Nashville, TENNESSEE – A huge crowd of more than eight hundred people from across the United States attended The GlockStore’s 6th Annual Open House in Nashville on Saturday. While the majority of the Second Amendment practitioners in attendance were Tennessee residents, a survey of the jam-packed parking lot and streets surrounding The GlockStore showed cars driven in from Alabama, Kentucky, Georgia, West Virginia, Illinois, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Texas.
The award for the furthest distance driven — 891 miles — went to Calvin Holcombe and his friends, who drove all the way to Nashville from the borough of The Bronx in New York City, New York.
“They won’t let us have anything like this in New York, so we just had to drive down here again this year,” Holcombe told The Tennessee Star.
Second place went to Renato Bearvotti, his wife, and their two young children, who drove 688 miles from Deerfield, Florida. “We found out about this event on The GlockStore website, and we just had to come up and be part of it,” Renato told The Star.
Third place went to Greg Skidmore and his son Christian, who drove for eight hours and 516 miles from Clarksburg, West Virginia to attend the Nashville event.
“We heard about The GlockStore Open House in Nashville listening to The Michael Patrick Leahy Show on our local radio station in West Virginia. He talks about The GlockStore all the time and we decided to drive down to see if we could meet him and see The GlockStore for ourselves. We met Michael and we are really glad we came. This place is amazing,” Skidmore told The Star.
The GlockStore, founded over 30 years ago by CEO Lenny Magill, is one of the largest retailers of Glocks in the country. Six years ago, Magill moved The GlockStore headquarters from San Diego, California, to Nashville, Tennessee, and he has not looked back.
In this 2022 interview with The Star, Magill explained why he and his company left California for Tennessee:
We escaped from California and are here now in Tennessee with the retail store as well as our manufacturing. And it’s really interesting, a lot of people don’t know that we actually manufacture parts right in our facility. And we manufacture them and we sell them nationwide. So we’re bringing money back into Tennessee. . .
In California, people don’t realize that it is relatively a conservative state except for the major cities. You got San Francisco and Los Angeles. And really, that’s about it. Those two cities are driving the whole state. The rest of the state is very conservative.
San Diego County was pretty conservative. Orange County, pretty conservative. But those two big cities really drive it. And then you have the governor, who’s absolutely crazy. And I just think that we’re so lucky to get out of there because it’s so oppressive in California to try to run a business.
In addition to a heavy online presence, The GlockStore features the famous Shoot 270 shooting rooms. Magill got his start producing gun event videos for ESPN back in the late 1980s. His production of YouTube training videos Glocks and guns is prolific, with will over 400 now online.
As Magill told The Star in this 2021 interview, “From Cook to CEO: GlockStore Founder Lenny Magill Tells His Inspiring Personal Story,” he moved from Pennsylvania to San Diego, California as a young man, and got a job as a cook, then as a waiter, then as a radio salesperson, and finally, a local television salesperson.
So I would walk into a car dealer and I’d say, hey, look, I’ve got this new network. It’s all sports all day, 24 hours called Entertainment Sports Programming Network. And I want to sell you some advertising. The guys look at me and go, no one’s gonna watch that. And I’ve got this other station. It’s all news, 24 hours. Cable News Network. He says, no one’s gonna watch that.
It was the hard sell because no one understood what it was. There are no numbers, nothing. So it was a good start. And that’s what got me into the TV business. And then one of my customers was in the gun business. And that’s how I got into the gun business.
So what he owned is an indoor range and I did some commercials for him. And that’s how I got into production, too. So I’ve got a big YouTube presence, as you may know. And I did some commercials for him. And the commercials were super successful. And he and I became buddies. And I did a whole bunch of other work for him. A lot of video work. And I got into the gun business. And all of a sudden, I was the gun video guy. And I did videos for Colt, Smith and Wesson, and all these other people in the gun business. And then I did a TV show for ESPN.
The GlockStore gave away more than $50,000 in guns, gear, and accessories to the attendees who participated in the raffle at the event. Crowds came early, so the doors were open more than an hour in advance of the advertised 10 a.m. opening time.
The festive event was highlighted with food trucks and vendors, one of whom, Dawn Wilson, wife of recently retired WTN radio talk show host Brian Wilson, offered her delicious CabanaWife cookies.
“This GlockStore Open House in Nashville is pure Americana,” a retired executive from New York who recently moved to Tennessee told The Star. “You can’t find an event like this anywhere else,” he added.
Tennessee Star CEO Michael Patrick Leahy delivered a brief speech, focusing on the importance of the Second Amendment and its practitioners to freedom in the United States.
“The United States provides more freedom to its citizens than any other country in the world. That freedom is attributable to the widespread embrace of the Second Amendment of our Constitution, which states that ‘the right to bear arms shall not be infringed.’ Only two other countries–Mexico and Guatemala–provide such a guarantee in their constitutions, but that right in those countries has been diluted dramatically by their statutes and regulations,” Leahy told the crowd.
“In the United States, private ownership of guns is extensive. We have 120 guns for every 100 residents. No other country comes close. Serbia, is in a distant second place, with 40 guns per 100 residents. And in the United Kingdom–where individual rights across the board have been evaporating at a rapid pace–private ownership of guns is severely limited, with just 5 guns per 100 residents,” Leahy continued.
Support for the 2nd Amendment is weakest, Leahy said, among the 18 to 29 year-old age group, highlighting the importance of younger people learning about the Constitution, which is the focus of the annual National Constitution Bee.
The huge success of The GlockStore’s 6th Open House comes at a time when at least two Democrat controlled states–Maryland and California–have passed legislation to ban the sale of Glocks.
As The Star recently reported,
The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), National Rifle Association (NRA), and Firearms Policy Coalition have filed a federal lawsuit challenging Maryland’s newly signed handgun restriction law after Governor Wes Moore approved Senate Bill 334 this week.
The legislation prohibits the manufacture, sale, transfer, or purchase of so-called “machine gun convertible pistols,” a category targeting most Glock handguns because of their cruciform trigger bar design. The law is scheduled to take effect January 1, 2027.
SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut blasted the measure, arguing the state is punishing lawful gun owners instead of criminals who illegally modify firearms.
“This Maryland law bans nearly every Glock and Glock-style handgun on the market today,” Kraut said in a statement. “These pistols are among the most popular on the market, chosen in overwhelming numbers by peaceable citizens for lawful purposes like self-defense.”
The lawsuit, filed as National Rifle Association v. Moore, argues the law violates the Second Amendment because it bans firearms commonly owned for lawful purposes.
The GlockStore’s Magill told The Star that next year’s Open House will be even bigger and better than this year’s, in part because Second Amendment practitioners are leaving gun control states like Maryland and California and flocking to Tennessee.
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Michael Patrick Leahy is the founder and CEO of the Star News Network, which includes The Tennessee Star. Follow Leahy on X at @michaelpleahy.
Being retired military, I go there to see if they have anything new. If I see something I like, I will go to the AAFES website and order it. I will then go and pick it up at the Shoppette on the Tennessee side of Fort Campbell. There, I will go do the background check, like anywhere else. What I won’t have to do is pay any of the overcharged taxes on it. Due to the Kentucky gun laws, I can buy a long gun, like a shotgun or AR, but not a pistol on the Kentucky side of Ft Campbell.