PEACHVILLE, Ga. (CAP) - From rusty pickups to cherry Harleys to hulking Hummers, Earl's Gun-Porium in Peachville has seen a wide range of vehicles parked outside its camouflaged doors, but owner Earl LaMotte is still surprised by what's been showing up in his parking spaces of late.
Volvos.
"Used to be my doors would swing open and in would come a good old boy in a wife-beater or flannel shirt," Earl says. "Now it's more often than not a doctor or lawyer in a fruity sweater with Chinos or tennis shorts, polluting the place up with their Sex In The City ring tones."
Earl shrugs. "Long as their money's green, what do I care?"
What Earl LaMotte has been seeing in his Peachville store over the past few months has been happening in gun shops and at gun shows across the country: liberals are starting to arm up. Unlike the right, who have also been buying weapons and ammo in record numbers since the November election, the left is not afraid that the government may soon restrict sales or actually start to come after gun owners.
No, the left fears one thing: the right.
"Well, geez Louise, you've got Chuck Norris and Glenn Beck and all of them stoking up their base with talk of revolution and secession and the like, and it's got me and mine scared," says Tom Morris, a professor of physics at the University of Vermont. He lingers over a Starbucks latte, a shopping list laden with armaments on the table in front of him.
"My reasons for purchasing weapons are actually two-fold," Morris says. "One, if 20% of the right, the hard-core dead-enders, are arming to the teeth, who do you suppose they're going to be using those guns on? According to talk radio, I'm the enemy because I voted for Obama, so that certainly makes me a target. And two, if I buy a few guns, that's a few less guns in the hands of a man with a Kill Em All, Let God Sort Em Out bumper-sticker on his truck."
The buying spree by both left and right has resulted in record prices for items such as assault rifles, ammunition and handguns, with many stores experiencing stocking problems.
"Left, right, they both seem to like the assault rifles, and the upper shelf ammo, the armor piercers, hollow points and stuff like that," Earl LaMotte says. "I've had trouble keeping up with some of that stuff. Other items, like targets, have been better. Conservatives like themselves a nice target with Arabs or Mexicans on them, while the liberals like to shoot at Dick Cheney targets for some reason."
Gun companies are taking advantage of the left's interest in firearms by expanding their advertising into an area they previously wouldn't have dreamed of trying: the liberal media.
"The NY Times Review of Books ran a Dostoyevsky retrospective a couple of weeks ago, and so naturally we blanketed that week's issue with Kalashnikov AK-47 ads," says Mo Hardover, owner of the Manhattanite Mitiaman, a NYC gun shop. "We ran out of all Russian-made rifles in something like three days. It was unreal."
The phenomenon of liberal arming has become so pervasive that it has also reached into the fabled left-wing power center of Hollywood, with celebrities such as Whoopi Goldberb and Seth Rogan announcing plans to launch their own designer handgun labels in time for this year's holiday season.
"We're calling it Gatts by Goldberg, sugar, and you know that when it comes to weapons, Whoopi's not gonna steer you wrong," the actress recently confirmed to CAP News.
- Rich Gray
Contributing Writer