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I attended my first gun show Saturday in southwest Florida where I reside in the winter. I’m not a hardcore gun guy, which is why, when a friend invited me, I took the opportunity to check it out. His text message included the alluring phrase “Guns+Beer+Rednecks=Party!” I was really curious to be among the gun people, some of whom reportedly possess more firepower than a Revolutionary War regiment. The venue was a convention center and the parking lot was packed to the point that vehicles filled the grass malls. Among the crowd were men with rifles strapped over their shoulders and hand-written signs attached to the back of their shirts advertising the details of the weapon for sale. Inside, vendors were hawking not only firearms and ammunition, but knives, stun guns, and various accoutrements such as magazines, holsters, cases, cleaning kits and laser sights. There were long tables of handguns- Glocks, SIG Sauers, Berettas and other makes I’d never heard of. Besides shotguns and what I call “hunting rifles”, there was a startling quantity of assault-styled semi-automatic rifles and carbines. Several sellers had signs advertising high-capacity magazines. There were tee-shirts with catchy sayings; “Guns Don’t Kill People, Fathers With Pretty Daughters Do” said one. At another table, you could purchase a pocket-sized version of the United States Constitution. While women were in evidence, it was a mostly male crowd.    

I have no negative attitudes towards gun ownership. I would prefer that the irresponsible among us did not have access to firearms, but I realize that tradition, politics and the economic clout of those that benefit from this peculiarly American addiction preclude finding a reasonable process for deciding whom among us may possess a weapon. I have small-bore shotguns in my homes, though they have not been fired in years. I have been to pistol ranges with friends and enjoyed target shooting with their handguns.  My primary residence is in New York, a state whose tough gun laws make owning a handgun daunting. While I had some experience with shotguns and rifles during my adolescence, I’ve had little contact with pistols in my life. I never gave serious thought to owning or carrying a handgun. Unlike some of my friends and family, I was never into hunting, and I did very little shooting of long guns as an adult.

The subject of self-defense was very much in evidence at the show. “Pumping Paranoia” might have been a fitting theme for the event.  My sense is that most people never have violent encounters as adults. In contrast, the impression that I got as I wandered among the displays and the crowds was that owning a gun was the singular thing that would guarantee my personal safety in a dangerous society. My thoughts on this have always been that for a gun to be effective, it has to be readily available and that the user must remain cool in a life-threatening situation when the common reactions are to be excited and panicked. Police officers who are trained to react to such circumstances probably hit the target less than a third of the time (there are many statistical studies on this subject). It challenges credulity to believe untrained civilians would do better.

In terms of home defense, I feel shotguns are as intimidating as we need to be in “standing our ground” because, in reality, firing a pistol at a person while you are under duress does not mean you will actually hit them. A shotgun fires a spray of pellets, so it need not be aimed, only pointed. There is also the reality that anyone who would break into your home while you are there is most likely a “mad dog”  and is better prepared for violent confrontation than you are.

Carrying a gun for protection or having guns in the home turns out to be problematic. Studies show a very small percentage of shootings are in self-defense; suicides, homicides and accidental deaths by gun occur at a much higher rate in homes where there are firearms.* In states where it is not difficult to obtain a concealed carry permit, the temptation to use a gun to resolve a conflict seems difficult to resist. In Florida alone, the state where George Zimmerman was acquitted in the shooting death of the unarmed Treyvon Martin, Michael Dunn is currently on trial for killing an unarmed 17-year old to death in a dispute over the loud rap music coming from a car full of teens. Last month, a retired police officer shot an unarmed man to death in a Tampa-area movie theater after they argued about the man’s texting. In all these cases, it is not unreasonable to assume that no one would have died if a firearm weren’t involved.

Then there is the extreme fringe of the gun cultists– the people I refer to as the “black helicopter crowd”- who justify the accumulation of personal arsenals as a buttress against an oppressive government. I assume they live in alternate universe. If the government is bent on oppressing us all, it would not be troubled about yahoos with AR-15’s and high-capacity magazines. It would simply deploy tanks or drones and- yes- maybe even helicopters. Even that seems a stretch, since we now know the NSA simply keeps us all under surveillance.

So here is the bottom line: It is all about the bottom line. If gun manufacturers, dealers, ammunition suppliers and the rest can make the case for fear, they can induce people to buy their products. Firearms are a lucrative business and the gun lobby is efficient at defending its turf. After the tragic mass killing of school children and teachers in Newtown, CT, there was a run on high-capacity magazines as gun owners feared the push for gun control legislation would mean such magazines would be banned. It is not counter-intuitive that the periodic chatter about gun control within the political class is good for the gun business.

My cynicism about the gun cult aside, I am glad I attended the show. I enjoyed handling the various pistols. I came across a stainless steel Kimber M1911 .45 which was simply gorgeous- as pretty as a mechanical device can be and comfortable to hold. As with other men I know, I suffer from a mild obsession with “tool porn” and guns fit into this. If it were a less costly hobby, I would take up target shooting. One of the eye-openers at the show was price- the Kimber I lusted after was listed at $1150- and my friend told that the cost of most ammunition had skyrocketed the last few years. I do think that many gun owners have attitudes similar to mine: They just like to shoot guns, the ultimate boy-toys. The self-defense and Second Amendment arguments are a faux-intellectual justification for indulging themselves.

I really would like to believe that, but when we pulled out of the parking lot Saturday afternoon, I saw these guys:

*Here is one example of a study which purports to be unbiased.