Atlanta hosts more than 700 conventions each year. But unlike most of those, at the annual pop-culture convention Dragon Con, you’re allowed to bring in guns — fake ones, that is.
If your costume for Dragon Con includes a prop weapon, you might get a tap on the shoulder from someone like Amanda Tucker.
She is part of a small army of security volunteers making the rounds through the lobby of one of five major hotels that host the convention, which draws more than 85,000 attendees.
Spotting a prop gun through the crowd, Tucker makes her way over to an attendee.
“Is anything ever going to fire out of this gun?” she asks. It’s clearly made of rubber, but Tucker sticks to protocol, pointing it safely toward the floor.
She fastens a bright, orange zip tie around the fake trigger. This is called “peace-binding,” and it is a sign to others that the weapon has been inspected.
“Please make sure this stays on the entire weekend,” Tucker says, before moving onto a plastic knife.
“Peace binding” is standard policy for fan conventions like Dragon Con, where many people dress up as their favorite video-game or sci-fi characters, according to Joshua Doss, who heads security for Dragon Con.
Dragon Con attendee, Max Giovanni holds his prop, sawed-off shotgun that’s had an orange zip tie put over the trigger. The practice — known as “peace binding” is intended to prevent against real guns from being brought into the convention.
Lisa Hagen / WABE
“If they’re going for authenticity, we want to give them as much flexibility as we can permit, but that flexibility ends where the safety of another individual begins,” says Doss.
Jessica Edmonds is dressed as a kind of space mercenary from the Star Wars franchise. Her Dragon Con outfit, plated in purple and black resin, is her own design. Lights blink on her robotic arm braces. In her hand — she’s got a gun.
“I carry a DL-44,” says Edmonds — a type of space pistol. “It’s a nerf gun. Got it in the kid’s section.”
She goes to several fan conventions a year, but her pistol can’t always come. One convention in her home state of North Carolina, Raleigh SuperCon, doesn’t allow them.
“It sucks because it does take away from our costumes that we work so hard on,” says Edmonds. “I mean, I’ve worked on this for a whole year.”
Jessica Edmonds and her husband strike a combative pose during Dragon Con in Atlanta in August. Edmonds’ prop gun is adapted from one she purchased from a kid’s toy section.
Lisa Hagen / WABE
She feels confident in the security at Dragon Con, which is true for most attendees I talk to.
But not everyone is on the same page. Max Giovanni is skeptical about the neon zip ties: “What’s to stop someone from bringing a real gun in and just putting it on themselves?”
For Dragon Con, Giovanni’s decked out in an “old-school” Mad Max costume features a pretty serious looking replica.
“This is an airsoft, sawed-off, double barrel shotgun,” says Giovanni. The prop gives a satisfying “clack” as he cracks it open to reveal its inner details. “The shells look pretty real.”
For Giovanni, the prop gun is key. He’s already skipped a G.I. Joe convention that banned them.
“G.I. Joe is the United States military!” Giovanni says. “What is the military without their weapons?”
While Dragon Con organizers say they are eager to avoid similar bans, other events have already had their hands forced.
Last year, the Phoenix Comic Fest, which attracts more than 80,000 attendees annually, had a close call.
“There was a gentleman who came on site who had live firearms. He had made some social media posts that were disturbing,” says Kristin Rowan, a spokesperson with Phoenix Comic Fest.
Police found the man with four guns and a knife in his backpack. The weapons were not a part of his costume.
“We had to go to extreme measures,” says Rowan. That meant no props at all for a few days. “There was definitely concern about what that would do to the event.”
Phoenix Comic Fest no longer allows prop guns.
Neither does Denver Comic Con.
Comic-Con International in San Diego now draws more than 130,000 people annually, making it one of the largest events of this kind in the country. Organizers there declined to comment on security — except to say they work closely with local police — and it’s always changing.
Analysts estimate the North American fan convention industry generates at least $5 billion dollars a year, bringing hundreds of millions in to local economies. These events are continuing to grow, and so are their security concerns.
After last year’s convention, Rowan says Phoenix Comic Fest organizers spent long hours in security meetings weighing how to allow as many props in as possible responsibly. One scary idea kept coming up: 3D-printed guns.
“If it’s plastic and looks fake it can get through the metal detector and it can still be operational,” says Rowan. “And because those possibilities still exist, we just can’t let them in.”
But in a way — they’re already “in.”
“It’s a really hard subject to go over because there’s a lot of 3D-printed guns in the prop-making culture,” says Freddie Basso.
Freddie Basso, dressed as an Atom Cat from the post-apocalyptic video game, Fallout 4.
Lisa Hagen / WABE
I meet Basso back at Dragon Con in Atlanta. He’s dressed as a sort of steampunk greaser — his homage to the Atom Cats of the post-apocalyptic video game, Fallout 4.
The revolver Basso’s made to go with his outfit for the convention is beautiful:
“[In the game, the gun] is pretty much a rusted out pistol made out of pipe,” he says. “But this actual prop is 3D printed. It is painted and weathered with real rust.”
Basso’s actually working on becoming a full-time prop designer and says prop-makers are increasingly turning to 3D printing as a cheaper, less time-consuming tool of the trade.
The websites he relies on host massive collections of design files for toys, art and home-organizing doodads. One of them, Thingaverse, is also where, in 2013, a man from Texas named Cody Wilson briefly debuted designs for the Liberator, the single shot, 3D-printed handgun. Wilson and his publicly available designs for 3D-printed guns have been in a legal back-and-forth with the federal government since then.
When I ask Basso if he’s ever been drawn to live-firing gun designs like Wilson’s, he says no — he’s on these sites to hone his prop design craft.
But the proximity is a risk fan convention officials are keeping a close watch on as they try to maintain the delicate balance between their attendees’ creative expression and safety.
Guns & America is a public media reporting project on the role of guns in American life.
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