Author: Adam Minter

Paul is an affable retired orthodontist who, between firing rounds from his .45, is conscientious enough to sweep up the spent shell casings that have accumulated around his lane at Bill’s Gun Range in Robbinsdale. Two lanes down, a couple of bumbling boys just out of their teens, “first-time shooters,” as Paul describes them affectionately, have been inquiring of his expertise. “Should we shoot with one hand or both?”

“Uh, most people shoot with two,” Paul answers with minimal concern. One of the boys points the gun downrange, at a portrait of Osama bin Laden. Paul watches as he misses the target almost entirely and asks, “Mind if I shoot his eyes out?” The boy agrees and Paul, in an impressive display of marksmanship, takes out bin Laden’s eyes from 21 feet away.

Bill’s Gun Range is located in a strip mall, sharing the building with the Institute for Athletic Medicine and a U.S. Bank branch. Customers arrive in a barren fluorescent lobby with matted carpet, vending machines, and a television tuned to KTCA. A row of windows faces 16 shooting lanes, and the muffled sound of gunshots thumps beneath the conversation. Victoria, a tough-talking blonde in her mid-40s, presides, exercising an authority that tends to correct even the slightest deviation from what she terms “my range rules.” When I ask her if there are ever problems between shooters, she just smiles. “Lots of guns here, so everybody kind of behaves.”

Bill Penney, the 73-year-old owner and patriarch of the range, breaks down “everybody” as follows: gang members (“We make them toe the mark. If their pupils are wide, we send them home”), “Let’s-have-a-blast” customers (“First-timers trying to impress their dates with big guns”), dedicated shooters (“Guys who join leagues”), private security officers (“We set up accounts with companies for training”), bounty hunters (“One guy looks like Joe Pesci”), police officers, hunters, and those simply interested in self-defense.

Penney himself does not fit into any of his own categories. He is a retired Ph.D. chemical engineer with an impressive portfolio of patents. He enjoys target shooting and some hunting, but actually owns “few guns” personally. Same for Victoria, who claims to be “the oddity around here” because she only owns two guns and self-identifies as “just a mom who loves her job.”

Though Penney won’t divulge his profitability, he concedes that he runs “a good business.” It sure seems lucrative: Lane fees are $20 for a single shooter, $30 for a pair; gun rentals start at $15; traditional targets, as well as those with pictures of bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, are available for $2; ammunition starts at $5 for a box of 50 bullets. And the range sells lots of bullets. “Last year,” Penney tells me, “we recycled about twenty tons of lead.”

It’s mid-afternoon when I ask a young and affluent-looking couple if they’d be willing to talk to me. They happily oblige on the condition that they not have to divulge their names. I learn that they live on Lake of the Isles, that she’s “in marketing,” and that he’s a former musician and current photographer. A native of Kentucky, he did some sport-shooting in his youth and still enjoys indulging the interest on occasion. Today’s occasion is an antique .44 Auto Mag that he “spent a fortune” buying at a gun auction. “It’s never been fired,” he announces, and after several furtive attempts, it stays that way. The couple has more success with a .380 automatic that she self-consciously describes as having “nice lines.”

While chatting we are interrupted by a massive blast that resonates painfully through my ear protection (ear muffs allow conversational frequencies while excluding most “high-decibel events”). Everyone turns to lane seven where a middle-aged man has just fired something with a nine-and-a-half-inch barrel. I approach carefully.

“Four-eighty Ruger,” he announces before firing five rounds at yet another photo of Osama bin Laden. When I ask what he does for a living, he laughs. “Oh, I run a detox center.”

A few minutes later Paul is taking aim at his own targets when he notices a young black kid in warm-up pants, a black T-shirt, and an Oakland Raiders cap, misfiring his Glock. Paul strolls over to the younger man who, under ordinary circumstances, would be unlikely to take an interest in a 60-ish white man who used to straighten teeth in the Sons of Norway building. But the younger man seems to recognize a valuable level of expertise in the older man, and he pays careful attention as Paul demonstrates proper aiming technique. “I like to help out,” Paul tells me later, as he relaxes in the lobby with a cigar. I look out on the range and see that the younger man has benefited from the tutorial: his shots have become much more accurate. “That’s just part of the fun of coming down here,” says Paul.

