It isn’t every day three women in their seventies walk into a gun store.Stephanie Nugent is the rookie, a first-time shooter who before today had never held more than a water gun.Mary Knox is proficient: Two years ago she was “petrified,” but overcame arthritic hands and bought her own pistol for self-defense.Then there’s Karen Corum, who has long had an interest in shooting and says she has “always been fairly good at it.” She got Knox into the shooting sports and the duo now shoots together almost every week.Customers like Corum, Knox and Nugent are what Bren and Mike Brown had in mind when they opened Frontier Justice three years ago in Lee’s Summit, Missouri.“There’s nothing like this across the United States,” Bren Brown says, as she walks around the 33,000-square-foot facility.With a women’s fashion boutique, small cafe and concierge-style service for VIP members, Frontier Justice offers women and families a shopping experience more tailored to their needs than most gun stores and shooting ranges, Brown says.The concept could be an important development for the $11 billion retail gun industry, which is increasing efforts to target women amid sluggish gun sales that have prevailed ever since the 2016 election.
