Point Blank

Point Blank

Economy, Fears of Obama Intensify Love of Guns in S.C. Story by Corey Hutchins. Photos by Graeme Fouste

I

t can happen to anyone, and does all the time.

It can happen to you: One day, if the world is falling apart around you, you are going to need to know how to protect yourself. And that’s why you might be thinking about obtaining a concealed weapons permit.

These pistols were among thousands of firearms for sale at a June 14 gun show in Columbia at the S.C. State Fairgrounds.

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Maybe you’ve only thought about this recently. You’ve read the newspapers. You remember, back in March, the Irmo pizza delivery guy who had a permit to carry a concealed weapon and was cleared of any charges after firing his handgun in self-defense and killing a man who attacked him while he was making a suburban delivery.

Maybe, more recently, it was the 61-yearold attorney and concealed weapons permit holder at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in Five Points who drew his concealed weapon and shot and killed an armed robber who burst into the meeting.

Or maybe, getting your own permit to carry a handgun is something you’ve thought about your whole life.

Either way, you’re not alone.

For many, holstering a handgun comes as natural as breathing. And as a rekindled debate over the right to own guns ignites in Congress and across the country, in few

places is the conversation slung so far in the direction of those packing heat as it is in South Carolina.

More South Carolinians are applying for and obtaining concealed weapons permits than ever before, State Law Enforcement Division spokeswoman Jennifer Timmons says in response to an inquiry.

In addition, firearms dealers and gun shows in the state are enjoying brisk business, which they attribute to worries about the stability of the economy and fears that President Obama has his sights set on rolling back gun rights.

Moreover, like teachers unions and snow plow fleets, the state is absent any legitimate anti-gun lobby. What it does have is one Evelyn Dolven, a 70-year-old retired schoolteacher in Charleston who heads up a virtually nonexistent — her words — state chapter of the Million Mom March. The group is a grassroots part of the national Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

Dolven calls herself “sort of a spokesperson when something happens,” but that’s pretty much it. She’s only lived in the state for two-and-a-half years. “I have a small list of other people who are interested in the issue, but nothing like having meetings and going to visit legislators,” she says. “It’s very minimal.”

Dolven’s perspective underscores the point: In South Carolina, the debate over the right to bear arms turns almost entirely on the views of those who either (A) already have guns; or (B) want them.

And why not? Indeed, the Palmetto State has always enjoyed a storied love affair with firearms. And in that regard, this is not a story that rehashes old debates about gun control.

Rather, it’s a tale of how, in the current era,

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South Carolina’s romance with guns is only getting hotter.

Witness the state’s first-ever “Second Amendment sales tax holiday” in 2008. For two days after Thanksgiving last year, sales of handguns, shotguns and rifles in South Carolina were tax exempt.

Meanwhile, SLED workers have been rifling through applications and renewals for concealed weapons permits faster than ever.

In 2007, the agency saw a 50 percent increase in them, according to SLED records. And then, in 2008, the percentage shot up by half again.

Right now, about 70,000 people in South Carolina can legally carry concealed weapons.

But that number gets higher every day as applications continue to roll into SLED. In Richland and Lexington counties, nearly 9,000 people have concealed weapons permits, more than double the number two years ago.

Experiencing the surge, gun dealers across South Carolina have seen their inventories deplete over the past several months as buyers have snapped up guns and ammunition at rapid-fire rates. Even with the economy on a downturn the gun industry’s stock is aimed at the rafters.

At the doors of area gun shows in recent months, lines have stretched into the parking lots with people inside packed wall to wall, forking over cash for hard-to-find munitions.

There has been serious ammo hoarding.

Fear and Loathing in South Carolina

One reason more and more people want to carry guns?

“Fear,” says Tom Thompson, president of the Mid Carolina Rifle Club, a private shooting range about 10 miles west of Columbia.

It’s been around since the 1980s, but Thompson says this year he might have to cap the club’s membership because of the number of people who are applying to join it.

Thompson assembles his own ammunition instead of buying manufactured rounds.

He and his wife burn through 2,000 to 3,000 of them a month, so reloading saves them money. It’s a good thing, then, that the Thompsons bought many of their components before Election Day ‘08. Since then, the price of primers, which ignite a powder charge in a cartridge, has blown sky high.

Last year a sleeve of 5,000 primers went for about $72, Thompson says. Now they can sell for more than $120. “That’s because it’s dried up, basically,” he says of the supply of primers.

At a recent gun show in the Columbia area, Thompson recalls meeting a man who sold his entire stock of primers — 1.4 million of them, the man told Thompson — in about two hours.

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For South Carolina gun dealers, ammo hoarding has them seeing record profits. And they’re not complaining.

Mike Kent, a prominent gun show promoter who’s been organizing shows throughout the Southeast since 1990, says that in recent months the number of attendees has been swelling his venues, and the wallets of vendors, with quick-draw speed. He does about 25 shows a year in the Carolinas.

