The Gun Show..Crap WILL Hit The Fan..Be Prepared

Reposting from the Gunslinger...Kinda makes you think....It's Saturday, 11:20 am. I just got back from the Gun Show at the San Francisco Cow Palace.

Oh my.

As someone else standing in the asshole-to-bellybutton-five-person-deep mob at the ammo booth cracked: "Who says Obama's not stimulating the economy?"

I have a regular strategy for the bi-monthly gun show. I show up before the doors open, grab my ammo first, borrow one of the dealer's hand-trucks, haul it to my car, then return the truck, and leisurely walk the show for as long as it interests me.

Today, for whatever reason, I took the wrong exit...got lost (don't ask) and got in line about 5 minutes before the doors opened instead of the usual 10-15.

Now, this might not sound like much. But the spot in line I got today was maybe 10 times further back than usual. AND it was just the line for tickets...not the line for the door!

And that, good buddy, is a record breaker.

I usually stroll right up to the ticket window, then get into about tenth place in line at the door and wait 10-15 minutes till they open. I'm usually among 3 or 4 early birds at the Ammo Booth. Today I arrived less than 10 mintues later than usual and there were hundreds of people already there. I've already described the scene at the Ammo Booth.

Now, I will say this. Being a woman of a certain age, wearing high heels, skirt and blazer, is apparently advantageous for getting served totally out of order amid the chaos. Waving a prepared list at the clerks doesn't hurt either.

Okay, admittedly, just being a female in that crush was like wearing a flashing beacon. There were maybe two of us. And at the risk of sounding catty, the other was damn near indistinguishable from the guys. (Ladies, learn to use it. We get the short end of the stick often enough.)

By the time I got back from stashing my purchase in the car, the mob crowding the Ammo Booth was even deeper and tighter.

(Oh...and did I mention a guy in line tried to pick me up. So, that was nice.)

I got a few other odds and ends, a sling for the AR, and a barrel wrenchy thing (shut up, I am still a girl). And one of those things that fits in the magazine slot of the lower, which you then clamp into a vice, so you've got the receiver held steady without actually crushing or scratching it with the vice itself. Coolest thing ever. Wish I had it when I put together the first one...

And I finally got a 10-round mag for the damned AR. I installed my new rear sight the other day, but I haven't been able to shoot it because I had no "cartridge delivery system" that I could use in public. It was $25. I thought it was high, until a guy I was talking to popped his eyebrows up and told me I should have snapped it up. So I did.

Sometimes you just have to depend on the kindness of strangers.

The Show was a crowded madhouse. Fun and all, but I couldn't get over the mob scene. The San Francisco gun shows have been declining for some time, as you might guess. The "community" doesn't exactly support the activity, and the government keeps threatening to shut them down. If the taxes they wracked up today were any indication of things to come...they'd do well to keep it going. They'd do well to offer incentives to make it bigger and better and get, I don't know, more GUNS there. If it wasn't for ammo, most of us wouldn't even bother going. Calling it a "gun" show has become almost a misnomer the last few years. Calling it a gunner accessory, food, knife, bumpersticker, book, Japanese sword, and clothing show is more like it. Well, and ammo.

It's always fun to hand-truck mine along the line of late-comers...as they goggle at the "lady" who looks like she's going to a luncheon, pushing several cases of ammo to the parking lot.

They make jokes. They're always the same. But I laugh anyway.

This has been a long winded way to get to my original (no A.D.D. here) point: People are seriously nervous, and they are seriously stocking up. I've never seen anything like it. I hope this "president" and his posse understand the implications. Cause, bottom line, they're not good.

The Gunslinger