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Where love of guns rules

William Ecenbarger is a freelance writer living in Hershey They began arriving well before the 9 a.m. Sunday opening, cramming the parking lots and forcing latecomers onto snowy fields. At least half the vehicles were pickups, peppered with road salt and bearing such bumper stickers as "Don't blame me, I voted for McCain" and "If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns."

William Ecenbarger

is a freelance writer living in Hershey

They began arriving well before the 9 a.m. Sunday opening, cramming the parking lots and forcing latecomers onto snowy fields. At least half the vehicles were pickups, peppered with road salt and bearing such bumper stickers as "Don't blame me, I voted for McCain" and "If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns."

When the doors to the Lebanon Valley Exposition Center finally opened, they stepped inside and paid $5 to attend the Lebanon Gun Show. By 10 a.m., they were packed three deep at most of the 500 counters.

Eagle Arms Production, sponsor of the show, estimated that 6,000 people attended the two-day event last weekend. For the most part, it was a subdued, polite group united by a common devotion to firearms.

Diligent shoppers hefted the rifles and assault guns, as attentive to their feel and weight as golfers are to their clubs. They held revolvers up to the light.

Rifles were lined up on the tables at 45-degree angles. Handguns were kept locked under glass. There was enough fire power here to arm a division.

Assault rifles were much in evidence. One table had an AR-15, originally made for the U.S. Army, for $875. A Russian-made AK-47, one of the most popular and widely used assault rifles in the world, was on sale for $495. There was a "Gun Show Special" on an SKS carbine for $165. An SKS was used in 2008 to kill a Philadelphia police officer.

Just across the aisle there was a $999 price tag on an FN Herstal Five-seveN tactical pistol. This weapon, also known as "the Cop Killer," is believed to have been used is last year's massacre at Fort Hood, Texas.

Off in a far corner, two long tables were arranged in an "L" shape to accommodate the show's largest weapons. One was a Barrett 50, a .50-caliber sniper rifle with a five-foot barrel that is capable of taking out targets a mile away. It cost $8,995. Two subadolescent boys took turns aiming it at imaginary targets.

The biggest weapon, priced at $20,000, was a Bren MK 1, a light machine gun used by the British army in World War II and the Korean War. "It can fire up to 540 rounds per minute with an effective range of about 600 yards," the sales clerk advised. "And it still works."

By noon the aisles were nearly impassable, and the day's commerce was well under way. Each transaction included paperwork and a telephone call that could take up to a half-hour but was usually completed in five minutes. The forms recording the transaction would go to the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.

The calls were made to a 24-hour center run by the Pennsylvania State Police, which informs dealers whether a prospective buyer has a criminal record.

Gun-control advocates contend that gun shows like this one are a fertile source of weapons to criminals because of "straw purchasers" - record-free individuals who legally buy guns and then give or sell them to criminals who could never pass a background check. Studies by the University of California-Davis School of Medicine have concluded that straw purchases at gun shows, which are illegal, are a leading source of guns used in crimes.

Al Toczydlowski, chief of the Philadelphia Gun Violence Task Force, says about two-thirds of the 400 gun-trafficking arrests in the last three years were tied to straw buyers and the people who received the guns.

"Criminals want a clean gun," he says. "They don't want to buy it on the street because it might already have been involved in a crime. So they send someone to a gun show to make the purchase. They want a gun with no history."

But Joel Koehler, an official of Eagle Arms Productions, said straw purchasing was not a problem at the Lebanon show.

"Those are Philadelphia problems, and that's a long way from here," he said. "These are real Americans and honest as the day is long. You leave a hundred-dollar bill on that table, come back in an hour, and it will still be there. Guaranteed."

Federal authorities say that Pennsylvania is in the top 10 among the states as a source for guns used in crimes in other states.

The Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a coalition made up of more than 340 mayors from across the nation, says Pennsylvania has more than 200 gun shows every year, a total exceeded only by Texas. Indeed, gun shows are a leading tourist attraction in the Lebanon Valley, which is hosting three this year. Tourist promotion officials estimate that each gun show will draw 6,000 visitors and generate between $2.5 million and $3 million for area businesses.

It was here in 2008 that a 30-year-old mother made national headlines by toting a gun to her daughter's soccer game. Last year the woman was shot and killed by her husband, who then took his own life.