Michigan’s own Dunham’s Sports has found an interesting niche in firearm retail in recent years. Several large sporting goods retailers and big box stores, including Dicks Sporting Goods and Walmart, decided to cave to the progressive agenda and end, or greatly limit, their firearms inventory.
Dunham’s—founded in West Bloomfield in 1937 and currently based in Troy—very quietly kept a strong spine. The company didn’t flinch and kept selling handguns and rifles, along with ammo for both.
It was a smart move on behalf of Dunham’s longtime CEO Jeffery Lynn. Now, many gun enthusiasts have no other options apart from firearm specialty stores and independent dealers. But there is a specific demographic of gunowner who avoids the independent gun dealers and almost exclusively relies on Dunham’s for their needs: normie gun owners.
I know this cohort quite well; I’m one of them. We are just regular suburban guys. We aren’t wild-eyed 2nd Amendment advocates or wearing the tell-tale signs of the range bro —Viking beard and Deus Vult tats—and we aren’t prepping for civil war.
This type of gun owner finds the notion of going to a firearm specialty store and getting caught talking to weird gun nuts about conspiracies off putting. In addition, the open-carry motif that specialty stores cling to doesn’t interest normie gun owners.
The reviews of such places are something like: “I like that place. They have cool stuff in there. The range isn’t bad. But every time I go in there, I get stuck talking to somebody who creeps me out”.
In this market landscape, Dunham’s Sports has become the one-stop shop for prospective normie gun owners. You can shop there in relative peace without getting indoctrinated into the Sovereign Citizen Movement or some other totally whacked out subculture. You can browse and not get condescended to by a gun nerd with a 40-inch waist and a dump butt.
And here’s the best part: Dunham’s Sports is always running sales on everything. I’ve never once walked into my local Dunham’s and not seen several makes and models marked down significantly lower than the specialty stores, which all seem intent on gouging the buyer and setting our credit cards on fire. It’s a rule of thumb among my friends that when we want a specific firearm, we just have to wait a few weeks and pick it up on sale at Dunham’s for $100 less.
A gun owner and close friend remarked, “Dunham’s firearm sales might be carrying their business; possibly keeping them open. Everyone I know goes there for their guns and ammo.”
That might be the reality in our current economy. Dunham’s Sports sells everything but doesn’t specialize in any major American sport. If you have teenage kids in sports at the high school level, you’re likely outfitting them from a specialty store. High school and club swimmers exclusively use a couple boutique stores in Metro Detroit. Hockey and lacrosse players in Michigan have Perani’s Hockey World or Pure Hockey on speed dial.
But if your kid needs tape, a mouthguard, goggles, laces, cleats, any type of athletic support, maybe even a damn kayak, and you have 30 minutes to gametime, Dunham’s can be your savior.
But the reality is that Dunham’s Sports has become Michigan’s household name in firearms sales, and you better believe the anti-firearm activists know this. Over the past few years, local and national activists have attempted, without success, to increase pressure on Dunham’s over their firearm sales policies. The Brady United group filed a civil lawsuit against Dunham’s in 2023 in an obvious attempt to fleece a settlement and apply media pressure.
Walmart, Dicks, and other large corporations based outside Michigan can’t feel the pulse of gun owners here. But Dunham’s, a Michigan company with over nine decades serving our state, knew normie gunowners were part of the culture. And so they held the line.
J.Z. Delorean is a writer for Michigan Enjoyer and has been a Metro Detroit-based professional investigator for 22 years. Follow him on X @Stainless31.
