Key Sentence:
- Along Madison Avenue in Manhattan, wealthy New Yorkers shop at luxury stores with famous names.
- Buying their shoes from Manolo Blahnik, their diamonds from De Beers, and their guns from the Beretta Gallery.
There practiced to be three, but one of them closed last year. In Manhattan, there are only the Beretta Gallery and the West Side Gun Range. Beretta is an Italian arms manufacturer founded some 500 years ago by the same family that runs it today, 15 generations later. The US division of a company called Beretta USA makes firearms at a factory in Tennessee.
The Beretta Gallery began in 1995 in a five-story brownstone, steep ground with the warehouse. The storefront looks more like a clothing store than a gun shop, but both. The first level is stocked with English-style merchandise, including tweed jackets, flacons, and dog head sticks suitable for fellow citizens. The second floor remains stocked with camouflage hunting and shooting accessories, including eye protection, protective eyewear, and hearing protection.
Guns is on the third floor, where a customer recently checked out a sturdy rifle with two barrels and two triggers next to each other like shotguns. This rifle fires ammunition with the potent 470 Nitro Express caliber. Beretta classifies the pistol as a “dangerous game” rifle and costs $22,199.
In a separate room, surrounded by long weapons racks, Haglin displayed the most expensive in the store: a handmade 20-caliber rifle costing over $165,000.
In addition to these special prices, the Beretta Gallery also sells hunting rifles and shotguns for less than $1,000. To purchase them, buyers must pass a background check conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and be licensed by the New York Police Department.
Permits are $140 for a rifle or shotgun or $340 for a handgun at the cost of $88.25 for a fingerprint.
Some customers will make history, buy weapons, and leave. But most of them don’t. “We delivered 95% of our weapons,” Haglin said. “Most people don’t come and pick it up themselves. Most people don’t want to walk around New York with a gun. “
There are no assault rifles in the Beretta Gallery – the city’s gun laws prohibit them. Likewise, none of the town’s gun shops stocked pistols. Retailers blame city laws for requiring licensees to purchase guns within 45 days of receiving or losing their licenses, making it impractical to keep guns.