COLUMBIA, S.C. For nearly 35 years, FN Manufacturing in Columbia has produced guns for the U.S. military and, during the last few years, police departments across the nation.

The Belgian company’s plant on Old Clemson Road makes a variety of weapons, from the M16 rifle to a 9 mm pistol. It’s the company’s only American manufacturing facility, and company officials say it’s in Richland County thanks in large part to the late Strom Thurmond, the U.S. Senator from South Carolina from 1954 to 2003.

Last fall, the company ventured into a new market: direct sales to the public. FN opened its first and only retail store – the FN Pro Shop – near its plant across from the Village at Sandhill shopping complex. Items for sale include the .338 caliber FN Ballista Lapua Magazine precision rifle, a 9 mm pistol, and even a semi-automatic weapon.

“Some folks have been driving by for a number of months not realizing what we do here,” said Ralph Young, a former vice president at FN America, a subsidiary of FN Herstal, which also is the parent company of FN Manufacturing in Columbia. Young, who is semi-retired, still advises FN America CEO Mark Cherpes.

The gun pro shop opened Labor Day weekend to a full house, company officials said, and business has been going gangbusters ever since.

“The first day, the first customer was two hours early,” Young said. “They had come over from Bristol, Tennessee. The second day, a customer came from Chattanooga, Tennessee.

“And last month, we had a couple come down from Detroit,” he said.

Mo Yunis, the pro shop manager, said the store “was an absolute madhouse when we opened up, in a great way.”

The pro shop carries a full line of FN products, from entry-level pistols to tactical and competition pistols, Yunis said, along with a full line of rifles, shotguns and other products. “It’s kind of crazy to think that this little shop is doing as much as it is.”

A private company, FN does not disclose revenue figures of the pro shop or of FN Manufacturing, the company said.

Some of the weapons in the pro shop are “scratch and dent,” or blemished in some small way. But the pro shop is not designed to undercut the company’s retail base, officials said.

FN also owns the Browning and Winchester brands. Winchesters are now manufactured overseas, and the pro shop features some of the brand’s last U.S.-made weapons, Yunis said.

In years past, purchasing an FN-manufactured weapon as a civilian required “knowing somebody” – someone within the company who could make a sale happen, company officials said.

For many years, Young said he sold the weapons to the public through the plant’s human resources office.

“The reason the (retail) store is very significant to us now is, as a brand, we want to expose the local community,” said Greg Butler, FN chief operating officer. “This is our initiative to open it up to locals and to expose the industry to the products that we make.”

FN Manufacturing has been making products in Columbia since 1981. Before then, all of the weapons FN sold to the U.S. military were made in Belgium.

“If you want to be long-term in the U.S. military market, you need a manufacturing facility in the United States,” Young said.

People regularly ask FN officials how the gun manufacturer made its way to South Carolina – Columbia, in particular.

Financial incentives were part of the appeal, but other factors also played into the decision, the company said.

“Probably the biggest one was...Strom Thurmond. He secured that for his home state.”

Other reasons were Columbia’s proximity to the Port of Charleston, the state’s interstate system, the University of South Carolina and Fort Jackson, Butler said.

Another factor was the perception the state was gun-friendly.

“There are a few states that are anti-gun,” Young said. “South Carolina wasn’t perceived as anti-gun.”

FN Manufacturing produces about 8,000 handguns, assault rifles, machines guns, grenade launchers and other weaponry each month at its 200,000-square-foot plant. FN makes an array of handguns, including .40-caliber and .45-caliber models, and the company brand includes the elite FN Five-seveN, a 5.7 x 28mm model. All of them are designed for military use, law enforcement and the general consumer.

Powerful, sleek in appearance, with pinpoint accuracy good enough to please the U.S. military, all the weapons manufactured by FN at the Columbia plant are considered “small arms” in the world of military defense.

The largest weapon made at the Columbia plant is the Mark-19, a 40 mm grenade launcher.

FN’s pistol lineup complements an array of rifles and carbines made in Columbia for the consumer, including the company’s popular FN 15 Series, which expanded last year.

In its glossy 2016 product catalog, labeled ‘Legendary,’ the company describes its military spec FN PS90 5.7 x 28mm carbine, capable of accommodating up to 50 rounds, as “the future now.” The gun, which resembles most people’s concept of an assault weapon, is limited to sales in the United States only.

This year, FN debuted its FN Military Collector Series. The series includes the FN M249S, a publicly available semi-automatic variant of FN’s M249 SAW light machine gun, which was designed strictly for law enforcement and military sales only.

“At the end of the day, our mission is to provide firearms, whether it be for the military, law enforcement or consumer markets,” Butler said.

One of the unique factors about the local FN plant is that manufacturing and research and development are conducted under the same roof, Butler said.

Roughly 27 engineers are on staff at the plant today, but 26 years ago there were just three, Young noted, and they primarily coordinated with government engineers to keep on track in producing military weapons, parts and ammunition. Overall, the plant has 450 employees.

For the majority of the time the weapons plant has existed it was “DOD-centric,” said Butler, referring to the U.S. Department of Defense. Going back just seven or eight years ago, everything made at the plant comprised “three products,” and had “one customer,” he said.

During the last seven years, the company has transitioned into selling products for law enforcement and, now, the general public.

“Our movement into commercial, consumer, law enforcement (sales) is, (first) that we’ve built up all this experience, now what do we do with it, and (second), the DOD world is not what it used to be,” Butler said.

“It’s a requirement for us that in order to be successful and profitable, we have to go out and build a consumer-law enforcement base to support the ebb and flow of the defense world,” he said.

Police departments require the same meticulous quality and reliability in weapons as the U.S. military.

FN is negotiating production proposals with Los Angeles County, for instance, which has 10,000 officers, Butler said.

Often, whatever weapons large law enforcement agencies purchase tends to influence the type weapons smaller, surrounding police departments also buy, FN officials said.

The company’s expansion into the consumer market is driven by the relatively large number of guns sold in the United States.

“Ninety-five percent of the consumer (gun) market in the world is in the United States,” Butler said. “So, if 100 million consumer firearms were sold last year, 95 million of them were bought in the United States.”

That’s a market the company had not tapped into before. “Our mission here was to deliver for the military. Things have just evolved over time where it was time to take that step and broaden our base and give other consumers ... the ability to buy our firearms.”