Gun Show Enthusiasts Feel Under Siege by Opponents : Weapons: People at Ventura event defend their interests and say they are misunderstood. ‘The public is being brainwashed,’ says one. ‘We’re being unfairly treated by the press.’

Dick Corrente, now middle-aged, grew up on guns.

As a child, he carried his .22-caliber pistol wherever he went. Heck, he said, everyone carried a gun in Ventura in those days.

These days he’s getting a little nervous.

For now, the gun show at Seaside Park, where Corrente sold firearms Saturday, is safe from closure. But with gun shows forced off Los Angeles County property by the Board of Supervisors, Corrente and others are afraid that it’s only a matter of time before politicians latch onto the issue elsewhere, maybe even here.

“I think we’re stuck on the wrong end of a bad argument,” he said. “It’s political pandering. People think we’re giving permits to drunks and crazy guys.”

At the Ventura County gun show Saturday, where thousands of enthusiasts streamed through the gates, owners and dealers admitted that in a culture still reeling from shootings in Colorado and Granada Hills, theirs isn’t always a popular stance.

They are feeling besieged. And they insist that they are misunderstood, lumped together in the public mind with tragic incidents covered intensely by the media.

“I think it’s mind control,” said Frank Barnyak, the former owner of Great Western Shows. “The public is being brainwashed. We’re being unfairly treated by the press, who only feed on the worst-case scenarios.”

Though Barnyak is no longer involved with the firm, Great Western recently sponsored a show at the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds in Pomona where federal investigators arrested a vendor who allegedly sold machine gun parts. But such apparent problems, Barnyak said, represent a fraction of the law-abiding owners and dealers he used to see at his shows.

Further legislation is merely a political show, he said. The laws are already on the books, he insists; the government just needs to enforce them.

Pat McCann, the Ventura event’s promoter, said the show is highly regulated: Children under 18 are not admitted without an adult. A licensed dealer must be involved in any transaction, and buyers cannot claim their guns until background checks are done.

Ventura County, which tends to be conservative and Western in its outlook, still seems firmly in favor of guns and this five-times-a-year show.

Vendors said that cities like Los Angeles may ban gun shows but that the idea won’t sell in Ventura yet.

“The only place the anti-gun lobby makes strides is in the city,” Corrente said. “In rural areas, they’d laugh you right out.”

On the first day of the weekend show, enthusiasts in camouflage mingled with families pulling children in wagons. Eddie Eagle--the National Rifle Assn. mascot geared to children--was on as many T-shirts as was the NRA motto, “Guns don’t kill people, people do.”

Here, where a man could wear a gun strapped across his back, gun owners felt like they belonged.

It’s the rest of the world that sometimes seems out of step.

“I feel a little oppressed,” said Frank Kiefer of Moorpark. “This is all about who’s screaming the loudest.”