Gun Enthusiasts Find a Paradise Of Wood and Steel

After Eviction From Montgomery, Shows Retain Fans Farther North

They came to talk full metal jackets and velocity in feet per second. They came to see the merchandise, to touch it, to lift it in their hands and, often, to aim it at some invisible target overhead and pretend to shoot. They waited in line yesterday before the doors opened to pay $7 to see the Silverado Gun Show in Frederick.

Gun enthusiasts often fume that the anti-gun crowd is forever thinking that firearms themselves are somehow responsible for terrible tragedies, as if a thing of forged steel and finely machined parts could contain some indwelling power and mind of its own. But here they are on table after table, rack after rack: guns as commodities, guns as toys, guns as wondrous things to behold. Maybe to buy.

Frank Krasner, the two-day event's promoter, puts on eight Silverado gun shows a year in Maryland. Three are in Frederick, where he usually gets his biggest crowds, he said. Krasner used to hold his show at the Montgomery County fairgrounds until county politicians evicted him because of what was being sold. In 2001, Montgomery moved to withhold its funds from any organization that sponsored gun shows because of a loophole in state law -- since closed -- that allowed the sale of some guns without background checks. As a result, Krasner lost his lease.

So far, that has not happened in Frederick, but Krasner said he worries as the county becomes more like its suburban neighbor.

"The nitwittery is moving north one moving van at a time," he said.

Vendors begin arriving at the Frederick Fairgrounds about 7 a.m. Krasner, a handgun in a fanny pack slung around his waist, pesters them to make sure all the guns are secured with plastic yellow ties.

"Hey, Frank. How's it going?" a vendor asks.

"I'm up and on my feet," Krasner says.

"That's good. Vertical's better than horizontal."

"Better than the alternative," Krasner says.

Krasner, 48, lives in Urbana -- but, he points out, not in the huge, new, Kentlands-like development absorbing the folks moving from Montgomery. "I live on the outhouse side of Urbana," he says.

The 50 or so visitors who arrive when the doors open at 9 a.m. are fewer than Krasner anticipated, but the sunless sky makes him optimistic. As many as 5,000 people are expected over two days.