(The May Day demonstration against the War in 1971 was billed as the “largest civil disobedience action” in American history. It is regrettably forgotten in the tumult of the end of the astonishing decade of the 1960s. There may be something else going on these days.)
It was asses-and-elbows trying to get out of the apartment and on the road to the farm yesterday morning. The day was brilliant and beckoning, but there was the matter of the laundry from the trip and the stuff from the days before-and-after to marshal, and loading the perishables to consume over the remainder of the weekend.
Plus, there was a stop to be made. I had agreed to meet a comrade at the Show at the Dulles Expo Center on the way at an impossibly early hour to be in Fairfax, and of course Japan was calling just at the time I was trying to walk out of the unit and get in the Panzer.
So I was on the verge of being beyond fashionably late when I rolled up to the vast parking lot in front of the big hall out by Rt 28. It was packed.
I drove around for a while before finding a spot about a quarter mile away from the entrance, but it was all right, and half way to the restaurant where we were going to have lunch later on. I trudged up to the entrance and my comrade was waiting patiently- I think he has come to accept my abandonment of strict compliance with military timing.
We wandered over to the guys behind the ticket counter and ponied up the $13 bucks for admittance and then approached the lady who was taking the tickets and stamping our hands for evidence of eligibility for re-admittance.
“Are you carrying weapons?” she asked, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and maybe it is these days. We said “Not yet,” though this was not a mission to look for anything in particular. I have wondered if there is some requirement that has not been met to some degree in the hysteria of the last few years, and we generally agreed that there was not.
The Nation’s Gun Show is as overwhelming as venturing into the Lowe’s or a Super Target. I immediately forget whatever it was that lured me to the stores to begin with, and wander lost through the aisles. There were hundreds of tables with vendors selling everything related to firearms- long and short, lethal appearing and innocuous, old and new.
“Just looking, right?” said my comrade, and I nodded, preparing to wander in dumb amazement down the crowded aisles.
I have come to view the Show as a sort of unofficial straw poll about how people think things are going. I mentioned yesterday the three ‘d’s’ I noted over the past two years: Desperation, Despair, and Determination. There was a wave of panic purchasing that was evident after the Sandy Hook massacre, that abomination of horror.
You would think that a rational consensus on what to do about this armed society might have resulted, or at least that is what some thought at the time. Instead, the lines seemed to have hardened. Connecticut, New York, California and Colorado passed some modest legislation about magazine capacities and types of semi-automatic weapons that would be permitted to be owned by its citizens.
The modesty of the legislation enacted turned out to be a matter of some personal difference with the citizens affected. New York’s Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement Act (SAFE Act) has been rolled out in stages. The ban on high-capacity ammo magazines (more than seven rounds for some reason best known to Albany) and ammo sales background checks took effect on Jan. 15. The requirement that mental health care professionals report anyone “likely to engage in conduct that would result in serious harm to self or others” took effect March 16; and the assault weapons registration and ban took effect April 15.
The State Patrol there said they would not be enforcing the ban on magazines for a perfectly good reason: no firearm comes with magazines of that capacity. That essentially renders any magazine-fed firearm illegal under the provisions of the law. I am sure some weapons must exist with a five-round capacity, they must, but no one is paying attention to it. The SAFE Act permitted owners of previously legal rifles to gain “grandfather” status for them if they went to the Patrol and registered them, and showed proof that a certified gunsmith has made the cosmetic alterations to comply with the law.
So far, citizens are not leaping on the opportunity to do so. It appears to be something in the grand tradition of civil disobedience. In Connecticut, compliance with a similar law is estimated by some to be in the range of 15%. In Colorado, all but two of the state’s sheriffs have announced that they will not be enforcing the new laws, and two of the State Senate’s ranking members were recalled in the controversy by a consortium headed by a local plumber without previous electoral experience.
It is interesting here in Virginia, being adjacent to the Free State of Maryland and the District (which both feature draconian penalties for gun possession). We are teetering between Red and Blue. Downstate is still firmly red; Northern Virginia and the Tidewater are reliably blue, and outgrowing the rural areas. The mood at the last Show was a fourth ‘d:” Disapproval for our new Governor’s Second Amendment component of his social agenda.
I don’t know what other reaction one would be looking to find at a gun show, for goodness sake, but the mood is what is important.
There is a lot to not like about Governor Terry McAuliffe, mostly about his casual relationship with crony government capitalism, at least from my perspective, but I had to note that the collective mood seemed to be one up from Desperation. That was the common theme at the show before that one was evident in the very long lines at the tables for the ammunition vendors.
I would have to say that the events of the last few years have solidified an apparent mood of Defiance. I saw one citizen who was selling shirts in support of something I had not previously heard: “Operation American Spring.”
“Support the Constitution,” said the bearded man behind his counter. “Come out to the National Mall on the 16th of May.”
I thought back to the first time I came to Washington as an alleged adult, to participate in the May Day civil disobedience action of 1971 against the Vietnam War. That was billed at the time as the “largest act of civil disobedience in American history,” though it is not remembered much these days. After the melt-down of the Students for a Democratic Society and the bewildering military campaign of the Weather Underground in the late sixties, history seems to have decided to forget about May Day.
In context, though, leaders of the Anti-War movement had come to believe that peaceful protest was not effective as a means to influence public policy and decided that more aggressive actions were needed. I remember the figures of the day: Rennie Davis, Jerry Coffin and the rest of the cast of characters in the War Resister’s League.
The scheme for the event was that small groups of activists, cloaked in the larger demonstration, would take direct action to disable cars at key intersections in the District. It turned out to be not as successful as the 1967 Abbie Hoffman-Jerry Rubin attempt to levitate the Pentagon, but no matter. It was pretty spectacular watching the kids versus the cops, and the one irate driver I observed get out of his car and knock the shit out of the people trying to raise the hood on his car and pull his spark plug wires.
I actually was not sure I opposed to the war in SE Asia from a geopolitical perspective, since I thought then (as I do now) that Communism sucks.
Still, I was a pragmatist in my views since I was directly affected by the career choices the war entailed and was reluctant to be drafted as a rifleman to participate personally.
The “2S Student Deferment” printed on the draft card in my wallet and the number “77” I drew in the lottery gave me a certain nuanced perspective. They were drafting up to around the number 115 in those days, and it was entirely possible that my services would be required- but not for another couple years and there were ways to string that out if necessary.
Mostly I just wanted to see this part of democracy in action- you know, the civil disobedience thing.
I wished the bearded man the very best of luck, and as we walked away, I leaned over to my comrade: “In the age of the drone, I think the National Mall would be a very good place to avoid that Friday.”
My pal nodded stoically. He is another retired Federal Officer like me who knows enough to know better. “You would have to be nuts to go reveal yourself to the Feds as a supporter of the Bill of Rights,” he said. “You know that is trouble these days. What do you think about lunch?”
I said that it was lawful, at the moment, and that I had seen all I needed to see at this edition of The Show. “I mostly like these things as social-cultural events to see what people are thinking. I don’t need to buy anything. I think I have everything I need,” I said
“Me too,” he said. “But what you require is a club sandwich and a beer.”
I nodded solemnly. Weapons and then beer is the right way to go, and certainly not the other way around. As it turned out, he was absolutely right.
Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303