I Think Too Much

I went to the Bob and Rocco Gun Show this past Saturday.  I was looking to trade in a pistol and my old .50 cal Thompson Center Hawken rifle.  I hadn’t been to a gun show in years and had never been to one of Bob Pucci’s shows.  The last general gun show I attended was probably 20 years ago.  I had gone to a couple of Civil War collectors shows where a lot of antique guns were for sale.  But nothing like a Bob and Rocco show.

With all of the silly blather about gun shows being a means for criminals, specifically Milwaukeegangs, to get their guns, I was somewhat concerned that I would be surrounded by members of the Crips and Bloods, the Spanish Cobras, and the Latin Kings.  Sure enough, they were all there—disguised as elderly white men.  There were probably more elderly white men than anyone else there.

I’ve bought a lot of guns in my day.  Indeed, at the gun show I bought myself a new in the box 9mm Glock 19 with my trade-ins.  I had to fill out all of the same forms that I fill out at a gun shop.  Wait a second, I said to myself, what about this gun show loophole that Doyle and his buddies all pratter on about?  I thought that I was supposed to walk in there with $10 in my pocket and walk out with a couple dozen “cheap” handguns.  Instead my Glock cost me about $500 bucks and I can’t take possession until Monday night.

To be sure, there were a lot of AR-15’s and AK-47 types of rifles for sale.  And there were also a lot of shotguns, pistols, and antique firearms.  There were a ton of hunting rifles and “sporterized” World War II era military rifle.  But you know what?  There were few if any deals.  I saw a lot of big numbers on the price tags.  True, you can negotiate at a gun show. But you can negotiate just as well at a gun shop.  The difference is that it is the quintessential free market at a gun show.  You can get an instant second opinion on the value of a gun.  You can immediately work on dealer against another.  But the dealers know that and also know what the market prices are.  You have to be really, really savvy to walk out with a super deal.  But it is amazing how you can go about selling your gun.  I saw guys walking around with pistols, rifles, and shotguns that they had for sale.  Many of them had signs taped onto the gun case or even their shirts, describing what they were selling.

But that gets me thinking:  What reasonably sober “gangsta” would buy a gun at a place where he’d stick out like a sore thumb?  The dealers are all on alert for these characters.  Rumor has it, and I certainly wouldn’t doubt it, that undercover BATF and state DOJ agents were all over the show building.  The dealers and show organizers are not idiots.  They know that they are being watched and watched closely.  These guys pay a ton for their federal firearms licenses and selling guns is their livelihood.  The guy who sold me my Glock picked up the $20 transfer fee to transfer the gun to a dealer from New Berlin because he was from Marshfield and after the waiting period I didn’t want to have to run up to Marshfield to pick it up.

Now, my Glock cost about $500 before the trade-ins.  When a gang member wants a Glock and knows that he can pick one up for $25 on a street corner without state and federal registration hassles and fees, why go to a gun show?  Heck, since a lot of these thugs aren’t even 21 years old (the age necessary to buy a handgun) and might well already have a felony record, they couldn’t even buy one at a gun show.  Further, any one trying to buy say a dozen of these guns by proxy for gang-bangers, would trigger horns and sirens all over the place.  You see, these dealers all know one another and work alongside each other on a pretty regular basis.  The grapevine is alive and well a gun shows.  These guys chat all day long. Again, they want to protect their right to own and sell firearms.

Again, I was amazed at the freedom taking place there.  Many of the buyers seemed to be serious collectors.  At one time the dominant firearm for sale was from the Civil War era or the Old West.  Now, it is predominantly World War II era weaponry.  There were a few full automatic weapons and a fair amount of collector and hunting knives as well.  But it was the age of the people there that surprised me.  Since this was my first show in a number of years, maybe there are normally a lot of younger guys at gun shows.  I left around noon.  So, perhaps all of the younger folks showed up after I left.  About 10% of the people that I saw at the show were women.  Indeed, the dealer’s 21 year old daughter wrote up my sale.

But you don’t have to be a shooter or a buyer or a seller to attend a gun show.  Folks who seek to stop or seriously impair this traditional marketplace should attend one just to walk around and talk to people and look at the amazing display of weaponry.  Look at the people making deals and tell me if they are dangerous gun nuts, psychopaths looking to shoot up a school, or dangerous drug dealers.  Mostly they are guys and gals interested in the marvelous mechanical precision of the firearm.

Today I heard how Jesse Jackson accused Barack Obama of “acting white”.  This whole “Jena 6″ thing has me flummoxed because folks are acting surprised that it happened.  But it was a predictable as the next sunrise.  The deeper question, and the one that I think explains the situation is this:  When did we as a country give up on a color-blind society?

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. proudly proclaimed that he looked forward to the day when all of us would be judged “by the content of our character rather than the color of our skin.”  But now we have become a nation that is near insanely focused on skin color.  People who once demanded that schools be desegregated now want special schools for various races, special dormitories divided by race, special days commemorating their race, and so forth.

