My conversation with Victor Bean (Florida Gun Show Owner)
Posted December 16th, 2007 by coplen187
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I called Victor Bean the other day. Most of you know him as the gun show owner that turned Ron Paul supporters away. I left a message telling him that I was writing an online article about the situation, and I had about 5 missed calls from him before I was actually around to answer. While I know that many of us have already made up our minds about Mr. Bean, (I know I had) he actually had some important things to say.
1. He used to live in Dr. Paul's congressional district and says that he is actually a fan of Ron Paul's.
2. He says that he only asked the Paulites to leave because of the constant chanting and large groups blocking pathways.
3. He said that he has had this problem since October, and he has tried to be civil about it (you must remember that he is not making any money on political tables, and that he is a businessman.)
In light of this, I asked him if he would allow Paul supporters back and at first he said no. But then I pursuaded him to allow Paul supporters again as long as the supporters are not constantly chanting, and as long as we operate the table and tell some of our more fervent supporters to not yell and carry-on. I would like to believe that us Paul supporters were the most well behaved group in the world. Truth is that while we are very civil and polite for the most part, we are also some of the roudiest political junkies one could meet. The Talahasee meet-up group needs to be contacted, and so if anyone has contact info, please pass this on.
Kyle Coplen
Rochester, Indiana
P.S No more threatening or intimidating phone calls to Mr. Bean. This only hurts our future of attending and working at his gun shows.
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Bad Manners...?
At a recent gun show that our group worked, one of the attendees was outright rude to us. When asked why, he said that at another gun show the previous weekend the RP supporters were very rude to him. He said that, as a veteran, he felt that some of the chants, etc were very anti-veteran (as opposed to just anti-illegal war). He said that they were just basically obnoxious and turned people off. With that kind of thing going on, I don't know that I would blame these gun show operators for banning political groups. (By the way, after much discussion with this gentleman, I do believe that we will be able to count on his vote for RP.)
I realize that it's very easy to get enthusiastic about RP's message....We just need to be sure that we're not offending potential recruits/voters. Please BE NICE out there when we're trying to drum up support. There are plenty of places to vent anger (at the media, for example) but anger does not attract people to the cause.
Just one little example from our corner of the revolution. Overall, I think gun shows are a GREAT place to spread the RP news so keep up the good work!