No, it’s not a joke. Actually, it kinda is. BuzzFeed Contributor Kashana Cauley’s article is a pathetic attempt to paint Indiana gun show attendees as old fat white racist rednecks. As you know, the first part of that isn’t entirely wrong. It’s the racist bit that gets BuzzFeed’s gun control juices flowing . . .
On the first Saturday morning in August, I stepped out of my car in a suburban Indiana parking lot and watched three middle-aged white men aim squinty-eyed suspicion at me from two spaces away. As a Wisconsin native, I’m used to squinty-eyed white Midwestern suspicion. But since we stood several hundred feet from a lot of guns and I figured the guys were probably armed, my feet froze. I had to drag myself to the entrance of the Kokomo Gun Show, where a brown-haired stocky white guy in his twenties talked to his friends while resting his elbow on a rifle butt as if leaning on a gun was the most natural posture imaginable.
White men! Squinty-eyed white men! With guns! In racist Indiana! If that lead doesn’t indicate that Ms. Cauley had an axe to grind, I don’t know what does. Well, maybe this . . .
Four people sat at the registration table: one white guy in his fifties and three women in their twenties, one of whom was black. Her blackness threw me off nearly as much as the mood outside. We made the sort of eye contact that meant we’d acknowledged each other’s blackness but we weren’t going to bond over it. I paid the $5 admission fee and told the guy, who called me sweetie, that since I didn’t have a gun I didn’t need to check mine while I shop. I turned away from him toward tables filled with more guns than I’d ever seen, forgot how to breathe, and retreated to the bathroom to calm myself behind a locked stall.
Hoplophobe much? Perhaps Ms. Cauley wasn’t the best person to send to a gun show – unless you’re trying to “prove” that it’s a nest of racists tooling-up to murder Americans of color. Dan reckons the gun show should have created a “safe space” to which she could have retreated and comforted herself with soft toys, fuzzy blankets and New Age music. Wait, it gets better/worse . . .
Black people aren’t part of the big tent of gun ownership. We’re never assumed to be law abiding, reasonable gun owners. That kind of gun ownership is seen as an upstanding white person act; a picket fence closed to outsiders like blacks. I wanted to see what was on the other side of the slats separating me from perfectly honorable, white people gun show attendance.
I think she’s being sarcastic at the end there. In fact I’m sure of it. I wonder if Ms. Cauley knows that American gun control was born from racism. Doubtful. Anyway, as hard as Cauley looks for racism at the Indiana gun show n– and boy (no racist intended) does she ever — she comes up empty. Well, not entirely . . .
I turned a corner and found an overweight man in his sixties with a thin halo of hair and suspenders holding up his jeans behind a table full of bumper stickers. Confederate flags screamed redly among the black and white right-wing slogans. Here, in the Union state of Indiana, which outlawed slavery in 1820, gun owners embrace the national symbol for being willing to go to war for your right to abuse black people.
“Never Give Up!” one said.
“Deal With It!” said the other.
Looking at those stickers was like being slapped in the face.
And . . . that’s all folks. Confederate flag decals were all Ms. Cauley could find to confirm her prejudice that gun shows are prejudiced. No matter what you think of the stars and bars, that’s pretty weak sauce. Still, you gotta give Cauley credit for making something out of [virtually] nothing. Or not.
Zzzzzzzzzzzz
Meant to state my level of impression and interest in Ms Cauley’s hoplophobic point of view. Forgetting to breathe at the sight of……..inanimate objects…….lain upon tables……..creating no violence on their own……ohhhhh the humanity………….I can’t breathe………..
Surprised she didn’t piss herself on the way to find someplace to hide, particularly after all the projection she imagined on the way into the place.
She couldn’t have pissed herself. The restroom was her “safe space”
dang Robert, you forgot to mention where she got kicked out and had threats of violence launched at her!
It never fails to amaze me how people can demonize others based SOLELY on the fact that they want to retain what few of their god-given rights remain.
Saw on arfcom. It must be a difficult life being afraid of literally everything.
I actually have a family member like that, OTOH she is not only certifiable but certified, on NICS as a prohibited person due to mental instability. Sounds just like this loser, I wonder if she is on the list as well.
She certainly needs to be.
I see black people all the time at gun shows and gun stores, having fun and having lively, polite conversation, just like anyone.
Sounds like another sad, pathetic attempt by a devoted victim to affirm her perpetual victimhood. Too bad it didn’t pan out. She should see a psychiatrist about needing to hyperventilate after seeing pieces of metal and polymer, though, that can’t be healthy.
