Liberal Street Fighter

He loved America. He felt that Americans were somehow short-changing themselves. After all his years in that country, he said, he had never encountered a people so fond of pissing in their own pond and then complaining that they had to move because the water was dirty — Michael Moorcock: “The War Amongst the Angels”

I understand wanting a weapon to hunt, or to protect your home … I may not nurture such needs myself, but I can understand where the impulse comes from. Like any working class American male taken out by his father to hunt and fish, I get that weaponry holds a special place in the American heart. But there really is a point where interest becomes obsession, and slides along into obscenity:

Wearing orange foam earplugs to muffle the nearby thunder of relentless automatic weapons fire, a grizzled man with SS lightning bolt tattoos on his forearms pulls a little red wagon loaded with rifle ammunition. Carefully picking his way through the teeming crowd, he passes table after table laden with machine guns, gas masks, combat knives, war memorabilia and bomb-making guides. The man sheds his camouflage tactical vest to reveal a worn black T-shirt emblazoned with a Totenkopf, the Death’s Head symbol of the Waffen SS. Then he parks his wagon to join a huddle of shoppers surrounding a hard-faced spokeswoman from Valkyrie Arms who’s extolling the virtues of the Olympia, Wash.-based arms maker’s new product, the Valkyrior 556 Rotary Gun.

“It’s .223-caliber, six barrels, basically you’re looking at a hand-cranked mini-gun,” she says.

The man asks, “What’s the rate of fire?”

“Just as fast as you can crank it,” she replies. “We just shipped a load of these babies to civilian security contractors in Iraq for convoy protection. When I go to sleep tonight, I’ll dream of towel heads splattering all over the place.”

“We need to ship a few to the border and start splattering Mexicans,” he says.

Then he picks up his wagon handle and continues browsing the wares. Two hundred yards away, around the Knob Creek Gun Range’s lower shooting area, hundreds of men, women and children are lined up like kids at Disneyland to rent and shoot M-16s, Uzis, AK-47s, SPAS 12 full-auto shotguns, vintage Tommy Guns and Heckler & Koch MP-5s. A teenaged boy wearing a shirt with a grinning Jane Fonda and the words “Commie Traitor Bitch” pays $25 to rip 20 bullets through a .30-06 caliber BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle). “Man,” he says, grinning and shaking the BAR owner’s hand. “That’s one hell of a rush.”

Is everybody who goes to such events a racist, extremist or member of a violent militia? Probably not, but one has to wonder how much such gatherings are used to enable the mainstreaming of extremism. As the proprieter of Knob Creek puts it:

“I do not think of us as an extremist or militia gathering, but we do not regulate any items sold,” Knob Creek Gun Range owner and festival chief Kenny Sumner wrote, responding to E-mailed questions about booth C-22. “If someone wants to sell white supremacist and neo-Nazi crap, that’s OK with me. If it offends anyone, they don’t have to stop at that vendor’s table. It’s just like strip clubs. I don’t care nothing about them and they can be wherever they want. I have the ability to stop in or drive by. This is America and we do have the right to choose. That’s why I do not restrict any of the vendors at our show.”

Rob Walker, who describes himself as “the fat, happy guy handing out Shotgun News,” has attended the past 15 Knob Creek shoots as part of his job for a New York City magazine publishing house. “I have never perceived an air of hate,” Walker says. “In fact, I’ve seen people of all races having a great time together.”

In past years, Walker says, “The militia groups simply used the huge draw of the KCR [Knob Creek Range] shoot to entice a greater amount of attendance at their little meetings, but they were never officially affiliated with KCR. Now, I’ve never seen anything more disturbing than some truly tasteless T-shirts. While I’d prefer to not even stand next to someone wearing a few of those shirts, it’s the First Amendment and I won’t argue with that.”

Beginning in 2004, Walker has distributed materials on “genocide and gun ownership” produced by the far-right JPFO (Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership) at Knob Creek shoots. “Not only was that well received, it was never scoffed at,” he says. “The materials were well marked as being from a Jewish group. Never have I heard a single anti-Semitic utterance.”

I’m sure many of the people there have no patience for OTHER people talking about preserving other kinds of “choice”, but since the Second Amendment is the only IMPORTANT part of the Constitution, it’s plain that maintaining these kinds of choices is of the highest importance.

Knob Creek organizers have for years insisted that the majority of people who come to their machine gun festivals are not white supremacists or militia members. While that’s probably true, a survey of tattoos, patches, T-shirt symbols, and merchandise at the April 2006 events provided strong evidence of a significant extremist presence. Sonny Landham, the 1980s action movie star who now shills for the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens, signed autographs and distributed CCC literature at his booth near a hot-dog stand. Print and CD editions of the racist fantasy novel The Turner Diaries were widely available, along with copies of the U.S. Militiaman’s Handbook, a guide to armed insurrection during “R-2,” the second American Revolution.

“When municipal, township, county, or local area law enforcement agents attack or seek to confine or control the U.S. Militia or its individual members, those agencies should be totally eliminated in the initial attack,” the handbook advises. “Do not allow any law enforcement agents to escape. Kill them all.”

I’m uncertain how to react to people like this. It’s hard to reconcile a belief that people should be able to choose how to live their lives when confronted by a large population of people who wallow in ignorance and play at death. How to find common ground with people who’ve been bombarded with more and more rightwing propaganda and the unsettling marriage of American exceptionalism with a doctrine where might makes right? Watch a mainstream movie like Blackhawk Down or Tears of the Sun, at the glorified image of American warriors delivering death on a scale that would have impressed ancient gods from the barrels of hand-held machines, taking out scores of adversaries. That’s what many see in their mind when they think about our actions in Iraq. Righteous warriors, dealing death to a frightening and numberless enemy.

In a perfect world, “live and let live” makes a lot of sense. In a world gone insane, it seems to be a recipe for one-sided civil war. Many of these folks believe we’re engaged in a culture war, and THEY feel that THEY are the victims of the rest of us, filthy-liberal-perverted-godless libertines eager to cornhole their children and turn out their wives. There is a war for America going on, and they’re the ones who’re heavily armed.

Almost makes you want to pick up a SPAS 12 full-auto shotgun yourself and barricade yourself inside, doesn’t it?