Gun control advocates have a major switch across their ass about gun shows. The fact that Americans can buy and sell firearms without government oversight is a source of endless aggro. That they can do it in public is the ultimate affront to their sense of self-importance. It doesn’t matter that the vast majority of guns used in crimes are stolen property. Or that gun dealers at gun shows must run a background check on all firearms purchases. Close the “gun show loophole”! Every now and then these advocates wander into what the rest of us call the real world and visit an actual gun show. Needless to say, they’re about as open-minded about the experience as a PETA member at a chicken processing plant . . .

So here we go, courtesy of Christopher Evans of cleveland.com:

I’m walking the perimeter of a packed parking lot, checking out the acolytes of the apocalypse: a steady stream of well-fed white guys with semiautomatic assault rifles slung over both shoulders, some sporting handguns, all of them heeding the Nov. 7 call of right-wing radio host Glenn Beck to “get your kids out of the schools that are indoctrinating them . . . and don’t forget the ammunition.”

I’m at the Medina Gun Show. It’s Saturday morning. The Medina County Fairgrounds look like the staging site for a ragtag militia.

Hey! TTAG’s OFWGs resemble that remark! Anyway, I don’t think I have to break this down for our Armed Intelligentsia, other than to say that painting all gun show attendees as right wing nut jobs is nothing new. Or accurate.

I think Evans gets that. The first bit, I mean. The scribe knows he has to reach deep into his snarkenator to make this visit to the “dark side” more than a cookie-cutter polemic. To wit:

It’s my first gun show. I’m trying to keep an open mind about the firearm fetishists who frequent these death markets. I’m not doing a very good job.

The bumper stickers don’t help. “Abort Obama” captures the ambiance nicely.

A number of vehicles sport plates from West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Michigan.

I suspect Evans is trying to evade criticism by appealing to his readers’ xenophobia or whatever the word is for people who look down on residents of other states. Anyway, I’m sure there were plenty of other pro-2A bumper stickers which would have more perfectly captured the attitude of the gun show attendees.

One dealer, a weathered old guy who looks like he took one too many shots to the head, offers an AR 15 assault rifle he’s hand marked as an “Obama SPL.” The original price of $1,300 has been crossed out. The new price: $1,500.

“Supply and demand,” the dealer chuckles.

There are semiautomatic Black Rain Zombie Slayers; Hillary Rodham Clinton Urinal Targets; Hi-Point 9mm semiautomatic carbines (the choice of Eric Harris, one of the two shooters in the Columbine High School massacre); and laser-etched, stained-oak, assault-weapon stands with poems such as “Now I lay me down to sleep/Beside my bed an AR1 I keep/Should I wake and find you inside/The coroner’s van is your next ride.”

We interrupt this character and political affiliation assassination to bring you a message about weaving misleading “facts” in with vitriol: it’s not very appealing. As the only gun guy who lets MikeB302000 post on his blog, I know.

I talk to a tall, skinny guy selling a Kel-Tec Pf-9 9mm semiautomatic pistol. It’s popular with the conceal-carry crowd. George Zimmerman reportedly used a Pf-9 to kill Florida teen Trayvon Martin last February.

Hardly a collector’s item. The skinny guy agrees.

“I’m selling it for a buddy,” he says. “He was gonna get his CCW [permit]. Then he got laid off.”

I express interest. “I want to keep it simple,” I tell him.

“No background check,” he says. “No record of sale. Strictly cash. I do need to see an ID, make sure you’re an Ohio resident.”

“Forget that,” I say and turn away.

“Hey,” the guy whines. “Everything’s negotiable.”

Put that on the headstone of the next kid shot in Cleveland.

True story? I doubt it. But one thing’s for sure: someone needs to take Mr. Evans shooting. It’s about the only way you’ll ever educate someone like him, an intellectual who doesn’t understand that a condescending attitude doesn’t make you better than the objects of your derision. Quite the opposite, really.

