Trip to the gun show.
A report from the field
So, I was talked into tagging along to a local gun show by a couple of friends. This was an odd choice on their part since they were forewarned numerous times that I would be frequently and loudly quoting Charlton Heston, Charles Bronson and Clint Eastwood. They thought I was joking. Nothing wrong with shooting as long as the right people get shot!
I felt very much like a fish out of water. The last time I held something that looked remotely like a gun was back in the Cub Scouts, and we were lucky if the bee bees broke the paper target. The day consisted of wandering from one booth to the next while my friends ogled increasingly bigger and bigger weaponry. They eventually came across a handcannon so big I was certain they would also need to purchase fusion-powered battle armor to keep the thing from turning the shooter's forearm into a mass of pulpy flesh and microscopic bone splinters. If I recall correctly, it cost more than my car several times over. And those were just the handguns. I don't even know how to describe all the other guns I saw, but if I ever need to topple a third world country or put down the Tarrasque I know where to start.
Now would probably be a good time to explain my position on guns. Guns are a lot like recreational dynamite: There's no reason you should be denied the simple pleasure of just haphazardly blowing stuff up in the middle of a wasteland if that's all that you're doing. Now, it's obviously detrimental to society when you use the dynamite to, say... rob a bank. Everyone's against that. But a different problem a lot of people seem to miss comes when you stockpile dynamite, possibly naming each stick, and fervently hope that someone someday breaks into your house so you can legally use the dynamite against them. That's kinda what disturbed me at the show.
It started with the person silhouette shaped targets. Those struck me as a monumentally bad idea since those are the same targets the military uses to train people to shoot at person shaped silhouettes. "Oh but Hatless Jack, you don't want to have to think about shooting a person shaped silhouette that's sneaking around your house at night!" Hmm... right, right. Go check the likely hood of shooting a family member vs. shooting the guy on the neighborhood watch signs with the spiffy black fedora. Then I noticed targets with what I like to call "ski mask dude" on them. Ski mask dude makes you feel good when you shoot him. Ski mask dude has many outfits. Sometimes ski mask dude wears body armor, sometimes he has a knife, other times he has a gun, and sometimes he is a horribly racist caricature of an African American gangbanger. You see, it all depends on whom you fantasize about killing in your free time.
It didn't just stop at the targets either. Let me tell you that none of you have any idea of the extent of man's ingenuity until you see the 31-derful different flavors of ammunition in each booth. I had absolutely no idea you could get homebrew ammo that specialized in maiming people in so many different and exciting ways! "This bullet is made of a copper husk filled with a drop of mercury! We sealed it in a vacuum. When the bullet enters the target's body the mercury uses kinetic force to shatter the husk, dispersing it into the tissue! Isn't that great! I have these other rounds that are made of a special soft alloy that mushrooms out into razor-sharp edges when it enters flesh. The Nazis banned them because they thought they were too inhumane. Sir! Wait! If you act now I'll even throw in these shotgun shells filled with thermite. Sir! Sir, come back!" I can't even get fireworks that explode in this county.
Then there were the knives. Look, I don't know much about guns, but I do know knives. I carry pocketknives all the time, and I own several pretty shiny sharp things that I can't legally carry (not that I'd ever have a need for any of it). What I saw in the show were knives designed to slit throats and puncture organs. Of course, the word "knife" under-describes the knives that were actually daggers, and the knives that could be classified as dirks (still designed to slit throats and puncture organs though). This in and of itself isn't all that damning either. I can understand the beauty inherent in that type of knife: It's like owning a claymore (the sword, not the mine). You mount it on a wall, put it on a shelf. But it seemed like most of the people who crawled out of the mountains to attend this show came in wearing their knives on their hip, and it looked like a good half of those guys left with something bigger, sharper, pointier, and more jagged slung off their belts. It was like each and every one of them was waiting for the day where they would get to reprise that scene from Crocodile Dundee, except instead of having Paul Hogan simply stating a fact for laughs you have to imagine a potbellied, middle-aged man with a Marine Corps. tattoo on his flabby, flabby arm screaming it in impotent rage.
That's really the crux of the matter. This particular show put itself forward as a family show, but everything being sold and everybody at the show just screamed "Bring it on world! I'm always ready to kill people!" Given, there were families present, but that was just as disconcerting. It's one thing to watch Dirty Harry in the movies take care of perps with a smirk and a big ass gun, but it's another thing entirely to see a grown man with a family pretend he's Dirty Harry every day of his life. There was no fun or whimsy involved in the show like there is in other non-gun related hobby shows I've been at. You didn't get a target in the shape of a clown or people good naturedly talking about what would happen if you shot a toaster. What you got was a bunch of folks who were in a constant battle against a world that wanted to loot their houses and ravage their women.
I guess the point is: Gun people, the other people in your hobby scare the ever-loving shit out of me. I think you would do much, much better in public opinion if you made the focus of your pro-gun campaign some thing along the lines of "We're just having fun." Where's the crowd that likes shooting clay pigeons? Where are the gun enthusiasts who just shoot at targets only for the zen and satisfaction of shooting at targets? I know you are out there --hell, I attended the show with two of you. Why is it like your entire hobby is preparing for ragnarok? You have to take back your hobby from the people who are likely to "accidentally" kill the rest of us because we knocked on their door at 10:30 at night, and you should probably also take care of the guys who think they need to stockpile their guns in case the Federal Government comes for their gigantic stockpile of guns.
