By Daniel Rigney
I’m reporting from downtown Houston on opening day of the annual convention of the National Rifle Association. It’s going to be a celebrity-packed weekend, featuring a guest appearance by political thinker and aerial wolfhunter Sarah Palin.
Be still, my heart.
Ted Cruz, Glenn Beck, Rick Santorum and Rick Perry are also expected in town for the event. Don’t get between any of these guys and a TV camera if you value your life.
They’re all here to help the NRA protect and defend the second half of the Second Amendment. The first half (the well-regulated-militia part) is apparently missing and feared dead.
Today, Houston’s convention center is the epicenter of the American gun culture, and I'm here to report the event POV.
The NRA convention has been described as a “mega-gathering known for bringing big political names, big guns and big bucks to host cities. ” The Houston Chronicle reports that 70,000 are expected at the three-day event this weekend, which features more than 550 exhibitors, speakers, educational seminars and firearms collections.
On my way into the main exhibit hall, I pass several tables offering an assortment of conspiratorial literature, most of it from the perennial right-wing movement of Lyndon LaRouche. LaRouche’s tables are the ones with the Impeach Obama signs, accompanied by pictures of the President with a hitler moustache. It is here I learn that 9-11 was a British-Saudi conspiracy. Who knew?
The Trade Show
Inside, things seem marginally more sane. A mega-trade show is underway in the cavernous exhibition hall, where business warriors are hawking the very latest in consumer weaponry from some of the biggest small arms dealers in the world. If you’re building that home arsenal you’ve always fantasized about, this is the place to shop. Gun dealers have everything you need, from pistols to assault rifles and beyond. If you can’t find it here, you don’t need it.
The NRA convention is the social event of the season if you’re anybody who’s anybody in the gun culture. This is where major gun manufacturers come to see and be seen. I see both Smith and Wesson here today. Remington. Winchester. Ruger. Glock. Sig Sauer. Bushmaster.
Many of these brands are household names now, especially since the mass shootings at Sandy Hook, Connecticut last December, where several of these name brands were later discovered in the Lanza family arsenal.
An Eyeball Census
I take an eyeball census of the exhibition hall crowd. Those in attendance today look to be about 90 or 95 percent white/anglo, a little less than 90 percent male, and skewing toward late middle age. Many here have Southernish accents. They’re dressed conservatively, but sport surprisingly few aggressive political t-shirt slogans (e.g., "I don't dial 911" over an image of a handgun) or other identifiers, apart from their NRA badges. The mood is friendly and polite in this culturally homogeneous, manly, older, and often portly crowd.
This is more or less my own demographic profile. I can pass for an NRA kinda guy myself if I keep my mouth shut.
Are these folks carrying today? The only unconcealed weapons I see here are the hundreds or thousands on display at the vendors’ booths. But how many concealed weapons are there in the room? I have no idea. There was no gun-check at the door, so it’s possible their number is manifold.
According to some gun industry theorists, the more people who pack heat, the safer we all are. If that’s true, I’m probably in one of the safest places in the world.
Gun paraphernalia on display today include magazines (both kinds – Guns and Ammo and long-clip), knives, field apparel and accessories, and collector’s items.
One side of the exhibit hall seems devoted mainly to hunting. I stop to look deeply into the glassy eyes of taxidermy specimens (a lion, a New Zealand stag) at two safari adventure booths.
Other spaces in the exhibit hall seem aimed more toward the paramilitary/survivalist/soldier of fortune/war fantasy crowd. While I’m sure some hunters also have paramilitary interests, I know for a fact that many hunters still don't comprehend why semi-automatic assault rifles are necessary to put fresh game on the table or defend the homestead.
NRA strategists must be aware that a wedge driven between the hunting and paramilitarist cultures could split and splinter the organization and weaken its political clout.
Strategists must also be worried about the NRA's ageing population.Young people today, it seems, would rather shoot videogame weapons than real ones, and seem more interested in their First Amendment rights than in the second half of their Second Amendment ones.
Patriotism, far-rightly understood, is a recurring theme here. A black 18-wheeler (parked inside) bears the words, in huge bold white caps, UNAPOLOGETICALLY AMERICAN. Red, white, and blue compete with black and shades of camouflage green in the gun culture’s fashion palette.
Another recurring theme here is fear. The gun industry depends on the cultivation and frequent fertilization of fear for its own economic survival. It sells guns by giving fear away for free and then offering a solution to the fear problem.
