Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, January 10, 1994 TAG: 9401100084
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Dealers predicted that liberals, the news media and gun-ignorant lawmakers will take aim to assassinate their industry.
"Yeah," sighed Fairfax County dealer Edwin Gilbert, looking across a civic center packed with people. "I have a sense that what you see right here is in its last stages of life."
Dick Chandler, a Chesterfield County dealer, also saw a bull's eye around the gun trade. "Eventually, they'll just outlaw it."
"The die-hard liberals want to take our toys away," he said, standing behind a machine gun about 4 feet long.
"We're history," said Shawn Scott, who works with a Jacksonville, Fla., dealership. He is having trouble getting ammo clips of more than 10 rounds because of an omnibus crime bill that may ban certain assault weapons.
Pat Ramsey, operator of Ramsey's Guns on Williamson Road, has seen price increases of up to 20 percent from weapons suppliers since he went into business a year ago.
The show's promoter for 15 years, Joan Davis of Galax, thinks gun-dealing will survive. This show - with about 100 dealers and an estimated 6,000 customers Saturday and Sunday - was busier than last year's.
It was a good place to hunt for solutions to criminal use of guns. These dealers think about it a lot. They know street crime and accidental deaths by gunfire are threatening the legitimate trade.
So what would they do about guns?
"If you catch somebody with one that isn't legal, you ought to shoot him with it," Chandler said. "Feed him to the lions, like they used to do Christians."
Sitting at the National Rifle Association booth, Bill Bailey said, "Let's farm this penitentiary system out to Russia. It could save us taxpayers some money," the Russians could use a money-maker, and facing a hitch in Siberia might deter criminals.
Ramsey, the Roanoke dealer, saw a public execution in Turkey in 1973. "They've got very little crime, lady," he said, eyebrows arched.
Gun control is not the answer, everyone insisted. "The biggest problem you've got is dope," Chandler said. "Dope is where the problem comes from. They just don't [care] anymore about life."
Edwin Gilbert long has pondered what is going on with people and guns. Beginning in the 1960s, he said, criminals bought them, then other people bought them, too, thinking that would keep them safe. "It's an endless cycle," he said.
He detests what he sees as one-sided headlines on gun crime in newspapers. "Horror stories," he calls them.
"It seems to be a propaganda movement, if you will - that all gun owners are bad, that all guns are bad. There is no perceived pleasure in owning one, that you only own one to harm someone or yourself.
"All the laws that are passed seem to be passed by people who don't understand firearms."
Gilbert said he had talked with lawmakers who never owned a gun, yet felt qualified to shape the nation's gun laws.
"It would be like asking me if we should have a new drug for AIDS. I'm completely ignorant."
People who do understand guns are often politically disconnected. When he sells a gun, Gilbert often asks for a voter registration card as a second I.D. "I'm surprised how many people don't have them," he said.
Gilbert scoffed at Clinton administration talk of a $600-a-year license fee to better control firearms dealers.
The cost would just be passed on to customers. "I just see it as another tax," he said.
As for crooked dealers, they would laugh off even a $60,000-a-year license. He does not know how you crack an underground trade so lucrative that he hears the crummiest $33 Virginia handgun can bring $350 in Manhattan.
If gun control becomes much more restrictive, Gilbert predicts a replay of the Prohibition era, when liquor was outlawed, then legalized again when it became clear people were going to buy it anyway.
Dealers on Sunday were asked what they would do if reforms pushed them out of the business.
Shawn Scott, whose denim jacket was decorated with Harley-Davidson patches, had a plan. "Go back to rebuilding motorcycles, I guess."
by CNB