Also, seeing the racist terrorist group BLM getting free passes on their bigoted attacks is a “slap in the face” to me. So you can shut up and deal with a sticker.
Same here. But I guess none of them are writing hand-wringing blog posts. Except for Kenn Blanchard and Colion Noir and Rick Ector. But they don’t count.
Yep, was gonna post the same thing.
See non-whites and non-males, at gun shows and the gun range all the freaking time. Always welcomed with open arms (figuratively).
Shooters are probably the least “intolerant” group I’ve ever seen.
The ‘meme’ of POTG being racist is a Progressive fantasy. Like so much else from the mouths of Progressives, it’s a LIE.
And at the last gun show I saw in Texas I saw several Black FFL dealers at tables. One was a family run business. So racist of the gun show. Not to mention the black customers and notably high volume of Latino shoppers as well. You could cut the tension of the racism with a… well I don’t think we have the technology yet to cut such a non-existent ism.
They seem to have no problem with the ubiquitous Mosin-Nagant and the hammer and sickle emblem they bare.
“… one of whom was black. Her blackness threw me off nearly as much as the mood outside.”
My new favorite! All these people who think the best way to end racism is to just focus harder on race. We haven’t ended racism because we just haven’t made people equal enough yet. Lets do something else to highlight the differences while ignoring what makes us all the same.
To be black and Republican or Libertarian or just conservative enough to own a gun and with that not vote Democrat, is a crime against the black race.
To clarify, I am black. Just not African American. Raised in the Bahamas. So for black people to hear of black conservatives (FNM), especially outside of the U.S. is quite foreign to them.
But there is more than just a group consensus black American perspective on things
You don’t fit the narrative that people of color are made out to be in the predominantly white, liberal media.
Who sez they want to end racism? They LOVE it.
The SJW is strong in this one…
Looking at those stickers was like being slapped in the face.
Obviously, she’s never actually been slapped in the face, or she’d know the difference.
Sounds to me she might be the racist one, not expecting someone black at the gun show.
Assuming the reporting is correct, here, I would bet that she went believing not only that she would be the only black person there, and the only female there, but that she would be refused entry or some such. Her intellectual dishonesty after finding that no one really cared that she was black or female was pretty obvious, she had nothing more to say.
When you have a bias, it’s easy to convince yourself that you are seeing what you think you are.
This Black man finds this woman’s reaction towards guns to be utterly ridiculous. She’s fooling herself if she thinks black people don’t participate in gun culture.
“She’s fooling herself if she thinks black people don’t participate in gun culture.”
It’s possible she doesn’t see it out in the open.
I suspect there’s a fair percentage of Blacks that keep their gun ownership on the down-low.
A number of months back ST commented here that at a family gathering he admitted he had a concealed carry permit.
And the family’s reaction to that news was instantaneous and *very* negative.
I suspect quite a few Blacks expect to get the same reaction from *their* extended families, so they just keep quiet about it.
Even still you can find quite a few black guys on YouTube that does gun reviews and pro-gun political rants. I’ve followed a couple of them. Colion Noir is one of many.
“…I figured the guys were probably armed, my feet froze. I had to drag myself to the entrance of the Kokomo Gun Show…”
“…We made the sort of eye contact that meant we’d acknowledged each other’s blackness…”
“… I turned away from him toward tables filled with more guns than I’d ever seen, forgot how to breathe, and retreated to the bathroom to calm myself behind a locked stall.”
Yeah, everyone was looking at you because you’re black, not because you were eyeballing people and acting erratically.
Good call.
LOL!!! I thought the same thing. She’s probably giving everyone the heebie-jeebies and then thinking they’re staring at her (in between her panic attacks and hyperventilation).
Yeah, why would you give someone who’s acting like that any information? Obvious plant.
More “behind enemy lines” reporting from a clueless race hustler. Lady, even if it was as bad as you think those people were STILL WILLING TO SELL YOU A GUN. As opposed to your average BLM rally, where whites are literally so reviled they are forced to stand out of sight.
“As a Wisconsin native, I’m used to squinty-eyed white Midwestern suspicion. But since we stood several hundred feet from a lot of guns and I figured the guys were probably armed, my feet froze.”
Some great projection there. Because she’s the type to judge, hate, and violently attack people based solely on their race, she assumes everyone is. BLM in action.
And she doesn’t even want to know how many people she has interacted with, close-up and personal, in the past 10 years who were also armed at the time, none of whom shot her. Since she was ignorant, she was happy. Isn’t that a racist personification of black people? Shouldn’t she attempt to *dis*prove it?
