In honor of John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley: In Search of America, I am keeping my eyes open for clues about America’s gun cultures as Sandy and I travel from our home in North Carolina to Yellowstone National Park and back. My inaugural post on this series can be found here.

Day 4 of my Travels with Sandy took us from Kellogg, Iowa (population 600) to Henderson, Nebraska. This long drive on Interstate 80 took us right through Omaha, which meant I needed to stop and see a gun industry acquaintance from years back, Mike.

I first met Mike 6 years ago, in the summer of 2017, when he was working at Suarez International in Prescott, Arizona. He has since moved to be closer to family and landed at Guns Unlimited, a retail gun store on Omaha’s east side.

The owner Tom Nichols opened Guns Unlimited in 1970 and still comes into the store most days. He introduced himself to me during my visit, in fact. He was also smart enough to buy not just his building, but he owns the entire Sports Plaza which includes a Golf USA store, an Outdoor Living Pool & Spa, and a very cool Irish pub and restaurant – where Sandy and I had lunch at Mike’s recommendation.

The first thing Mike wanted to show me, and easily the most remarkable thing I have seen in any retail gun store is the number of Browning sporting shotguns on hand.

Beyond what is displayed in the Browning shotgun room, the store has a seemingly unlimited supply of Brownings on hand for sale. The picture below shows just some of the boxes of just Browning Citoris. These over/under shotguns come in five different barrel lengths (24, 26, 28, 30, or 32 inches) and five different gauges (12, 16, 20, 28, and .410 bore), so it’s to understand how the stock can multiply. But having literally hundreds in stock is something else.

I wasn’t surprised to learn that Guns Unlimited is the #1 independent retailer of Browning shotguns in the United States.

Guns Unlimited has a presence at big events like The Grand American World Trapshooting Championships held annually in Sparta, Illinois at the World Shooting & Recreational Complex. Tom Nichols has an Illinois Federal Firearms License to facilitate the hundreds of shotguns he sells there.

There is a strong hunting and sporting bent to Guns Unlimited. Trap, skeet, and sporting clays are among the most apolitical of gun hobbies. Even those who strongly support gun control rarely take aim at these honest, innocent sporting pursuits.

The store also has an incredible number of Henry lever action rifles, the assault weapon of its day, that you could load on Sunday and shoot all week.

But defensive firearms are also well represented. Like all retailers, they were swarmed during the Great Gun Buying Spree of 2020 with people wanting to buy handguns especially, including many new and non-traditional gun buyers.

Mike recounted the story of a married couple who came in to buy a firearm. The “husband” was a male-to-female transgender person (a.k.a. a trans woman). The sales clerk needed to indicate the person’s gender (male or female) on the ATF Form 4473. Rather than making a big deal out of the situation the clerk simply asked the buyer what box to check. The buyer, who had not yet had gender reassignment surgery, said male to match what was on her state identification.

Interestingly, even before the COVID gun buying spree, the ATF had proposed adding a third “non-binary” category to Form 4473 for people whose identifications (drivers license, state id, passport) list gender as “X.” This went into effect in May 2020.

Many of these new buyers, especially those who were Omaha residents, were surprised to find out that they could not just walk into any gun store and walk out with a handgun. Not only does Nebraska require buyers to get a pistol purchase permit from their County Sheriff, but residents of the City of Omaha also need to register their “concealable” handguns with the Omaha Police Department.

(Actually, “Omaha Municipal Code 20-251 requires that all concealable firearms inside the city limits of Omaha be registered. Regardless of where a person resides, concealable firearms inside the city of Omaha are required to be registered with the Omaha Police Department.” Fortunately, those who hold Nebraska concealed carry permits or those who have permits from states Nebraska honors with reciprocity – including North Carolina — are exempt from the registration requirement.)

So, a new gun owner who does not have a Nebraska concealed carry permit who wants to buy a handgun from Guns Unlimited is required to (a) go to the Sheriff’s Office to get screened and buy a pistol purchase permit, (b) take the permit to the gun store and purchase the gun, (c) go to the Omaha Police Department to get screened again and register the gun they just bought, and (d) finally go back to Guns Unlimited to take possession of their handgun.

According to Mike, although it does not happen often, it is possible for someone to get a Nebraska pistol purchase permit but be denied registration by the Omaha Police Department, in which case Guns Unlimited refunds the purchase and just keeps the gun which the buyer has never taken possession of.

About 2020 new gun buyers, Mike also made a couple of other observations. First, few of them became repeat customers. Second, and surely related, he is already starting to see some people bringing their panic-bought to the store to sell back. They are surprised to find that, even though they have never shot the guns, they will only be getting about half of their purchase price back.

Wrapping up another interesting stop on my tour of America’s gun cultures, I bought a small gun safe and souvenir cup on my way out.

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