I enjoy going to gun shows.  I’ve been going to them ever since I was a little kid and my dad would take me.  I can’t wait until my son is old enough for me to take him and we can have that same type of bonding.

I used to live in rural Indiana and Indiana is a good state for gun shows.  The best by far is the INDY 1500, and four time a year, I would drive the hour to Indianapolis to go to it.  I bought my very first gun at the INDY 1500 my freshman year of college.  It is a huge show, and a good one.  I’ve always had a lot of fun going to gun shows in Indiana.

President Obama and Hillary Clinton have been talking about gun control, and about closing the “gun show loophole” in particular.  I guess all that talk is what inspired some putz journalist from The Daily Beast to head off to the Crown Point gun show in Indiana.  Oh, the horror!  Oh, the humanity!  AR-15’s and AK-47’s were for sale!  Just laid out on tables for people to buy!  Of course the author had to bring up Sandy Hook and San Bernardino.  But I don’t seem to remember those guns having come from gun shows….

Yes, the author does bring up that guns purchased at Indiana gun shows have ended up in the hands of criminals in Chicago, calling out the case of David Lewisbey.  But the article notes that “Lewisbey was convicted and sentenced to 16 years in federal prison” for firearms and drug trafficking.  Why?  Because buying guns to sell them to criminals across state lines is already a crime.  The fact of the matter is that gun shows aren’t even a major source of illegally trafficked guns, accounting for about 2% of guns used in crimes.

At least the Daily Beast acknowledges that the people at the gun show were genuinely friendly.

I can’t say the same for the Buzzfeed journalist reporter hack.  She decided to turn her trip the Kokomo gun shows into a race baiting hatchet job.  The thing about the social justice crowd, is that they have to make race and bigotry part of everything.

“Four people sat at the registration table: one white guy in his fifties and three women in their twenties, one of whom was black. Her blackness threw me off nearly as much as the mood outside. We made the sort of eye contact that meant we’d acknowledged each other’s blackness but we weren’t going to bond over it.”

“Black people aren’t part of the big tent of gun ownership. We’re never assumed to be law abiding, reasonable gun owners. That kind of gun ownership is seen as an upstanding white person act; a picket fence closed to outsiders like blacks. I wanted to see what was on the other side of the slats separating me from perfectly honorable, white people gun show attendance.”

Seems the author is not aware that the fastest growing demographic of gun owners and carry permit holders are women and minorities.  Maybe she should watch Mr. Colion Noir’s excellent YouTube channel a little bit.

She spots several other black people at the show, some of who are vendors.  But she still manages to ignore that to come to her predisposed conclusion:

“The gun show is where that white suspicion arms itself…  One gun show table held pamphlets for the Oath Keepers, the non-partisan militia whose mission is to protect Americans from being disarmed — using assault rifles. But what it feels like people are most suspicious of is me.”

Yeah, she found the guy with the table full of Confederate flags.  I’ve been to countless gun shows in half-a-dozen states, and there is always that one asshole who shows up with way too much NAZI memorabilia and vaguely racist literature.  But I’ve never seen “that guy” get much in the way of business and most people ignore him.

By the tone of her piece, you’d get the impression that she attended a Klan Rally.  Except, it seems that everybody there was nice to her… and that was some form of bigotry.

I enjoy gun shows.  Thousands, millions of other Americans also enjoy gun shows.  They are a celebration of freedom for us.  If you don’t like guns, don’t go to the gun show.

I’m not going to attend Burning Man or the the Folsom Street Fair and complain about the attendees wearing a diaper while getting spanked.  You do whatever it is that you liberals like to do, leave our gun shows alone.