I went to a gun show the other day. Never been to one? Oh, come on – you’ve got to go! Bring the wife! And the kids! Actually, you don’t see a lot of wives but do you see a lot of kids. And tattoos. And big bellies. And, in a sea of white faces, some Mexicans, too. In fact, I saw a one-eyed Mexican with lots of tattoos and a big belly flopping over a fat belt with a shiny gold buckle, one hand holding a really big gun case, the other resting on yet another weapon, an AR-15 semi-automatic, hanging off his stomach, supported by a sling. He was laughing and chattering away in Spanish to a similar looking and armed fellow, minus the eye patch, wearing shiny yellow leather belt.

 And I liked that guy. At least he was smiling. Not like the Nazi. Yeah, that’s what I said: the Nazi.

Hey, I’m not somehippie/freak/communist, meaning, to translate, I’m not anti-gun. In fact, I owntwo of my very own, of which I take loving care. I practice with them, I clean them, I tuck them away for the night. Just to one up you, I even carry one when I work as a sworn member of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Posse.

So I went to the gun show to see what Santa and his elves had cobbled together for the summer. And I saw more than I had bargained for.

To start, I’d say America, at least in Phoenix Coliseum this morning, is not only overweight, but in need of hair shampoo, maybe conditioner to boot. And we seem to communicate by T-shirt as much as word, and that communication is not happy. One middle-aged guy’s black tee proclaimed, “Bitter white guy clinging to God and guns.” Another said, “Infidel.” In case that message was too subtle, another fellow declared through pressed-on plastic, “I spit on Islam.” And I thought T-shirts were supposed to be fun. Of course, one man’s interpreting those slogans as the angry stabs of those who realize they have neither power nor hope in an uncaring world is another man’s fun. You say tomato…

Definite types emerge from the crush of people. There are the lean, buzz cut, hard-looking men, often in military fatigues, who look at the weapons with the keen interest of professionals. I listened as one fellow in camo shorts, boots, and a Marine Corps shirt, explain to a dealer how a certain sight on a Bushmaster worked so well he put “a third orifice on an Iraqi sniper in a crosswind.” All that while he was holding his bored, blonde daughter, probably three years old.

The largest contingent consists of some really badly dressed men, (and this from one who wears a T-shirt and shorts almost every day), with the aforementioned tattoos, and definite hygiene challenges. This group can be broken down into those who appear to be gangbangers or just plain punks, young men in their teens or twenties who wear their shorts way too baggy and low, and their baseball caps stupidly tilted to the side; old guys, perhaps missing a tooth or two, who stop at every booth, (and there are dozens upon dozens of booths selling guns and parts of guns and books about guns and clothes you wear to accent our guns), and who know every salesman and dealer; fathers with their sons, bonding, though it is a bit disconcerting to watch a sex-year-old calmly aim a semi-auto in your general direction. The one thing this entire contingent has in common are the many who brought their own guns, just because they always carry their weapons, or to sell. A rather bizarre subgroup are the fellows walking around with small, crudely printed, cardboard signs around their necks, advertising a gun they’re offering to sell. While dealers dominate the show, it’s perfectly legal to sell, without any sort of background check or some other such nonsense, one’s own weapon to another citizen.

I wouldn't want to omit the militiaman, evidently come down off his high desert or mountain compound, dressed in a homemade uniform from head to foot, from Aussie campaign hat to jump boots, some unidentifiable insignia on both shoulders of his army blouse, stocking up on knives and 7.62 ammo to take on whatever enemy is undoubtedly plotting to invade his turf.

And then there’s the Nazi. I understand he’s a regular at the gun shows around town, and we have gun shows, very large guns show, held inside public arenas, a couple of times a month. An older gentleman, he was sitting inside the rectangle of his little glass display cases, inside of which was World War II memorabilia. And while there were a handful of American medals and artifacts, the Nazi items were the showstopper.Real collector items: SS insignia, Nazi medals, unit badges, even black-and-white video from German archives “to support the war effort,” as the back of the DVDs declared, put together with dedication by the old bastard himself, listed as the producer on the box.

I considered asking him something to the effect of, What is the meaning of this?, but he was busy explaining to a couple of like geezers that this country was disgracefully selling off its military heritage, i.e., U.S. military medals, to European and other riffraff collectors. It wouldhave been amusing, considering he was doing the obverse, promoting another country's stuff by trading in Nazi crap,except that he was trading in Nazi crap.

By this time I had had enough and left, which caused me to miss, in another enormous room, another Nazi booth. This one, as related by our very own webmaster, ex-marine, and sharpshooter, Loren Senior, sold not just Nazi stuff but Nazi T-shirts. And not the jokey kind, like “My parents went to Germany and all they got me with this lousy Waffen SS T-shirt,” nor the sensibly condemning kind, like “Hitler sucks,” but unadorned declarative statements, such as – and I kid you not – “SS 1938,” same as you might buy after a trip to the Magic Kingdom, “Disneyworld 2008,” or commemorating an accomplishment, as in “New York Marathon 1987.”

Loren said he didn’t see anybody buy one, but then he didn’t see anybody object, either.

I guess my point in running on about all this is to say I get guns. I get, in a way that few living back east do, where humanity is more closely packed and a cop is never too far away, that you need to be able to take care of yourself out here in the great, wild west. I get that while it might be a more perfect union if guns didn’t exist,that ship sailed long ago, and we live in a world where bad guys are going to be armed, and you might want to be as well. And I’ll tell you something else –guns are fun. It’s fun to be good at anything, and shooting is a skill that must be mastered.

But guns are only guns. Theymight be fun, but they are not something to build a faith upon. They are utilitarian, not religious objects, nothing to be worshipped. Those who areafraid the government’s going to swoop down and take away their weapons are just wrong, and stupidly so. Neither political party is even close to calling for prohibition. There is no debate. The battle is over, and the gun side won.

Unfortunately, it can’t accept that victory. The NRA and others have a political and economic stake in promoting the notion that dark, evil forces are out to take away their .45s and shotguns and Glocks. The rabid pro-gun forces fight against reason in stopping any plan to restrict certain weapons and ammunition, to insist on registration of some variety, to regulate in any form gun ownership.

Conventions are usually happy places, full of smiling faces, as you get to ogle the object of your desire, be that cars or food or clothes. But the feeling at the gun show was quite different. It was us-against-them, them being a very broad range of people, of fellow Americans, a feeling of mistrust and isolation and uncertainty. 

The Second Amendment is trotted out as sacrosanct proof of the Founding Fathers intentions, and I will not bother to rehash the oh-so-familiar arguments. The world has changed since the18^th Century. We no longer have slaves, women have rights, and thisnation regulates virtually everything we do that impacts our fellow citizens, from how fast we drive to what we are allowed to consume to how we cross the street. Why should gun ownership be any different? If the threat of the government turning upon us and enslaving us is authentic, then we should refuse to get driver’s licenses and register to vote and use our social security. But we don’t, because no sane person can believe the government is either that competent or that devious or that flat-out evil.

The anti-registration argument is bogus, a cover for political leverage and financial gain, cynically exploiting the senseless fear snaking through a segment of the populace. The sooner we can contend with the reality of guns as grown-ups, the better off we will all be.