FORT WALTON BEACH — A wreath made of shotgun shells hangs on the front door of Ranger Firearms, a gun shop on Hospital Drive across from the Bernie Lefebvre Aquatic Center in Fort Walton Beach.

Inside the shop, .22 caliber bullet boxes are arranged neatly in plastic bags tied with curled ribbons. Lacy underwear holsters and leather concealed carry purses hang right alongside black leather holsters and boxes of ammunition.

“See?” Sarah Zetterlind, the owner of Ranger Firearms, said as she held up a shotgun shell display adorned with ribbons. “This is what you get when you have girls in gun shops.”

The small feminine touches might be the only indication that the gun shop is owned and staffed almost entirely by women. She co-owns the store with her husband and, since it opened seven and a half years ago, has made a name for herself in the local gun owning community.

“All shops have personalities to them,” she said. “We try to be as open to anybody as we can, and we try to make it inviting.”

A 'normal gun shop'

Sherry Weise, a sales associate who has been with Ranger for about five years, rolls her eyes and smiles describing how her husband introduces her to people as a “henchman for an arms dealer.”

“This is just a normal gun shop to me,” Weise said. “We treat everybody the same, male or female.”

Wednesday afternoon, Weise’s task was to help a customer pick out a gun for his wife. She put four handguns out on the table and went through the different features of each one with the customer.

“This one is a little bit smaller,” she said, picking up a couple of handguns. “This one is ambidextrous, and it has a magazine release on both sides and it does not have an external safety, it has the grip safety.”

Weise is one of five sales associates Zetterlind employs, four of whom are women. Zetterlind admitted that some customers are surprised at first when they see women behind the counters selling guns.

“The gun industry has finally recognized that women are the fastest growing demographic (in terms of gun ownership),” she said. “But women who actually work in the industry have traditionally had certain jobs. And the person behind the counter traditionally isn’t a woman.”

The female employees generally aren’t phased by the fact that they’re women in male-dominated fields. Kristie Stitch, who has been with the shop for about three years, just really likes guns.

“Guns are fun to talk about and learn about,” she said. “I knew nothing about guns when I started. I learn a lot from my customers though, which is nice.”

'Ugly shades of pink'

Zetterlind, a wife and mother of three, said she also knew little about guns when her husband first opened the shop, but over the years has become proficient in gun safety, styles and trends. She works full time in the store as an owner and manager, helping customers, dealing with gun sales representatives and managing her staff.

She said sometimes, if she is assisting a male customer, another customer will come up to them and, thinking the man is the sales associate, ask the man a question about guns.

Zetterlind said she just smiles and politely helps those people.

“I’m not opposed to having men work for me at all,” she said. “I just look for quality sales people. Somebody that can do really good customer service and not push their opinion on customers and be open to what the customers want. And recently, it tends to be more women I’ve found that have those skills.”

Zetterlind said she has slowly but surely made her own small impression on the gun industry, pointing to a black holster with pink lining on one of her shelves.

“Several years ago, everything in the firearm industry was all pink trying to attract women,” she said. “A lot of it was ugly shades of pink … I would tell the sales reps, ‘shooting guns is dirty so why would I want to have something all pink?’”

She said over time, manufacturers began making accessories of all different colors.

In general, Zetterlind said customers in the store have gotten more used to women staffers, but there are still occasional hurdles.

“We get man-splaining a lot,” she said. “We try really hard to be polite when that happens, but sometimes it’s just constantly having to show that you are capable. Which we are.”