Fear of crime. Fear of racial and ethnic otherness. Fear of other gun owners. Fear that government is coming after our guns. Our property. Our families. Our faith. Fear that home and hearth are under siege.
One company touting its wares today offers “concealed carry for your home” with its line of “secret compartment furniture” with drawers big enough to hide a small arsenel. A conservative Christian group offers “tactical training” in preparation for a coming secular apocalypse. I wonder what Jesus would have carried. (WWJC?)
For some Americans, the coming of a more cosmopolitan and metropolitan world is the end of the world as they know it, and they feel fear. To these folks, guns aren't a problem. They're a solution.
Guns and Gender
The NRA convention is gendered in interesting ways. I’m seeing varied stereotypes of women here. On the one hand, I see what appear to be traditional Southern ladies attending with their husbands. (The red-meat concession at the back of the hall is named in their honor: “Southern Lady BBQ.”)
At the other end of the decorum spectrum, I'm offered a free pin-up poster of a gifted model in a tight pair of camo short-shorts, gripping an assault rifle at arm’s length and saying “If you show me yours, I’ll show you mine.” Gun lust? Not today, but thank you.
An ammunition display features a living, breathing model spilling out of her brief red, white and blue outfit as she helps promote an ammunition delivery service. Nothing says patriotism like sexualizing ammo.
Most striking, perhaps, is the sign pictured at the top of this story, advertising an assault rifle in the grip of a combat-ready babe. Are we allowed to say “gun porn” on the Internet?
Future Technology Now
I can’t leave the exhibit hall without checking out the latest in sleek and efficient weapons of mass-marketed destruction. First there are the laser guns, integrated with wall-sized video screens to create the illusion of actual combat or target practice. Laser systems are currently in use not just for training and recreational purposes, but also for laser-targeting by missiles, drones, and small arms, often by remote control.
How soon before remote laser-targeting technology becomes commonplace on the streets of the U.S. and around the world -- and not just with harmless Laserquest arcade guns. The thought of this technological future doesn't inspire hope for the human future.
Even more disturbing to me is the advent of 3-D printing in the manufacture of ammunition and other ballistic hardware. Imagine a future in which we can print metal.
The future is now. It’s called 3DP, or digital materialization. I have seen the bullets of the future, made of printed metal. What new and more destructive applications of 3DP lie just around the corner? Printed armed robots in multiple copies?
[Addendum: We interrupt this post to bring you a breaking news story: The First 3D Printed Gun Has Been Fired. Added 5/6/2013]
Back Outside the Gun Culture
That’s enough death technology for one day. As I leave the convention center and cross the street onto Discovery Green, I notice a cluster of people surrounding a young woman in a black hoodie, standing at a podium in front of a sculpture by the French artist Jean Dubuffet. She represents a group from Austin who call themselves No More Names. She’s reading aloud the names of victims of gun violence as her personal act of public resistance to the gun culture, an act protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
I talk with her afterwards. She and friends are here to advocate for universal background checks and restrictions on sales at gun shows. She says “my little 13 year old brother could buy a gun at a gun show,” no questions asked.
Standing nearby is Colonel Bill D. Badger, U.S. Army Retired, here today as a wounded survivor of the attack on Sen. Gabby Gifford in Arizona last January. He’s wearing a pink baseball pin overlaid with the initials CTG, in memory of Christina Taylor Green, a young girl (and baseball lover) who died on that day in Tucson. Col. Badger is making his quiet presence known to the National Rifle Association by choosing to be here today, just outside the epicenter of the gun culture, as an eyewitness to (and a victim of) gun mayhem.
Col. Badger points me toward a dark-haired man in a light suit, being interviewed by a German television correspondent. I stand nearby and listen. Afterwards I talk with the man. He, like Col. Badger, is calm, even-tempered and dignified. He says he’s not here to protest or make trouble. He’s here because he has questions to ask the NRA about its political opposition to reasonable restrictions on the sale of guns – restrictions he believes might have saved the life of his son Jesse, a six-year-old first grader who died on a December day in Sandy Hook, Connecticut. The gentleman tells me, "I'm here out of respect for my son."
Media people, both national and international, both inside and outside the convention hall, are interviewing participants. The whole world is watching, if only for a few seconds between commercials.
Inside the convention center, media correspondents ask conventioneers, “Why did you decide to be here today?” Outside, they ask resisters: “Why did you decide to be here today?”
Same question. Different answers.
Danagram
For further explorations of the gun culture and gun resistance, see “Unconventional Worlds: The Gun Show” and Shaming the Gun Culture.
