault-style rifles, semi-automatic handguns, and revolvers, which one would expect from a store that size.
I was particularly caught off -guard by a section dedicated to more traditional shotguns (as opposed to the modern “tacticool” versions with extended magazines), with prices ranging from under $2,000 to more than $14,000. Even after it was explained to me, I still cannot grasp why one shotgun was $12,000 more expensive than another despite looking fairly similar and having no major alterations as far as I could discern.
The price tags on these shotguns, as well as many of the handguns — in the $400 to $600 range — put the lie to the pro-gun claim that Permit to Purchase licenses, which will cost $65 in Oregon for example, are a prohibitive financial burden. Good handguns are expensive. Rifles are more expensive. Ammunition is expensive, particularly if a gun owner is responsible and goes to the range somewhat regularly to maintain their shooting skills.
If the gun industry apologists complaining about the cost of a permit actually cared about pricing out economically disadvantaged people from gun ownership, they would start by providing substantial discounts on the guns and ammunition. But they don’t, so they don’t.
During our time exploring the store, I overheard one of the salesmen explaining to a potential customer why a certain handgun was the right one for her. At the outset of his pitch, he nonchalantly dropped, “this will save your life.”
The myth of defensive gun use is at the very heart of modern gun culture. The gun salesman had probably never heard of Gary Kleck or John Lott, and maybe once stumbled across Kleck’s 2.5 million DGU estimate on YouTube. Yet that has not stopped Kleck and Lott’s theories, propagated by the gun lobby at an industrial scale, from permeating everything.
Thousands of guns every day are being sold based on the lie that the gun will keep its owner safer. And until that lie is “killed, buried, dug up, killed again and buried again” as Mark once said, reducing gun violence will be infinitely more challenging.
While at the range, we shot the following handguns (along with a Smith & Wesson M&P15 [an AR-15 variant]):
Colt 1911 Combat Elite
S&W M&P 45
Springfield XD-S 45
S&W Bodyguard
S&W Combat Masterpiece
Beretta Model 92
Aside from misjudging the sight on the M&P15 on my first few shots, apparently I wasn’t too bad for an admittedly inexperienced shooter. (You can see the photo evidence below, a target at which all three of us fired.)
This was my third time firing guns, and it had been six years since my last experience (which was skeet shooting in Ireland). The target this time was first at 21 feet and then back to 30 or so. From the hour in the range, I gleaned the following lessons:
While shooting, I did not expect just how noticeable the lead would be. Before going into the range, Mark pointed out the massive ventilation system used to keep the air breathable, which apparently is one of the biggest hurdles/costs associated with maintaining a range. However, despite the herculean effort, the taste of lead would not completely leave even after lunch and a substantial amount of water. The dangers of lead are well-known, and it is hard not to think that decades at a range wouldn’t take a toll.
Another thing I did not anticipate was that the smaller the size of the gun, the meaner the kick, at least among the handguns I fired. The meaner the kick, the harder it was to fire multiple rounds accurately and quickly. Additionally, it doesn’t feel pleasant. While I’m sure a decent amount of training could rectify that pattern, it struck me that oftentimes smaller guns are aggressively marketed to women. Particularly if it is someone’s first gun purchase, the person buying that smaller gun is going to be in for a surprise on its first use, a surprise that could easily lead to disaster in a bad situation — especially since there is no training required to buy a gun in Kentucky and most states.
The nicest gun that I fired was the Colt 1911. Despite its old age and distinct lack of ergonomic grip design (at least compared to the array of newer designs), its kick was not bad, the sight was easy to use, the trigger pull was smooth, and it had a comfortable weight overall. It did exactly what I thought it would as someone who doesn’t fire guns regularly.
Permitless carry is spectacularly stupid. I’ll go a step further: letting anybody purchase a firearm without having fired a gun first (especially that specific type of firearm) is insane. Truly caring about firearm safety and not requiring some form of live fire training first are mutually exclusive. If you have not fired a gun before, you will not expect how loud it is, how violent the kick of the gun is, how difficult it is to manually load a magazine, and how bad you likely are at aiming with no experience. These are things that can only be learned with some live-fire training. And that’s before considering how to properly clean and maintain the gun, how to safely unload a gun (including the bullet in the chamber), knowing the laws surrounding gun use, knowing how to deescalate a situation without using a gun, safely carrying the gun, knowing what and where the safety is, and so much more. Without ALL of this training beforehand as a bare minimum, handing someone a gun and telling them it will save their life is reprehensible.
The idea that people will be able to successfully use guns without proper training or extraordinary luck is a fantasy within a lie, and it is getting people killed.
As part of my 12-part series debunking the defensive gun use myth, I talked about how important the distance of 20 feet is (your average man can cross that distance in two seconds), and how much closer that distance is than most people think. After shooting at the range, it is also apparent that 20 feet is simultaneously a lot further away than you likely think it is.
While an experienced gun guy like Mark can rapidly empty a full magazine at a target 21 feet away with his eyes closed and reliably land every single shot, most people are not Mark. In fact, even I went into this better “trained” than basically all the first-time buyers that surged into gun stores during and since the pandemic.
I spent a couple of seconds before each shot carefully aiming for the X at the center of the target. I think I hit that X once, and the red shading around it a few more times. While almost all of my shots were still technically “on target” in the 8 and 9 circles, that is not terribly impressive at 20 feet in close to optimal conditions. And I was doing better than the guys in the neighboring lane.
People often scoff at how poor police shooting accuracy is in deadly force encounters, with sometimes more than 80% of shots not landing on target. After shooting at 20 feet while stationary with perfect lighting and all the time in the world, and still not landing everything on that X, I completely get that now.
That doesn’t mean some police officers are bad shots, but unless your hobby is going to the range, it is a lot harder than you think, even in ideal conditions. And the idea that all those first-time buyers are going to do any better in a DGU scenario is pure fantasy.
L-R: Devin Hughes, Mark Bryant, and Jennifer Mascia at Bud’s Gun Shop and Range
After we had left the range, I would learn Bud’s was the store that supplied the Highland Park shooter with the Smith & Wesson M&P15 that he used to kill seven people and injure 49 others in 2022 — a rifle he was not allowed to purchase under Illinois’ assault weapon ban. It was the same brand of rifle I rented from the store and fired at the range.
Also, I learned that in 2019, there was a suicide at the range. While Bud’s was well protected against attempted smash-and-grab robberies (with a protective steel curtain and a police station a quarter-mile away), it was not immune to the inherent dangers of guns themselves or irresponsible selling practices.
Devin Hughes is the President and Founder of GVPedia, a non-profit that provides access to gun violence prevention research and data.
Images courtesy of Devin Hughes.
Thank you for this series, and in particular, for investigating a subculture I haven't the nerve to crash. The details are gripping, from the shocking price of guns to the descriptions of the "kick" (& the attendant warning to small firearms' force of kick), of the smell and taste of a range, and for what your novice schooling on the range leads you to conclude about the probability of gross misfiring by those who haven't trained up.