On June 14, Kent looked out over a colorful array of tables and booths set up inside a building at the S.C. State Fairgrounds in Columbia. Gun, knife and firearms accessories dealers from across the country displayed their wares as eager buyers weaved their way through the offerings. The sound of a stun gun zapped the air; a turkey call wailed; a representative of the John Birch Society pilloried the prospect of a North American union among the United States, Canada and Mexico. At the entrance to the show, a smiling picture of President Obama was taped to a wall. It proclaimed him “Firearms salesman of the year.”

Kent gives a nod to the obvious message behind it.

“Our crowds have pretty much doubled and tripled in some cases in South Carolina since the [presidential] election,” he says.

“We’ve never seen anything like this and I’ve been in the business for 20 years.”

Kent describes the phenomenon as “panic buying.” It traces to two factors: an unsure economy and the ushering in of a new Democratic administration in Washington. When the stock market goes cliff diving people get scared. They worry about the price of gas. The price and availability of food. They start worrying about more crime. And they buy guns.

At the June 14 gun show, Steve Kelsay manned a booth for GrassRoots GunRights, which describes itself as the largest pro-gun group in South Carolina.

says. “It’s good for the gun business; it’s good for the gun vendors.”

On the other hand, critics worry that all this weapons and ammo hoarding could cause some of the same apocalyptic outcomes that gun owners are trying to avoid. What happens if Obama doesn’t come grabbing for the guns?

The argument that he won’t is justifiable.

Take a June 7 headline in Parade, arguably one of the most mainstream magazines in the country: “Despite Recent Violence, Gun Laws Are Softening.”

Recent legislation on the state and national levels backs up the assertion. Congress passed

“Our crowds have pretty much doubled and tripled in some cases in South Carolina since the [presidential] election. We’ve never seen anything like this and I’ve been in the business for 20 years.”

— Mike Kent, a prominent gun show promoter who’s been organizing shows in the Southeast since 1990

President Obama, Kent says, has publicly commented in ways that can be perceived as anti-Second Amendment. A lot of officials in the new administration are thought of that way, he says. Fairly or unfairly, it makes some people worry that, down the line, legislation might be introduced that would make it harder to own guns.

That’s one of the main reasons gun enthusiasts are stockpiling while they still can, Kent

a law not too long ago to allow guns in national parks. And earlier this month, the General Assembly passed and Gov. Mark Sanford signed into law a bill allowing people with a concealed weapons permit to have a gun on the grounds of a college or university as long as the weapon is locked inside a vehicle.

In addition, President Obama so far has declined to push to renew a Clinton-era federal assault weapons ban that lapsed during the

George W. Bush years.

In that regard, could the amassing of guns and ammo be a pre-emptive act against a perceived threat that might never come to fruition?

If so, the hoarding could lead to a glut of weapons and ammunition with scenarios every bit as scary as the Obama administration is to some gun rights champions. Consider Mexico: As it teeters on becoming a failed state, Mexican drug lords might go looking for cheap munitions. A fearful observer could easily see web sites like Craigslist ripe with offers to offload guns in a wide and pricedepressed market.

Either way now is a Gilded Age for the gun business.

Midday in the Gun Club of Good and Primeval The national debate over gun laws tugs as hard on the emotions of gun violence victims as it does on the convictions of those who advocate for the right to keep and bear arms.

Just ask Robert Butler, legislative director of South Carolina GrassRoots GunRights, perhaps the state’s most hardcore pro-gun organization.

Behind heavily fortified gates at a private gun club in southern Lexington County, a random clap of gunshots punctuates Butler’s sentences like exclamation points.

“The saddest thing about the gun-control debate is the fact that it’s waged on an emotional level as opposed to an intellectual level,” Butler says. “Because if it were waged on an intellectual level we wouldn’t be having this debate. The other side would be laughed out of the room.”

Somewhere on the 25-acre compound, a

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round pops and echoes across red clay hills at the site. Then another. He doesn’t flinch.

Butler has a thick beard and glasses with dark reflective lenses. He wears overalls under a sweatshirt with an illustration on it of a bird trying to swallow a frog as the frog tries to strangle the bird. “Never give up,” it reads. His business card features the motto of GrassRoots GunRights: “No Surrender, No Compromise.” And, should you overhear him talking about his gun collection, well, it might conjure thoughts of the kind of guy you’d want to be friends with if the Russians invaded Red Dawn style.

Started in the late ‘90s, GrassRoots

fact, he wishes he were fishing.

Butler’s take on why people are increasingly trying to wrap their hands around a pistol grip is darkly tinged.

“People are finally starting to realize that we don’t live in a world filled with only good people,” he says. “There are evil people in this world. And when you run into an evil person, the only person that has the power to be able to make sure that no harm occurs is that evil person … unless you’re armed.”

When criminals know there are more people carrying concealed weapons, Butler believes it forces those criminals to play a form of Russian roulette. “The bad guys don’t

He said he’d have to pre-screen me over the telephone to make sure I’d be a good fit for his class. I raised an eyebrow.

“We don’t train crazies,” Katz says. “We don’t train bigots. We want to train you [in] what to do when the world has fallen apart around you and you need to take care of yourself.”

