South Carolina gun manufacturer Palmetto State Armory is looking to expand, and has picked a 69,000 square foot facility in Myrtle Beach for a new retail location and gun range. The building was formerly the home of the Sun News newspaper, which moved to a smaller space last year, but soon it will be home to the gun company’s eighth retail location.

“We are extremely excited about the new location. PSA has been trying to find a location in the Myrtle Beach area for at least the past five years,” PSA co-owner Julian Wilson said in an email. “The former Sun News site was absolutely perfect in terms of size and location. If I had to put a tack in a map of Myrtle Beach area of where I would want to be located, that tack would have poked a hole in the map right though this site.”

“We will tailor package for golfers who get rained out where we can offer a once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to see and shoot pieces of history,” Wilson said. “ The property will also be the home of our Freedom Museum, which will house PSA’s collection of historic firearms, which have been collected by (the company’s founder) Jamin McCallum.”

If Palmetto State Armory’s new gun range is a hit, as I suspect it will be, maybe we can replace other shuttered bastions of our First Amendment freedoms with businesses that support our Second Amendment rights. The Newseum in Washington, D.C. is now closed, for instance. How about we turn that building into a one-stop gun shop and range for the D.C. area? Heck, the Farmville Herald building in Farmville, Virginia has a lot of used space, and our nearest indoor range is 40 miles away in Lynchburg. Wonder how easily I could put together a group of investors for the Farmville Indoor Firing Range?

It would definitely be a lot easier to put a gun range in Farmville than to turn the Newseum into a Second Amendment superstore. I’m sure Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and the city council members in D.C. would find a way to stop that from happening, but thankfully Palmetto State Armory didn’t have to worry about that in the friendlier confines of Horry County, South Carolina.

The gun company says it hopes to have its new location up and running by the end of this year or in early 2022, so folks heading to Myrtle Beach for a summer vacation will have to forego a trip to the PSA Freedom Museum, range, and gun store until next year, but I suspect that when the new facility opens its doors to the public it will prove to be a very popular destination for both locals and visitors. Who knows, by then it may even be possible to find ammo to use at the new indoor range without having to scour the Internet or stand in line for a few hours in hopes of getting a box or two.