CHANTILLY, Va. – President Barack Obama is expected to meet with Attorney General Loretta Lynch Monday to discuss ways he could use executive action to expand gun restrictions.
But not everyone likes the idea, and many gun owners, collectors and advocates are showing their displeasure by heading out to the nearest gun show.
“Obama,” Roger Gooden explained as his reason for being at the Dulles Gun Show in Chantilly on Sunday with a chuckle. “Nah, me and my daughter shoot and collect guns and because of his policies — and you never know what the heck he is going to do with his executive orders — just adding to the collection.”
Gooden says he bought his first gun when he was 14. He’s now in his fifties and only owned no more than nine guns — until recently.
“Since Obama’s been in office, I’ve gone from nine to close to 50 (guns),” he said. “It’s just every time something happens and he [President Obama] starts running his mouth, it’s like ‘Well, let’s go to the gun show.”
Others weren’t as politically motivated to make the trip to the gun show.
“It started out with a basic handgun,” Dave Darling shared. “They’re like tattoos. When you get one, you want more.”
But he, too, is no fan of the president’s plan or strategy to reduce violence.
“People aren’t getting shot to death in Texas because everyone carries guns. It’s places like California that are very liberal,” said Darling.
Richard Graham decided to go with his buddies to the Dulles Expo Center to see what was there after a morning of shooting.
“I think he’s an idiot,” Graham said of Obama, with a smile and a chuckle. “That’s all I’m going to say.”
His friend, Chris Dugan, had a more direct reason for making the trip from Woodbridge to Chantilly on Sunday. “I’m just kinda shoving it in Obama’s face.”
Dugan says background checks are important and necessary to ensuring only qualified people have access to firearms, but he feels that more gun ownership would keep the country safe.
“These guys with the guns that are going and blowing people away in the malls and in movie theaters, if they thought that everybody else had a gun,” he offered, “they’d think twice about doing that.”
