14 February 2011

The Gunshow Loophole


(The Throng at the Nation's Gun Show, Dulles Expo Center, Chantilly, VA.)

I was sitting there thinking about mortality and infinity when the phone went off. It was my son, the Naval Officer, who said the Gun Show was on this weekend, and he wanted to go buy a handgun.

They have two monster shows a year out at the Dulles Expo Center, and they advertise more than a thousand vendors under one roof, armed to the teeth.

That kinda shook me up, since there are a whole lot of downstream choices associated with semi-automatic pistols, and almost all except target plinking mean a lot of paperwork at a minimum, if not death or jail time. He responded that it was better to do the paperwork than be dead and I had to agree with him.

I support Second Amendment rights, even if there is a potential downside, and said, "OK. Actually, I have been meaning to get a .22 Ruger to use for target practice. The ammunition for the big guns is really expensive."

Plus, he spent the Fall sleeping with an M-16, so what the hell. Long story short, he picked me up in the Bluesmobile and we drove out to Chantilly. The Dulles Expo Center was jammed- literally, we had to park a half-mile away from the entrance, and stand in a long line to get in. A big yellow sign on the door proclaimed:

“No Loaded Guns. Empty them. All of Them.”

A table by the door was manned by some volunteers doing a brisk business signing up new members for the National Rifle Association. These things are not free, and we ponied up $12 apiece to join the throng.

There was a coupon I had failed to print that could have saved us big time:

Naturally, some pals had a table just inside the door and yelled out for us to come over. Ralph is a retired Army Colonel who specializes in historic weapons, and Tony is one of those men with a really intense look.

A former Naval Aviator, if you know what I mean.

My son was thinking about a Glock 9, and thank God Tony was sitting there to suggest an alternative, the Sig-Sauer .40 cal, model SP 2022.

"The Glock is a loser," he said. "The hammer is a half-cock and the trigger safety can hang up when you put it in your holster. That is why the Secret Service guys are always shooting themselves in the ass. Just happened again last week."

I trust Tony's judgment. He has a hundred guns, he said proudly. I thought to myself that is sort of over-kill, so to speak. I might have ten, either old family shooting-irons like Great Uncle Pud’s .32 Hammerless Going Downtown Colt, or the Colt Navy that someone found out on the lawn after the Rebels went through town on the way to Gettysburg.

The others were carefully selected by category for a balanced capability.

I wasn’t surprised by my son’s selection of the Glock 9. I mean, everyone is talking about it, and a lot of law enforcement people have picked it up. Tony seemed to think it was part of a loss-leader by the firearms manufacturer to gain market share.

It is also what that with lunatic used against Gabby Giffords and her staffers and constituents down in Phoenix. That act of brutal multiple murders is why the crowd was so big.

There really are two Americas these days. This half is scared to death their guns are going to be taken away with all the other crap the government is up to. I would call them paranoid, except I am not sure they are wrong.

After all, you are only paranoid if they are not actually out to get you.

We swam through the crowd and wound up at the vendor Tony recommended- Trader Jerry's. The long tables were butted together to make an elongated island and hundreds of pistols lay on their shipping containers, all linked together through the trigger guards with cable bike locks. Picking one up too abruptly also lifted the one next to it, and it was impossible to work the action.

It was so crowded that it was difficult to get near the tables, much less get the attention of the men behind the counter. Jerry's had a ginormous series of tables with thousands of guns. I managed to get the attention of one of the harried clerks and he showed my son this one, along with an informational brochure:




(SIG-Sauer SIG Pro SP 2022 pistol, developed for French police and gendarmerie forces.)

Type: Double Action or Double Action Only
Chamber: 9x19mm Para, .357SIG, .40 S&W
Weight with empty magazine: 760 g (9mm); 790 g (.40 & .357)
Length: 187 mm
Barrel length: 99 mm
Capacity: 15 (9mm) or 12 (.40) rounds
 
The SIG Pro pistol is another joint effort between two famous European arms makers, the SAN Swiss Arms (formerly known as SIG Arms) and the J. P. Sauer & Sohn of Germany. Originally developed as a .40SW caliber service pistol with modular design, it was first announced in 1998 as the SIG Pro SP 2340. About one year later, the 9mm version, designated the SP 2009, was introduced and entered production. The SIG Pro is used by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), as well as by number of other law enforcement agencies worldwide. In the 2003, the French law enforcement agencies (including Gendarmerie and Police Nationale) adopted a slightly modified version of the SP 2009. New version of SIG Pro, designated as SP 2022, to replace Beretta 92G and some older pistols. A total of 250,000 SP 2022 pistols are ordered by France.

While my son was looking at the .40 cal, I asked if he needed anything beyond his Illinois driver's license and his active duty military ID, and Mike-the-clerk said "He will need a copy of his orders assigning him to Virginia."

My son sighed, since of course he thought you just had to go to the show and buy a gun. Maybe he was thinking of the famous “gunshow loophole.”

I guess he had believed the bullshit about the “no background checks.”

I will have to tell you about what happened next, but it was clear that we were going to have to go back to the show the next day if he was going to get his gun, and that is exactly what we are going to do with the story, too.

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
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