I’m reporting from downtown Houston on opening day of the annual convention of the National Rifle Association. It’s going to be a celebrity-packed weekend, featuring a guest appearance by political thinker and aerial wolfhunter Sarah Palin.
Be still, my heart.
Ted Cruz, Glenn Beck, Rick Santorum and Rick Perry are also expected in town for the event. Don’t get between any of these guys and a TV camera if you value your life.
They’re all here to help the NRA protect and defend the second half of the Second Amendment. The first half (the well-regulated-militia part) is apparently missing and feared dead.
Today, Houston’s convention center is the epicenter of the American gun culture, and I'm here to report the event POV.
The NRA convention has been described as a “mega-gathering known for bringing big political names, big guns and big bucks to host cities. ” The Houston Chronicle reports that 70,000 are expected at the three-day event this weekend, which features more than 550 exhibitors, speakers, educational seminars and firearms collections.
On my way into the main exhibit hall, I pass several tables offering an assortment of conspiratorial literature, most of it from the perennial right-wing movement of Lyndon LaRouche. LaRouche’s tables are the ones with the Impeach Obama signs, accompanied by pictures of the President with a hitler moustache. It is here I learn that 9-11 was a British-Saudi conspiracy. Who knew?
The Trade Show
Inside, things seem marginally more sane. A mega-trade show is underway in the cavernous exhibition hall, where business warriors are hawking the very latest in consumer weaponry from some of the biggest small arms dealers in the world. If you’re building that home arsenal you’ve always fantasized about, this is the place to shop. Gun dealers have everything you need, from pistols to assault rifles and beyond. If you can’t find it here, you don’t need it.
The NRA convention is the social event of the season if you’re anybody who’s anybody in the gun culture. This is where major gun manufacturers come to see and be seen. I see both Smith and Wesson here today. Remington. Winchester. Ruger. Glock. Sig Sauer. Bushmaster.
Many of these brands are household names now, especially since the mass shootings at Sandy Hook, Connecticut last December, where several of these name brands were later discovered in the Lanza family arsenal.
An Eyeball Census
I take an eyeball census of the exhibition hall crowd. Those in attendance today look to be about 90 or 95 percent white/anglo, a little less than 90 percent male, and skewing toward late middle age. Many here have Southernish accents. They’re dressed conservatively, but sport surprisingly few aggressive political t-shirt slogans (e.g., "I don't dial 911" over an image of a handgun) or other identifiers, apart from their NRA badges. The mood is friendly and polite in this culturally homogeneous, manly, older, and often portly crowd.
This is more or less my own demographic profile. I can pass for an NRA kinda guy myself if I keep my mouth shut.
Are these folks carrying today? The only unconcealed weapons I see here are the hundreds or thousands on display at the vendors’ booths. But how many concealed weapons are there in the room? I have no idea. There was no gun-check at the door, so it’s possible their number is manifold.
According to some gun industry theorists, the more people who pack heat, the safer we all are. If that’s true, I’m probably in one of the safest places in the world.
Gun paraphernalia on display today include magazines (both kinds – Guns and Ammo and long-clip), knives, field apparel and accessories, and collector’s items.
One side of the exhibit hall seems devoted mainly to hunting. I stop to look deeply into the glassy eyes of taxidermy specimens (a lion, a New Zealand stag) at two safari adventure booths.
Other spaces in the exhibit hall seem aimed more toward the paramilitary/survivalist/soldier of fortune/war fantasy crowd. While I’m sure some hunters also have paramilitary interests, I know for a fact that many hunters still don't comprehend why semi-automatic assault rifles are necessary to put fresh game on the table or defend the homestead.
NRA strategists must be aware that a wedge driven between the hunting and paramilitarist cultures could split and splinter the organization and weaken its political clout.
Strategists must also be worried about the NRA's ageing population.Young people today, it seems, would rather shoot videogame weapons than real ones, and seem more interested in their First Amendment rights than in the second half of their Second Amendment ones.
Patriotism, far-rightly understood, is a recurring theme here. A black 18-wheeler (parked inside) bears the words, in huge bold white caps, UNAPOLOGETICALLY AMERICAN. Red, white, and blue compete with black and shades of camouflage green in the gun culture’s fashion palette.
Another recurring theme here is fear. The gun industry depends on the cultivation and frequent fertilization of fear for its own economic survival. It sells guns by giving fear away for free and then offering a solution to the fear problem.
Fear of crime. Fear of racial and ethnic otherness. Fear of other gun owners. Fear that government is coming after our guns. Our property. Our families. Our faith. Fear that home and hearth are under siege.
