I recently attended Shot Show in Las Vegas. As a member of the media, I was able to access the list of outdoor celebrities that would be attending the convention. As I browsed the list, I noticed that Louie Tuminaro, the host of Gunfather Restorations would be attending the show. I have watched his show before and I thought that he would make an interesting interview for the magazine. I have never met Louie, so I had gone through the proper channels to arrange the interview. The day before our interview, I was walking through the show and to my surprise, I bump into Louie. I stop to introduce myself and from that moment on, I had made a life long friend. We talked and laughed for a good thirty minutes before both of us had to head over to our next appointments. Louie is a fascinating person and he is exactly what you see on television. What you see is what you get. It does not get any more authentic than that. I will say that I look forward to our next meeting because I know that it will be filled with laughs and entertainment.
Chris: I'm here with my new, really good friend, Louie Tuminaro, from Gunfather Restorations. Louie, it was really great meeting you yesterday.
Louie: My fellow paisan over here, I'm going be honest with you, Chris. Even within five minutes that I was talking to you, I felt like I had a brother standing right next to me. You know what I mean?
Chris: It's been a lot of fun.
Louie: You know, when you have another guy from New York that actually comes up right next to you and starts talking, we're talking about pizza and food and all that fun stuff, I knew this was going to be a great, Interview here.
Chris: You know, we probably went to the same night clubs growing up.
Louie: I know.
Chris: I had a lot more hair back then, so I know you probably don't recognize me.
Louie: Me too, brother. Me too.
Chris: So, you grew up in Long Island.
Louie: Yeah, I grew up in, uh, Suffolk County, Long Island. I was a business owner at a young age. Cars were always my thing. I Loved cars. I was in the automobile industry. What happened was, I always through my dad, peddled guns. I always bought and sold guns. I collected guns, worked on guns. So, I had sold a couple of our companies that we owned and I just found myself doing more with gun. One day I decided, I came home and I said to my wife,
“hey, you know something, I think I want to change. I think I want to move to Montana, and I think I want to buy and sell guns.”
This was a huge decision because, you know how it is being in New York, your whole family is in New York and normally the hard part when you are in New York is saying to your family, “Hey, babe, how about leaving your family, to go move to Montana with me.” You know that most people want to do that, but they say, “Oh, I can't because my family's still there.” But we did it. We left everybody and we just went and did it. But it was a great experience. I started working out of my double car garage. The next thing, you know, I, have a small shop for my first gun shop, and then I had the bright idea of doing television show.
So, once we hooked up with the Outdoor Channel, I knew that I needed a really nice place to film TV show. So, we purchased the building and property that we are in now. We have ourselves an absolutely beautiful gun shop.
Chris: At what age did you start shooting?
Louie: Oh, my dad had me shooting when I was a child. We lived on Long Island but we would travel about three hours to Columbia County, upstate New York. We had a place where my dad would go hunting. What we would do is, we would start out shooting rabbits and squirrels with a .22. Everything that we saw, we shot. It was that new excitement of when you were a kid. I would shoot birds, squirrels, chipmunks. I was having a lot of fun doing that while my dad was putting up his hunting blinds up for the following season. Shooting was something that was in my blood.
Chris: You just progressed from there. When did you get your first handgun?
Louie: Right now, I have a concealed weapons permit. But growing up, I've shot so many of my dad's handguns. I applied for my first handgun permit when I came to Montana. I went through the state required course and I got my concealed weapons permit. I've had it ever since. That was about when I was 42 years old.
Chris: So, how does the reciprocity work for bringing your guns from New York to Montana? Was that easy? Because I know that some states acknowledge that you have a firearms license and allow you to renew when it when your current license expires.
Louie: I'm going to use this as an example here. God bless my father, he's in heaven right now, but when my father ended up moving from New York to Montana and he passed away, it was kind of weird, Because I was contacted by New York state asking where all of my father's guns were?
It was just kind of weird that people are keeping track of who is passing away, what guns they have and so on. But we know we have a have a federal firearms license. So, everything that comes into the shop, it comes in through our license.
Chris: Yeah So it makes a hell of a lot easier than the normal guy
Louie: Everything is above board in our business. Every gun that comes into our building for a restoration for a build or whatever it may be comes in with an FFL attached to it. You do not mess around with that stuff.
Chris: What was it like coming from New York. The hustle and bustle where you can walk down the street and there's a nice restaurant. Going to Montana, in the middle of nowhere, where you hear that there's a great Italian restaurant only to find out that you get egg noodles and ketchup.
Louie: You know, coming to Montana was real culture shock. The pace was a lot slower. You could not go out and get food at any time of the evening like in New York. Chinese food was not made by Chinese people in Montana. You know what I mean?
There were not any pasta places in my particular town where you can go and get an Italian dinner. So Chinese is out. Pizza is out. You have plenty of steak houses. Don't get me wrong, Montana beef is amazing. But it is not like being in New York where food is a part of our culture. We look forward to good food.
