Gun shows are about ‘show and tell and sell’

I live in Bel Air. I write this letter after reading Jane Ayer’s letter in The Sun, titled, “Sponsoring Bel Air Gun Show sign of poor community care,” published Sept. 8. Ms. Ayers is completely right to bemoan this gun show, in the face of increasing gun deaths from school shootings and gun suicides. But my one past experience at this gun show tells me, that it is a business and the show’s only purpose is to congregate gun enthusiasts for a “show and tell and sell.”

Driving home from a party in a sari one year, I decided on an impulse to enter and explore this very same gun show sponsored by the American Legion. I thought I would be a fish out of water, but I didn’t arouse a flicker of curiosity. For all they cared I was just another peculiarly dressed gun buyer, and when I stopped by at various tables strewn with guns, I was solicited, asked what kind of gun or guns I wanted to purchase and if it was for self-defense I wanted to purchase one.

What left an indelible impression on me, before I left the show without a purchase, was a dad who came in with a young man who seemed to be his son, no more than a preteen or a teen. The dad took him to different tables, pointing at guns, asking the salesmen to show his son their virtues, allowing his son to touch the guns fondly and leaving me, an observer, utterly confounded at the reverence displayed by father and son, for what I myself hold in fear and contempt as killing machines. When

Ms. Ayers wants the Bel Air American Legion to have a conscience about their gun shows, canceling them with respect for lives lost to guns, she doesn’t realize gun fetish is deeply rooted and intergenerational in the American soil and mind. Guns are a lucrative business and livelihood for many, for hunters a means to food and sport and for collectors and target shooters a veritable cornucopia of delight.