Gun Show Still a Draw for Firearms Fans : Weapons: Thousands of sellers, buyers and browsers attend first day of Ventura event, which goes on as usual amid shifting politics and public perceptions.

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

As a child, he carried his .22 pistol with him 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 Ventura’s Seaside Park, where Corrente sold guns Saturday, is not going anywhere.

But with gun shows forced out of Los Angeles County after a vote last month by the Board of Supervisors, Corrente and others are afraid it’s only a matter of time before politicians latch onto the issue elsewhere, maybe even here.

“I don’t feel beleaguered, yet. But 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, in which thousands of enthusiasts streamed through the park’s 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’re feeling besieged. And they insist they’re misunderstood.

Frank Barnyak is the former owner of the Great Western Gun Show.

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 Barnyak, who is no longer involved with Great Western, said such examples represent a small fraction of the law-abiding owners and dealers who attended his shows.

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

Pat McCann, the Ventura event’s promoter, said gun shows are 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 after a background check.

It’s intense news coverage of tragic incidents that helps to wrongly portray the gun community, Barnyak said.

“I think it’s mind control,” he said. “The public is being brainwashed. We’re being unfairly treated by the press, who only feed on the worst-case scenarios.”

Ventura County, which tends to be conservative, still seems firmly in favor of guns and this five-times-a-year show. Vendors said cities like Los Angeles may ban gun shows, but that idea won’t sell here 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.”

Saturday’s gun show brought plenty of people in from Los Angeles County, officials said.

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

Frank Kiefer of Moorpark wore a chain with a spent bullet casing. Gage Olson of Ojai shopped for more guns to add to his collection of several dozen. Ken Nichols of Santa Barbara brought his 8-year-old son, Austin, whose nose barely reached the table where rows of rifles lay.

Here, where a man could wear a gun strapped across his back or sight a rifle by pointing it in the air close to the guy next to him, gun owners could feel like they belonged. And like it’s the rest of the world that sometimes seems out of step.

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