Dallas Arms Gun and Knife Show – Dallas, TX

When you’re in a new city that’s known for things, you generally try to do them, right? Well, I was in Dallas and I’ve never been to a gun show before, so I thought I’d better check it out. My friend DreadPirateNick is a military guy who owns a lot of guns and knives, so I was happy to have him along for my own personal tour guide. I also realize this is a controversial topic, so I’m sure this post is going to ruffle a few people, but will also make a few people laugh. It’s a world I know nothing about and these truly aren’t “my people”, but I would be remiss if I didn’t step out of my bubble once in a while to try to observe and try to understand other people’s passions. At least give me THAT much, friend-os.

Before we even made it into the show, they had two offers to get free admission: Donate blood OR sign up for an NRA membership. It’s an interesting marketing tactic, but I guess I’m not surprised. It seems like an appropriate scenario to get people more on board, since they’re already (probably) on board, I guess. I opted for the $10 admission to see what I found out was 1,500 tables (1.5 miles) full of guns and gun accessories on 4.5 acres of showroom space.

This show is put on by the Dallas Arms Collectors Association or DACA (founded in 1975), which I haven’t decided whether it’s irony or some sort of intentional or unintentional (or cosmic) dig that the Obama administration created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals – or DACA – in June of 2012. It just struck me as “interesting”.

I’m not sure who I expected (or who YOU expected) to be at these things, but it is mostly men, more women than I expected, and even more children than I expected. There were some well-dressed rich-feeling folks, a lot of older veterans and current military, a lot of apocalypse/doomsday/zombie preppers, and a handful of hunters (far less than I expected). For those of you that think these things are filled with bubbas in overalls, you might be surprised to know that I only saw one person wearing overalls the whole time I was there. Also of note, I saw a handful of people that appeared to be of Latino descent, one Native American, one person of African descent (selling religious t-shirts), zero people of Asian descent, zero people of Middle Eastern descent, and no identifiable LGBTQ folks.

Here are a FEW notes from the event – obviously not all my notes, due to how long this post is already turning out to be. I’ll even start with the more light-hearted stuff before I ramp up to more heavy topics.

One guy working a booth told us, “I used to work at Dollar General, but now I get to play with guns all day. This is way more fun.” That WAS what I expected to see, but did not expect to get such blatant confirmation, to be honest.

Don’t ask the booth owners about the giant mousepads. Apparently, these aren’t mousepads, but rather TACTICAL GUN CLEANING MATS. DreadPirateNick told me not to joke with folks unless they joke first. Some of these guys have no sense of humor and are unable to joke about even the smallest of things – and by “small”, I mean a giant mat made out of the same material that mousepads are made of. …which now I want for my office at work.

The librarian in me was amused by the booth which offered books with the insides cut out to hold a gun. Of course none of them have a lock or any child-proofing built in, but I guess these people aren’t concerned about things like that. I’m not surprised that many of the book titles were religious - to, presumably, fit in with your home library’s existing contents.

There is a LOT of homophobic and racist/bigoted t-shirts, bumper stickers, and patches, over and above confederate flags. I thought there might be one or two stashed away or buried in a pile like a left over joke, but there were many, MANY, brand new and shiny ones in approximately every booth selling t-shirts, stickers, or patches. I can’t even bring myself to write down the messages in this post. They were NOT funny – they were serious.

There was a lovable nerd who had built and painted custom Lego® figurines in an impressive array of military-themed outfits. Things I had never considered being an actual THING, like Viet Cong soldiers, Taliban fighters, and ISIS executioners (complete with all the misspellings you’d expect). Something for ALL the kids to love. I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess this “artist” is using the term “Logo Compatible” to hopefully avoid any sort of cease and desist order that I’m guessing the Lego Group would love to enforce.

I was honestly NOT surprised that there are a handful of Nazi memorabilia collectors/displays at this kind of event. It isn't hidden in back rooms, and there are plenty of signs from the vendors up that they're always willing to trade things for more, if you've got some you're looking to offload. It ranges from medals and old photos to uniforms, helmets, and personally engraved honorary daggers and everything in between. No one was goose-stepping up and down the aisles at this show, but there are people collecting these "historical" items all over the place here.

There are booths that loudly advertise “silencers” or all shapes and sizes, however, when you talk to them, they are sure to explain that they are really “suppressors”, not silencers like they say in the movies. Illuminating.

There are tons of booths selling incredibly large capacity magazines (the things the click into the bottom of the gun that hold bullets). A “normal” magazine can hold 7-10 bullets, but the ones they are selling at this show go from 10 to like 200 - I'm not joking. It’s kind of crazy when you think about people complaining about handguns not ever needing more than a few bullets for self-defense purposes, and yet, they’re selling a device that holds a Rambo-amount of bullets for one handgun. Intriguing.

