Home from the National Rifle Association's Annual Meeting

And there was nothing quite so invigorating as spending 3 days in the company of 50,000 78,000 great American citizens who enjoy the shooting sports and support the Second Amendment.

I've got lots of pics, but here's a few for a start, just to give you a rough idea what the exhibit hall looked like. (Gun-hating liberals who might have found this page by accident, be sure that you've taken your blood pressure meds and that you're sitting on something that won't be ruined when it gets wet.)

Six acres of exhibits were here, consisting of booths and displays from virtually anybody who is anybody in the firearms and sport-shooting industry.

And who comes to see this stuff? Why, any NRA member who wants to...and fifty thousand seventy-eight thousand of them did, from all across America. Reportedly, every hotel for miles around Nashville was completely booked.

As much as the anti-gun crows likes to try to claim that gun owners are just a bunch of "angry white males", the crowd shots here tell a different story. Look at the women clearly visible in most every shot. Women were everywhere here, browsing and checking out guns and gear right along with the men.

And kids...lots of kids there, too. Nice to see tomorrow's generation of shooters getting started young.

Young and old, male and female, every ethnic group represented...true "average Americans" all united in pro-gun camaraderie and each one here on their own dime because they like this stuff and wanted to be here...So much more representative of America than this tiny group of a hundred or so protesters in the park a mile or so away, all wearing matching t-shirts that some deep-pocket anti-gun shill group bought for them. And half of that group was kids who were probably dragged out there by their mothers just to serve as props. Of course they got the news stories all week-end while the same media basically ignored the pro-gun majority inside and around the convention center.

Personally, I thought that it was great to be around so many like-minded people, all of whom seemed to be in a great mood. But again, it's really hard to be unhappy when you're surrounded by fellow gun-loving Americans in a sea of guns.

All these gun owners in one place...tens of thousands of them surrounded by guns on display as well as the ones that many brought with them.

A good time was had by all...and what a surprise--no one got shot anywhere near the convention center or the downtown area despite all of those armed citizens and guns everywhere.

Even Nashville's Finest seemed to be enjoying themselves.

I talked to a number of the police officers that were there, both inside and outside of the convention center, and all of them remarked about how orderly and friendly the crowd was. No problems reported and no convention-related arrests as far as the ones that I spoke to knew. One said that he almost never works big events because of the anti-cop attitude that large groups usually display, but that sort of thing was totally absent from this group, according to him. Another said that officers were literally begging to come work this event just because it's such easy money due to the overwhelming number of decent, law-abiding type of people here...plus guns! Most cops are gun folks too, and who doesn't like to get paid premium pay to look at guns?


Of course there was one protester there. He showed up and began pointing at us gun owners and proclaiming that we were all going to go to prison when Hillary takes office on 2017, but even he didn't get shot...the most interesting man in the world just ran him off with a plastic sword.