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68 COMMENTS

  1. Robert – a better way to phrase is is that the majority of crime guns do not come from guns shows. There’s no solid evidence that the majority come from theft, and a quick google search indicated to me that sources are far more diverse than one might think. The only clear majority (at 35%) was “from family or a friend”.

    • Thanks Blinky, I was going to point that out myself but I was afraid Robert would think I was “weaving misleading “facts” in with vitriol.” again.

    • Funny how they fail to identify if the family or friend was a felon to begin with.

      Then again since the US Supreme Court ruling Haynes vs US 390, 85, 1968 affiriming the 5th amendment right of no self incrimination, any form of identification request as 85% of existing 22,417 gun laws do today, do not apply to felons.

      • “Funny how they fail to identify if the family or friend was a felon to begin with.”

        Well, if they did that, then their entire argument would be shot full of holes.

  2. I spend a lot of time at gun shows (I do not sell guns). Since the majority of the population is white, that’s most of who shows up- I also see lots of Blacks, Latinos and Asians. Also lots of families with small children. One of the things I always enjoy is the large number of really attractive women who come to gun shows 🙂

  3. Range shooting likely won’t help. With the biased rut he is in, a CCW holder saving his life from the butter knife serial killer wouldn’t change his mind.

    • @speedracer – A pen will do more damage to the eye than a sword? You’re not one of those guys who thinks 22LR is enough for everything, right? 😉

      • Well like try taught us when we were boxing in school.. Get inside their reach, renders their weapon/ gloves useless and then strike quick and hard.
        But I really like the Indiana Jones approach to someone with a sword, so much quicker and safer.

    • Yup. Its always the libs that are the racist. Mid 90’s for Barry percentage wise from the black community vs low single digits for both moderate war hero Mccain and Mitt during the last two elections. Obummer could show up in white robe and hat and declare himself the grand wizard of the KKK and wear a Nazi arm band and still score in the mid to high eighties.

  5. This is like a kids first time going to Disney World. They believe that there really is a giant mouse smiling and giving him a hug, just as much as this guy thinks that all the guns in there are going to turn full auto and start killing everyone in sight. People with small brains such as children and anti-gunners need special care so they don’t get scarred of the boogey man when they go to sleep at night.

  6. Take Evans shooting? NO.
    I have a better idea: throw him into one of the scary neighborhoods in Detroit, NYC, or Miami and see if he doesn’t want to own a gun too for self protection.

    What a nut. Funny how he thinks we’re all nuts too, when he himself is one.

    • Won’t work the way you’d want it to. What you’d get is his voice going shriller by the second as he DEMANDS something be done about the guns if he survived… never mind those who’d shoot him on sight without provocation would just as gladly use a baseball bat, tire iron, golf club, tree branch, sign post, steak knife, meat cleaver, chef’s knife, a hunting knife, or whatever else was handy, and do damage, on him instead.

  7. Jeebus H. Christ I’ve seen rattlers with less venom. Where to begin? Searching out types of firearms linked to famous shootings? Check. Implying everyone who likes guns is rayciss? Check. Total ignorance of what constitutes an “assault weapon” ? Check. Topping it all off with “think of the children!” ? Check. I really hope is daughter, sister, or wife (re)marries a gun guy.

  8. It’s a mistake to call this guy an intellectual. I know he thinks he’s a deep thinker, but he’s really a sort of snark hobbyist. His thing is making fun of people he looks down on. There’s no deep thought behind any of it, it’s just a prose form of Internet meme.

    The real irony is that the writer probably sees himself as a picked-on minority punching back the only way he can, when in reality he is the worst kind of establishment bully, a hate propagandist slandering ordinary people to help the upperclass feel superior.

  9. This guy makes mikeyb almost look rational. Almost. Aren’t reporters sorta obligated to make a half assed attempt at telling the truth? Half expected this guy to say the gun people were boot stomping new born kittens for enternainment.

    • Apparently not any more. Some of the stuff that passes for news reeks of subjectivity. Definitely not when they do editorial or column pieces.

  10. Last I checked the only gun purchased legaly for the Columbine shooting was one of the shotguns. It was purchased legaly by an adult freind of the boys. The others as I recal were black market purchases, including the Hi Point.

