A gun show in Wichita, Kansas, showed the disparity in Second Amendment supporters to those who seek a disarmed population. On the Saturday morning of 16th July, there were over 20 *vendors* who had rented tables for every protester. There were over a hundred vendors and five, as pictured above, protesters. From kake.com:
WICHITA, Kan. (KAKE) -
Inside Century II Expo Hall today was a gun and knife show with more than 100 vendors selling firearms, knives and accessories.
Outside Century II, the Wichita Coalition Against Gun Violence held a vigil for those who have lost their lives in recent gun-related attacks.
Rev. Michael Poage is co-director of the Coalition. He says there are many reasons he wanted to hold a vigil at Century II today.
"Well one reason are the three flags at half mast back here," Poage said. "That's been the scene too often - too many killings. Too many guns, too many killings."
The number of people who attended the show was not reported. I have attended many gun shows as a vendor, organizational representative, blog promoter or simple attendee. In my opinion, attendees normally outnumber vendors by 20 to hundreds to one. They have to for the vendors to make money. Only a small percentage of the attendees buy from any vendor. The ratio of attendees to protesters at this show was likely thousands to one.
In the hundreds of shows that I have attended, I cannot recall a single protester. Of course, gun shows run all weekend; protestors tend to show up for a photo-op and leave.
Reverend Poage puts forward the primary false assumption of the people who want to disarm the population:
Too many guns, too many killings."The assumption is that reducing the number of legal guns will reduce the number of illegal killings. It is a false assumption. The world does not work that way. Everywhere that gun control has been put into effect, the murder rate has either gone up or, in at least one case, Australia's, been unaffected.
The ratio of thousands of gun show attendees to gun show protesters shows why Kansas Second Amendment supporters have been so successful in restoring Second Amendment rights. Kansas is where the "collective rights" argument about the Second Amendment was created, in the Kansas Supreme Court, in 1905, in the Salina v. Blakesley case.
A hundred years later, in 2005, Kansas changed from banning the concealed carry of arms altogether, to a shall issue concealed carry law. 1n 2015, just 10 years later, Kansas became a permitless or "Constitutional" carry state, where no permit was required to carry either openly or concealed.
Much of the organizing and education required for that change happened and was facilitated by gun shows. It is easy to see why those who want a disarmed public are so motivated to destroy gun shows. They have become a political force multiplier.
©2016 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.
Gun Watch
If they were not simply full of crap they would be demonstrating in front of DMV and preventing drivers from registering their cars. Thousands more die in car accidents than by guns, look at all the regulations for cars. the French have extreme gun control and look at the weapons used to kill all of those people in Nice, a big truck. there is no way to stop bad people from doing bad things that good people would never do. good people do not kill people for no reason whether it is with a truck or a Thompson. If you took all the cars and trucks off the road You would still have someone that built their own car or steal one out of a museum. crooks believe they are above the law. prime example Hilary Clinton. Treason is a crime but what does it matter now? Only four people died because of her gross negligence. who could possibly trust her with that 3 a.m. call.
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