We are just outside Willmar when Mark begins to explain how he and his family eat and sleep for free at Indian casinos. “Hey, we look like Indians. I tell the manager we’re Sioux, and if he doesn’t ask questions, we’ll probably get suites and buffet coupons.” Mark’s skin is the color of a very well-tanned Caucasian, and his hair is ink black. It wouldn’t be hard to imagine that he is, in fact, a Native American.

But Mark is an American Roma. Better known around the world as a Gypsy—a term which offends many Roma, but not Mark. He is one of nearly a million American Gypsies descended from Eastern European and Turkish clans. Though assimilation has become common, many Gypsies still live in a highly secretive, mobile world where false identities are standard, cash is preferred, and photographs are strictly taboo. Mark’s real name—in particular, his clan name—is a well-guarded secret.

Today I am riding in Mark’s white Chevy Suburban. In the back seat is his American Gypsy wife, and surrounding her are three of their seven children, ages 6, 9, and 11. The mood is warm and welcoming. Though allowing outsiders (much less writers) into this world is considered a serious cultural breach, Mark is proud to show off a small part of his unique lifestyle. Mark says he married his wife when he was 14 and she was 16—about average for an arranged Gypsy marriage. The negotiated dowry was $20,000—paid by the bride’s father. “I’m hoping my kids work out a little cheaper,” Mark says. He has three daughters.

We are on our way to a machine shop where Mark will buy nearly a ton of scrap aluminum. Once the metal is loaded into the Suburban’s trailer, Mark drives it to a Minneapolis scrap yard. For nearly half the year—two to three months of which are spent in Minnesota—this is how Mark supports his family. He’s not alone. According to Mark, there are probably 5,000 “scrap Gypsies” roaming America during the summer months.

Countless machine shops across Minnesota deal with these nomads on a regular basis, though often they don’t know it. “They wouldn’t look at us if they knew we were Gypsies. So around here we tell them we’re Indians. Down south we’re Mexicans.” Mark spends his winters outside Wichita, Kansas, where he owns a house. Nevertheless, the road is Mark’s workplace, and even during the winter months he spends weeks driving through Texas and Oklahoma in search of scrap metal. More often than not, his children accompany him, learning the intricacies of the scrap business along the way. It’s important to Mark because like most Gypsy children they won’t complete more than a few years of school. And like most American Gypsies—including Mark and his wife—they cannot read or write. It’s a serious problem in the Gypsy community, but one that is rarely addressed for fear that further assimilation will devastate the private Gypsy culture. Nevertheless what’s lacking in literacy is often balanced by an uncanny ability with numbers—particularly when those numbers are attached to dollars.

We arrive at the machine shop and Mark asks me to stay in the truck. He and one of his kids approach the loading dock where an official-looking man in a blue denim jumpsuit leads them into the building. After 10 minutes a forklift arrives with several pallets of aluminum. A moment later Mark reemerges, and he’s in a hurry to leave. “We got too good a price.”

Mark tells me that Minnesota and the Dakotas are good territory for Gypsies. “People don’t give us too much trouble. If it weren’t for the winters, we might even move up here.” He also assures me that Minneapolis scrap yards understand the peculiar needs of a mobile, anonymous businessman with no forwarding address.

When he drops me at my car, Nick gives me a bolo tie with a turquoise clip. He tells me that it’s the same tie he gives to machine-shop foremen who need convincing that he’s an Indian. “Just make sure you write how we’re all good Indians.” He hands me the address of the long-term residence motel he and his family are using as a base while they work Minnesota. I’m invited for dinner. It’s in the outer ring suburbs. “That’s where all the nice Minnesota families live, right?”