He’s not talking about a visit from the four horsemen of the apocalypse. But when you’re being attacked, he says, your body goes through certain physical reactions. Time slows down. And your world really can feel like it’s coming apart.

Shooting your gun, then, should only be

know who out here has a concealed weapons permit,” he says.

“It’s not possible to know when a crazed, suicidal maniac is going to decide that he wants to create a large body count to be his legacy,” he adds. “We can’t stop these people from starting to shoot. But we do have the power to stop them before their body counts get large. And the only way to do that is to have armed good guys somewhere able to protect [themselves]. So why are we ignoring the reality of what a concealed weapons permit holder could do to help?”

a desperate last best chance to stay alive, Katz says. It should never be the first answer to any problem.

If my road to gun ownership was paved with preconceptions, then so much for those.

Katz comes from an anti-gun family and grew up in New York. He lived in the Midwest for a while and then taught English at the University of South Carolina. In our first conversation he jokingly referred to himself as “probably the only liberal in Columbia with a handgun.” He invited me to join a SaturdaySunday class that he and his wife Janet were teaching June 13-14. It would begin at a private shooting club 20 miles east of Columbia, a place frequented by SLED agents, FBI agents and judges.

SLED requires applicants to receive a minimum of eight in-person teaching hours to qualify for a permit. The National Rifle Association recommends 10. The course I took lasted 10 hours on the first day (classroom portion and testing) and two hours on the second (range shooting qualifications). As I did not have my own gun to use in the course, the Katzes loaned me a 9 mm Glock. The

Other examples of wares offered at the gun show.

GunRights is a nonprofit membership-based group. Asked the number of people who are members of it, Butler says he gives out that information “on a need-to-know basis” and describes it as the largest pro-gun organization in the state.

For people like Butler, the right to own guns should be automatic. No application, no training courses, no background check, no pay to play.

For him, like many gun owners, the mantra is “more guns, less crime.” It’s less a bumper sticker slogan than a straight-up statistic, he insists, one bolstered by a book of the same name by author John Lott that serves as the bible for much of the pro-gun movement.

Butler is also a registered lobbyist on behalf of gun rights. But he doesn’t think of himself as the kind of slick-shoed, accessbased hack who would play up his relationship with a lawmaker. Instead, he prefers to keep those making the laws squarely in his political crosshairs. Butler claims one client and one client only: gun owners. And when he goes to the State House he might wear a suit and tie but he wishes he didn’t have to. In

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“When the world has fallen apart around you … ” Butler’s argument intrigued this journalist enough that I wanted a closer look into the culture of those carrying concealed weapons. So I started looking for trainers offering courses nearby to obtain a permit. A Google search led me to a company called Paladin Services, and after some phone tag I got hooked up with a man named Joe Katz.

course cost $85.

Because some in the class worried about their names or likenesses appearing in this article, I promised not to report any specifics about the nine others who were there. What I can say is that they weren’t the kinds of people I expected. When I showed up that Saturday, to put it generally, it was as if I’d walked into a Welcome Wagon party one of my parents’ friends might have held in the early ‘90s in suburban Anywhere, U.S.A. At 27 I was the youngest participant.

We put on nametags.

I filled out a waiver pretty much saying that if I blew my head off it wasn’t anyone’s fault but my own. Then Joe Katz told us that he hoped we never had to fire a gun in selfdefense. He said we should never try and be a hero. But if the day ever came when our world broke apart, when there was some brutal force trying to take our lives or the lives of those around us — when our hands shook and our hearts raced — then we would remember Joe’s voice and exactly what he told us to do.

If that day ever comes I will hear that voice.

“When the course is over,” Joe Katz said, “We’ll feel comfortable turning our backs on you with a concealed weapons permit.”

By 3 p.m. on Sunday everyone in the class had qualified to carry a concealed weapon.

We had each passed a 50-question, closedbook SLED test featuring true/false, multiple choice and written sections and an open-book NRA quiz. We had shot 50 rounds at a paper target from various distances under a hot sun.

And we had proven to our instructors that we were responsible people able to handle weapons that were capable of destroying lives.

I still can’t say whether I’ll ever own a handgun. Maybe if the stock market takes another nosedive, my neighbor is once again robbed at gunpoint or my president, whoever he or she is at the time, says they want to take away my right to buy arms at a gun show.

But going through the process of being allowed to carry a concealed weapon was unforgettable. And the knowledge I retained from the experience, as useful as it is, I hope I’ll never have to use.

Back at the June 14 gun show at the Fairgrounds, someone is selling a T-shirt with a picture on it of an AR-15 semiautomatic machine gun. “Because the next war for independence won’t be fought with muskets,” reads a caption underneath the image.

At the next booth over a man rolls his eyes. “It’s the wrong execution of the right idea,” he says, lamenting it as the kind of stereotype that gives the gun rights community a bad name.

There are plenty of people who demonize firearms enthusiasts as “gun nuts.” In that I won’t participate. And in South Carolina, I am hardly alone.

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