I had to give up certain things to come to Montana, but the pace and the beauty and the way of living is great. I was just in New York a few days ago, visiting my daughter. My daughter just had a baby.
Chris: Congratulations
Louie: Thank you. I had a little baby girl.
Chris: That's awesome.
Louie: Thank you. So, I was there for a day and a half. While I was there, I had Chinese. I had pizza. Went to an Italian restaurant. All within the day and a half that I was there, I have to get it in before I go back home. I try to get back to New York a lot, probably three, four times a year I get back.
Chris: Is that what you miss most about New York? The food? And of course, family?
Louie: Yeah. But I have to admit, this time going back to New York, I have to truly say that I drove to New York this time. Took me three days. Driving three 15- hour days. But as I hit New Jersey, watching every lane of traffic, something came over me where I just said, “this is not my home anymore.” Okay. Traditionally it is, but it's not my home anymore. I don't want this race. I don't want this anymore. If anything, I am looking, as we get older, to slow down. I know that I have slowed down a little bit.
Chris: So you relocate to Montana, you finally get your gun shop. What makes you want to start a TV show?
Louie: It's kind of funny, but I'm the kind of person that I get complacent, I don't want to be complacent. So, everything is going great, I got this beautiful gun shop, and a friend of mine did TV out on Long Island. I was familiar with production; I was familiar with how he got the TV show. So basically, when you want to do a TV show you have to film a pilot, so you have to have a production company come into your place film something for three to five minutes. That's going to be amazing. Showing characters, showing what you do, and then you have to pitch that to networks.
So, we went ahead and did all of that. We had called the outdoor channel and the outdoor channel liked our pitch and they liked our promo that we sent them. Before you know it, (2014) the outdoor channel picked us up and we started filming with our family.
Chris: Wow. Now, originally you had your whole family in the shop. You were all characters in your show. How does that affect your everyday life? You're working together, you're living together, you're eating together. You must get on everyone's nerves.
Louie: Well, I seem to get on people's nerves once in a while.
Chris: I mean, each other's nerves, not just yours.
Louie: Well, no, You know, I'm pretty type A and I'm very particular. But we have a very, very close- knit family. everybody liked being on TV, so they were okay with it. They really didn't know any better because they were young and they were on TV. But what happened was, as my family started growing, this child went this direction that child went that direction. But my son did decide to come and work in the family business. We do have Louis Jr. in our shop, as we speak right now. He is holding the fort down over there. So as everybody chose their own path and went in their own direction, we reformatted the show to a show so that we could show more gunning. Now I had a little less family to show, but now we are able to showcase more of our craft.
Chris: So is there a particular type of firearm that you prefer more than others? Everybody has a favorite.
Louie: Oh yeah, I have one.
Chris: What's yours?
Louie: Well, my dad's favorite was a Smith and Wesson. My dad was always a huge Smith and Wesson fan. And I am too. But Colt is, my gun. I'm a huge Colt, Revolver, and 1911 fan. And it just so happens that Colt is our presenting sponsor on our TV show. Colt is like our family. When I say family, I go to Connecticut two, three times a year, and I go to the factory, and I know everybody, and we walk through the custom shop, and we walk through the factory. I see what they're building and the people over at Colt treat us like family. It's amazing. It is a great relationship and I am a huge fan of the Colt Python.
Chris: There's a lot to be said about tight relationships, not just friends and sponsors, they become family because I have that with my advertisers. Not all of them, but the ones you just know.
Louie: Everybody that we partner with for each season that we're on television, they all have my cell number. I have their cell numbers. For Christmas, we will text each other, Merry Christmas. I'm looking to establish long-term relationships so that we can grow together and offset each other. That is important to me, that our sponsors are equally as happy at what we are doing for them as what they're doing for us.
Louie: Okay. And everybody is just nice to each other. Everybody is friendly, like, we're like one big family and all I can say is that I'm very, very happy to be part of the outdoor channel family.
Chris: Will there be any surprises that we should look forward to for this coming season?
Louie: Oh yeah. Let me tell you something. We have an amazing lineup. We have hundreds and hundreds of people that send their submissions in every year. Hoping that we're going to pick and choose them to be on an episode of the Gunfather Restorations.
We have a phenomenal lineup, and all I can say is that I am really happy that the people are still writing in to be on the show. We are getting great responses, and we hope that everybody loves the work that we are doing on everyone's guns.
Chris: That's great. I am looking forward to the season. You have to look forward to a care package of Soppressata, dried sausage, maybe some provolone.
Louie: Chris, I'm depending on you, Chris. I need it, alright? I'm dependent on it, alright?
Chris: Absolutely. I appreciate you taking the time to talk to us today. Definitely check out Gunfather Restorations on the Outdoor channel and we're looking forward to another great year.
Louie: Thank you, brother.
Chris: Thanks so much.