There is 72% less FFL Holders in Minnesota as there was 10 years ago.

The Star will be running a story on this soon.

Well, I saw a similar thread on THR. My personal beliefs are three things, 1.) the big chain stores such as Cabela's, Gander Mt, and Sportsman's Warehouse, etc. They buy in such big discounts that the typical brick & mortar store has a tough time competing. 2.) The advent of internet sales adds an additional burden because many internet sellers are selling at a very slim profit margin. 3.) As mentioned in another thread here, on the whole, service kind of sucks at many gun stores.

Well, the big box stores can easily, if they'd like, margin-shave the independents out of business. By and large, though, they don't -- prices at Gander Mountain, for example, tend to run lower than Bill's, but higher than, say, Frontiersman or Gun Stop, and much higher than Mark's.

Internet sales are a different thing. Discountgundealer.com , for example, appears to easily be able to deal on thinner margin than even Mark can. What he's giving up, in terms of gun sales, by not having a walk-in bricks-and-mortar establishment, is handling and buying, but that's it -- for gun sales, that is. (Accessories, service, etc. are another matter.)

These days, any traditional gun shop that doesn't treat its customers well (in their opinion) is asking to close down; the market, at best, isn't growing fast enough to support them.

Service makes a difference. Mark was able to find a Mossberg 500 barrel I was looking for where all other gunshops, Dicks and Gander Mt could not located it!

Thanks again Mark and I'll be in on Monday to pick it up!

UPS gets here about 3 PM call first to make sure .Thanks Mark

Oh, absolutely. I think that somebody who, say, buys a couple of new guns a year ought to be happy to pay $50 over wholesale for good service throughout that year on other things.

But there's lots of folks who just look at the price, and buy accordingly. Gun shops that take a relatively large margin will not only lose out on those days, but are very dependent on their rep for service. Doesn't take many bad experiences for word to get around.

I've purchased several guns through Gander Mt. Their prices were a few dollars over the internet prices, but I have received good service from them. I don't mind buying locally, at all. I have picked up on a couple of decent deals through the internet, too. But then there's the shipping fee, transfer fee, etc. It usually washes out between local & internet. It's way tougher to bring a gun back to an internet dealer than a brick and mortar store.

The news story should run this weekend in the Star.