Irreplaceable Gun Stores

As I have written in these pages several times, I was born and raised in Mingo County, West Virginia, the location of the Hatfield/McCoy Feud of the late 1800s and the Coal Mine/Union Wars of the early 1900s. (My great-great grandmother was Suzanna Hatfield.) In 1968, the nearest college was Marshall University in Huntington, where in November 1970, a plane crash wiped out the football team and coaching staff. The 2007 movie We Are Marshall was based on that tragedy. (Yes, I was a student there at the time.)

- Mike Venturino

Hating the confinement of school, two things kept me sane during those unhappy years. Both were gun stores, and I’ve just received news that neither exists anymore. There in Huntington was the larger store, Mack & Dave’s. Besides firearms and accessories, it sold musical instruments, cameras, jewelry and a host of other things I paid little attention to. Being a teenager fascinated with shooting and handloading, the gun department was a utopia. There were Lyman bullet moulds and loading dies right on the shelves, large stocks of primers and powder and racks full of rifles, shotguns and handguns.

Mostly I bought handguns in those days. My first Ruger Blackhawk .357 Magnum came from there, as did my first S&W Model 28 .357 Magnum. Those were new guns. From the used handgun rack, I bought a Colt U.S. Model 1909 .45 and a 2nd Generation Colt SAA .38 Special, nickel-plated with a 43⁄4inch barrel. Many of those early purchases were made before I was 21. My brother-in-law, also attending Marshall, was the actual buyer.