Have Gun, Will Travel

I knew that I eventually would be curious enough to attend a gun show at some point. I have all my life been anti-gun, the kind that the NRA (National Rifle Association) despises, and if I were a politician, the NRA would be able to raise millions in a heart beat to defeat my candidacy.

It started as a curiosity, a willingness to look at things from the perspective of the other side, and an evolution in my own perspective as I drove many times over interstate highway 15 on that stretch of highway in California's Death Valley.

Death Valley gives me the creeps. I saw the movie "The Hills Have Eyes." The movie tells of grotesque, disease-ridden inhabitants of hills overlooking a desert highway who prey on people who had car breakdowns. Instead of helping such people in their hour of need, the hill mutants and monsters harrass, torture and kill and/or rape the hapless motorists and their families.

Once in a while I would catch myself thinking of and fearing the possibility of a car breakdown and being stranded and helpless in the darkness and eerie isolation of highway 15's shoulders. The traffic that alternates between heavy and nearly non-existent on I-15 - the artery that links Los Angeles and Las Vegas - is the only deterrent against ill-intentioned motorists who might stop to seemingly help us, but whose true agenda is to rob us and perhaps even harm us, especially my wife and son, who would be the most vulnerable.

This is my biggest fear each time I hop on my car and drive my family to LA to see to our daughter's needs in downtown LA. Natasha is on the last leg of her course in Fashion and Merchandising Design at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in LA. So hopefully, our trips to LA will be much less frequent in the future.

But the thought that the creepy dangers of Death Valley will soon be in my rear-view mirror has not dissuaded me from becoming, for a first time in my life, a gun lover. This immediate past summer, I have been subjected to images of monsters of a different kind: right-wing lunatic fringe gun-toters who pack their sidearms and menacingly picket the health care reform rallies of Democrats and even those of President Obama's. I could see myself attending one of those health care rallies and being confronted by a wacko shoving a gun at my face.

It has become perfectly clear to me that U.S. politics have become risky business; the grim reality is that such events represent a clear and present danger to one's health, one's life.

It happened over a long period of time, but now, finally, I can see why the NRA is right in saying that if guns are outlawed, only the outlaws and the creeps will have guns. By all means, if conservatives feel the need to own and carry guns, liberals must feel that need more - because nearly all conservatives have guns.

And so, I have decided to own a gun, finally, and to attend training sessions that will teach me how to use a gun and how to keep it out of reach of my ten-year-old son. I wish I could buy a smart gun, one that can be fired only by me. This would assure that no one in my household will be able to use it and accidentally shoot someone, or maybe even harm themselves.

At the recent gun show in Las Vegas - Sept. 5-6 in Cashman Center - there spread out on rows upon rows of tables were a vast collection of firearms, enough to supply a small army. Las Vegas has the distinction of putting on the biggest gun shows in the U.S., and that show was huge.

What do hunting knives and military apparel have to do with guns? It is obvious that there is a segment of the population that believes, deep in their hearts, that there are enemies in the U.S. who must be repelled. Are these your neighbors? Are they the Mob? Are they the rogue elements in the local police? Or are they the ruthless conspirators in the U.S. government?

It really doesn't matter who those bogeymen (and women) are; as far as the gun-toting crowd is concerned, they're all out there, ready to create mayhem, and who are probably being prevented from moving in on the squeaky-clean NRA members only by those members' arsenals.

In the paranoid logic of the ultra-conservative mind, the main convincing argument against the adventurism of society's bad elements - allegedly including but not limited to the Federal government - is the ready availability of lethal weapons in the U.S., especially the still-wild west. I saw the Barrett-99 50 caliber sniper rifle that has a range of 1 mile. This is reputedly one of the favorite rifles of rooftop and hotel room snipers who presumably are being contracted to eliminate high value targets. Just like in the movies.

It is also presumably used by the military to decommission vehicles that may contain explosives and are heading for a military outpost in Iraq, Afghanistan or some hot spot around the world.

All sorts of rifles and handguns - new and used - were on display. In the middle of this vortex of potential violence sat Wyatt Earp III, the grandson of the famed lawman Wyatt Earp. He showed me his favorite six-shooter, a gleaming nickel-plated 38 caliber that he uses in competitions. He claims to be the fastest draw in the world.

Since I've never owned a gun, my friends and the salesmen at the Gun Show have recommended that I buy a starter gun. The gun that most enthusiasts consider as a "starter" is the 9 mm. There are good 9 mm Luger, Millennium and Smith and Wesson, all in the price range of $300 to $400 brand new. Used ones can be had for $150. I wouldn't recommend the used ones because one never knows if they will always fire properly, get jammed, or worse, explode in the user's face.

I like the Smith and Wesson best, because of the feel of that gun, and because it closely resembles the Glock 9 mm, whose design S & W reportedly copied, under license from Glock.

Did I actually buy a gun at the Gun Show? What do you think?