Scottsdale Gun Club's exclusive Titanium Lounge gives a nod to the Old West.
Terry Schmidt is co-founder of Scottsdale Gun Club.
dark-wood paneling in articles heralding the arrival of the “guntry club,” a new style of gun range — er, “shooting destination” — that resembles the traditional country club, only with guns instead of golf as the primary leisure activity. Today, at least a dozen such luxury gun clubs are thriving throughout the United States, including the Centennial Gun Club in Centennial, Colorado; Elite Shooting Sports in Manassas, Virginia; the Frisco Gun Club in Frisco, Texas; Athena Gun Club in Houston; Lock & Load in Miami (where Lebron James is a member); and the Strip Gun Club in Las Vegas. Titanium Lounge has been part of Scottsdale Gun Club since the $8.2 million facility opened in 2004, making it, in effect, guntry before guntry was cool. “When we started, there was nobody else in the country doing this,” says Kennedy. “And up until a few years ago, we were one of the largest in the country. Since then, there’s been some big mega clubs and what they call ‘guntry clubs’ that have opened up around the country. But a lot of them are modeled on the success we’ve had here over the past 12 years.” SGC does have one thing going for it that other luxury gun clubs lack: Arizona’s less-restrictive gun laws, coupled with a lingering Wild West identity that closely links guns with the state’s frontier heritage. Another is its courtship with modern-day Annie Oakleys. The Gun Club actively attempts to draw a younger, female clientele, a demographic that, surprisingly to some, is responding favorably. For several years running, SGC has remained a top-ranked
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Arizona tourist attraction on travel websites, and its location in Scottsdale Airpark makes it a popular meeting destination for business executives, for whom guns are rapidly becoming the new golf. “It’s the wild, wild West here,” says Erica Mauk, marketing assistant at SGC, who confirms that the facility draw a robust tourist business. “Everyone comes out here and expects to see this flat desert with cowboys running around. And in a sense, that’s kind of how it is, because we do have the lenient gun laws and we are allowed to do stuff like shoot the machine guns.” Restrictions in Arizona are less invasive than in most of the country,” Kennedy confirms. “It’s one of the few bastions where you are still able to buy a firearm with a high-capacity magazine or shoot a machine gun or get training out in the desert and actually do long-range rifle shooting and machine-gun adventures,” he says. That freedom comes with its costs. A 2012 study by the Washington, D.C.-based Violence Policy Center found that Arizonans are more likely to die from guns than car crashes, looking at 2009 figures that compared 856 deaths caused by guns to 809 caused by motor vehicles. Subsequent Ron Kennedy (left), Scottsdale Gun Club reports from state departments of general manager, and transportation and health services Terry Schmidt, the from 2009 to 2012 have shown club's co-founder, in that gun-related deaths continue the Titanium Lounge. to outstrip vehicle-related deaths in Arizona. Often guns and cars are interrelated in fatalities here: On the morning of this visit to Scottsdale Gun Club, news reports tell of a mother of three who was shot to death on State Route 51 in an incident that police initially tie to road rage. Nevertheless, Arizona’s gunfriendly culture has been good for its tourism business. “Especially if people are coming from a part of the country or another part of the world where these kinds of things are not allowed,” Kennedy adds with a