Saturday my wife and I went to the Nashville Gun Show to see my brother, Keith, who was working one of the booths. He is working at a gun store in Cleveland, and his weekends are filled with gun shows all over the southeast. This is him in Iraq awhile back. He wasn't decked out like that at the gun show.

The Gun show made for a fascinating afternoon. I had some notion of the subculture, but had not been immersed as I was then. Kim and I were a bit taken aback by it. I have never seen so many firearms in one place, especially as they were being handled so openly. Many seemed to be adopting the premise of Red Dawn as a present reality, and were not going to be found unprepared. The majority of firearms were of military make, or at least faked out to appear so. The weapon to the left has been an internationally popular weapons for various military entities. It is the FN FAL, and due to its popularity there has been many made, by many manufacturers. This popularity has bled over into the retail market, and with so many having been made, they are reasonably inexpensive. They were all over the gun show, as were blasts from the pasts AK-47s, AR-15s, and even an uzi or two.

We estimated from our observations that about 75% of those at the show were involved in some conspiracy theory of some sort. there were collectors as well, who saw them as much as artifacts as weapons (there were many old weapons there as well). I even saw a guy with a six-shooter strapped to his leg old west style. Many brandished weapons, presumably unloaded (they were checked at the door), making you feel you were in an unsecured area of an embattled city.

I was carried back to my childhood, where I did almost systematic study on firearms and was fascinated by firearms, military history, etc. I probably also bought into some of those conspiracies at the time, though at age 10 I didn't have the money or credentials to make a purchase to properly outfit me for the presumed outcome. It was a very interesting day, reflecting both on those around me, and on my own history.