Welcome to the gun show: America's loudest and proudest

We visited one of America's loudest and proudest gun shows to find out what it is people love about the weapons so much.

At this American gun show, even the national anthem comes with an added kick: artillery.

The firepower is astounding and people come from everywhere to watch and to take part.

"We have people coming from all over the world," says gun lover James Johnson.

"Japan, Australia, they come from all over the world. Scotland. Canada. Every place where guns are banned, they come to the Unites States to shoot."

Gun enthusiasts wait for years to get on this firing line - to make Swiss cheese out of old fridges, cars and boats.

Yet ironically, this is one area where there is gun control in the US.
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"I come to watch, maybe buy and sell," says gun show regular Tim Cole. "Talk to other like minded people."

"Cause there’s a lot of people out here like me. They enjoy the aspects of the firearms and the nice precision machinery.

"Everything that they’ve tried - the assault rifle ban - that didn’t work. All of the major things.

"It’s just been an inconvenience for law abiding citizens, and its not really done anything against crime."

Even if it was easy to buy fully automatic weapons - where you just hold down the trigger and spray the area - it’s a very expensive hobby.

Semi-automatics - which load automatically, but you have to pull the trigger to fire each round - are much easier to get. Still, gun dealers say the rules are strict enough.
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Brian Zawistowski from DEX Tactical Arms is one of these dealers and thinks the blame relating to gun crime is being misplaced.

"We’ve gone through all the legal channels like selling it and following the rules and everything like that," he says.

"And if somebody decides to do something then that’s something we can’t control.

"I use this argument, how could you hold a car manufacturer responsible if someone goes and kills themselves or someone else drunk driving?

"You can’t really blame the person who makes the car." 

Hillary Clinton wants to ban assault rifles and to add tougher background checks and more measures to stop domestic abusers and violent criminals getting guns - all modest proposals by Australian standards.

But despite 11,000 gun murders a year, tougher laws remain elusive - and these people might have something to do with it.

"We believe in the second amendment," says Byron Fisher, Executive Director of the Jefferson County Republican Party.  

"That’s one of our core principles. And we’re trying to spread the word, get volunteers, that sort of thing."
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Now this is Donald Trump country. It’s overwhelmingly white, it’s mostly male and nobody here wants more gun control, which is what Hillary Clinton is promising.

No surprise then that the Republicans have a presence here.

"This is a core constituency," says Bryon.

"I think we do need to reach out to everyone, but it could go both ways.

"The Democratic Party should reach out to the so called 'angry white men'.

"That’s a part of the reason they have lost so much in the south, it's because they no longer speak to the issues that Kentuckians care about, that southern white people care about.

"And that is guns."
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By SBS Staff
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