Wow pathetic attempt at racism. I’ve been to an Indiana gun show(Crown Point) and saw lots of black folks…and Kokomo ain’t that far away. As well as several Indiana gun shops including Blythes,Westforth(GARY),Cabelas,Debs,Dicks and Gander Mountain. LOTS of black and brown folks happily intermingling with us evil white men. I hope this gal didn’t get paid…
The truth of course is it is the black woman writer that wrote an incredibly racist rant against the white people in attendance.
The crown point show is probably 1/3 black. Dealers love them because they buy. We stand, shuffle, chat, joke, cause we are all there with the same purpose. To be semi private, I’ll just say I’m another minority, my wife is yet again another minority. I’ve never been treated different.
Neither has my minority female wife. Dealers LOVE her because…. Dealers love BUYERS.
Projection indeed. I’m familiar with all those dealers. What a joke of an article.
So in her search for racism, she found the confederate flag, which “gun owners embrace” “for being willing to go to war for your right to abuse black people”. Yet surrounded by all of these racist gun owners who want to “abuse black people”, the closest racist gesture she could come up with was a supposed “squinty-eyed” look in the parking lot? Inside, a racist white guy kindly called her “Sweetie”, and she surprisingly encountered another black woman, who made a friendly acknowledgement to her. That’s some terrifying stuff right there. I can see why she needed to lock herself in the bathroom stall.
It’s truly amazing that people who see racism everywhere don’t realize that they are the real racists.
You forgot the part about her gang member cousin shooting someone…
I would have broken this one out on its own, “Four people sat at the registration table: one white guy in his fifties and three women in their twenties, one of whom was black.”
** “one of whom was black” **
where a brown-haired stocky white guy in his twenties talked to his friends while resting his elbow on a rifle butt as if leaning on a gun was the most natural posture imaginable.
Sooo the muzzle of the gun was on the ground and the man was leaning on the butt of the gun? I can say I have never seen this in my life. Total BS story.
I’ve seen it in the movies, does that count? You’re right, of course, total BS.
I wanted to see what was on the other side of the slats separating me from perfectly honorable, white people gun show attendance.
Well….she got that part right.
Here, in the Union state of Indiana, which outlawed slavery in 1820, gun owners embrace the national symbol for being willing to go to war for your right to abuse black people.
Oh heck, when I was at Knob Creek, some of the vendors had pro-Nazi paraphernalia for sale. and I am not talking about collector items either.
I’m pretty sure she’s the racist.
Yeah I forgot to ask if she gets upset when she sees OFWG’s happily married to a beautiful black woman-like me. And I’m no fan of the stars and bars but me and the wife don’t lose sleep over it. Some of her biggest fans(on her blog ) are extremely southern daughters of the confederacy type white women(and some men). Duh…
“No matter what you think of the stars and bars, that’s pretty weak sauce.”
So a spread of stickers and flags is all she has? You know, the U.S. flag flew over those same states, too, but does she get the vapors watching the state of the union address or driving by any school? Never mind the atrocities committed on Great Britain’s watch and the Union Jack incorporated into Hawaii’s flag today. There goes Hawaii Five-0!
Weak sauce indeed, lady. I’ve seen heartier meals made of a cigarette, some coffee, and four tiny stones.
“Black people aren’t part of the big tent of gun ownership. We’re never assumed to be law abiding, reasonable gun owners.”
Quick, someone tell the NRA that they accidentally let MrColionNoir, a black guy, be their spokesperson….
He’s black?
Last gun show I went to in North Carolina had people of all races. I really didn’t see any Confederate flag stuff around there either. I think one person had a few small flag stickers for sale. They rest were selling guns, gear and tools. Every gun purchase I witnessed had a form 4473 being filled out.
I get what she means, to an extent.
I may have mentioned this before, but I’m not white, and I didn’t grow ups with guns – it’s something I’ve long supported but only recently embraced. When I went to the gun counter for the first time, it was a little intimidating. I didn’t know the lingo and everybody with an opinion was an expert. Toss in that I look different than all the other folks there, and it would be easy to “see” racism.
That being said, I have never seen or experienced anything of the sort, that I’ve noticed. People have always been forthright and happy to engage in conversation. It doesn’t hurt that I am usually pretty amiable (and the short stints when my dad was stationed in MS and GA have left me with a drawl that pops up in echo of the person I’m speaking with are useful in TX).
And if she thinks it’s tough being black in IN, try being Muslim colored for the last 14 years. You don’t see Florida gun shops banning black folk…
But, even by her own description she DIDN’T look different from everybody there; at the registration table, when she arrived there were (including her): 1 OFWG, 2 white millennial women, and 2 black millennial women. Sure, the whole guns thing is obviously new to her (and she obviously has a honest-to-goodness phobia going on), but with 40% of the new sign ins being black, she can hardly claim that that segment of the population was under-represented.