I felt very much like a fish out of water. The last time I held something that looked remotely like a gun was back in the Cub Scouts, and we were lucky if the bee bees broke the paper target. The day consisted of wandering from one booth to the next while my friends ogled increasingly bigger and bigger weaponry. They eventually came across a handcannon so big I was certain they would also need to purchase fusion-powered battle armor to keep the thing from turning the shooter's forearm into a mass of pulpy flesh and microscopic bone splinters. If I recall correctly, it cost more than my car several times over. And those were just the handguns. I don't even know how to describe all the other guns I saw, but if I ever need to topple a third world country or put down the Tarrasque I know where to start.
Now would probably be a good time to explain my position on guns. Guns are a lot like recreational dynamite: There's no reason you should be denied the simple pleasure of just haphazardly blowing stuff up in the middle of a wasteland if that's all that you're doing. Now, it's obviously detrimental to society when you use the dynamite to, say... rob a bank. Everyone's against that. But a different problem a lot of people seem to miss comes when you stockpile dynamite, possibly naming each stick, and fervently hope that someone someday breaks into your house so you can legally use the dynamite against them. That's kinda what disturbed me at the show.
It started with the person silhouette shaped targets. Those struck me as a monumentally bad idea since those are the same targets the military uses to train people to shoot at person shaped silhouettes. "Oh but Hatless Jack, you don't want to have to think about shooting a person shaped silhouette that's sneaking around your house at night!" Hmm... right, right. Go check the likely hood of shooting a family member vs. shooting the guy on the neighborhood watch signs with the spiffy black fedora. Then I noticed targets with what I like to call "ski mask dude" on them. Ski mask dude makes you feel good when you shoot him. Ski mask dude has many outfits. Sometimes ski mask dude wears body armor, sometimes he has a knife, other times he has a gun, and sometimes he is a horribly racist caricature of an African American gangbanger. You see, it all depends on whom you fantasize about killing in your free time.
It didn't just stop at the targets either. Let me tell you that none of you have any idea of the extent of man's ingenuity until you see the 31-derful different flavors of ammunition in each booth. I had absolutely no idea you could get homebrew ammo that specialized in maiming people in so many different and exciting ways! "This bullet is made of a copper husk filled with a drop of mercury! We sealed it in a vacuum. When the bullet enters the target's body the mercury uses kinetic force to shatter the husk, dispersing it into the tissue! Isn't that great! I have these other rounds that are made of a special soft alloy that mushrooms out into razor-sharp edges when it enters flesh. The Nazis banned them because they thought they were too inhumane. Sir! Wait! If you act now I'll even throw in these shotgun shells filled with thermite. Sir! Sir, come back!" I can't even get fireworks that explode in this county.
Then there were the knives. Look, I don't know much about guns, but I do know knives. I carry pocketknives all the time, and I own several pretty shiny sharp things that I can't legally carry (not that I'd ever have a need for any of it). What I saw in the show were knives designed to slit throats and puncture organs. Of course, the word "knife" under-describes the knives that were actually daggers, and the knives that could be classified as dirks (still designed to slit throats and puncture organs though). This in and of itself isn't all that damning either. I can understand the beauty inherent in that type of knife: It's like owning a claymore (the sword, not the mine). You mount it on a wall, put it on a shelf. But it seemed like most of the people who crawled out of the mountains to attend this show came in wearing their knives on their hip, and it looked like a good half of those guys left with something bigger, sharper, pointier, and more jagged slung off their belts. It was like each and every one of them was waiting for the day where they would get to reprise that scene from Crocodile Dundee, except instead of having Paul Hogan simply stating a fact for laughs you have to imagine a potbellied, middle-aged man with a Marine Corps. tattoo on his flabby, flabby arm screaming it in impotent rage.
That's really the crux of the matter. This particular show put itself forward as a family show, but everything being sold and everybody at the show just screamed "Bring it on world! I'm always ready to kill people!" Given, there were families present, but that was just as disconcerting. It's one thing to watch Dirty Harry in the movies take care of perps with a smirk and a big ass gun, but it's another thing entirely to see a grown man with a family pretend he's Dirty Harry every day of his life. There was no fun or whimsy involved in the show like there is in other non-gun related hobby shows I've been at. You didn't get a target in the shape of a clown or people good naturedly talking about what would happen if you shot a toaster. What you got was a bunch of folks who were in a constant battle against a world that wanted to loot their houses and ravage their women.
I guess the point is: Gun people, the other people in your hobby scare the ever-loving shit out of me. I think you would do much, much better in public opinion if you made the focus of your pro-gun campaign some thing along the lines of "We're just having fun." Where's the crowd that likes shooting clay pigeons? Where are the gun enthusiasts who just shoot at targets only for the zen and satisfaction of shooting at targets? I know you are out there --hell, I attended the show with two of you. Why is it like your entire hobby is preparing for ragnarok? You have to take back your hobby from the people who are likely to "accidentally" kill the rest of us because we knocked on their door at 10:30 at night, and you should probably also take care of the guys who think they need to stockpile their guns in case the Federal Government comes for their gigantic stockpile of guns.