It was a great weekend. The snow missed us, the farm was delightful, and there was a thoroughly surreal encounter with a component of Real America that is terse, determined, and making a concerted effort to be ready for whatever comes next.

I don’t count myself in that number, at least not completely. I was thinking about that as I crashed through the story yesterday morning while buttoning up the farm: wash dishes, strip and make bed, bring in the Dwarf, lower the flag, lock the doors and turn down the thermostat.

This is a gang and lunatic problem, as best I can determine, and why they want to abrogate the rights of law abiding citizens as a first step, rather than going after these two groups that are responsible for the problem eludes me, unless there is another agenda at work here.

Which many people are completely confident that there is.

I had made arrangements with a pal to stop at what is billed as The Nation’s Gun Show, an event held every six months out at the Chantilly Dulles Expo Center. There has been an urgency attendant to the national climate regarding Second Amendment rights that is sparked each time some demented anti-social creep does something unbelievably awful.

Accordingly, I am taking the current flurry of legislation with an air of prepared resignation. Even if the Government- or elements of the National Security State and the bluer of the States- get what they want, the guns that are out there will take a century or more to begin to decay into irrelevance.

Bans don’t work, unless one wants to follow the idea of forcing registration and follow-on visits from the State Police to check for compliance with a new list of safety procedures. Add to that bit of astonishing intrusion on property right, restrictions on ammunition, or the creative application of liability insurance to drive costs of ownership so high that The People are effectively dis-armed.

If that last paragraph suggests something sinister, or a step in the right direction, you are naturally free to choose which one you believe. Legislation to impose exactly those things are under consideration or have been passed in New York and California intends to out-do the Empire State in the severity of new rules.

Law abiding citizens are no threat, and the statistics bear that out. Gang and drug related violence are a direct and real threat, as are loonies who periodically act out in places with plenty of targets. Of course, both groups are already operating outside the law, and are not permitted firearms under the existing raft of laws.

Anyway, any thinking citizen knows what is coming under a Progressive-ruled government, and most of us are all set. I was curious to sample the mood of the crowd.

I flogged the Panzer up Rt. 29 to meet my pal at the big mall in Fairfax, since we knew the parking lot was going to be jammed and space would be at a premium. Clark’s gun shop was jammed even early on a Sunday, and the range was active as I motored through the Rt 17 junction at Opal.

My pal was waiting patiently at the mall, and I scooped him up and we drove back out Rt. 50 to the Expo Center, located adjacent to the big blue building that houses an agency whose very existence was secret for most of my government career.

“Kinda weird that two old national security apparatchiks should be convinced that the government is out of control, isn’t it?” said my pal.

“No shit,” I said. “This is unreal.”

The doors had been open at the show for only an hour, and as predicted there were no parking places closer than the WallMart complex about a half a mile way from the Expo Center. The lot was filled with trucks, which is something the government ought to look at profiling for possible domestic terrorism affiliations.

We paid our thirteen dollar admission cost, and produced our tickets for Maggie, who was seated on a stool inside the doors.

“No concealed carry here,” she said, and I raised my arms to show I was unarmed. “No loaded weapons,” she said, and I marveled briefly that a vast hall filled with guns and ammunition was technically a gun-free zone.

Then we plunged into the weapons zone.

Going to the gun show is a lot like visiting the DMV: you meet fellow citizens who are mostly completely out of the usual orbit of middle class life. Except maybe in Culpeper.

The DMV is about the new America- an incredibly diverse population that expects service in Spanish or Pashtun. This crowd was composed of rednecks, lawyers, physicians and professionals who are very concerned that what they have worked for all their lives will be taken away from them. The mottos printed on the t-shirts and ballcaps reflect it.

There are two different worlds that inhabit the same space-time continuum. There were many women- more than you would expect, unless you thought it through.

“A handgun is the only thing that makes a 110-pound woman the equal of an NFL linebacker.” Said my pal.

“No shit,” I said, overwhelmed by the tables filled with long guns and short guns and scary looking guns and antique guns and scopes and carry holsters and assorted paraphernalia.

“What is the hot item at the show?” I asked the guy with short hair, earrings and a tribal pattern tattoo that snakes down his arm from shirtsleeve to wrist. He was selling me boxes of ammunition that have been in short supply since last summer, no background check required.

He looked at me and cocked his head. “I would have to say it is extended capacity magazines,” he said. “That is one of the things that is going to be illegal here shortly.”

“Prices are pretty steep,” I said skeptically.

“No shit,” said my pal. “They seem to be prepared to spend what it takes. Think these folks are going to line up to register their weapons?”

“Um,” I said, shaking my head. “I seriously doubt it.”

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com