There is an overwhelming love of Jesus at these events. If there are too many racist shirts and bumper stickers here (i.e., more than ZERO), then there are exponentially far too many shirts with religious sayings on them, especially in regards to their god-given right to own guns. Again, I figured I’d see some, but I didn’t think it would be this many.

Remember, I said I was starting with the light hearted stuff? Despite the previous paragraphs being alarming, they aren’t as alarming as some of these next observations.

We walked past a gun that had a weird-looking butt (yes, feel free to add your own hilarious comments about that). It was like  soft rubber shortened butt, but it was hollow and had some straps on it. Neither of us were sure what it was for, so we asked the guy. The guy got super jazzed to tell us all about it. The butt is hollow so you can put your arm in it and then strap it to your arm. Why you need to strap one of these to your arm? Well, that’s the wrong question! It’s so you can strap one of these to EACH ARM and really light them up. Did he mean “them” like both of the guns or whatever object you might be battling. The image of him demonstrating this on the showroom floor without actually shooting, of course, was a little alarming. Then he continued to explain HOW TO AVOID A FELONY CONVICTION while using this gun. He told us the butt of the gun is not intended to be put against your shoulder, since that’s an automatic felony, including ten years in prison and a $25,000 fine. So if you aren’t tempted to put that tiny butt up against your shoulder, then you can claim self-defense and save yourself a felony charge in most instances. Helpful advice – thanks!

We walked by  a tall metal tripod with two large guns mounted to it, one on each side. There weren’t small guns. They were REALLY large guns. Like three times wider than a huge shotgun. There was a hand crank on the side that appeared to be mounted to the tripod. The booth person noticed us looking at it and he piped right in. He explained that his company builds these tripods and they can be custom fitted to absolutely any gun you want to put on it (it doesn’t have to be two of the same style gun). Then, you can turn the handy crank on the side and it continuously fires each weapon. I notice he didn’t say “automatic”. He did mention that you can just set this up and leave it and then run over to it and open fire as you run out of rounds in your other weapons. Despite this taking place a few weeks back, I NOW find it very interesting that the Las Vegas shooter had some sort of weapon mounted on a tripod in his hotel room. Let that sink in.

I saved the best for last because it’s sort of a multi-layered big deal. Towards the end of our visit, we walked past a booth for Tracking Point. There was a pretty intimidating really large rifle with a super fancy sight mounted to the top. When DreadPirateNick asked what it was, the booth person was oddly standoff-ish. So we walked away. He tried to get us to come back and it wasn’t until he said something about a “self-shooting rifle” – THEN we stopped. We walked back and he explained how this gun is a precision guided firearm. A “long-range, laser-guided robo-rifle” – a direct quote from the company’s website. A thousand yards away, and you can still make ethical kill shots. Basically, you get what you want to shoot lined up in your sight, then you click a button to lock it on to the target – like a mapping feature. Then, you can swing your gun all over the place, but as soon as your gun points at that exact spot you had locked on, it will FIRE ON ITS OWN. Apparently with 99.something % accuracy. It will take into consideration how fast your barrel is moving, and all sort of other factors to make sure it hits the target. Get this: the target can actually be moving around (no more than 7 mph) and the rifle sight will still lock on and shoot what it’s supposed to. We asked if this thing was actually legal. He replied with “OF COURSE IT’S LEGAL!” It’s seriously advanced technology like from a science fiction movie. I found myself wondering if it was technology better off in the hands of military or NOT in the hands of the military. It’s an interesting concept and one that I’ll admit is REALLY cool. But it’s also got a lot of potential problems and controversial stuff that goes along with technology like this. Then he said something that stopped me in my tracks. He said, “you could set this up on your back porch and shoot deer in the woods if you want.”  This was the first and only person at this whole event that spoke to me about shooting an animal. No one else even mentioned hunting animals in any of their speeches or presentations. I began to realize how disturbing this was - Not all guns are for hunting animals. In fact, I’d guess maybe 15% of the vendors there were explicitly selling duck hunting shotguns or game hunting rifles. Just an estimate, but people aren’t there to buy game hunting tools here. This isn’t a hunting show, it’s an ARMS show. There’s a huge difference.

I will say that I left smarter than I had entered. I have never been to anything like this. I’ve got relatives and friends who hunt. I’ve got relatives and friends who collect guns and weapons. I know a little bit about how these people think and they sometimes try to explain it to me. I’m not anti-gun, but I’d definitely feel a lot better if these things were registered and maybe have some sort of restrictions on them. I don’t have any problems with people building their own guns and tricking them out – I compared it to pimping out a computer or guitar, but I guess that’s a little bit of an apples-to-oranges comparison. I left this gun and knife show with a lot of questions (and some elk meat sticks that are delicious).

…And, the shootings continue.

…And, the gun control regulations don’t come.

…We’re not doing things right.