At the 145th National Rifle Association annual meetings and exhibits, you could see and purchase replica flintlock muskets like the kind Daniel Boone used, “wardrobe” handguns the size of a cellphone, a carriage-mounted 1883 Gatling gun, historic firearms from the Renaissance down through the latest Surge, bullet-splat jewelry, deep-concealment holsters, triple barrel shotguns, and camo everything – coolers, flasks, four-wheelers, deer blinds, infant-wear and sexy-time lingerie. Mingling with a crowd striking for its nearly uniform whiteness, I did lapse into a kind of fugue state from time to time, a retail trance brought on by sheer sensory overload, but with...