Egalitarianism on display.

The second amendment is a tool that recognized a fundamental right of each individual to resist tyranny.

Tyranny is not only the hand of a nefarious government intruding on individual liberty…. tyranny can take the form of a mugger, an abusive spouse, or a sexual predator.

A gun is a tool that allows a citizen to resist tyranny.

Does it potentially make the tyrant more powerful as well?

Of course.

Does that make the relevancy of the firearm moot for the protection of life and the resistance to tyranny?

Don’t be ridiculous… of course not.

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But only certain types of people buy guns right?

Less educated, politically conservative, religious zealots right?

Nope.

This last weekend Sandy and I worked our first ever Artemis Defense Institute booth at the Crossroads of the West Gun Show.

What a couple of days that was!

Immediately after the show opened hundreds of people flooded the hall, most searching for quick cheap deals on ammo and many glancing towards our booth and trying to figure out who the hell we were.

Then everything stopped.

Over the loudspeaker there was a call to pause and say the Pledge of Allegiance. During the pledge I furtively glanced around at all of the people who had arrived there early.

Anti-gun folks like to propagate a specific narrative about gun owners. To diminish our relevancy the first thing they need to do is cast us as a homogeneous group. This usually tends to be based on race.

Gun owners are white people.

Throw in a little abject racism, a smattering of anti-semitism, sophistry secured to the ball and chain of conspiracy theories…. and for good measure make sure that they are not educated and we got our selves the stereotypical gun owner right?

Not even close.

The group that I saw was first and foremost large. I mean really large, and from what I was told kinda on the small side for a typical gun show. It was also diverse. While there were definitely more men in attendance women made up a good chunk of the attendees.

There racial make up was pretty broad too: African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians and a few that quite frankly I had a difficult time pinning down.

I’m not sure how relevant the sexual orientation of the people there was,… but for those of you that are keeping score of our big “political tent”, I can tell you I saw two gentleman wearing Pink Pistols Gay Shooting Organization shirts…. from this I can only make assumptions.

The point is that our visceral aversion to tyranny is not dictated by race, gender or national origin.

Nor is it a mandate of wealth.

There were quite a few people that came to our booth who clearly had established wealth.

(Or are deeply in debt).

There were others that were not ashamed to admit that they were on fixed budgets and were exited to hear that they could participate in our training programs for a fee that would not require a second mortgage.

These two groups intermingled, talked and exchanged advise on guns and training without hesitation or restraint. While they might live in different worlds economically they were bound together with a common cause…. the active resistance against tyranny.

While money might buy you better guns, it will not dictate your place among free men and women.

Ours is an egalitarian society indeed. (And from what we saw from the people that came to our booth a pretty friendly society as well!)