Snoopin' 'round the gun show
In 1999 -- not long after the Columbine school shootings in Colorado -- I spent a few peaceful hours hanging around a crowd of avid gun collectors and their favorite weapons.
In the late 1990s the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette came up with a smart series called ‘Close Encounters,’ which was designed to put reporters/writers into interesting or exotic places and have them write their stories from a first-person or subjective point of view with as much color as possible.
Sticking to their guns
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
May 16, 1999
Two hours into the big weekend gun show at Greengate Mall, and already there's been trouble.
Security at the Pennsylvania Gun Collectors Association show had seemed air-tight, as usual.
At the front-and-only-door, no-nonsense Capital Security guards made sure no loaded weapons came in. They threaded plastic ties into the actions of the handguns and rifles being carried in by a steady stream of gun-lovers straight out of the pages of Guns & Ammo.
The guards also were keeping an eye on the Hempfield parking lot, which was over- flowing with Blazers, Ford F-150s and Suburbans whose drivers fulfilling all the familiar stereotypes were nearly all white, male and definitely not liberal Democrats or President Clinton supporters.
But the trouble was occurring deep inside the crowded gun show, where members of the vending arm of America's gun culture were manning 300-plus tables at an event that should attract as many as 8,000 paying customers by the time it ends this afternoon.
For sale was everything from backpacks, books and scopes to new $769 Kimber target pistols, deer hunting rifles and a $4,000 MP-40 Schmeiser, a fully automatic machine
gun the Germany army used in WWII. Not for everyone, it takes a special Class 3 gun license, a spotless criminal record and a note from the local police chief to be able to own it.
The trouble started with some kids near the escalators. A guy working behind Braver-man Arms. Co.'s table told Richard Vensel, the president of the gun collectors association, about it in a whisper.
Three little girls probably belonging to a vendor were trying to run up the down escalator. Could he do something about it?
Before Vensel could do anything, however, the girls ran off through the crowded aisle-ways in the general direction of where they were selling rifles and bayonets from World War I.
Later, Vensel, a retired Buick mechanic from Baldwin who collects Contender single-shot pistols, had to deal with really serious lawbreakers -- a few gun dealers who insisted on breaking the mall's no-smoking ban.
Unless tomorrow's headlines prove otherwise, despite the 3,000 guns and enough ammo to hold off the Serbian army that are stockpiled inside Greengate Mall, this year's gun show will pass as peacefully as any of the six that Vensel's group puts on each year.
Vensel says he has never seen a shot fired by accident or design at one of his shows.
Already, he has put limits on the amounts of ammo a vendor can sell to any one customer. And he has forbidden the sale of the kind of cheap faux "assault weapons" — guns that look like machine guns but don't shoot continuously. These fakes give the whole gun industry a bad name and, he says, an unknowing public mistakenly associates them with drive by shootings.
Security at the show is tight everywhere. Guns displayed on tables are locked in glass cases or strung together with theft-proof cable. Along with such prominently posted no-no's as booze, loaded guns and hate T-shirts, thanks to what happened at Columbine High School last month Vensel has decreed that the wearing of trench coats is also forbidden.
The U.S. Senate spent last week debating and voting on new rules for gun show sales that would require background checks for guns sold by individuals as well as those sold by dealers.
Although Republicans had voted against a control measure earlier in the week, they successfully attached their own amendment calling for restrictions on individual sales at gun shows to a bill on juvenile justice Friday.
Vensel is disappointed that Republican senators had retreated from their strong stand against the Democrats' proposed new rules. He got on the gun show's public address system early yesterday morning to urge his fellow gun owners to call or e-mail their legislators on Monday to oppose the proposed restrictions.
He says his shows already enforce strict background checks. He said everyone who buys a gun at the show must pass a Pennsylvania Instant Check System check, which includes an on-the-spot computer check of local, state and federal criminal data bases.
If a prospective buyer fails the check, which usually takes the gun dealer about 20 minutes to complete, he can't get the gun.
Naturally, Vensel, like nearly everyone else milling around his gun show, has nothing good to say about politicians who blame guns for the killings at Columbine High School or who are trying to make it even tougher to buy, sell, own or collect guns while failing to enforce the myriad laws already on the books.
Ray Ciampoli of Ciampoli's Gun Shop in New Castle is one of the few vendors who's willing to even speak to the media, a profession he and his fellows generally consider to be clueless when it comes to every aspect of the firearms industry.
Standing behind a table of Remington, Winchester and Sako hunting rifles, Ciampoli can simultaneously handle sales and counter all the standard anti-gun arguments, which he does with gusto.
Ciampoli believes in instant checks almost as much as he hates cheap assault rifles and video games — which he says teach kids to shoot at human beings, which, he says, is not what 99.9 percent of guns are used for.
"In 22 years in this business, I've never sold a firearm that's been involved in a crime. I have a right to refuse a sale to anyone, and I do it all the time."
Asked about the killings at Columbine High School, Ciampoli, says, "I feel hurt because the public believes firearms are the problem. It's not really the problem. It's a social problem. It's up to parents to monitor their kids."
"When I grew up, all of us had guns in the house," Ciampoli, 52, said. "Why were there no killings then?"
As for those attending the gun show, none could have had a more pleasant shopping experience than an ex-federal government employee and Vietnam vet who gave his name only as Fred of McKeesport.
Fred, 50, who was a little gun-shy about giving his last name, emerged from the show carrying a charcoal gray AR-15, a 1977 Sporter semi-automatic rifle that had never been fired.
The instant check took about 15 minutes. He paid about $1,400 for it and would have paid as much as $2,000. "It's one of the last of its kind, he said. "I'm tickled pink."