This is freaking silly. I live in a state where black people are a very, very, VERY small part of the demographic (at least in the part I live). Yet it seems like every gun show we have, I see no less than a dozen or so black folks and their families walking about, checking out all the hardware, and having a generally good time. This lady needs to grow the hell up, quit being a racist, and possibly see the shrink!
Here’s the first draft of Miss Cauley’s piece that she tossed:
I went to a gun show expecting to be surrounded by white people who would be shouting racial epithet’s. I went to a gun show thinking that I might be sexually assaulted by white men. I went to a gun show fearing that I may be lynched. None of that happened though, everyone was very friendly.
Wow, this chick (or however she self-identifies) sounds more stuck up than a blue-blood carping about negroes and jazz. Must be neat having that race-based telepathy thing she mentioned, too, or what-ever the hell she was going on about. Yup, nothing but a bunch of white male racists, how dare they treat her politely and invite other black women into their midst; don’t they know she has an article to write?
Paranoid behavior (the threat she imagined from whole cloth), obsessive behavior (the persistent analysis of everyone’s skin tone around her, like Howard Hughes looking for germs), delusional behavior (the special racial bond super-friends thing); the woman is clearly mentally deranged. There is no other explanation for this behavior. How she got that way is debatable, but she’s there now, and seeing drooling racists everywhere like a freaked-out stoner spying tree-cops in his peripheral vision.
The photos that accompany the article undermine her narrative. She describes staring down a sea of confederate flags, but only has a photo of two stickers that she says she bought and took home because she was afraid to take a picture at the show. Not even a pic of the table from a discreet distance. She also mentions signs reading “private collection” and “no questions asked” but only managed a picture of the private collection sign. It’s almost like these things she saw weren’t there.
At least one of the gun show organizations here in Fort Worth has a “No Photography” policy (I think they got “burned” by a hit-piece local news story once) so it is possible that there was something like that preventing her from taking pix… but I’m just guessing.
Just read through this. As a white person can I claim she’s racist? She makes it sound like because I’m white and own guns I go to sleep every night wrapped in the stars and bars. Does it have historical context? Yes. Is it in poor taste to display it outside of those scenarios? Absolutely. Do people have the right to display it in poor taste? Absolutely. It’s the price for living in a free society.
People like this are a walking set back to race relations in this country. I think she needs a Xanax or something for her anxiety, she’s likely in one of the safest, most law abiding areas she’ll ever be in.
I’m curious as to what exactly she was expecting when she got in her car and drove there.
I’d like to ask Robert Farago to read the article again for some important details. Quote from the article
“There were plenty of private vendors standing behind signs that said Private Collection, Cash Only, No Questions Asked.”
THIS IS BS. I live in IN, about 40 minutes from Kokomo and have been to many, many gun shows throughout Indiana and this simply is not the case. If so why didn’t she take a picture of one of those “many” signs???
After 2012 every IN gunshow has been crawling with LE and undercover ATF. The author also proceeds to recount a conversion with a woman at the entrance table who she says claims that we always have many attempts by thieves to steal guns at shows. Are you kidding me? I have never heard of one, let alone many.
If the Left can skew any statistics in their favor then we have got to be diligent and call out EVERY falsification in every gun grabber piece of propaganda and demand proof. Apparently we are looking at Sandy Hook #2 in the eyes of the liberal media right now, so once again it starts.
It does happen from time to time- a few months back a vendor here in Texas had a few guns stolen. That particular guy was set up right by the door the vendors use to access the men’s room, and doesn’t use an alarm cable on his guns. That’s the only time I’ve heard of, though.
Unfortunately, it does indeed. 3 at the last show in Reno in one afternoon. After that everybody was putting cables through the trigger guards of all their equipment. It’s a damn shame, cuz I rather enjoy finger f*cking guns I’d otherwise never get to handle.
Projection. Wait…PROJECT-ion? Obviously a racial microaggression.
She shows her total lack of education and understanding. The South did not have a flag. The stars and bars was the Battle Flag of the Army of Northern Virginia and this was taken from the Confederate Naval flag (being square not rectangular). Also does she realize that 596,670 northern WHITE (as if the lack of a high concentration of melanin in your skin really matters) soldiers died so she could be free?
Huh….strange…. I go to the range every Wednesday night with a black friend, run drills with him, them we go out for a steak and beers….am I just dreaming this??
Here’s the scary question that nobody else has the guts to ask… With all those guns laying on those tables, how did she make it out alive? I’m calling BS on her whole story, there’s no way she actually went in.