What caused us to give up on a color-blind society? I have no firm answers.  Really, no one has ANY answers.  And certainly no one is willing to discuss the solution. We went from a dream of equality for all to a dream that each race separately be equal to the other races.  Put another way, think of each race being a bar on a bar chart with total equality being at the top.  True equality, in my way of thinking, would be only having only one bar and it would extend all the way from the bottom to the top.  No races, just all Americans.  But some folks want to see equality as being dozens of bars, each striving for the top yet maintaining their individuality and not mixing with the other bars.  That to me is segregation.

You see, some folks have got in their heads that if one of the bars on the chart is slightly ahead of another bar, that that means that the bar that is lagging is less equal.  And it is, because in that sort of set up it is a zero-sum game.  There is, in that mindset, a total quantity of X amount of equality.  If you are ahead, then others must be behind.  And that is why a race-conscious society is a dangerous society.  That sort of set up is asking for constant sectarian and racial and ethnic violence. 

I am astounded and disgusted that we keep trying to perfect the multi-bar strategy.  The main reason that I hate that idea, besides it never having been successful EVER, is that it creates a creature that I like to call an “equality pimp”.  This is the professional agitator that goes around making his living off of getting his feelings hurt.  Think of Al Sharpton, think of Jesse Jackson, think of Ibrahaim Hooper, think of any number of folks who arrive on the scene when racial tension erupts.  Now think of this:  What situation have they ever made better by their presence?  These guys have a vested interest in the situation not improving since then they would no longer be needed and would no longer live int he lifestyle to which they have become accustomed.  The last thing that an “equality pimp” wants is actual equality.

Our goal should be elimination of racial distinction.  But somehow we’ve gotten sidetracked onto a goal of hyper-sensitivity of race.  Racial identity get enumerated at almost every government agency.  Some bray about how many of each race that they have employed.  Some white liberals brag about how many blacks that they have as friends.  There are scholarships and set asides for just about every race.  Schools insist that they must have a means to insure that their campuses are “diverse”.  So they crunch racial numbers in hopes of finding a mathematical nirvana that  they can call “Diversity”.  The strangest result out of all of this is that folks get surprised when whites start clustering together under a “white tree”, that a campus Republican club offered a scholarship for Caucasians only, that there are white separatists.  Folks scratch their head wondering where kids got the idea of spray painting the N-word on a school building, or that there are racial fights at a basketball game, or that each year we seem to spend more and more time shouting at each other about race. 

Make no mistake about it:  I hate and detest racial and ethnic separatism in all of its forms.  There is never any excuse for it whether it be a bunch of thugs stringing nooses in a tree or another bunch of thugs beating up a kid of a different race.  Taunting and name calling have no place either. 

It would be easy to slip into a mode of saying “Well, white got charged with a hate crime when they beat up black kids.  Why shouldn’t blacks get charged with a hate crime when they beat up white kids?”  Because that is the WRONG QUESTION!!!!!!  The correct question is who put the idea into their head in the first place and why is it still there?  We need to teach our kids that racial distinctions are meaningless.  You don’t advance on the color of your skin, you advance on your skill, energy, intelligence, dedication, and perseverance.  And don’t forget that the blessing of this country is that you get a chance, not that you get a result.  You are going to fail and you might even face injustice.  Forget about it and keep trying.  The thing that has always kept me moving ahead is that I had a number of folks tell me that I couldn’t do it.  I did.

A while back some dolt asked me how many friends of different races that I have.  My answer:  “I don’t know.  I don’t keep track.”  Then this idiot went on to brag about how many blacks and Hispanics and Native Americans that he counts as friends.  The sorry sap actually felt that he had an obligation to keep track of this statistic. 

Sadly, he is all too common in this country.

Today I came across an example of the sorriest of all sorry lots, a person with Bush Derangement Syndrome.  He had signs declaring “Impeach Bush and Cheney Now!” all over his yard.  I could see in his garage and there were all sort of protest signs from what must have been the multitude of anti-war rallies that he had attended. He even had one of my personal favorites “Stop The War Now!”.  Sadly, like the rest of these deluded saps, the signs are in their front yards and not in Iraq where the alQaida terrorists can actually see them.

I have great sympathy for folks (but not the cause) with BDS.  You see, they know that their raison d’etre is slowly slipping away each day we come closer to January 2009.  The day after the inauguration these folks will become like the lonely old hippie with the bald head and graying beard and tie-died t-shirt barely covering his gut.  You see these guys all of the time hanging around college campuses refusing to graduate.  What are the victims of BDS going to do with their time?  What is going to be their reason for living? 

Perhaps they will become like the “UFologists” who for some strange reason keep hanging around Roswell, New Mexico in hopes of a another visitation by whatever never visited there in the first place.  Maybe they will hold reunions ala the Woodstock set where they can sit around and swap tall tales and reminisce about the kooky conspiracy theories that they convinced themselves were of-so-real.

It is sad to see these folks these days.  They put so much energy into their deranged beliefs that somehow Bush, Cheney, Halliburton, and Blackwater were plotting something, anything, ha is he consummate evil.  If only they coul convince someone other than themselves they could make this all come true.  My thoughts are:  What could these folks have accomplished had they put their minds to work on something good and productive?

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,297133,00.html

“Let’s get the big money out of politcs”–yeah, sure.  Anything that you say Russ.  Wonder if the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has asked him about this.