Chapter 2 - THE PROGRAM CUTLER’S PROMISED
I had not driven three hours to Briar Creek to buy a rifle.
Cutler’s Firearms had received $218,000 over three years through the Nebraska Adaptive Marksmanship Access Program, a partnership funded by state grants, private veterans’ charities and participating ranges.
The program had a simple purpose.
Veterans and civilians with physical disabilities should be able to receive safe, professional instruction without being mocked, excluded or treated as incapable before anyone evaluated their experience.
Cutler’s applications described an impressive operation.
Accessible shooting benches.
Modified supports.
Staff trained in adaptive loading and safe one-handed techniques.
Monthly instruction sessions for amputees, wheelchair users and shooters with limited mobility.
The store reported forty-eight completed adaptive appointments during the previous year.
The photographs submitted with its grant renewals showed smiling participants beside expensive equipment.
Then complaints started arriving.
A veteran with limited movement in his left hand said an employee refused to let him touch a rifle.
A woman who used a wheelchair was told the range was “not built for her situation,” despite the store receiving money for accessibility renovations.
Another customer said staff laughed when he asked about a modified shooting support listed on Cutler’s website.
The official appointment logs showed all three people had completed instruction.
They had never entered the range.
I led the review team responsible for determining whether the complaints reflected poor training, inaccurate paperwork or deliberate misuse of funds.
The program required at least one unannounced access evaluation before a grant could be suspended. The evaluator was supposed to enter as an ordinary customer, request appropriate service and document the response.
I did not hide my missing arm.
I did not need to.
Jace saw it and supplied the rest of the evidence himself.
The white-haired man near the ammunition shelves was Walter Briggs, sixty-seven, a retired Army master sergeant and member of the state’s veteran-access advisory board.
He was also one of the complainants.
Six months earlier, Walter brought his nephew—a former combat medic with partial paralysis in one hand—to Cutler’s for an adaptive session. Jace told them the program had been discontinued.
Cutler’s reported the appointment as successfully completed.
Walter had agreed to accompany the inspection without identifying himself. He was supposed to observe the store, not intervene unless safety became an immediate concern.
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Jace assumed he was an old man shopping for ammunition.
He had been wrong about both of us.
