I don't have any experience with the first two proprietors who began the thread.
Having said that, I see these signs on all the local booksellers as the slowly fade out of existence. Pleading won't make it happen when prices are not a mere 4% off but 40% higher than online or bigger stores. And rudeness? Unbelievable at some stores I've been in.
To business owners all: customers are not the enemy to be treated as a necessary evil. If you can't compete with the bigger folks on price, what can you compete on? Education, proper selection processes, wisdom. You can't get any of those from Amazon comments and review sections. Know your audience and the growing segments, like women. Put together your favorite pistols from women of different sizes and shapes to give women an idea what might fit them best. Show on a dummy the different concealed carry options so they can see they can carry and still look sexy. Offer women (or all) one free cleaning a month or a free safety checkup /mo or most anything else to get them into your store. Apple loses money on their One-to-One program in order to get someone into their store on a regular basis where they are surrounded with stuff to buy. Hire female staff who won't scoff at women shooters. Bring in the local martial arts dojo owner for a ½ hour self defense course. Dojo owner wins potential new clients, you get more people buying stuff they see around them. Bring in a guest speaker like a lawyer to answer questions about local laws. Bring in someone from the community to hold discussions on setting up neighborhood watch. Or food storage. Have someone a "Tupperware" party to show everyone a newly introduced gun, or better yet, gather the ladies and talk about "girl guns" ala Mr. And Mrs. Smith. Make your shop a gathering place where you facilitate knowledge, community, relationships.
Find something simple and inexpensive to give away with every repair you do or sale of a gun. Research I've done in real life shows that people who are surprised when they receive something unexpected become truly loyal.
Find a way to bring some of your better customers in for a BBQ or other special event open only to those who've bought 4 guns from you this year. Ask them questions about what products they are buying online, what services they'd like to see, or programs you can offer. Ask people for referrals and give them a box of ammo when their referral brings in a referral card with their name on it and actually buys something. Hold a special shoot for the youth or spouses of your better customers. Do a writeup of your better customers and those who send you business and put it up on your website. And for crap sake, hire someone to put up a decent website on Wordpress for you so you can add stuff to it on your own.
Whatever you do, don't play the buy local card. Differentiate yourselves and give customers a reason to do so.
Acme and Cassadilla, if you want to talk further about any of these ideas in happy to help.