The Gun Show

I've never held a gun. I did "riflery" at Camp Orkila as a kid, but when you hand a bb gun to a 13-year-old wearing a tie-dye shirt, there are a few confederate soldiers who might like a word with you about using the term "riflery" so casually. Or maybe not. The 1860s weren't exactly a hotbed of safe and harmonious activities for Americans.

If my circle of people encountered someone with a gun, we would shout "Oh fuck, someone with a gun is here" and not "Hurray! Someone with a gun is here!" I grew up in a family who didn't have guns and they had their reasons of not wanting them around future generations. My parents were both within six degrees of gun experiences that weren't pleasant, stories I didn't find out until I was almost 30. Me personally, I've never had a bad experience with a gun that would have influenced my opinion about them one way or another. Experiences were exposed to me, however, that turned me into someone who isn't necessarily anti-gun, but someone who is anti-certain-type-of-person with a gun, or anti-military-grade-weapons-available-to-the-general-public. The instances I'm speaking about are the mass shootings at schools, concerts, and nightclubs, places where people of any background or history should feel safe and not feel scared of other Americans who turn their political beliefs into violent cries for help. One might say the new millennium hasn't exactly been a hotbed of safe and harmonious activities for today's Americans, either.

When I was teaching last year, I taught one of my classes about the second amendment, the one where some 18th century guys with syphilis said that we (men) had the right to bear arms (shitty muskets) as long it was well regulated (not regulated at all). I explained that the legal tenets of our society had not properly forecast the changes in technology over the next 250 years. We no longer fight each other with cannons and death does not arrive via guillotine. I suppose a group of five cannons could be well regulated. You push them off one ship and onto another. You have to pull it by a rope. It's tough to lose them. You'll always know if it's loaded, god forbid a cannon gets into the wrong hands.

This piece of law hasn't aged gracefully and its benefits are often the first straws at which people grab when defending their rights to own a gun. Some people own guns simply because they can. I can legally own a horse, but I don't. I'm sure there's some research out there proving that horses are more deadly than guns, but I'm not clinging to colonial law for my right to own a horse. This is the conversation I imagine people having when making a case for the second amendment:

"I'm going to eat some ice cream, mom!"

"Not right now, Johnny. You'll spoil your supper!"

"BUT DAD SAID I COULD!" 

That's what people sound like, and when I say "people," I mean large white men with a particular rural accent who are somehow deathly afraid the government is going to go door-to-door to make them surrender their semi-automatic ice cream. I'm also not trying to get into a huge debate or an argument about why certain people act the way they do when they're in possession of certain guns. When I spoke with my students about the gun rights in the Czech Republic, they seemed supportive of their laws, probably because there are only an average of 165 gun-related deaths per year. We often equate gun-related deaths to homicide, but this figure includes suicides, hunting accidents, accidental discharges, or improper training. We were able to hold a civil discussion about our countries' differing laws, our views on violence, society, social constructs, and stereotypes, and no one lost an eye or got blocked on Facebook. It didn't boil down to the popular argument of guns vs. mental illness or white men vs. everyone else. Most of them supported the idea of owning a gun simply because of the stricter laws in the country. 

During this class, a student of mine asked me when was the last time the United States had a school shooting. This was the day after Parkland last year. Now I have to clarify which mass shooting I'm talking about. Was it the outdoor concert? Was it the college or the high school? Was it the synagogue or the mosque? There are too many to keep track of. I asked my students when the Czech Republic's last school shooting took place, but they told me they've never had one. 

The Czech Republic has a population of ten million people and it boasts as having less strict gun laws than the rest of the EU nations, but when compared to American gun laws, they're actually fairly comprehensive. Multiple tests need to be passed, you can only own certain types of firearms, and education and licenses must be acquired prior to purchasing a gun. You have to complete on-course training and clear a medical check. I explained the complexity behind gun laws in the US as we have 50 different states, meaning there are 50 different sets of laws and ordinances that are sometimes fully enforced or not enforced at all. Czech people are always mystified by the size of the United States. 350 million people are spread out across a country whose width is equal to the diameter of the moon. Imagine how many guns are in a place like that. 

