The Gunshow

I did stop off at the Nur Shriners Temple gun show on Saturday. I was more surprised by what I didn't see than what I did. What didn't I see?

• Young people. There were a hundred or so people mulling around the show floor (which was about the size of a basketball court). Most were older white men between 55-75. A few were younger family men in their forties toting their kids about. A very few were my age or younger. This was not a place for young urban males to buy their gats.
• Handguns. I'm guess the show broke down to a third were non-weapons. Military surplus in various forms, books, holsters, scopes, grips, etc. Another third was knives. There were easily as many knife dealers as there were gun dealers. The rest were almost all older shotguns and mil-surp bolt action rifles. There were handful of handguns tables. There were probably a few dozen total hanguns. No luck finding a deal on an older .357 revolver. No-one seemed to be selling cowboy action guns either.
• Modern military arms. One person was prominently displaying an M1A (and wanted $6k for it). Another had a few AR-15s and a weird AR upper that accepted P90 mags and ammo. (Why would you want a gun that is the same size and weight as an AR, but takes more expensive and weaker ammo?) With an Obama administration looking more likely, I expected a lot more of that sort of stuff. I expected someone selling stripped AR lowers in bulk, but I saw 1 stripped lower and it was a novelty item tagged at $250.
• Ammunition. Slim pickings here. There were a few historical ammunition curiosities, like a really old box of .44-40 hunting ammo. There was one table that had a few hundred rounds of 7.62x39. Another sold .30-06 in en-bloc clips for an M1 garand. That was it.

So that was the show. I hit Millers and X-ring on my way home. Millers didn't have much I was interested in, but X-ring had several stripped lowers for under $150 and a 3" Ruger GP100. No sale, but nice to know that this stuff is out there.