If you’ve visited a gun shop, especially when it is crowded, the counter staff is very busy. And often, as you may experience, you have to wait a while for attention. Processing a firearms purchase can take some time considering the necessary paperwork and requirements involved. Nics checks often take longer than you want. Firearms safety debriefing and other disclosures are also a necessary. So, it’s not as simple as walking in, picking up a gun, and walking out. Gun owners and gun store owners and staff all know that.

When you are walking around an outdoor sporting goods store, and peruse the firearm accessories aisles, you may or may not notice much in the way of gun care products. Sure, they all have at least a few essentials like at least some gun spray or cleaner degreaser aerosol, or a few bottles of cheap traditional solvent, but if you notice, plenty of stores don’t carry a full line of accessories. No brushes, or patches, not a single rod, and maybe only a row of cheap low-end throwaway kits. So, there doesn’t seem like much concern there.

From what I know, better stores do a much better job at merchandising the things that you need for firearm maintenance. But then again, this is the case with many product categories in the store. As is the case in any retail environment, in general, a well stocked store with plenty of choices best serves the consumer so that one-stop shopping is much more likely. That means you aren’t inconvenienced enough to have to look online for what you really want. Every FFL dealer offers guns and ammo. That’s a given, but to really service a consumer, you have to cater to their needs.

Gun care products are not big ticket items, but they take of space on the shelf, and there are a lot of details, like making sure they stock as many calibers of brushes and patches as possible to match up with the size of gun bore hardware that the end user just purchased. This does require more attention, and preparation on the part of the gun shop, and not all of them do it. Maybe they are too busy, don’t care, or are having trouble finding a supplier that will offer such things. The firearms industry is not perfect, and assuming that this shelf stocking strategy is easy, but it’s not. Like many industries, the supply chain isn’t quite running smoothly, and some gun distributors literally couldn’t care less about offering the little things.

Not only do the most admired firearm dealers offer a more complete gun care product mix, but they train their sales staff to understand and guide their customers well so that they know what to buy. This isn’t about any one brand of cleaning kits, because to some degree, these items are commodities, but gun owners, especially newbies, have questions and will only learn if somebody with industry knowledge educates them. This is very much like selecting the most appropriate fishing tackle. It is more involved than my wife things. Ha ha.

What Tetra Gun care believes in is offering as much of a complete gun care products mix as possible, and supporting the gun dealers who are on the front lines of firearm industry retail. Firearm maintenance products are our passion, and most dealers don’t have the time to think about that all day because they have plenty of other things to think about. There are people who are busy enough just focusing on semiauto handguns, for example, or just optics. Outsiders don’t realize how much detail is involved. And don’t get me started on ballistics. Bullet calibers and loads are a science.

My point is, sharing knowledge is important to educating people on all firearms related topics, and I don’t mean political. This is a large sporting goods industry, with lots of details, and we all have to think about passing a gun care education down to the next generation. This is not a video game.

#firearmsindustry #firearms #guns #nssf #gunstore #gunshop #ffldealer #2a