Just another gun guy?

About 15 years ago, I considered writing a piece about gun shows. I’d been to a handful, never as a serious shopper but as an interested observer of American gun culture. I grew up around guns, but nobody I knew ever made a fuss about them.

I vaguely knew Italian shotguns were supposed to be very good (and expensive) and that there were a lot of cheap and unreliable Saturday night specials in circulation that were beneath the interest of honorable people. But I didn’t know the brand of the .22 rifle that sat unloaded in the hall closet. I knew the revolver locked up in a drawer in my father’s desk was a Smith & Wesson, and was .38 caliber, but never heard anyone discussing its specs.

I hung around with police officers and sheriff’s deputies in the early ’80s; some became friends to the point that they tried to recruit me to their side. On a couple of occasions I went shooting with them, and they brought some exotic weapons. So I know what it is like to shoot a ’70s-era Uzi capable of firing 600 rounds a minute (that’s the one chambered for 9 mm rounds; the .45 caliber version will do 500 rounds per minute). I learned basic things about handguns, especially the semi-automatic pistols typically carried by American law enforcement officers.

I find weapons fascinating. I admire their workings, heft and tolerances. That I am not a gun guy has less to do with philosophy or moral revulsion at the damage they do our society than it does with having found other tools—golf clubs, watches, guitars—to investigate obsessively. But whenever I find myself in the vicinity of a gun case I spend a few moments lingering over it, noting makes and prices and thinking about an alternative life where I am a gun guy.

The reason I didn’t follow through on that piece about gun shows is that I don’t follow through on many of my ideas. I went to a couple of gun shows and found the atmosphere depressing—there was the odd swastika neck tattoo and some talk of black helicopters and XX T-shirts advertising the testosterone levels of their wearers—but the clientele didn’t seem much different from the general swap-meet crowd, or Saturday night at the state fair.

The genuinely dangerous among us don’t tend to cos-play as military snipers. People have a right to wear rude T-shirts, and the rest of us have a right to think “bless their hearts.” Most of the people at gun shows are just fascinated by gear.

We are a gun-obsessed nation that has a quasi-religious relationship with tools designed to kill, but that seems more a matter for philosophers and priests than politicians. Someday maybe we can have a conversation about hard things. Right now, there is too much money encouraging the lie that guns are holy.

Bryan Malinowski held a high-profile position. He made a good living and resided in an affluent neighborhood. I am surprised that no one in my circle of contacts knew him. Maybe he liked to keep to a small circle of friends.

What some people want you to think about Malinowski is that he was a bad guy who deserved to be killed in a shootout with ATF agents who broke into his home before daylight to serve a search warrant. He fired at federal agents standing in his entryway. They returned fire and splattered bits of him all over his wife standing behind him.

This is what I have heard. Some of the questions I asked in this space a few weeks ago have been answered.

Not all of them. Not enough of

them. I want someone independent of the government to review the body-cam footage from those ATF officers. I want the body camera footage to be public.

I have no reason to doubt that the ATF officers who converged on Malinowski’s house just before 6 a.m. March 19 were following procedure when they disabled Malinowski’s security cameras, announced themselves and entered his house. They wanted to catch him half-asleep, groggy; they figured it would be safer that way. And maybe he’d say something his lawyer would rather him not say.

I’m sure they were following policy. But you can’t flush guns and computers down a toilet. Maybe some common-sense amendments to these procedures and policies are in order. Maybe Malinowski was lying in wait to die because he knew his whole world was about to fall apart. Maybe he was just a guy with a gun reacting to strangers in his house before dawn.

Maybe he was a dangerous criminal; certainly that’s what the ATF would want us to believe. Certainly he was involved in serious business, though the laws of this country don’t treat the sort of gun-show sales Malinowski was involved in as serious business. The so-called “gun show exemption” is a subjective standard—if you sell a few guns as a hobby you don’t have to be a licensed dealer and conduct background checks. If you sell more than that, if it’s a business, then you do. Did Malinowski even know he was being scrutinized by the feds?

There is reason to believe Malinowski was good at his job, good enough to be posthumously voted a $24,000 bonus by the Little Rock Airport Commission last week. His clip file was scant; we know he was involved in a legal dispute over property a couple of years ago, and that he left a job years ago under less than ideal circumstances. We know he collected coins and guns, that he probably had a little of the gear-guy obsession going. Maybe he figured out a way to make money off his obsession. A lot of us would rationalize away a lot of things if it meant we got to make a lot of money.

I’m not saying Malinowski wasn’t Walter White, only that I’ve seen no hard evidence of that. I have heard rumors but have no reason to believe them.

This country has a problem with people selling guns to people who should not have them. If Malinowski was doing what the ATF alleges he was doing, he shouldn’t have been doing that, and the law should have made that clear. A lot of people think in business, sport and life if you’re not operating in the gray area, if you’re not pushing the envelope, you’re not trying.

Malinowski may have, by the lights of some, violated the law. He probably should not have been operating the way he was. But he deserved to be able to make an argument that he hadn’t violated that subjective law, and he certainly didn’t deserve to die because the ATF is inflexible when it comes to serving warrants.

I’m not always in favor of brightline rules, but wonder if Malinowski would have crossed the line if he’d known where it was.