Why the Left hates Gun Shows

Long Lines into and out of Arizona Gun Show, 2013

Gun shows are centers of resistance to the nanny state. As resistance to the growing, all pervasive regulations and vague, impossible to decipher federal laws, grows in the heartland of America, gun shows offer a place where freedom is still practiced, and limits to State power are recognized.

At most gun shows, if you are not a gun dealer, you are allowed to sell your personal firearm to another person without special permission from the nanny state. The stranglehold on political speech by the MSM is not so tight, and opinions that are not tolerated on ABC, NBC or the New York Times are tolerated in reasoned discourse. Books that are not found at book stores may be bought, and most people there revere the Constitution.

Gun shows are where the new breed of principled, activist state organizations, dedicated to rolling back decades of unreasoned and illegitimate restrictions on the ownership and carrying of arms, have organized, recruited, and thrived.

Organizations such as the Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL), the Buckeye Firearms Association, the Arizona Citizens Defense League(AZCDL), and numerous other grass roots organizations have used the freedom of association of gun shows and the concentration of liberty loving Constitutionalists to build strong and effective state organizations. These organizations are staffed with volunteers, unlike the astroturf organizations of the anti-freedom forces, that consist of one or a handful of paid activists.

Volunteers man the table at the gun show where someone who wants to fight back against the nanny state, but who has been told, most of her life, that freedom is an ancient and outdated concept, finds an organization of like minded people who are making a difference at the state level.

It is amazing what the power of this grass roots organizing, with near instant communication through the Internet, and earlier, phone trees, has been able to accomplish. Legislators are realizing that the MSM has, and is, repeatedly lying to them about the popularity of citizen disarmament. They realize that their political careers can be put at risk by the large numbers of freedom fighters who actually vote, campaign, and pay attention. This has been how the concealed carry movement has gone from just a handful of states in the 1980’s to 50 states when Illinois joins (by court order) this summer (2013).

Few of those who wish us to regress toward an all powerful state, who without a hint of irony, call themselves “progressives” attend gun shows. They fear the concentration of freedom activists, and the ability to organize that gun shows offer.

Gun shows are centers for exercise of both the First and Second Amendments, which is why they are despised by the left.

©2013 by Dean Weingarten Permission to share granted as long as this notice is included.