Gun Enthusiasts Find a Paradise Of Wood and Steel

"Showers," Krasner says. "It gets them off the lawn mowers. Gun show weather."

A few people arrive with a gun or two to sell. First, a shooting instructor certified by the National Rifle Association makes sure the guns are not loaded and disables them with the plastic yellow ties. Then the sellers mosey around -- "For Sale" signs sticking out of the gun barrels like flags saying "Bang!" -- hoping to find buyers.

Fans the size of airplane propellers pump sweltering air into the even more sweltering hall, which is chockablock with tables. Some vendors offer books, many with faded jackets befitting their obscurity. Others peddle Native American tchotchkes, swords that a samurai or a crusader might have swung, Barlow pocket knives and World War I bayonets, Third Reich memorabilia and bumper stickers.

"I'D RATHER HUNT WITH DICK CHENEY THAN RIDE WITH TED KENNEDY," one reads.

"Here's my favorite," Krasner says. "Guess who said this."

He shows the bumper sticker, hiding part of it with his thumb: "The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms," it says.

His thumb moves: Hitler. Krasner chuckles.

People have given Krasner grief about stuff on sale that might give offense to Jews. But free speech is free speech, he says, and anyway, he happens to be Jewish, which becomes obvious to anyone who hears him tossing around Yiddish wisecracks.

Over at the NRA's booth, a guy in a blaze-orange vest cups his hands and shouts to let people know that he is ready to sign them up as members.

But most people have come to see the guns. They rest in glass cases and lie in neat rows on long tables covered with sheer, tulle-like gauze. Some are antiques. Some are the latest in a long line of finely machined tools.

A Weatherby .25-06-caliber rifle, its wooden stock smooth and blond as toffee, goes for $529.95. A small Keystone Cricket .22-caliber rifle with a pink fiberglass stock goes for $189 and comes with a few words of explanation: "Young Ladies First Gun."

A guy wearing a "Blackfoot Police" baseball cap and a NASCAR T-shirt -- "Like Father, Like Son," it says, with pictures of Dale Earnhardt and Dale Earnhardt Jr. -- holds a rifle in his arms as if it were a baby. Head cocked, he looks it over, end to end. He works the action. Then up to the shoulder it goes, and he aims. At the neon lights? The ceiling panels? Something only he can imagine? What?

It's a ritual repeated again and again.

"Eighty percent of them are tire kickers. They've just come to look. They just want to touch them and feel them," says Jacob Lowe, owner of White Marsh Arms Inc. of Reisterstown. "We are a gun culture."