The Largest 6-Shooter In Texas
When Gary Humphreys of Del Rio was in high school, he and a friend were hitchhiking back from San Antonio to save the $6 bus fare and they got a ride with a rising star. “Marty Robbins picked up in a 1956 Chrysler pulling a horse trailer with THE MARTY ROBBINS BAND painted on the side of it.”
Gary has an open mind and open face and people are just naturally attracted to him. He has a gun shop in Del Rio that is a popular destination for gun lovers as well as movie stars who are making movies in the area. “They just seem to want to come in and hang around,” says Gary. On some of the westerns, he helps with the firearms. “I helped James Arness when they filmed the last episode of Gunsmoke in Del Rio.”
It has been said that if Gary fell into a lake he would come out with a pocketful of fish. He sold Wrangler jeans for a while in his gun shop and a man from Brazil came in and for the next few years Gary sold him 50,000 pairs of Wranglers. Gary made trips to Brazil and was treated like a star.
When he was a child, his mother, a nurse, helped the famous female bullfighter Pat Mccormick heal after she was severely gored by a bull in Villa Acuna. Gary and the Texas Torera got to spend some time together and formed a strong friendship.
While a soldier stationed in Louisiana he went to the Louisiana Hayride Show to hear his favorite country singer Norma Jean. He was walking along and he heard a woman’s voice say, “Hey, soldier, would you buy me a coke?” He looked over to find Norma Jean sitting in a Cadillac. When he brought her the coke she asked him sit with her before she went on stage. “I spent an amazing 15 minutes just talking with her,”
Gary has some Model A’s and loves to travel in his Casita camping trailer. He was working for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms when he decided to open his gun shop. He borrowed $600 and started repairing and selling guns in his garage. That was in 1972. He has been in his current location in downtown Del Rio 42 years.
Gary’s shop is next door to an old fire station that is now home to the Del Rio Arts Council. Once Bob Wade, a famous outdoor sculptor, was conducting a class there. He apparently got the class excited and the students asked if they could build something. They went next door to Gary’s and asked him if they could create artwork on a concrete slab next to his building. “They said what would you like for us to build and I told them a pistol. So they worked two weeks and built Texas’s largest six-shooter. It’s 2 stories high and the cylinder is a 55-gallon barrel. The barrel of the pistol is made of stovepipe and the sides of the handle are concrete made to look like ivory. People drive thousand of miles to see this thing because its been written up in the New York Times, Washington Post, Time Magazine, Texas Monthly and other publications. It’s been on national TV a bunch of times.” Gary is planning a big 50th anniversary celebration for his gun shop on May 12. It’s the only fulltime gun shop in Del Rio.