Official count of attendees has been announced, and it went over 81,000.\u00a0 That\u2019s 81,000 people who came to Atlanta on their own dime, against a few buses full of protesters, many of them doubtless paid to be there.\u00a0 None of whom were at the Convention Center, though it seemed they got about as much publicity as the 81,000 law abiding gun owners.\u00a0 Sigh\u2026<\/p>\n
Overall mood of the conference?\u00a0 Solidarity, a definite post-November 2016 victory dance\u2026and enough complacency to worry about.\u00a0 We won a battle, not the culture war that the other side wages on the gun debate.<\/p>\n
Sales are down, but in perspective, the general consensus of the industry is that it isn\u2019t a slump, but a return to normalcy.\u00a0 We\u2019ve had a reprieve from a Presidential candidate who demonized guns and their owners. The mad rush to stock up on gun and ammo prior to the election was caused not a panic, but a perfectly logical rush to buy legal firearms before they were banned by malum prohibitum <\/em>feel-good fiats by what would have been the most anti-gun (and anti-gun owner) President in history had she not been defeated.<\/p>\n Atlanta proved to be a very welcoming city.\u00a0 I drove there, but was told that at the airport, there were \u201cWelcome NRA\u201d signs.\u00a0 If you live in California or Maryland or New Jersey, remember that Georgia accepts refugees.<\/p>\n Some had been worried about \u201cantifas,\u201d the violent self-proclaimed \u201canti-fascists\u201d who have physically attacked Republicans, Trump supporters, etc. elsewhere.\u00a0 The antifas were notable by their absence.\u00a0 I\u2019m told one of their mottos is \u201cPut Your Fist In A Fascist\u2019s Face,\u201d their definition of \u201cfascist\u201d being anyone they disagree with.\u00a0 How ironic that they don\u2019t understand their behavior is the very exemplar of fascism.<\/p>\n Perhaps they thought if they tried to \u201cPut a Fist in the Face\u201d of an NRA member, they might get a response of \u201cBlast a Bullet Into a Brainless Bully\u2019s Butt.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Official count of attendees has been announced, and it went over 81,000.\u00a0 That\u2019s 81,000 people who came to Atlanta on their own dime, against a few buses full of protesters, many of them doubtless paid to be there.\u00a0 None of whom were at the Convention Center, though it seemed they got about as much publicity […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":6428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4169","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-current-events"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}