I don't know a lot about guns. To be honest, mostly what I know about guns comes from the ballistic analysis scenes in Law & Order: SVU. I know about muzzles, gel tests, accuracy vs. precision, the components of a cartridge, etc. But I don't know what they cost, which states have which laws, where to acquire one in which country. I am not the most knowledgable nor the most confident when talking about firearms. I can identify guns, as in I can stand here and say "that is a gun." That's the extent of my education when speaking with people about their collection, arsenal, bunker, stockpile, or whatever.

About two weeks after losing my job last November, I got a call from a Czech "engineering company" I had applied to for a social media management position. He spoke to me in Czech and I greeted him with much poorer Czech, but we continued the conversation in English when he asked if I was American. I told him I was from the States and had been in CZ for a little over a year. He explained they needed a marketing specialist who would be in charge of their social media presence and content creation. I have eight years of experience and they needed someone who spoke English, so it seemed like a perfect fit. But then he asked me, "So let me ask you, how do you feel about guns?" I laughed nervously and gave him a non-answer. "Well I'm American, so..." He laughed and didn't inquire any further. I couldn't tell if asking my opinion about firearms was job-related or the fact that he found out I was American, and as you know, every American is from Texas and obsessed with guns and 1980s butt-rock. He gave me instructions on what to do when I arrive and I scheduled the mysterious job interview into my phone. 

The next week I took two buses way out to the suburbs of Brno. This part of town is mostly factories, warehouses, sanitation facilities, the old airport, giant smokestacks, highways with no crosswalks, weird smells, and trucks with flat faces. I'm no stranger to the public transportation system here and I'm accustomed to looking slightly disheveled whenever I show up somewhere, but I tried to look my best. I wore my nicest flannel to cover my tattoos and my thicker boots to stay warm. After arriving at their facility, the sprawling warehouse campus had no reception but instead had a buzzer with a secured door. I hit the button and introduced myself in bad Czech. A voice responded in actual Czech and buzzed open the door.

There wasn't much to see at first. There was a drop ceiling and some ignored dusty ficus plants in the lobby. I looked out the windows while the sun set behind the smokestacks across the highway I ran across to get there. By 4:30pm Brno was dark but busy with commuters on trams and buses. I toodled around on Facebook and checked the forecast when a guy came out of an office and introduced himself as Jan, the man I spoke to on the phone. He asked me a few questions, like how long I've been doing social media work and how in the everliving fuck did I end up in Brno? The answer to the latter has a million different possibilities and the explanation is usually longwinded, but I've learned to stick with "I traveled through here ten years ago and really liked it" and not "well this tanned tangelo asshole got elected and he threatened to take away my health insurance and the cost of the life-saving medication I'm on has risen 600% in the last 15 years and I couldn't risk it so I moved to your former communist country for the socialized healthcare, cheaper cost of living, and the chance to live for myself and no one else." 

Jan asked about my working status in the country and I explained I could work on my trade license as my visa will be held through IBM, but he didn't tell me much about the job aside from most of the work could be done offsite and I'd be able to work remotely. The nice part about working in social media is that it can be accomplished from anywhere: you're no longer tethered to an office with specific work hours, especially when working for an international company who operates through multiple timezones. While Jan was taking some notes about my trade license, I noticed the pen he was writing with had a bullet casing as a cap, but I smiled and kept my hands in my lap to hide my knuckle tattoos. Jan ended the last sentence he wrote with purpose and led me into another office to meet the owner of the company. I still wasn't sure what it was exactly they produced in their huge warehouse, but as soon as I stepped into the owner's office, it was clear this was not your garden variety Central European engineering plant.

