God, Guns & Amurrica!

Blog: Guns Shows, God, and Amurrica

Happy Spring everyone (in this hemisphere anyways).

If you saw my posts from Facebook last weekend, you know that my folks came to visit to celebrate my dad’s birthday. He’s 76 and still healthy in body, mind and spirit! Such a blessing! While he was here, we went with my cousins to the Loveland (a town about 45 mins north of Denver) gun show. You gotta know, that ever since I was a kid, I enjoyed going with my dad to different gun shows in New Mexico, and so, I thought this would be a great opportunity.

Now, I’ve been to a lot of gun shows in my day, but this gun show was a different experience to me for a several reasons.

The first, there weren’t just some truckers trying to unload their stockpile, there were survivalists there! Do you know what survivalists are? I really didn’t until I got there. Survivalists are essentially planners for when all of societal infrastructure implodes, either due to the Mayans or the Obama administration. And these folks take it really seriously.

I walked in, and I kid you not, there was a dude with a two-gun belt around his waist (pearl handled), another two six shooters in shoulder holsters, a deer knife on a leather strap around his neck and a machete strapped to his back. My first thought was “This is where America is headed to the violence of a generation.” And the next thing I thought was “That. is. Awesome!”

Conversations of these survivalists were interesting. I overheard a dude saying, “I’m an electrician by day. I do long term food storage on the side. Take a card, if you need some MREs or 30 gallon water containers, call me, I can get you a deal.” At a booth, there was one lady, she looked like a hippie, was dressed in pelts and a tasseled leather vest, right next to the gasmask kiosk, she was selling these portable magnifying glasses that could burn some peet to make a fire. And this got me to think, hippies don’t prepare for the end of the world, they will enjoy nature right up to the point of it. She’s gotta be Republican. With a capital R.

Two, I never noticed it before at previous gun shows, but you heard some funny comments that would be typical at a gun show like:

“Happy hunting!” (Even though the conversation had nothing to do with actual hunting)
“We’ll hold down the fort!”
And “Does this taser come in pink?”

Oddly enough, you’d never hear someone ask, “Is this 2 gallon sterno can good for cooking vegan?” or "I hope this gun show realigned your chi!"

Lastly, the stuff folks sold were quite incendiary in nature. There was a kiosk of a guy selling T-shirts. One was black with white letters that read "INFIDEL" in English (and then Arabic at the bottom). Which, I kind of get, they're trying to be all in your face about their Judeo-Christian beliefs, and say "Hey, if believin' in the Amurrican God is wrong, I don't wanna be right!"

I decided to buy the shirt and wear it teaching my Arab students. I was like, "Good morning class! I'm your professor Matt Baca, (pointing to my chest) infidel!" And then I asked them, "Hey, the Arabic script at the bottom, does that mean 'infidel' in Arabic?" To which they took a look, squinted, and said, "No, that means 'sweet and sour pork'; it's like those Chinese tattoos."

God bless America!