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Normality, not iniquity, uncovered at gun show
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
Normality, not iniquity, uncovered at gun show GARVEY WINEGAROUTDOORS Dec 19, 2001 GARVEY WINEGAR
Contact Garvey Winegar at (804) 649-6579 or gwinegar@timesdispatch.com When I shelled out $4 and entered the gun-show auditorium this past weekend, I felt like the prophet Daniel about to enter the lion's den.Or to take another Biblical analogy, maybe I was imitating poor old Lot, who'd just five minutes earlier watched his wife turn to a pillar of Morton's salt because she had looked upon things De Lawd had forbidden her to look upon.Unlike Lot, who possessed character, I was about to sneak back to Sodom and Gomorrah wearing Orvis shades. I was determined to risk a peep and determine if the world's wickedest city - in this case, a local gun show - was as bad (and thus as interesting) as the local press claimed.Let me add right away: The press made me do it.First, because I am a card-carrying member of the press. That's our job - to snoop around, to uncover malfeasance, to enter the occasional den of iniquity without staying too long and compromising our own sterling integrity, and finally, to write about what we find.Second, I use firearms in my work. I shoot a lot. I shoot to see if guns are as accurate as their makers claim, and to determine if scopes self-destruct after a thousand rounds. I even fire in the general proximity of things with fur and feathers during hunting season. Most of my friends do the same.But primarily I wanted to see if The Washington Post was right.The Post, as you probably know, hates gun shows. Since all right-thinking Americans take their moral compass readings from the editorial pages of The Post, their writers had convinced me over the years that attending a gun show was the equivalent of walking into "Deliverance" movie territory without Burt Reynolds to protect me.I was especially moved by an editorial in The Post over the weekend entitled "Gun Shows and Terrorists." The paper, to my enlightenment, found a cozy connection between terrorists and gun shows.That was all I needed to know. If those creeps who hit the Twin Trade Towers and the Pentagon got their box cutters and pilot's licenses from gun shows, then I would be first in line - in Thomas McIntyre's words -"to cross over to the dark side" by employing an Inspector Clouseau disguise, entering the show, then blowing the whistle on the assorted drug dealers and surpremacists inside.(I confess that The Post did not claim the Sept. 11 plane hijackers got their weapons from gun shows, but the editorial did say - quoting an al Qaeda Web site and Hezbollah, two paragons of honesty - that "hand grenades . . . and submachine guns" were available for purchase. This bothered me. I knew for a certainty that nobody outside the U.S. military could get their hands on submachine guns or hand grenades, or for that matter, rocket launchers and cluster bombs.)I went inside anyway.What I found was a lot of junk. Nazi belt buckles, WW I British helmets, U.S. Army surplus canteens and gas masks - all the stuff that I would have loved to own at age 13, but which has now lost its charm. And there were guns. Everything from priceless Parker shotguns to AK-47s (non-automatic) to ancient rifles such as Winston Churchill carried in the Boer War.Apparently no one steals at a gun show - a positive in itself - because everything but the guns was spread out on row upon row of open tables. The guns - at least the ones that looked as if they'd fire without exploding in your face - had cable locks.Then there were the hundreds of swirling customers. They looked fairly normal - as normal as the people you'd elbow at Wal-Mart on a Friday night. Their hands looked like the hands of people who work for a living changing tires and operating heavy machinery, instead of pecking on a computer keyboard.These weren't drug dealers and terrorists. They were neighbors, friends, my people.'Tis sad, but a simple trust in Post profundity has been shaken.Contact Garvey Winegar at (804) 649-6579 or gwinegar@timesdispatch.com http://www.timesdispatch.com/sports/columns/MGBUBWCJEVC.html
Contact Garvey Winegar at (804) 649-6579 or gwinegar@timesdispatch.com When I shelled out $4 and entered the gun-show auditorium this past weekend, I felt like the prophet Daniel about to enter the lion's den.Or to take another Biblical analogy, maybe I was imitating poor old Lot, who'd just five minutes earlier watched his wife turn to a pillar of Morton's salt because she had looked upon things De Lawd had forbidden her to look upon.Unlike Lot, who possessed character, I was about to sneak back to Sodom and Gomorrah wearing Orvis shades. I was determined to risk a peep and determine if the world's wickedest city - in this case, a local gun show - was as bad (and thus as interesting) as the local press claimed.Let me add right away: The press made me do it.First, because I am a card-carrying member of the press. That's our job - to snoop around, to uncover malfeasance, to enter the occasional den of iniquity without staying too long and compromising our own sterling integrity, and finally, to write about what we find.Second, I use firearms in my work. I shoot a lot. I shoot to see if guns are as accurate as their makers claim, and to determine if scopes self-destruct after a thousand rounds. I even fire in the general proximity of things with fur and feathers during hunting season. Most of my friends do the same.But primarily I wanted to see if The Washington Post was right.The Post, as you probably know, hates gun shows. Since all right-thinking Americans take their moral compass readings from the editorial pages of The Post, their writers had convinced me over the years that attending a gun show was the equivalent of walking into "Deliverance" movie territory without Burt Reynolds to protect me.I was especially moved by an editorial in The Post over the weekend entitled "Gun Shows and Terrorists." The paper, to my enlightenment, found a cozy connection between terrorists and gun shows.That was all I needed to know. If those creeps who hit the Twin Trade Towers and the Pentagon got their box cutters and pilot's licenses from gun shows, then I would be first in line - in Thomas McIntyre's words -"to cross over to the dark side" by employing an Inspector Clouseau disguise, entering the show, then blowing the whistle on the assorted drug dealers and surpremacists inside.(I confess that The Post did not claim the Sept. 11 plane hijackers got their weapons from gun shows, but the editorial did say - quoting an al Qaeda Web site and Hezbollah, two paragons of honesty - that "hand grenades . . . and submachine guns" were available for purchase. This bothered me. I knew for a certainty that nobody outside the U.S. military could get their hands on submachine guns or hand grenades, or for that matter, rocket launchers and cluster bombs.)I went inside anyway.What I found was a lot of junk. Nazi belt buckles, WW I British helmets, U.S. Army surplus canteens and gas masks - all the stuff that I would have loved to own at age 13, but which has now lost its charm. And there were guns. Everything from priceless Parker shotguns to AK-47s (non-automatic) to ancient rifles such as Winston Churchill carried in the Boer War.Apparently no one steals at a gun show - a positive in itself - because everything but the guns was spread out on row upon row of open tables. The guns - at least the ones that looked as if they'd fire without exploding in your face - had cable locks.Then there were the hundreds of swirling customers. They looked fairly normal - as normal as the people you'd elbow at Wal-Mart on a Friday night. Their hands looked like the hands of people who work for a living changing tires and operating heavy machinery, instead of pecking on a computer keyboard.These weren't drug dealers and terrorists. They were neighbors, friends, my people.'Tis sad, but a simple trust in Post profundity has been shaken.Contact Garvey Winegar at (804) 649-6579 or gwinegar@timesdispatch.com http://www.timesdispatch.com/sports/columns/MGBUBWCJEVC.html
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