Lethal Passage_ The Story of a Gun - Erik Larson [79]
During one of several visits to a gun show in Frederick, Maryland, I stood at one dealer’s table beside a man and his young son who, like me, were intently watching a promotional video produced by Power-Plus, a maker of exotic ammunition. The narrator, dressed in a dark T-shirt and speaking in that laconic backcountry drawl that characterizes today’s notion of toughness, demonstrated his company’s rounds by firing a sample of each into a fresh block of yellowish gelatin, with the camera then cutting to offer a close side-view of the depth of penetration and the jagged wound channel coursing through the translucent plasma. Each round was more destructive than the last, until the narrator fired a sample of the company’s Annihilator high-explosive bullets, which slammed into the gelatin, exploded, and knocked the quivering block from its stand. Anyone wondering who might use such a bullet need only look to John Hinckley, who used a similar bullet marketed under the brand name Devastator in his attack on Ronald Reagan. Only one of the bullets he fired did actually explode, much to the benefit of Reagan, who did not even realize he had been shot, but to the lasting detriment of James Brady, in whose brain that one bullet happened to perform as intended.
The Power-Plus narrator moved on to demonstrate the company’s Multi-Plex rounds, which launched anywhere from two to four bullets from a single cartridge. An Alabama mail-order ammunition dealer described these bullets in its catalog as “an outstanding choice for home defense.”
As if all this weren’t enough, our narrator next demonstrated the effects of the company’s bullets on a pail packed with clay. This time those of us watching were treated to the additional audio enticement of hearing the wet slapping sound of the clay as the bullets entered, fragmented, and ruptured the surrounding muck, gouging caverns the size of pumpkins.
“Still watching, Son?” the father asked softly, his hands resting on his son’s shoulders.
His son, clearly entranced, nodded slowly.
Gun shows are marvelous places to capture a feel for America’s gun culture. The moment I stepped from my car, I saw a middle-aged man with a well-developed paunch sauntering toward the show entrance. He was dressed in a short-sleeve shirt and loose, wrinkled slacks and looked like a TV producer’s dream image of the average suburban American male—except, that is, for the black Colt AR-15 assault rifle slung over his shoulder.
The show occupied two buildings at the Frederick County fairgrounds. A few men walked the aisles wearing little signs on their backs listing the guns they owned and wanted to sell. Another man had stuck a FOR SALE sign in the barrel of the rifle dangling at his back. Seated behind battered fold-down tables, dealers sold guns, books, accessories, and ammunition, even those hard-to-find .50-caliber rounds needed for long-range sniper rifles and battlefield machine guns. Several dealers sold books on how to kill and, for those who knew how already, how to do it more effectively, including books on how to make silencers, military manuals on how to make booby traps, black-covered Army manuals on how to make “improvised munitions,” and a nifty little tome courtesy of the Pentagon on how to brush up on your sniper skills.
One dealer offered a Browning heavy machine gun complete with tripod. A thin, balding clerk wearing a black T-shirt commemorating the 1992 “Machine Gun Shoot” told me the gun worked and asked, was I interested?
“I don’t have the tax stamp,” I said. (I was referring here to the $200 transfer tax any adult must pay before acquiring a machine gun, a silencer, or any other weapon restricted by the National Firearms Act of 1934.)
“No problem getting one,” he said. “If it’s the cost—think