    Not sure I would want to drop my pants even to a photo of Hillary but that poem was kind of funny. I sure hope this zombie garbage dosnt make us a bigger target to antis. They will take what they can get but it dosnt help that the fantasy of a zombie apocolypse just makes everything we stand for look like a game.

    • “The others as I recall were black market purchases, including the Hi Point.”

      IMPOSSIBLE that was square in the middle of AWB part 1 so there is simply no way a gun could have been purchased illegally; the law would have made sure of it.

  11. What we see here is that gun shows are Rorschach tests. When I go to one, I see a cross-section of American buying and selling things they enjoy. He sees a cesspool of evil.

    We find in a gun show what we have inside ourselves.

  12. wow, that writing is atrocious. the stronger the propaganda, the stronger my aversion; this guy’s level of bullshit is on par with the NRA.

  14. Well, should young Christopher Evans ever find himself in a dangerous situation he can’t bullshit his way out of, I certainly hope a member of the AI will be on hand to assist him in his time of need….

    ….and call the Police on his behalf, just as I’m sure he’d want.

  15. This guy goes to a Gun Show with his preconceived, stereotyped bias about gun owners, and probably most of the article he’s being paid to produce to pander to his editor’s similarly biased audience already mostly written on his laptop and finds exactly what he expects to find and finishes the article with some anecdotes and notes taken while there. No surprise at all.

    Now imagine myself going to the Anti-Gun Show. What would I expect to find? What would I expect the vendors and attendees to be like? What would I report for posting on TTAG? After doing that exercise I found I did no better than he did. Try it yourself.

    Gun Owners and Anti-gun Advocates are so polarized that we all cling to stereotypes of each others’ evils, narrow-mindedness and stupidity and readily use those biases to bitterly attack each other at every opportunity…except, of course, that we People of the Gun are right and those rat-bastard gun-grabbers are wrong!

    • Actually Derry, you are correct; they are wrong, we are right; those who support gun control ultimately enable tyranny , dictatorship and mass death; those who support the second amendment ultimately support freedom and liberty.

      Trying to make us all equal Derry dosen” t change the fact that there is evil in the world; when people supported Stalin, Mao and Hitler in disarming themselves because they thought that their countries would be safer without guns, didn”t change the end result, tyranny, dictatorship and mass death. It enabled it

      The road to hell is paved with good intentions, being politically correct by saying there is no difference between our belief systems just greases the slide downward.

      • As a further expansion of this thought; when an anti-gun person attacks me for carrying a gun they say I’m trying to be a tough guy, compensating for a small package, that I’m really wanting to just to shoot people, I’m a red neck racist bible thumping gun nut clinging to my gun and my bible, ect., and OMG! There will blood in the streets with more guns in the hands of law abiding citizens!
        sound familiar? All personal attacks and irrational fear not backed by facts.

        What do I say about anti -gun people? That they are in denial of basic human nature; law abiding citizens don’t suddenly become homicidal maniacs when they get a gun in thier hands.

        That they are delusional; a sign on a building of a gun with a circle and slash through it won’t keep a homicidal maniac away.

        That they are tyrants because they are the trying to infringe a god given right.

        That I respect thier choice of not owning a gun, but they don’t respect my choice and right to carry one.

        So tell me where anything I have said is a personal attack or is not factually correct.

      • Yeah…well nevermind. Nice diatribe. Glad I made you think. I have no interest in being politically correct. I just like to throw stuff out there to see how people respond. Living on the edge, so to speak, because it amuses me to do so.
        Since there’s little chance of a productive dialog with the ant-gun folks, might as well make fun of it.

        • BTW- ThomasR – you did not say anything above that I have not said and sincerely meant as well, and still believe. I just get amused with the vitriol from both sides. Sometimes my cynical nature gets the better of me and I just have to express it.

        • LOL, Thanks DM, I don’t know if I would call my response a diatribe, but I definitely can do a diatribe with the best of them and I agree, the hot tempers on both sides make it needed at times to stand back and find the humor in our human condition.