Henrik was an Austrian man who commuted to Brno from Vienna. He drove a BMW and donned a style of simplicity and efficiency. While he finished a phone call with his feet up on his desk, I examined the elk head hanging on the wall behind him. The glass coffee table to my left was stacked with magazines featuring tactical gear and survivalist advice, and the long gun mounted above the door to his office had been recently dusted. He ended the call with an auf wiedersehen and brushed away some loose bullets on his desk to make room for his phone. We greeted each other with a strong but appropriate handshake.

Like Jan, Henrik was curious how I ended up in Brno, but he wasn't satisfied with my "ohh, you know, I just wanted to live somewhere else" answer. I talked about my employment history, my writing skills, my social media work, my "comfortability with public speaking," my life in Seattle, and my knowledge of firearms. While Henrik's company did indeed specialize in engineering, they specifically manufactured firearms. Brno does have a rich history with the military and the weapons developed here to assist with imperialism, so the idea of a functioning firearms manufacturer in the Czech Republic wasn't completely absurd. 

Henrik was impressed with me. He said the difficulty they've had with social media is that gun production must be treated as a sensitive process: it is way more delicate than marketing lightbulbs, charcoal toothpaste, or mobile phones. But he figured with my past experience combined with my native language and commitment to research about an industry on which I knew next to nothing, I was a good fit for the position. I discussed my freelance rate with him and what sort of hours I would be looking at per week, and he told me he'd call me the following day.

I bundled myself up and left for the bus stop. I was happy I had a job with however many hours it would be, but I also didn't feel wildly comfortable discussing the nature of my new position with anyone. I told my parents I got hired with "an engineering company." Prior to making this post, only five people knew what I was doing a few evenings a week while waiting for my start date at IBM. In someways it felt hypocritical to be anti-gun in a very gun country while working for a gun company. I was mostly afraid of the frustration or backlash following the announcement of my new employment. I felt like I was betraying my own beliefs, or that I was so anti-American while living in America that I became even more stereotypically American while not living in America. I should be doing the social media work for a cat cafe or a goat yoga studio or a food truck. Somehow this felt wrong, but also kind of exciting. 

Before I made it to my bus transfer, Henrik called me and asked if I could come back the next day. One of their partners from Bahrain was coming in from Vienna and he saw an opportunity to introduce me to some higher ups. The company was known on an international scale but I didn't realize how quickly I would encounter it without even leaving Brno. Henrik had only just met me an hour ago and he already wants to introduce me to others? I was proud and impressed with myself, even though I was a little fish in a big pond filled with guns. 

Mr. Aabir reminded me of Frankie Sharp from Wayne's World in that he looked like he'd own a stretch limo with a huge antenna on the trunk. At my height, the Bahraini businessman had a messy ponytail and a giant ring on his pinkie finger so I figured he was doing okay for himself. Mr. Aabir didn't know what to do with me right away. He appeared skeptical and hesitant to have a small white woman with tattoos representing a company in which he held more than one stake. Henrik introduced us and the three of us sat around a conference table. Mr. Aabir took the remote for the television and muted the stream of Fox News. He seemed to know his way around the office, or at least seemed to be the type of guy to make himself comfortable wherever he is. Henrik gave him a recap of our talk the day before but his business partner decided to continue the conversation with me in depth. 

"What do you think the gun problem is in America?"

"Can you clarify 'gun problem?'" 

"Americans are known for their guns."

"...I don't think it's a matter of the guns necessarily but more of the hands they get into that are contributing to the violence."

"So you agree that guns aren't the problem?"

I was mildly annoyed but tried my best to maintain professionalism during this meet-and-greet turned sudden political discussion. I continued while trying to keep my new job but still be a faithful bleeding libtard.

"I believe...that the laws in my country did not accurately anticipate the advances in technology or accommodate the changes in our political culture. Unfortunately the documents which give Americans the freedom to own guns also protects them from scrutiny after any tragedy."

