The Glenwood Gun and Pistol Range operated for nearly 60 years on the Glenwood’s main street before it closed in 2024, lasting well into the 21st century even after two owners were killed in the store.
The store triggered Glenwood’s first restrictions on the operation and location of gun shops in the area and was a source of concealed carry training. Village trustees tried to shut down the store in 1999 after the homicides and due to its proximity to a school and park, but the store changed ownership and remained open for another two decades.
The bright pink and white building at 135 E. Main St., is now for sale, and some residents have requested to keep the gun range, while other business owners have proposed new uses for the building, said Glenwood Village Administrator James Patton.
The property includes a 1,000-square-foot front room, a shooting range, a warehouse and a parking lot.
Patton said several people have asked about zoning and permitted uses. The front of the building briefly operated as a flower shop, which closed late last summer, he said.
He said the village has not received proposals to keep the building as a gun shop, but some residents said they would like to operate the gun range again.
Patton said he is open to having a conversation about reopening the gun range, but said there would need to be restrictions.
Christine Nordstrom, the daughter of the most recent owner, Chris Deyoung, said she remembers the store as an “old timer’s gun shop” that also offered concealed carry courses. She said these trainings were her father’s work.
“He was never a big firearms seller,” she said. “He never carried a large stock of firearms. A lot of the firearms that he did have in there were kind of more an antique or something that would be more interesting to a certain kind of collector.”
She said Deyoung worked in partnership with several concealed carry instructors from Indiana, and he supported the Police Department, as officers often visited the range to keep up their training.
She said Deyoung, 86, closed the store in October 2024 due to personal health complications.
“It just wasn’t feasible for him to run the shop anymore,” she said.
She also said the store closed in part because it couldn’t compete with modern gun shops and ranges in the area, a struggle that was exacerbated by increased state gun restrictions and taxes such as the Cook County bullet tax, she said.
The bullet tax, effective since late 2021, added a $25 tax on retail firearm purchases and a 1- to 5-cent tax per round of ammunition.
Nordstrom said her father struggled to keep up with this tax more than other stores because his store did not sell at a high volume.
She said just before the store closed, it was no longer fully functional and was reduced to only operating for a couple days of the week, as it was hard to staff.
Nordstrom said that while guns are not her thing, she helped her father operate the store for years while he recovered from having a stroke.
“Sometimes you have to step up and take one for the team, and I didn’t want my dad to lose everything that he had worked for just because he got sick,” she said.
Deyoung received ownership of the property in November 2000, according to a mortgage granted to him at the time. The store was foreclosed in 1999 under the ownership of Dan Pennella, according to a foreclosure filing.
Pennella’s family operated the store for about 11 years, although the gun shop has existed since the early 1960s.
Pannella’s father and brother were killed in the store during an armed robbery in September 1998.
Store employees estimated that more than 50 of the 350 guns and rifles in the store that day were stolen.
The shootings and robbery prompted public safety concerns, and village trustees said they had serious reservations about the gun shop continuing operation. Trustees said in addition to the homicides, there had been a burglary and an attempt to break a wall down at the business, all within a three-year period.
Pennella wanted to keep the store open, but the Village Board voted to deny an extension of the gun shop’s retail business license, putting him out of business when his license expired in May that year.
When Pennella later tried to sell the store, the Village Board approved an ordinance restricting gun shops to at least a quarter-mile from a school. The gun shop was within 20 yards of Brookwood Intermediate and Brookwood Junior High schools.
A county ordinance at the time also restricted gun shops from being within a certain distance from parks and forest preserve land. The gun shop was and still is down the street from Cook County Forest Preserve land and picnic sites.
Pennella promised to increase safety at the store to meet trustee demands, such as installing video cameras and including admittance only through bar-coded membership cards.
After Pennella’s business license expired, he passed on the mortgage to Deyoung, who was a store customer, according to Nordstrom.
Nordstrom said Deyoung installed security measures at the store, such as new alarms. She said taking over the store was a passion project for him, as an ex-Army ranger.
Nordstrom said the store closed in October 2024. The business was officially dissolved April 11, 2025, according to filings on the Illinois Secretary of State business database.
awright@chicagotribune.com
