Messaging the Shooter; a Dispatch From the Nra Convention

Summary

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In vendor booths all around us, tethered to the walls with cord, were guns, guns anyone could handle. Everywhere was the smooth oily rasping of revolvers being dry-clicked, rifle bolts being drawn back and then slid home, shotguns being pumped, slides being pulled back, magazines ejected and replaced. And nobody was cringing or saying, "Hey! Watch where you point that thing!" There were kids in strollers everywhere, but the only disapproval I heard from room was a young woman who, as she groused to her husband, found the action of a Beretta too stiff. Kids pointed rifles skyward, drew beads on the convention center's roof. One young girl -- she couldn't have been more than 6 or 7 -- stood by Ruger's display of double-action revolvers totally unattended, grabbing guns and waving them around. It reminded me, somehow, of the Pittsburgh Children's Museum.

While cars have gotten safer, guns have gotten more dangerous. As [Tom Diaz] writes, "Just as tobacco industry executives loaded cigarettes up with addictive nicotine ... so have gun industry executives steadily increased the lethality of guns and ammunition." And status matters just as much in gun sales as anything else, Diaz writes, except that in the gun industry the trendsetters and tastemakers are the military and police. Visitors to the NRA convention this year could pick up a catalogue for arms maker FN, which features a combat shotgun that isn't even available to civilians. Then again, it used to be you couldn't buy a Hummer, either. Or a laser sight. Now they're status items.

This is where the NRA comes in: providing the political cover that allows people to purchase guns, and turning those purchases into political statements. Outside the trade show, the NRA was staging a live broadcast of its Internet news program, NRA News, which offers pro-gun perspectives that the media ostensibly "doesn't want you to hear." The anchors were complaining about Michael Moore, whose anti-gun documentary Bowling for Columbine apparently still rankles.

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Messaging the Shooter; a Dispatch From the Nra Convention

I am the NRA.

I didn't set out to be. See, the National Rifle Association's annual convention here included a trade show boasting of "4 acres of guns and gear," but only NRA members could get in. If I wanted to see the weaponry on display -- and I did -- I had to join.

Fortunately, you could buy a membership right at the conve...

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