Mr. Aabir cocked his head to the side while looking at me, like a puppy trying to find its good ear. 

"Do you own guns?"

"No."

"Did you in America?"

"No."

"What do you know about guns?" 

Fair question.

"I'm familiar with the measurement system and some of the terminology, the main manufacturers--"

"What do you really know about guns?"

"...I'm familiar with the measurement system, some of the terminology." At this point I was more about people accepting my answers and not about giving them what they wanted to hear but this was just the beginning. 

"We have a YouTube channel with videos and some of them have proven to be controversial."

"Controversial how?"

"Marketing firearms can be a sensitive issue. How would you go about marketing a controversial product?" 

"I would strive to focus purely on the mechanics and selling points of the firearm while avoiding politics and current events." 

Mr. Aabir didn't seem satisfied, but Henrik was intrigued. 

"One of our videos has 20,000 comments on them. How long would it take to go through and delete all of the unfortunate and irrelevant commentary?"

I was suddenly doing math I didn't think I'd ever be doing. If I'm on the page of a YouTube video, and I'm scrolling at .035 miles per hour, and each comment takes .5 to 1 inch on my 13 inch screen, how long would it take to completely fabricate an answer to this question?

"If it was just the one video, I could probably do it in a few hours." 

"Really? Just a few hours?"

"Many larger companies with a social media presence do not police online commentary as they know everyone on the internet has an opinion. Engaging or making an attempt to alter genuine interactions can sometimes create even more controversy than the original statement."

Henrik nodded and took some notes, and Mr. Aabir confirmed what he wanted to hear. 

"So if there were...idiotic comments or something of the nature in the comments, it would take you half a day to delete these?"

"Roughly. Again it's best to let other individuals stir up the controversy rather than engage in it ourselves."

"Liz has a good point," Henrik took over. "We simply want to create and monitor our online presence, not create and monitor the controversy of other users." While he seemed to back me up, Henrik also seemed unsure of what he was saying. Mr. Aabir shrugged and told Henrik they would talk. He retrieved an actual briefcase, shook both of our hands, and left without saying anything. Once the door to the conference room was closed, Henrik seemed relieved. "Don't mind Mr. Aabir. He wants to control the internet. Very unrealistic." I smiled. It felt nice to be defended even after my "non-biased" beliefs had surfaced.

My first real task for the company was to do research. If I was going to market firearms successfully, I needed to know more than just the ballistic information Olivia Benson discovers halfway through an episode. As I gained access to their existing accounts and examined their current status, I clearly had a lot of work to do. Most businesses realized the eventual migration towards social media marketing about eight to ten years ago. They created Facebook pages and neglected Twitter accounts. This company had some catching up to do, and two of my previous jobs had also brought me in at the 11th hour for one of two reasons. Sometimes a company realizes they should have been doing this all along, and they need to get caught up while their product or service remains relevant, so companies either a) hire someone to get them caught up because they don't have the time but are aware of the tasks and measures that need to be completed to be successful, or b) they have no idea what to do and I need to do a lot of hand holding to get them up to speed. And with this new position, I discovered it was mostly Part B. 

In the beginning I still didn't feel 100% comfortable with what I was doing. I didn't tell people about my new job and if I did, I chalked it up to doing freelance work for an "engineering company" like I stated earlier. No one really questioned it because a Czech engineering company not utilizing social media doesn't sound like a completely farfetched idea to begin with. As time went on, their demands for success turned from reasonable to unrealistic. Some companies have asked me "We JUST started our social media page last week. Why haven't we gone viral?"Viral. This is a word I've learned to hate. If you look at the reasons behind why some content went viral, it's because it caters to a mindless interest everyone has at the time. Viral content usually fits into a few categories: new media released by a celebrity, an unconventional marketing tactic used by a popular company, a local feel-good story that turns national, or a fad, ie Harlem Shake, where companies make their own version of the original content and it turns out being unnervingly more successful than the first. And then there's the meme. 

