In honor of John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley: In Search of America, I am keeping my eyes open for clues about America’s gun cultures as Sandy and I travel from our home in North Carolina to Yellowstone National Park and back. My inaugural post on this series can be found here.

As discussed in my previous post from Cody, Wyoming, most visitors to the Cody Firearms Museum are not interested in firearms per se, but are visiting the Buffalo Bill Center of the West because it is on the way to or from Yellowstone. This informed the recent renovation of the museum led by former curator Ashley Hlebinsky and current curator Danny Michael.

But there are a minority of visitors who visit the Cody Firearms Museum because they are gun nuts of one kind or another. And there is a lot for these visitors to see and appreciate at the museum as well.

The museum collection includes over 7,000 firearms, of which over 4,000 are on display. Some of these are openly displayed in cases (pictured above), and others are available for viewing in “open storage” drawers and sliding cabinets (pictured below).

Fortunately, the museum’s collection of artifacts is easy to navigate due to its organization. There is both a chronological section and various thematic sections (military, hunting, “the West,” science, art, etc.).

There is truly something for every part of gun culture here: hunting, recreation, collecting, military, law enforcement, self-defense.

One man I ran into in the military section of the museum was looking for a World War II-era “grease gun.” He was surprised the museum didn’t have one. He caught up to me later while I was playing with the “ma deuce” simulator to let me know he found the gun and excitedly told me about it.

As I was exiting the museum for the second time, I actually ran across an exhibit section I did not see my first time around: the modern shooting sports gallery.

I liked this display both because it covered one of my bucket list items (cross-country skiing and shooting, i.e., biathalon), and because there were items from two people I’m fortunate to have gotten to know some in my travels through gun culture: professional shooters Julie Golob and Chris Cheng.

Again, I spent 2.5 hours touring the museum and could have spent 2.5 days. I know I only scratched the surface, but what I saw was pretty awe-inspiring.

And educational.

In my forthcoming third and last post from Cody, I will highlight some of the social and cultural education about firearms the museum attempts.

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