commodon
NES Member
I just stumbled across the article from a year ago, which was interesting to read. Curious, I checked the price of membership to Weston Shooters Cluband it's a helluva lot more expensive than I was expecting!
Inside the Secret Lives of Massachusetts Gun Owners
Gun ownership in Massachusetts is steadily—albeit perhaps stealthily—on the rise.
Daphne McManus fires a round at the Weston Shooters Club. / Photograph by Toan Trinh
A hint of cigar smoke lingers in the air as I walk past a bank of sleek leather armchairs in the main clubhouse. Beneath a pair of high-end TVs lies a gleaming new shuffleboard table, while down the hall well-coiffed men and women often swap stock tips and the latest gossip inside a burnished-wood locker room. Where am I? It could be any private club in Boston—with one notable exception: Everyone here is packing heat.
If golfers have The Country Club in Brookline and C-suite tycoons have the Algonquin in the Back Bay, then gun enthusiasts have the Weston Shooters Club—the undeniable Ritz-Carlton of New England gun ranges. On the back wall, a few feet from the shuffleboard table, is a custom vending machine stocked with ammunition. Near that is a wall-mounted display case full of firearms for sale (the Beretta CX4 Storm 9mm tactical carbine for only $749 is a real steal!). And down a short hallway and through a heavy door is the crown jewel: a posh, state-of-the-art, eight-lane shooting range, open to members 24/7. “I really wanted the place for myself,” says Victor Grillo, the club’s founder. “A place to have a cigar, have a drink, and shoot a gun.”
Across the country, in cities such as Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Miami, high-end ranges that emphasize socializing and the good life as much as target practice have been popping up like mushrooms. Some include restaurants, spas, and VIP lounges. An outing at Dallas’s luxurious Frisco Gun Club, for instance, might entail a private shooting lesson followed by a dinner, capped off with a fine brandy by the fire. Yet when Grillo, of Framingham, who made a small fortune in marketing and commercial real estate, looked around, he quickly realized no such place existed in Massachusetts—let alone within earshot of Boston. To remedy that, he and a few like-minded friends plunked down a total of $1 million in 2014 and opened the club just off I-95.
So what does a Weston Shooters Club member look like? Just like our state can’t be reduced to a handful of stereotypes about progressive moonbats (sorry, Howie Carr), neither can Bay State gun owners all be painted as Tea Partiers or partridge-hunting patricians. Sure, these people exist—there are plenty of Romney conservatives with pricey shotguns and Trumplicans with a hand cannon on each hip—but spend enough time looking and you just might find that the woman who sits next to you at work and the potbellied neighbor whose Subaru Outback is spackled with Hillary Clinton stickers are bearing arms.
Massachusetts gun laws, Grillo likes to point out, are notoriously strict—and conversations around them are equally polarizing. In the past two years alone, a group of gun associations sued Attorney General Maura Healey over her ban on so-called copycat assault rifles; all nine of the state’s U.S. representatives received failing grades from the Gun Owners’ Action League; and the city’s largest newspaper, the Globe, made national waves by tweeting the names of 388 mass-shooting victims along with the hashtag #MakeItStop. Taken as a whole, it’s easy to get the impression that Bostonians share a unified belief that guns are not pieces of sporting equipment or tools for self-defense—they’re a public health crisis.
Despite the apparent gun-control fervor, though, the reality is that gun ownership in Massachusetts is steadily—albeit perhaps stealthily—on the rise. Since 2010, the number of people with active License to Carry Class A permits in the city of Boston alone has grown by more than 132 percent, to nearly 8,000. Cambridge, Somerville, Arlington, Belmont, Weston, Newton, Wellesley, Hingham, and almost every other surrounding suburb have also seen upticks. “It’s almost a dirty little secret,” says Chris Kielty, owner of Precision Point Firearms, a gun shop in Woburn. Some of Kielty’s most loyal customers include progressive social workers and academics who would be mortified if their colleagues knew of their hobby. Or as one lesbian gun owner recently told me, it’s often much easier to come out as gay in Boston than it is to admit to owning a firearm.
To date, the success of Grillo’s shooting club has far surpassed his expectations. Originally, he’d hoped to draw 100 members over the first five years. Now, three years in, the so-called guntry club has nearly 1,000 people happily willing to pay the $500 annual dues. As Grillo says, it turned out there are throngs of gun owners around Boston, all looking for what he calls a “safe haven.” The Weston Shooters Club is a testament to the recent renaissance of gun ownership in Massachusetts: All walks of life stroll through its private, biometrically secured doors.
Ed Gardner, a 47-year-old father of two, is as liberal as the day is long. He supported Bernie Sanders, is mortified by Donald Trump, and follows the party line on nearly every issue. Yet when it comes to the Second Amendment, he veers dramatically off course. At his home, after all, is a well-secured arsenal.
Guns have always been part of Gardner’s life. He grew up on a farm in southern Ohio with a rifle by his side. Then he lived in Texas. In the ’90s, Gardner took a job in the educational services industry and moved to Newton, where he was surprised to learn that there are unwritten rules to being a gun owner. Posting a picture on Facebook from a leisurely day at the Weston shooting range, for instance, let alone bragging about a new Bushmaster at the company Christmas party, could be a social disaster. “It’s sort of like, ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell,’” he says.
