After Eviction From Montgomery, Shows Retain Fans Farther North
By Fredrick Kunkle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 25, 2006
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.
"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."
View all comments that have been posted about this article.