His fascination with firearms emerged within the broader context of an American gun culture and the growing survivalist movement. All presidential candidates during the 1988 elections were members of the National Rifle Association (NRA), and there were firearms in nearly half of all American homes, with a reported 60 million handguns and 10,000 machine guns in circulation. Throughout the country, a growing number of ordinary citizens purchased 9 mm pistols, .22 automatics, .45’s, 12 gauge shot guns, Uzi’s, MP-5’s, 9 mm submachine guns, untold rounds of ammunition, armor piercing shells, and
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