One company touting its wares today offers “concealed carry for your home” with its line of “secret compartment furniture” with drawers big enough to hide a small arsenel. A conservative Christian group offers “tactical training” in preparation for a coming secular apocalypse. I wonder what Jesus would have carried. (WWJC?)
For some Americans, the coming of a more cosmopolitan and metropolitan world is the end of the world as they know it, and they feel fear. To these folks, guns aren't a problem. They're a solution.
Guns and Gender
The NRA convention is gendered in interesting ways. I’m seeing varied stereotypes of women here. On the one hand, I see what appear to be traditional Southern ladies attending with their husbands. (The red-meat concession at the back of the hall is named in their honor: “Southern Lady BBQ.”)
At the other end of the decorum spectrum, I'm offered a free pin-up poster of a gifted model in a tight pair of camo short-shorts, gripping an assault rifle at arm’s length and saying “If you show me yours, I’ll show you mine.” Gun lust? Not today, but thank you.
An ammunition display features a living, breathing model spilling out of her brief red, white and blue outfit as she helps promote an ammunition delivery service. Nothing says patriotism like sexualizing ammo.
Most striking, perhaps, is the sign pictured at the top of this story, advertising an assault rifle in the grip of a combat-ready babe. Are we allowed to say “gun porn” on the Internet?
Future Technology Now
I can’t leave the exhibit hall without checking out the latest in sleek and efficient weapons of mass-marketed destruction. First there are the laser guns, integrated with wall-sized video screens to create the illusion of actual combat or target practice. Laser systems are currently in use not just for training and recreational purposes, but also for laser-targeting by missiles, drones, and small arms, often by remote control.
How soon before remote laser-targeting technology becomes commonplace on the streets of the U.S. and around the world -- and not just with harmless Laserquest arcade guns. The thought of this technological future doesn't inspire hope for the human future.
Even more disturbing to me is the advent of 3-D printing in the manufacture of ammunition and other ballistic hardware. Imagine a future in which we can print metal.
The future is now. It’s called 3DP, or digital materialization. I have seen the bullets of the future, made of printed metal. What new and more destructive applications of 3DP lie just around the corner? Printed armed robots in multiple copies?
[Addendum: We interrupt this post to bring you a breaking news story: The First 3D Printed Gun Has Been Fired. Added 5/6/2013]
Back Outside the Gun Culture
That’s enough death technology for one day. As I leave the convention center and cross the street onto Discovery Green, I notice a cluster of people surrounding a young woman in a black hoodie, standing at a podium in front of a sculpture by the French artist Jean Dubuffet. She represents a group from Austin who call themselves No More Names. She’s reading aloud the names of victims of gun violence as her personal act of public resistance to the gun culture, an act protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
I talk with her afterwards. She and friends are here to advocate for universal background checks and restrictions on sales at gun shows. She says “my little 13 year old brother could buy a gun at a gun show,” no questions asked.
Standing nearby is Colonel Bill D. Badger, U.S. Army Retired, here today as a wounded survivor of the attack on Sen. Gabby Gifford in Arizona last January. He’s wearing a pink baseball pin overlaid with the initials CTG, in memory of Christina Taylor Green, a young girl (and baseball lover) who died on that day in Tucson. Col. Badger is making his quiet presence known to the National Rifle Association by choosing to be here today, just outside the epicenter of the gun culture, as an eyewitness to (and a victim of) gun mayhem.
Col. Badger points me toward a dark-haired man in a light suit, being interviewed by a German television correspondent. I stand nearby and listen. Afterwards I talk with the man. He, like Col. Badger, is calm, even-tempered and dignified. He says he’s not here to protest or make trouble. He’s here because he has questions to ask the NRA about its political opposition to reasonable restrictions on the sale of guns – restrictions he believes might have saved the life of his son Jesse, a six-year-old first grader who died on a December day in Sandy Hook, Connecticut. The gentleman tells me, "I'm here out of respect for my son."
Media people, both national and international, both inside and outside the convention hall, are interviewing participants. The whole world is watching, if only for a few seconds between commercials.
Inside the convention center, media correspondents ask conventioneers, “Why did you decide to be here today?” Outside, they ask resisters: “Why did you decide to be here today?”
Same question. Different answers.
Danagram
For further explorations of the gun culture and gun resistance, see “Unconventional Worlds: The Gun Show” and Shaming the Gun Culture.
No comments:
Post a Comment