
Community Service
McCunn Specialty Firearms is a family-owned business that believes in its mission of community service.
By Christopher Cogley

Iowa’s McCunn Specialty Firearms is a small-town retailer with a big heart.
There was a time when small-town stores dominated the American retail market. Stores where the owner was always behind the counter or stocking shelves; stores where the employees not only knew each customer’s name, they knew each customer’s story. Conversations took place over the countertops and in the aisles. The store was more than a gathering place; it was a part of the community, and the owners cared more about that community than the profits its people could provide. Anyone who thinks that kind of store has gone the way of the passenger pigeon hasn’t visited McCunn Specialty Firearms in eastern Iowa.
McCunn’s was started more than 12 years ago by Kevin McCunn and his son, Brice. Today, McCunn’s is not only an example of the customer-first business model that made local stores so successful in the past, it’s a testament to the fact that even in an era where large corporate conglomerates dominate the retail landscapes, small family-owned businesses can still flourish by making their customers feel special.
“It’s important to me. How you treat people matters,” Brice says. “I always want to do more than what’s expected. When it’s your name on the front of the building, that’s just what you do.”
If that sounds like an old-fashioned ideal, it’s probably because it’s an ideal that has been handed down to Brice for generations. Kevin spent the majority of his professional life working in the John Deere dealership that his father started in the 1970s. Back then, especially in a rural farming community, customers expected—and received—the kind of honest business that was conducted over a cup of coffee and sealed with nothing more than a handshake. It’s a value that Brice’s grandfather passed along to Kevin, and one Kevin passed on to Brice.
“That’s definitely where I learned the family business model,” he says. “I saw it in my grandfather’s store, and I see it with our business. When you treat people with honesty, respect, and integrity, word gets around. What you do in your store says a lot about the kind of person you are.”
Judging by the word-of-mouth advertising that’s spread across neighboring counties and states, customers like the kind of people Kevin, Brice, and the employees at McCunn’s are. With that kind of personal testimonials, it isn’t surprising how fast the business has grown. Twelve years ago, Kevin had a shop on Main Street in Massena, and when father and son decided to start a firearms business, Brice took over a small corner of Kevin’s shop. Two years later, the business had grown large enough that Brice had to build his own shop.
From the very beginning, the McCunns had a mission to do more than provide people in the area access to high-quality firearms, they wanted to help create safe, responsible gun owners. One way Brice chose to accomplish that mission was to put an emphasis on gun safes to help make sure that his customers’ firearms never ended up in the hands of anyone who shouldn’t have access to them. The choice turned out to be extremely popular.
“We started a dedicated safe department in 2019. Word spread quickly, and our safe business grew more rapidly than we could have ever expected,” Brice says. “We had to build an addition to our store that was dedicated solely to gun safes, and the next year we built a warehouse just to store the excess inventory.”
That side of the business grew so large that now McCunn’s is one of the biggest safe shops in the state. But McCunn’s commitment to helping their customers be safe, responsible gun owners didn’t end with their expansion into the gun safe business.
“Not long after we opened our retail business, we also realized that there was a need for an indoor shooting range. We’re in a rural area where most people can step outside their back door and shoot, so I wasn’t sure how well a range would be received. But I’m one-hundred-percent happy that we built it.”
In addition to providing customers with an indoor place to shoot, especially during the cold Iowa winter, and hosting league shooting events, the range provides McCunn’s with another opportunity to create responsible gun owners.
“In the last few years we’ve seen an explosion of first-time gun buyers. We don’t like to see people buy a gun for the first time and not be educated on how to use it safely,” Brice says.
As part of their commitment to this philosophy, McCunn’s offers every new gun buyer a free educational session at the range.
“The range is a great place where we can work with them to get them familiar with their gun so they are comfortable with it and will be able to use it safely,” he says.
The McCunn’s commitment to their customers goes far beyond the doors of their shop. Just like the businesses of yesteryear that McCunn’s retail shop is modeled after, Brice and his entire family are part of the community they serve, and are active participants in charity functions as well as school, church, and other community events. When an F5 tornado tore through the area a few years ago, Brice and his crew used their heavy equipment to help with the clean-up. They also delivered safes to people who were hit the worst by the tornado so that they could keep their valuables secured until they had a new home to store them in.
“That was something small that we could do so that those folks had one less thing to worry about,” Brice says. “Watching my dad and my grandfather be a part of the community, I knew that was just something you do. You don’t just have your business here, you live here. These are your friends, your neighbors. We help take care of each other and do whatever we can to give help where help is needed.”
And Brice makes sure that same feeling of community is extended to every person who walks through the doors of his business, whether they came in from around the corner, or from another state.
“When someone comes in they’re going to be taken care of. They’re going to get the best of us,” he says. “When they leave, we want them to say that they’re going to come back. That’s my goal.”
It might seem like a novel idea in today’s cutthroat retail marketplace, but McCunn Specialty Fireams is proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that it’s as effective today as it was when Brice’s grandfather first opened the doors to his business more than 70 years ago. (mccunnguns.com)
Editor’s Note: Additional research for this article conducted by Miles Hall.