Crossroads of the West: inside the last gun show in San Francisco

Paul Stamp has been selling “country foods” – beef jerky, dried fruit, roasted nuts – alongside gun holsters and firearm ammunition for about 30 years. As a longtime vendor at the San Francisco Bay Area’s Crossroads of the West gun show he’s come to see similar faces, and even considers some of his customers to be family. However, last week’s gun show will likely be the last time Stamp sees this particular clientele.

In April of this year, the board of directors for the Cow Palace arena, the longtime venue of the gun show in Daly City, announced it would discontinue gun shows at the property. In their monthly meeting, the nine-person body voted to uphold the prohibition which will take effect on 1 January 2020.

Inside the last Cow Palace gun show on the 16 November weekend, attendees walked around in newlypurchased bulletproof vests, peered through rifle scopes, and chewed on samples of Stamp’s beef jerky. The crowd primarily consisted of middleaged and older white men, many of whom were sporting T-shirts signifying their reverence for the United States military and the police. Since California laws disallow anyone from leaving the show with a fully functional firearm, most people left without an actual gun. Instead people purchased gun parts, hunting equipment and self-defense items.

The lack of functional firearms was a departure from the firearm-heavy gun

show that 20-year-old Ricardo Moreira is used to. He lived in Arizona for five years and says that this was his first time at the Cow Palace gun show, which he describes as “smaller, and more toned down”.

“There’s not much to see,” said Moreira, who brought four of his friends. “For a gun show you’d think there would be a lot of guns. Here there are more attachments, backpacks, and knives. There were some guns, but they were old ones.”

Upon learning that that weekend’s gun show may be their first and last, Moreira’s posse seemed mostly unfazed. Unlike Moreira, who says he has been shooting for sport since he was a teen, his friend said they weren’t interested in carrying guns, and Saturday’s show was merely a fun group outing.

“It’s kind of sad that it’s not out here anymore, but it’s San Francisco,” said 19year-old Taylor Benson who purchased a stun gun and knife from one of the