Just shows that black woman can be bigots too….nice.
I remember the look of pure joy on the faces of three black teenagers at a gun show where their dad bought them their first semi-auto rifles, surplus SKS rifles. I’m a white guy, not old, but a little overweight. Anyway, I was really excited for them because an SKS was the first semi-auto I got as a teenager as well because they’re soo affordable. I remembered my excitement seeing it in their faces. Gun shows in my area are full of blacks, hispanics, and asians, vendors and buyers. It’s a representative cross section of society I think.
And I don’t blame her, at least about the racist part. The rebel flag was never the official confederate flag, and it gained popularity after the civil war was over. It’s not history that is the problem: do you see historians walking around saying “deal with it”? No, it’s heritage, for some people. A heritage that one should never be proud of. I can be proud of my Arkansas state history, and I can know history, but heritage differs from history. History is just what happened in the past. Heritage is when you make something a part of who you are. And if that heritage includes the rebel flag, well, then you’ve made something rather negative a part of who you are. The only difference between those in this story and the KKK is the KKK wear robes and hoods.
Wow, Well I guess as an African-American man I should feel privileged that I am legally able to obtain and carry my firearm. She probably wouldn’t feel safe at my house either Lord knows this house is protected by the Second Amendment
“Black people aren’t part of the big tent of gun ownership. We’re never assumed to be law abiding, reasonable gun owners.”
She should come to my gun club and talk to the black members. The ones who shoot beside the white people on the ranges. The ones who laugh and socialize with the white people at club events. The ones who put in volunteer hours alongside the white people to help maintain the club. The ones who hold positions on the club’s executive board alongside the white people.
If she is excluded, it’s because she is excluding herself. Just like she acknowledged the blackness of the woman sitting at the entrance table, and determined that they would never be friends.
“We made the sort of eye contact that meant we’d acknowledged each other’s blackness but we weren’t going to bond over it.”
Wow. What does that even mean? You mean you glanced at each other? Like you looked at each other like people?
Can/should I start doing this with white people? Is that a thing?
I don’t get it. She obviously didn’t want to be there. Why pay money to go in? Why go at all? That would be like me going in to Yankee Candle without the need to buy a gift, I don’t want to be there, I’ll complain about the smallest thing, and it’ll give me a headache. So what do I do? I don’t go (some restrictions apply, statement is null and void when girlfriend is present). I just don’t understand people sometimes….
Want to really stop this kind of utter stupidity? It’s super easy: Take a black family to the range. I did. Reserved the entire facility for just us so I could ease em’ into it. That worked and they not only enjoyed themselves, they found out that black people are entirely welcome and learned to shoot everything from black powder rifles to AR-15’s to precision rifles and pistols and revolvers. They’re weren’t pro-gun or anti-gun before. Now they’re pro-gun and not suffering from self induced alienation from a place they’ve been entirely welcome to come and have a good time at for longer than I’ve been alive.
It’s not condescension or microaggressive racism to deliberately select a black family. They’re underrepresented at shooting ranges and so their culture doesn’t have a bit of gun sense. Easy to change by bringing them into the fold with open arms.
I won’t just say I did it though, lemme prove it:
And that is how you fail at being a drama queen. If she wanted to REALLY find everything offensive, she would have been able to come up with all these and more in the first 5 minutes:
15. Not designated “safe space”
14. Certain classes and items referred to as “black” powder
13. Men.
12. Heterosexuals
11. Able-bodied
10. Jokes.
9. Obama “Socialist” merchandise
8. “Crusader” and “Infidel” merchandise,
7. Religion publically displayed.
6. No speech codes
5. Children present around weapons
4. No 4473’s in braille.
3. Hunting.
2. People without guilt complexes.
And last but not least
1 No trigger warnings, especially on triggers.
I’m sure there is a Beach Boys joke in there somewhere, I just can’t think of one at the moment.
The liberal media black or white will always avoid showing positive images of black civilians with guns. Or images of all races together enjoying firearms, like the NRA meeting in Nashville. I had a great time there.
Racist blacks like this reporter are just slaves following the orders of their white masters. To do so ignorant with the Internet full of information is her just being stupid on purpose.
Seems to me the only person being objectively racist there is her. She’s literally discriminating between people based solely on skin color.
I don’t doubt there were some racist people there. You know, statistics and all. But a confederate flag? I’m not from the US but I suspect that a lot of people fly that flag as a symbol of their freedom that was taken by the Northerners.
Even if slavery was a big part of that time period it was also about the freedom to leave the Union, no?