        • I am glad that I did not totally tick you off, ThomasR. Sometimes I get real frustrated with the stalemated dialog because it seems we argue logically and on the basis of established facts, but we just get propagandized drivel (like this Evans person wrote) in response. It makes me despair, so I vent the despair, and sometimes that doesn’t work as well as I’d hoped. All best and Thanks for understanding…now, if I can just bury the hatchet with RF, as well, it will be a good day. Cheers!

    • Not true. About a TTAG reporter going to a gun control conference and being sarcastic and condescending. In fact, the next time I hear of one, I’m going.

      • Not insinuating my imaginings were as “a TTAG reporter”, I would not presume to so grace myself. I will look forward to your future report on a Gun Control Conference…and grading your objectivity…I am sure it will be very instructive.

  18. For the benefit of those who may not know, Columbine was a failed bombing attempt perpetrated by two deranged youths who laughed at petty school shooters, bragged about dwarfing the carnage in the Oklahoma City bombing and inflicting the most deaths in U.S. history.
    Their plan went awry when the two propane bombs planted in the cafeteria failed to detonate.
    The purpose for the guns was to shoot any fleeing victims who survived the explosions.
    Jefferson County, Colorado Sheriff’s Report
    http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2000/columbine.cd/Pages/TOC.htm
    The Bombs at the School
    http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2000/columbine.cd/Pages/BOMBS_TEXT.htm
    “There were approximately 357 pieces of explosive evidence identified and collected.”

    As for Mr. Evans, suffice it to say he’s well, at least somewhat misdirected.
    Certain we are that his next opinion piece will be written to educate and inform the rest of us after he’s toured the gunshows we’ve never been to. The ones conducted daily in the ‘hoods by ex-cons, gang-bangers, turf warriors, illegal aliens and non-OFWG street-level drug dealers in back-alleys and out of car trunks and crack houses.

  19. His writing betrays his lack of true altruism as he clearly despises certain people, belittling them with every other word he utters. Guns are the great equalizers, and equality terrifies his poor soul. It must be terrible to live day to day within that paranoia ridden mindset. I pity him and the likes of him…..

    J.

  20. @mikeb302000
    Good morning Mikey! How are you? Glad to see you here today to enlighten us on the true way to peace and harmony in the world.
    Have a great day and God Bless You!!

  21. I second speeracers thoughts Mikeb. The day started out crappy, then you came along and reminded me things could be a million times worse, I could be like you!

  22. That gun show sounds a lot better than the ones near me. Too few products, not great prices and in small locations.

  25. “…the acolytes of the apocalypse: a steady stream of well-fed white guys with semiautomatic assault rifles slung over both shoulders….” RACISM! RACISM!

    “It’s my first gun show. I’m trying to keep an open mind about the firearm fetishists …”
    “Open mind?” Is that like Democrat “bipartisianship”? What a lying sack of excrement.

    • Yeah, it’s funny how that works. I have been competing in competitive rifle and pistol matches, going to gun shows, and going to shooting ranges, since I was in high school (50 years, OMG).

      NEVER seen a fight, or even heard a loud argument, at any of those places with lots of guns around. Some of the guns were even being SHOT! IN PUBLIC! But no one was ever killed or hurt. And here all of the anti- self-defense media types have been telling us for the same 50 years that it’s the guns that kill people.

  27. I am curious as to what is on display at an anti-gun show. Are there tables full of anti-guns? Seriously, I can only visualize stacks of paper pamphlets and maybe shocking photos of gunshot victims. I imagine that there is no laughing, no tall tales about anti-hunting, or anti-shooting events. Only a maniacal frenzy about how they must STOP us from existing, because we own guns and more importantly, we have fun with them.

  28. Trying to keep an open mind my ass. He’s making all kinds of snide comments and stereotypes all throughout his writing. When i go to a gunshow, sure there are a couple big 4×4 trucks and rednecks, but i also see that at the mall too. What i see at gunshows are a normal looking mix of people, rural, suburban, and urban. At least that’s the way it is in PA.

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