East Granby Gun Shop Owner: Newtown Shooting Turned Industry ‘Upside-Down’

This story was posted by Susan Schoenberger. It was written and reported by Jessie Sawyer.

After the December Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, the number of people asking for NRA basic pistol permit classes at Tech9Guns in Stafford quadrupled, said owner Jim Catania.

So, in February, the Enfield native and Stafford resident brought the gun training center to the Liquor Cabinet plaza in East Granby so he could be closer to the Hartford Gun Club and access its indoor shooting range for his classes. His 56B Rainbow Road facility does not have a shooting range.

“I teach the class because I like to promote the sport and for people’s personal protection. It’s about safety,” said Catania, 44, who supports more gun education to address violence. “In order for the government to begin to address the issue, the issue needs to begin with more training.”

He is also in the process of finalizing paperwork to bring the gun shop portion of his business to the East Granby site. In addition to firearms, he plans on selling ammunition, survival items, clothing lines and accessories like holsters and scopes.

Participants training at Catania’s East Granby location — coming from as far as Danbury and the Montville/Ledyard area — are “looking to be prepared,” he said.
 
Many of them are young women, mothers who want to protect their children, older couples and doctors. When Catania has asked the women in his classes why they signed up, many —  unprompted — have said, “We don’t want to be the next Petit family,” referring to the 2007 Cheshire home invasion.

Catania plans on expanding training for disaster preparedness, home defense, rifle training and survival at Tech9Guns. He expects to launch Eddie Eagle “child recognition” gun safety classes in April for children in kindergarten up to third grade.

Ever since Sandy Hook shooting, operating a gun store has been “extremely tough,” Catania said.

 Smaller gun shops have struggled to keep firearms on the shelves as gun sales surged, supplies grew more scarce and manufacturers had trouble keeping up with demand. Catania said his gun distributors had about $27 million in inventory a week before the Newtown tragedy and that supply dropped to about $9 million afterward. Gun prices have also increased.

“They made more sales in a 48-hour period than they had in the past four to five years,” Catania said. “Overnight everyone scrambled to purchase the items that were available before the government stepped in and banned these items. The industry was turned upside-down.”

He is easing his gun business into East Granby, to be “respectful of the community” amid controversial gun debates nationwide. He hopes that the average person seeing the sign for his new gun business won’t “formulate an opinion based on fear.”

“Given the way things are right now, it’s still a touchy subject.... I am extremely cautious not to offend everybody. ” Catania said. “I’m not looking to do anything large.... I’m certainly not looking to open anything on the scale of Hoffman’s or the larger gun shops.”

Customers can register for classes at www.tech9pistolpermits.com. More information about Tech9Guns is available by calling 860-899-5966.