In 1857, John Brown ordered a thousand iron pikes from a blacksmith in Collinsville, Connecticut. Each had a six-foot ash haft and a ten-inch double-edged head. They cost a dollar apiece. Brown paid for them out of his own pocket and the pockets of a small group of New England abolitionists who knew what he intended to do with them.
The pikes were meant for the men, women, and children he expected to free at Harpers Ferry. He believed — correctly — that the federal government had been arming one side of the question for a very long time, and that the people the law most consistently failed deserved something to hold in their hands.
The pikes were never used in earnest. Brown was hanged. The Civil War started anyway. The pikes sat in crates in Maryland for a while, then drifted off into private collections and museum cases. You can see one in Harpers Ferry today.
"All persons known to be of good character and of sound mind and suitable age, [...] whether male or female, shall be encouraged to carry arms openly." — John Brown · Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States · Article XLIII · 1858
We took the name because that argument — who is the right to bear arms actually for? — never really ended. It just got quieter, and then louder, and then quieter again. We'd rather be on Brown's side of it.
No. 2 · The shop What we are, in plain terms.
We are a federally licensed firearms dealer and outfitter in Fairfax, Virginia. We sell firearms, ammunition, optics, accessories, and gear. We run FFL transfers, do customization work, and source field equipment to spec. We host classes when we can. We are tucked into the front-facing loading bay of the Nova Labs makerspace, which means a lot of our customers came in to laser-cut something and walked out with a question about a rifle.
We are not a tactical shop. There are no skulls on the walls. There is no Punisher logo. Nobody at the counter is going to call you "operator." We sell guns the way a hardware store sells drills: they're tools, they're serious, you should know how to use them, and we're going to help you get there.
No. 3 · The politics We are open about who we are.
Plenty of gun shops in this country do an excellent job making queer people, trans people, Black and Brown people, women, immigrants, and first-time buyers feel like they walked into the wrong place. We are not that shop, and we say so out loud because some people need to hear it before they walk in.
We are not interested in performing politics at you. We're not going to put a flag in the window or a slogan on a t-shirt and call it allyship. What we'll do is treat you like a serious person who came in to buy a serious thing, and answer your questions without sighing, and not try to sell you a $4,000 rifle on day one.
If a gun shop has ever made you feel small, we're sorry. That isn't this place.