Columnist Scott Dickensheets: Having a blast at gun show

THIS IS no place for Liberal Boy. I'm strolling among the tables of guns, gear and rootin'-tootin' propaganda at a firearms show in the cavernous and echoing Cashman Field Center. There are thousands of weapons and thousands of shooters, every one of them an ordinance-loving partisan of the Second Amendment and therefore an avowed enemy of the Brady Bill -- a liberal gun-control initiative. Outraged bumper stickers and handwritten anti-Brady signs are everywhere. I'd rather venture in here wearing antlers than a Clinton-Gore T-shirt.

I came in like a spy in the house of redneck. While Liberal Boy doesn't hate guns -- I generally favor nothing more restrictive than a brief waiting period -- I visit these gatherings for the same reason people read Stephen King: a controlled scare, a glimpse of an alarming Other. It usually works. Last time I saw a T-shirt asking, with regard to Bill Clinton, "Where is Lee Harvey Oswald when we need him?" And indeed I was afraid; in this temple of weaponry, it was a loaded quip. These aren't people noted for their irony.

Unless you're a connisseur (SP?), the firearms all begin to look alike after a few tables. The mind wanders to other merchandise, bearing the question, Who the hell would need that? There's a table piled with books. Along with guides to specific weapons or military history you'll find pamphlets on building silencers or pipe bombs, volumes on sniper techniques and revenge-seeking. How to start your own country. Or my favorite, "How to Sell Yourself to Science," a guide to parting yourself out at a profit (a cup of bone marrow goes for $10,000 in some countries!).

There are, it goes without saying, many items of macho fantasy fulfillment -- swords, killing knives, assault rifles, vaguely paramilitary-looking gear, books on night-fighting techniques and homemade spy equipment -- ideal for those covert ops sorties around the neighborhood.

At another table, I contemplate a box of armor-piercing bullets. Who the hell would need that? Oh, right, in case the deer you're hunting hops into a tank. No, I think I find my answer at a table across the exhibit hall, where I see a bumper sticker proclaiming, "I love my country but I fear my government." Ah, there it is, that little shiver of fear I've been looking for. Paranoia mixed with gun ownership -- a potently scary combination, especially when leavened with a redneck distrust of government and labeled as patriotism. It is, I suppose, a way of flattering oneself, imagining that the government gives a damn about either your guns or your defiance.

But those are the exhibitors' booths, and glancing around at the exhibited-to, my spooked feeling ebbs. The paying customers are mostly white, mostly male, frequently dumpy-looking and, I think largely harmless -- in other words, much like me. There are distinctly fewer holster-wearing obvious nutcases than at past shows. Sure, I encounter a few junior-varsity Freemen looking tough in camo pants and bad-mutha expressions, but not many. Perhaps, as one gun enthusiast tells me, the Brady Bill has scared moderate gun owners off the fence. Or maybe they're just guys interested in guns. But few look as if they meant to build silencers or start their own United States of Heavily Armed Rednecks. Liberal Boy's heebie-jeebies last no longer than it takes to scrub the admission stamp from the back of his hand.

archive