Gun buyers and gun control activists crossed paths at a Pembroke Pines gun show
There were two kinds of people milling about in front of the Charles F. Dodge City Center in Pembroke Pines on Saturday. Some carried freshly bought ammunition and firearms — with the tips of rifle barrels sometimes poking out of plastic wrapping — while others waved homemade signs calling for gun reform.
That was the contrast on display when a controversial two-day gun show opened its doors just a week after 31 people were killed in mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio.
“I’m kind of in mourning,” said protester Rosann Roxy Jentes, who works in Pembroke Pines. “Thirty-one people were killed last weekend. People are still having burials. But here we are, at just another gun show. It’s appalling.”
At 19, Daniel Zemon was too young to purchase guns at the show — as of last year, you have to be 21 in Florida to buy firearms. He went to the event just to look and talk to people, a handful of whom, like him, wore clothing with Trump insignia. He recognizes the timing of the show isn’t ideal, but he says it’s possible to make too much of it.
“The show was planned months ago, way before the shootings happened,” he said. “Those were terrible, but it’s not relevant to what’s happening over here. People aren’t for mass shootings. They are just coming out to look at guns.”
Like Jentes, a handful of the protesters on hand Saturday had gone to a commission meeting in Pembroke Pines earlier in the week. There, commissioners said that, though they don’t want the gun show in Pembroke Pines, the city signed a contract with the event’s promoter, Florida Gun Shows, in January.
“Some of the commissioners acted like they really cared, like they didn’t have a choice, but they contracted in January,” Jentes said. “That was after Pulse nightclub. That was after Marjory Stoneman Douglas.”
The site of this weekend’s gun show sits only 30 minutes away from the Parkland high school where Nikolas Cruz killed 17 students last year. In addition to welcoming several weapons dealers — event organizers say all of them are licensed and adhere to regulations that require background checks — the gun show is also playing host to a Republican Party voter registration drive.
Candace Larman, from Coral Springs, has been going to gun shows for years. She says she’s a history buff, and is drawn to antique firearms and the stories they tell. “I’ve been around firearms my whole life. [...] At gun shows there’s tables, there’s people. Everybody is very friendly; it’s not like an intimidating environment,” she said.
Saturday was the first time she encountered protesters on the way in. As she watched over a heated discussion between protesters and patrons, she said people need to “come together and talk about the issues” to figure out a way forward.
Short moments of confrontation weren’t uncommon outside the Dodge City Center on Saturday.
“People have gone past me saying ‘Haha, I’ve got 3,000 ammos.’ Another one said, ‘I have three guns in here.’ When he said that I guess I made a comment about ‘You’re overcompensating,’” Jentes said.
Another protester, Lourdes Diaz, didn’t shy away from arguments, but she said she was concerned about safety.
“I was scared to come here,” she said. “I was just hoping that we don’t have any fanatics that come like what happened in El Paso, because that could happen.”
On his way out from the gun show, with a new pig-hunting rifle tucked under his arm, William Hopkins said he wasn’t concerned by the protesters’ “agenda”
“I know that agenda because I grew up in Cuba, a communist country,” he said. “I always come to gun shows to exercise our Second Amendment right that protects us from them.”
Another man who also got a gun Saturday said he was motivated to come by the same event that spurred on the protesters: last weekend’s mass shootings.
“The shooting last weekend and the protest is honestly one of the reasons I made it a point to come today,” he said. “Because if I hadn’t seen a thing on the news about how they tried to shut it down, I probably wouldn’t have come.”
The man, wearing a T-shirt with the words “2nd Amendment” on it, gave only his first name: Mike. He had driven 45 minutes from Homestead to support the show.
This story was originally published August 10, 2019 at 5:24 PM with the headline "Gun buyers and gun control activists crossed paths at a Pembroke Pines gun show."
