Observed by an Eye-Witness
Note: As a follow-up to my VAHALLA: A Personal Argument for Gun Control post, I expand here on what I actaully saw at the Tulsa Gun Show, as commenter Sailorcurt felt I resorted to “bigoted stereotypes” in depicting the gun enthusiasts I saw there.
People sell, buy and trade guns in the parking lot. This is perfectly legal. No need to pay ten bucks for entry to the Show in the Expo Center; you can still get a gun. It’s a lot harder to find a parking place.
Most of the vehicles I observed in the parking lot were large SUVs, campers, and pick-ups, with a significant sprinkling of really sad looking beaters, some of those plastered with multiple bumper stickers. I saw no hybrid or electric cars.
Inside the Expo Center, the vast majority of the dealers and attendees were white; in fact, I saw not one black person on my rambles about the several acre expanse of the building’s interior. Some of the concession stand workers were Hispanic in appearance.
A large majority of the people attending the Gun Show were male as well as Caucasian. There were woman in attendance, but a large plurality if not majority of the feminine minority appeared to be the wives, daughters, or girlfriends of the male customers and dealers.
There were people of all ages, but the demographic seemed to be weighted toward middle-to-late-middle-age, particularly among the men.
If I had to pick a profile for the typical Gun Show customer from the many people who put down ten bucks to get into the place the day I was there, He would be a paunchy, balding, middle class white guy in his 40s or 50s, five foot nine inches tall or under, dressed casually but conservatively in khaki pants or a nice pair of jeans and a button down long sleeve shirt, usually accessorized with a metal banded wristwatch, bill cap optional.
The typical customer, but for slight sartorial differences, is someone who looks a great deal like me. I did not stand out in this crowd. I disappeared into it.
There were a number of guys, usually younger with a working class mien, dressed in their camo-deerhunter duds. Bill cap mandatory. A smaller, but eye-catching minority dressed in military style (but not in my estimation servicemen in uniform), or cowboy gear, or something like mountain men, or a melange of men-with-guns fashion, on Dr. Frankenfurter’s “Don’t dream it, be it” principle, the costume or uniform corresponding presumably to the wearer’s “Mitty.” I think I saw a couple of Matrix fans.
One cowboy/mountain man hybrid I saw carried over his shoulder a saddle bag of finely handtooled leather, with a great big swastika picked out in brass studs on the side.
Speaking of swastikas, a number of booths dealt in Nazi memorabilia, WWII German military weapons, insignia and gear. If I had wanted a Luger, P-38, an MP-40 sub-machine gun just like in old war movies, a SS presentation dagger, and the uniform to go with, I could have had them for what were probably not-unreasonable prices, were I a fan. Most of the dealers don’t have this stuff on offer, but a black hooked cross in a white circle on a field of red can be seen from across the exhibition hall, so those who do stand out.
Of course, most of what’s on offer is guns and everything conceivable thing that goes with. Beautifully engraved over and under shotguns; black powder percussion cap pistols and rifles; WWI Lewis machine guns (the original of the gussied up model that Chewbacca carried in Star Wars); Mini Gatling guns; WWII Garand M1 rifles; futuristic looking .22 caliber pistols for target shooting; a surprisingly large number of lever-action repeating rifles, 30-30 Winchester and .44 caliber Henry, Marlins and so on (I think of lot of these guys must have watched The Rifleman on tv when they were kids); historic antique flintlocks; deer rifles; derringers, elephant guns, almost every kind of bangbangshootshoot ever made including flare guns. Also available were stone knives, crossbows, hatchets, and battleaxes. The variety surpassed any description or list I could make.
However, two class of weapons (and their ammo, magazines, and accessories) dominated the all-you-can-shoot-stab-and-hack-with menu: modern military style semi-automatic handguns and assault rifles. There was a reason for this: These were selling like hotcakes at a Lion’s Club Breakfast.
These were the shooting irons that, to echo the John Wayne line in True Grit, these sons of bitches were filling their hands with, participles dangling. These are the guns that these men will be clutching in their cold, dead hands at the end of the Red Dawn shoot-out of their dreams.
Only a few of these guys really creeped me out. Most of them had normal affect, behaving as men of their class and race would behave in any social context in which you would typically find them–As sane and as nice as any God-fearing Republican in Oklahoma, so long as you don’t tell them you voted for Obama.
Dr. Omed's Tent Show Revival 