On hand for the weekend’s grand opening celebration of the Arms Room firearms store’s move into the former Circuit City off the northbound I-45 feeder south of FM 646 in League City: a fire spinner and juggler, a clown handing out balloon animals, a booth from ESPN 97.5 FM, a barbecue stand, a cake decorated with toy pistols, “a few blonde, tattooed girls handing out free Arms Room merchandise,” . . . and Houston Press reporter Craig Hlavaty. He notes the store’s owners originally had wanted to move into a former Academy sporting goods store down I-45, but didn’t get a great welcome there:
“The lease holders didn’t want any guns being shot in their strip center, so we walked away from them,” says [Kathleen] James. The only thing holding that line of stores intact now is a Chinese buffet and a Subway sandwich shop.
Sucks for them. The 20,000-sq.-ft. former big-box electronics store at the Jameses ended up buying at 3270 Gulf Fwy. South allowed them to include a 15-lane indoor gun range (kinda like a bowling alley, “but you don’t have to change your shoes,” quips general manager Travis James), along with a gun shop, a section devoted to antique firearms, and room for an on-site gunsmith.
***
Where you would have bought [an] iPod a few years back is now the counter where you can finally pick up that dream Glock you have had your eyes on. The showroom now echoes with round after round from an array of pistols, machine guns, and high-powered rifles.
- Gun Store In A Former Circuit City: League City’s Latest Tourist Attraction [Hair Balls]
- Previously on Swamplot: Shooting in Circuit City
Photos: The Arms Room
Sweeeeeeet!
Dude.. they need to open one of these near the Galleria.. But I’d suspect rent would be a tad higher. Sad I missed the opening festivities..
Indoor gun ranges are much better than the outdoor counterparts. The bullets can be easily collected and disposed. Outdoor gun ranges will let the bullets bullet residuals seep into the ground leaving a high lead content.
hee haw! hot damn! i done died and went thru them pearly gates!
Solid elemental lead (as used in bullets) is fairly inert; lead containers are used to store sulfuric acid, for example. Moreover, most bullets have a jacket which encase the lead. It takes a very long time for such lead to leach out, though of course the exact rate depends on a variety of factors.
Plus what lead there is in the ground is easy to recover. There is an incentive for outdoor ranges to recover the lead from their berms since it can be sold and recycled for money.
In other words, sure, the amount of lead in one bullet can hypothetically contaminate ‘x’ cubic feet soil if dissolved, but in reality very little of that happens.
The comparatively miniscule amounts of lead compounds in the primer, which become part of the smoke when a round is fired, has a much greater chance of getting into your system.
Thus, outdoor ranges are much less hazardous to your health than indoor ranges, which require extensive filtration and ventilation systems to keep the air relatively free of lead.
I haven’t been to the indoor range at the Arms Room, only the retail store, but I read that their filtration system is state of the art.
Mike,
The drawback to outdoor ranges is if the land is ever utilized for something else. While the lead itself may not be a problem, its existence makes the process to convert to a different used such as a subdivision can be problematic and costly. EPA and TCEQ rules require environmental remediation on the order more than what is probably necessary. A developer client found this out in rural Brazoria County. And old gun range which was long closed was purchased along with many other tracts to create larger area for development. The developer has the gun range land vacant since they were not ready to deal with the remediation costs.
An indoor facility will contain the lead easily if the site is ever re-purposed. Good facilities will have the filtration systems you mentioned which will help the workers who are there day in and day out.
kjb434,
You may be right about the remediation requirements, but I’d much rather buy land that used to be a shooting range than a gas station :-)
Mike.
Mike,
ABSOLUTELY!!!
Will they open a second location next to the Wal Mart on Yale?
Outstanding! I can imagine this being very popular, and similar versions popping up around the city, in otherwise ‘unused’ locations.
Roy G Biv,
If they opened one of these near the West End Walmart the leftist/liberals in the area would go ballistic!
There’s a talk in Texas to make guns manufactured in Texas exempt from ATF federal rules. Which means you could buy a fully automatic machine gun (for deer hunting), a silencer (for silent deer hunting) and even armor piercing and explosive ammunition (for armored deer hunting). I love Texas.
That would be fantastic, but is there talk in D.C. to modify the National Firearms Act?
Most of the federal government’s power and ATF come from the Interstate Commerce Act and if the said guns are made, marketed, sold, and held within a state border, the State with “stones” to do so has the power to tell them to go suck a fat one.
I would agree that the interstate commerce clause has been abused by the federal government. However, bypassing it would set some precedents that would not bode well on other issues…like drugs. And between the Dems’ anti-gun position and the GOP’s anti-drug position, I’m not thinking that states’ rights on this matter are going to be very popular.
But would interstate commerce convene on commerce that is intrastate? At long at a sale across the borders aren’t made, it isn’t interstate commerce.