West's gun advocates fight to uphold region's traditional wildness

PHOENIX — In the red rock and sand of the Arizona desert, just past the retirement villages and golf greens that have made this sun-worshipping city famous, sits the biggest public shooting range in the United States.

Not far away are the Wal-Marts where Arizonans pay Sun City retirees to wait in line when a new ammo shipment arrives, lest the supply run out. Residents have the right to carry handguns openly, and starting last month residents who have no criminal records and are at least 21 also are able to carry concealed weapons just about anywhere, without the bother of getting a permit.

The full embrace of firearms is just as fervent to the north in Montana, where nearly two-thirds of all households have firearms. Montanans feel so strongly about their right to own guns for hunting, fending off grizzlies and — if it comes to it — fellow humans that lawmakers passed a measure last year that challenges the federal government's authority to regulate guns made and kept in their state.

This is the gun culture of the American West, and it is from here that the latest challenge has come to firearms laws enacted by the city government of Washington, D.C. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., have proposed a law that they say would sweep away overly stringent regulations imposed by the D.C. Council after the Supreme Court struck down the city's 32-year ban on handguns.

Council member Phil Mendelson, a Democrat, said the McCain-Tester bill could gut the city's regulatory powers, including laws that are stricter than most states', about keeping guns away from people with records of domestic violence. He also said the law shows a disregard for the realities of the city, where guns mean drive-bys, holdups and intimidation more than sport, tradition and the American way.

"The national debate about guns just misses that they are very different cultures," Mendelson said of the city of Washington and much of the rest of the country. "It's like a psychology, a mind-set, as to how people as a group think about guns."

McCain and Tester declined requests for interviews. But their bill reflects a philosophy that seems part of the American West's genome. Even Arizona's flag, based on a design created by the team captain of the former territory's rifle team during a national rifle match almost 100 years ago, symbolizes the way guns are woven into the state's politics and culture, whether for self-defense or sport.

"You think golf forces you to focus — try holding a deadly weapon in your hand," says Pamela Gorman, who helped ease gun laws as a state senator and is running for Congress.

If the Ben Avery shooting range is not the heart of Arizona's gun culture, it's close to it. More than 220,000 shooters a year test their firepower at ranges covering more than 1,500 acres of desert on the outskirts of Phoenix.

"It's a Phoenix Point of Pride," said Noble Hathaway, president of the Arizona State Rifle and Pistol Association, referring to a community promotional designation. "All my kids and grandkids grew up out there."

Just down the road from the Ben Avery range is the ZIP code with the most federal firearms licensees in Arizona (20), including McMillan Firearms Manufacturing, a family firm that makes precision rifles and synthetic rifle stocks used by big-game hunters and military snipers.

Kerry McMillan, 55, whose father created the company, sounds puzzled about why places such as the District impose so many restrictions on an adult's access to firearms. Criminals don't obey the law anyway, he says.

"To us, we don't see what the big deal is," McMillan said. "I'm surprised that the restrictions that exist now actually were ever passed, because I think law-abiding gun owners are as responsible with single-shot, bolt action, semiautomatic, handgun, revolver, even fully automatic weapons, as they would be one with the other."

In Washington, a person who wants to obtain a handgun must file forms with the police, take a five-hour safety class, undergo two criminal background checks, pass a multiple-choice exam, endure a 10-day waiting period and take the newly registered handgun to police headquarters for a ballistics test. And that's just to keep the gun at home. Except for retired law-enforcement officers, private residents cannot legally carry open or concealed weapons.

In Arizona, a resident who has no criminal record need only visit a gun shop, pick out a gun, undergo a federally mandated, computerized background check, and walk out. As of July 29, Arizonans can carry their weapon concealed without a permit.

"Out here in the Southwest, it's really a Wild West mentality. People are willing to accept the fact that people are walking around with guns on their hips," said Hildy Saizow, president of Arizonans for Gun Safety.

But gun-rights advocates say that the city of Washington's gun-control laws — not to mention prohibitions against murder — did not prevent a drive-by shooting in March that involved illegal weapons. They also say that despite having nearly 158,000 people with concealed weapons in Arizona, their homicide rate of 6.3 per 100,000 is lower than the District's, 31.4. That's true of Phoenix, too, where the homicide rate is 10.5 per 100,000.

And although most gun- rights advocates skew Republican, Arizonans say that large numbers of Democrats embrace the Second Amendment.

"Hell, if you're going to believe in free love and drugs and all that kind of stuff from the 1960s, you've got to believe in guns," said Jeff Smith, a former columnist for the Tucson Citizen who calls himself a "redneck liberal."

Smith, 64, who is paralyzed from the chest down from a motorcycle accident, likes President Obama, dislikes Sarah Palin and thinks health-care overhaul should have included a single-payer government option.

He also competes in long-range shooting events, casts his own lead bullets and gave his former wife a .38 special snub-nosed revolver for Mother's Day. His preferred weapon, the Sharps repeating rifle, is made in Montana.

The Shiloh Sharps Rifle Manufacturing Co., in the tiny town of Big Timber, Mont., is housed in a building that vaguely resembles Hollywood's idea of a saloon.

Because of a backlog, customers wait as long as two years for a Shiloh Sharps rifle, which is an exact replica of the firearm patented by Christian Sharps in 1874. The company makes about 800 to 1,000 rifles a year, some of which have appeared as props in "Dances With Wolves" and other movies. Fully customized, some models run $5,000 each.

Before taking a visitor onto the shop floor, owner Robert Bryan relates a little family history about members who formed cattlemen's associations, ran off rustlers and fought for statehood, often at the point of a gun. Among the Bryan heirlooms is an original Colt revolver said to have killed a man in a poker game in the town of Alzada.

Guns are such a part of the West's history, Bryan said, that his family worries about some of the attitudes imported by East and West Coast newcomers. When his wife took one of their Sharps rifles into an elementary school for show-and-tell, some of the children were excused from class at their parents' request.

"This is something we don't even understand," Bryan says.