Memes are mindless and sharable which contributes to their massive reach within a short time. Memes are visual and they don't need to be read for more than five seconds. They're a disgustingly cheap way to attract an audience because platforms like Facebook make it so easy to digest and regurgitate. You can never run out of content to post on social media if you're a business as long as memes exist. Unfortunately for the firearms industry, a gun meme not only will dumb down the serious nature of the business, but it could ultimately destroy it. Mr. Aabir was right: the firearms industry is sensitive and it needs to remain that way in order to be aware and successful of their customers. You've probably seen a second amendment meme and haven't really thought about it until now, but it was likely successful because it was a meme. If you took that same thought or premise and applied to a regular text Facebook post or a tweet, it would remain innocuous, or at most it would be liked or favorited by your one gun-nut friend. 

Guns are already viral, which makes them difficult to market. The conversations and controversies are already in front of the internet, especially during a time where the school shooting has, and I don't want to say it, become commonplace in the United States. When a new contender for gun manufacturing enters the arena, they want the attention that Beretta or Glock have been receiving. The problem is that Glock and Beretta abandoned the analog ship ten years ago and have cultivated a social media following based on their legacy, the functionality of their products, and the name itself. Henrik would occasionally say to me, "Why does Glock have two million followers on Facebook and we don't?" And it took everything in my power to not respond with, "Because we're not Glock." 

The main pistol we sold was a 7.5 field pistol that sold for $7,500. Even I knew that was a lot for a handgun. The company wanted to emerge internationally as a prestigious manufacturer from a historic area of the Czech Republic. The problem being is that buying a handgun means going through an authorized dealer. You can't buy one off of Amazon and it'll be on your doorstep in two days. It's an experience that must be tested and compared. Only 1,100 of this field pistol are being produced, thus the price and its availability as a limited edition item. The price wasn't the only factor discouraging the public to engage with the gun. There was only one location in the entire United States where you can purchase it: Florida. 

With featured posts on Fridays and Sundays, I made sure to post at internationally friendly timezones for our worldly audience, refrain from engaging with politics or sassy internet comments, and explained the social media process thoroughly as I was executing it. There were times where I needed to explain things such as a hashtag or "trending," which is what I referred to earlier as hand-holding. In order for the company to understand or consent to my process, they also needed to fully understand the content, language, and strategy I was implementing. There were a few times I got frazzled phone calls asking for a further explanation about a certain verb I had used that didn't quite translate into Czech or German. One time I brought them back from the edge and had to ensure them that the verb "produce" was not the final nail in the firearms industry coffin when describing our business.

Over time the demands increased and the expertise I had gained over the last eight years was frivolously dismissed. They were incredibly displeased that our paid ads were against Facebook's advertising community guidelines, something to do with us advertising a really expensive firearm to different demographics in the United States. Back in November, I was hired to heighten the presence of a firearms manufacturer, but in the end, my advice for success was no longer needed. Henrik called me and explained they were going to go with someone in-house to do their marketing, which prior to my hiring, didn't go that well as I understand it. We were polite and cordial to one another, he thanked me for my time, and he proposed that if we cross paths in the future, we should go out for a beer. I chuckled and said "sure."

During my time with the company, I grew their social media presence by 700%. They now have a steady stream of likes, followers, and shares which is all a business needs to get off the ground. I don't feel like I compromised my integrity by working for a company in a controversial industry because they were directly in need of my experience. I don't think my work contributed to school shootings or ended the lives of countless Americans. I took a job to tie me over until I started full time at IBM, which has been going swimmingly well. My parents now know what I've been doing for the last four months, and they both agreed it's a really bizarre situation, especially after I explained the quirks and frustrations of the industry and being micromanaged. I now have a somewhat useless knowledge about certain handguns, which I will put into good use by not owning a gun. The experience wasn't totally pointless. What's pointless is selling a $7,500 firearm in the state of Florida.