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The Heckler & Koch 416 .22-caliber rimfire rifle purchased for this column. / Emerson Marcus/RGJ

Written by

Emerson Marcus

Editor’s note: With a national conversation under way about how to reduce gun violence following the Dec. 14 massacre 
in Newtown, Conn., Americans are asking a lot of questions about how firearms are obtained. With the Crossroads of the West Gun Show in town this weekend, we sent a reporter to find out what it’s like to buy a semi-automatic, military-style weapon at a gun show. This is his first-person account:

I purchased and walked out of a gun show Saturday in Reno with a semi-automatic, military-style rifle in less than 30 minutes for under $600.

Whether you feel that is right or wrong — or you think Nevada should tighten or loosen its gun laws — is not relevant to this story.

Everyone seems to have an opinion on this issue.

I was assigned to learn how the process works and write about it.

I’ve never purchased a firearm in my life. I completed Army basic combat training with an M-16 rifle, but I’ve never owned a firearm, nor am I familiar with anything other than the Army’s standard gun.

4:33 p.m. Friday

To educate myself, I started with Jack Ross Ammunition on east Mill Street.

I walked in the ammunition store just as snow began to fall late Friday afternoon.

I introduced myself to the owner. I told him I was married with a wife who was 7 months pregnant and I was interested in purchasing a firearm, which is all true.

He suggested three handheld pistols: M1911, Ruger SR9 and a Mossberg 500. He said the M1911 was the “Cadillac” of pistols, but suggested the Ruger SR9 priced between $400 and $500.

He recommended I check out the Silver Bullet Gun Works on Rock Boulevard, so I did.

I entered the store, and introduced myself the way I did at Jack Ross Ammunition. A seller said this week was one of the worst weeks to buy a gun in recent memory because “something the president said,” probably referring to President Barack Obama’s speech last week at the Sandy Hook Elementary School memorial service. He pointed at a gun rack with only two rifles.

“That rack was filled last week,” he said.

The store owner suggested I buy a Glock pistol and handed me the gun. I looked down the barrel and saw the price tag — $550.

“It’s marked up because all prices on guns have gone up,” he said. “But I’ll sell it to you for the old price of $495 because you just came from Jack Ross.”

After talking with him for about 15 minutes, I told him I would have to think about it. I thanked him and left.

9:08 a.m. Saturday

The line of cars was more than 15 deep to enter the parking lot at the Reno-Sparks Convention Center for the Crossroads of the West Gun Show.

The truck immediately in front of me had a NRA logo and a bumper sticker that read “Build Buy Be American.” It also had a Dale Earnhardt No. 3 logo in the back window.

I paid the $7 parking pass and $10 admission. Once in, I didn’t waste my time — I priced all the semiautomatic rifles of different vendors.

I left out the small talk from Friday and went straight for the steel.

Crossroads attracts more than 407,000 customers to its traveling gun show each year, more than any other gun show in America, according to its website. Obama’s speech last week vowing to use “whatever power this office holds” to engage Americans to prevent similar massacres made for interesting side conversations. Discussions on the nation’s mental health, the media and president were as prevalent as guns on racks.

One Las Vegas seller had M4-carbine rifles starting in the low $1,000s and exceeding $3,000. My budget was $750.

The seller said the M4 rifles — similar to the one the Newtown gunman used — were “well out of my price range” with recent demand leading to surging prices. He said “prices will more than double in the next 90 days — I guarantee it.”

He had two semiautomatic rifles in my price range. One of them sold while I was in line. That left one military-styled rifle: the German-manufactured Heckler & Koch 416 .22-caliber rimfire rifle.

I got the salesman’s attention and asked for the gun.

“OK. Let’s ring up the young man,” he said.

They asked me to move from the display section to the purchase area in the back. The stand was about 25-feet long and about 10 feet wide with a constant customer flow surrounding it.

He asked me to fill out a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms transaction form. As I filled out the form, the seller took my driver’s license and told me he was calling Nevada Highway Patrol dispatch on his cellphone to run my background check.

The transaction was completed in about 15 minutes with a $25 charge for the background check.

I asked, “What happens if I don’t pass the background check?” He said, “Then you don’t get your ID back” and laughed.

I paid $595 for the gun, and he handed it to me in its cardboard box.

10:25 a.m. Saturday

After I made my purchase, I put the gun in my car and read every manual in the box, including the instructions, a firearms safety guide and a sheet of paper explaining the gun lock that came with the firearm.

I then went back into the gun show to browse the vendor displays.

I noticed some of the non-firearm items. Just as the side conversations, many of the items were political.

Obama was side-by-side on small posters with Mao Zedong, Joseph Stalin and Adolph Hitler. In another poster, Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin directed an army of Bolsheviks with the date 1917, with Obama on the right half directing a similar unruly mob with the date 2012 — each with the slogan “Forward.”

One stand sold T-shirts that read “Bullets First, Come and Take It” and “Land of the Free” with a map of the United States made up of different firearms.

According to the neck tags, the two shirts were made in

Haiti and Nicaragua, respectively.

Those “gun nut” stereotypes re-emerged.

I don’t think the people at the gun show are bad for being gun enthusiasts — none of them fired at innocent children in an elementary school

But I feel safer outside the gun show.

And for that reason, I don’t want to own a gun.