For the rest of the article see Guess Who’s Packing at Dinner?
Inside the Secret Lives of Massachusetts Gun Owners
Gun ownership in Massachusetts is steadily—albeit perhaps stealthily—on the rise.
Daphne McManus fires a round at the Weston Shooters Club. / Photograph by Toan Trinh
A hint of cigar smoke lingers in the air as I walk past a bank of sleek leather armchairs in the main clubhouse. Beneath a pair of high-end TVs lies a gleaming new shuffleboard table, while down the hall well-coiffed men and women often swap stock tips and the latest gossip inside a burnished-wood locker room. Where am I? It could be any private club in Boston—with one notable exception: Everyone here is packing heat.
If golfers have The Country Club in Brookline and C-suite tycoons have the Algonquin in the Back Bay, then gun enthusiasts have the Weston Shooters Club—the undeniable Ritz-Carlton of New England gun ranges. On the back wall, a few feet from the shuffleboard table, is a custom vending machine stocked with ammunition. Near that is a wall-mounted display case full of firearms for sale (the Beretta CX4 Storm 9mm tactical carbine for only $749 is a real steal!). And down a short hallway and through a heavy door is the crown jewel: a posh, state-of-the-art, eight-lane shooting range, open to members 24/7. “I really wanted the place for myself,” says Victor Grillo, the club’s founder. “A place to have a cigar, have a drink, and shoot a gun.”
Across the country, in cities such as Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Miami, high-end ranges that emphasize socializing and the good life as much as target practice have been popping up like mushrooms. Some include restaurants, spas, and VIP lounges. An outing at Dallas’s luxurious Frisco Gun Club, for instance, might entail a private shooting lesson followed by a dinner, capped off with a fine brandy by the fire. Yet when Grillo, of Framingham, who made a small fortune in marketing and commercial real estate, looked around, he quickly realized no such place existed in Massachusetts—let alone within earshot of Boston. To remedy that, he and a few like-minded friends plunked down a total of $1 million in 2014 and opened the club just off I-95.
So what does a Weston Shooters Club member look like? Just like our state can’t be reduced to a handful of stereotypes about progressive moonbats (sorry, Howie Carr), neither can Bay State gun owners all be painted as Tea Partiers or partridge-hunting patricians. Sure, these people exist—there are plenty of Romney conservatives with pricey shotguns and Trumplicans with a hand cannon on each hip—but spend enough time looking and you just might find that the woman who sits next to you at work and the potbellied neighbor whose Subaru Outback is spackled with Hillary Clinton stickers are bearing arms.
Massachusetts gun laws, Grillo likes to point out, are notoriously strict—and conversations around them are equally polarizing. In the past two years alone, a group of gun associations sued Attorney General Maura Healey over her ban on so-called copycat assault rifles; all nine of the state’s U.S. representatives received failing grades from the Gun Owners’ Action League; and the city’s largest newspaper, the Globe, made national waves by tweeting the names of 388 mass-shooting victims along with the hashtag #MakeItStop. Taken as a whole, it’s easy to get the impression that Bostonians share a unified belief that guns are not pieces of sporting equipment or tools for self-defense—they’re a public health crisis.
Despite the apparent gun-control fervor, though, the reality is that gun ownership in Massachusetts is steadily—albeit perhaps stealthily—on the rise. Since 2010, the number of people with active License to Carry Class A permits in the city of Boston alone has grown by more than 132 percent, to nearly 8,000. Cambridge, Somerville, Arlington, Belmont, Weston, Newton, Wellesley, Hingham, and almost every other surrounding suburb have also seen upticks. “It’s almost a dirty little secret,” says Chris Kielty, owner of Precision Point Firearms, a gun shop in Woburn. Some of Kielty’s most loyal customers include progressive social workers and academics who would be mortified if their colleagues knew of their hobby. Or as one lesbian gun owner recently told me, it’s often much easier to come out as gay in Boston than it is to admit to owning a firearm.
To date, the success of Grillo’s shooting club has far surpassed his expectations. Originally, he’d hoped to draw 100 members over the first five years. Now, three years in, the so-called guntry club has nearly 1,000 people happily willing to pay the $500 annual dues. As Grillo says, it turned out there are throngs of gun owners around Boston, all looking for what he calls a “safe haven.” The Weston Shooters Club is a testament to the recent renaissance of gun ownership in Massachusetts: All walks of life stroll through its private, biometrically secured doors.
Ed Gardner, a 47-year-old father of two, is as liberal as the day is long. He supported Bernie Sanders, is mortified by Donald Trump, and follows the party line on nearly every issue. Yet when it comes to the Second Amendment, he veers dramatically off course. At his home, after all, is a well-secured arsenal.
Guns have always been part of Gardner’s life. He grew up on a farm in southern Ohio with a rifle by his side. Then he lived in Texas. In the ’90s, Gardner took a job in the educational services industry and moved to Newton, where he was surprised to learn that there are unwritten rules to being a gun owner. Posting a picture on Facebook from a leisurely day at the Weston shooting range, for instance, let alone bragging about a new Bushmaster at the company Christmas party, could be a social disaster. “It’s sort of like, ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell,’” he says.
For the rest of the article see Guess Who’s Packing at Dinner?
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