Our business was founded in 1960 by Marty and Saul Arnstein. Their original retail gun shop, known as Ivanhoe Sports Center, was located in Watertown, Massachusetts. During the next forty-four years the business grew to become Interstate Arms Corp., a leading distributor of firearms and accessories to retail gun dealers across the country.

In the mid 1980's Interstate became interested in importing firearms from China and became an importer of Chinese military style rifles and pistols. After the assault rifle ban went into effect, the importation of firearms from China was substantially reduced and stopped completely when President Clinton ended the importation of all rifles and pistols from China.

Shotguns could still be imported from China and in 1999 Marty came up with the idea that reproductions of shotguns made in the late 1800's could be manufactured economically in China. Because cowboy shooting was becoming very popular, the decision was made to manufacture short barrel, fast loading copies of the old Western shotguns that the cowboy shooters wanted.

IAC Shotguns are faithful to the original designs except for improvements that were necessary for their use with modern smokeless powder and to enhance their use in cowboy shooting competition.

The IAC Division of Interstate Arms Corp was formed to provide a brand name for these shotguns which are sold to distributors for distribution to retail dealers throughout the U.S. IAC distributors are well known as leaders in the firearms industry and include: RSR Group, Davidson's, Zanders, Camfour, Southern Ohio Gun, Ron Shirk's, Ellett Brothers and Sports South.