Prop Guns And Security A Delicate Balance At Dragon Con
Max Giovanni poses with with a plastic, sawed-off shotgun at Dragon Con.
Lisa Hagen / WABE
If your costume includes a prop weapon at Dragon Con, you might get a tap on the shoulder from Amanda Tucker.
“Is anything ever going to fire out of this gun?” she asks. It’s pretty clearly made of rubber, but she sticks to protocol.
Tucker makes her rounds through the crowd at the Marriott downtown as part of a small army of security volunteers maintaining a delicate balance between safety and artistic expression at these events.
“It is rubber, that’s fantastic. We are still going to to a zip tie, in your regular traditional spot,” she says as she fastens a bright, orange zip-tie around the fake trigger. It’s called “peace-binding,” and it’s a sign to others that the weapon has been inspected.
More than 80,000 people are expected downtown this weekend for the annual fan convention, which features elaborate costumes, and often, prop guns.
“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 where so many people dress up as their favorite video-game or sci-fi characters, according to Joshua Doss heads security for Dragon Con.
“If they’re going the authenticity, we want to give them as much flexibility as can permit, but that flexibility ends where the safety of another individual begins,” says Doss.
Jessica Edmonds, who goes to several fan conventions a year, is dressed as a bounty hunter from Star Trek. Sometimes, when there’s a credible threat, props like her painted nerf gun get banned. That happened at last year’s Phoenix Comicon and Denver’s Comicon followed suit.
“It sucks because it does take away from our costumes that we work so hard on. I mean I’ve worked this for a whole year,” says Edmonds.
In her daily life, both she and her husband carry real guns for self-protection.
“Last night, I actually walked around downtown Atlanta. I’m unfamiliar with this place. I carried my gun on me,” said Steve Edmonds.
Dragon Con has a strict, no-weapons policy. The Edmonds says they feel confident in the security here, which is true for most attendees WABE talked to. But the fatal mass shooting at a video-game competition in Jacksonville just one weekend before this event means the possibility of violence feels more acute than usual.
“One of the things I’ve seen among the community is the sense that they were also part of our family,” Dragon Con spokesperson Dan Carroll. “It was a little bit different than a convention setting, but they were still gamers. And a lot of us are gamers.”
Carroll and Dragon Con organizers say they rely on that same family spirit for reports of suspicious behavior, and reminders to get props cleared.
Max Giovanni’s prop gun has already been peace-bonded. He’s more skeptical about the neon zip-ties.
“What’s to stop someone from bringing a real gun in and just putting it on themselves?” says Giovanni, who’s served in the Marine Corps.
The Atlanta Police Department is out in full force right now.
“We did do some additional resources for Dragon Con, for the gaming area at that event,” said Atlanta Police Deputy Chief Scott Kreher at a Thursday press conference about weekend security. “Those resources were procured by Dragon Con themselves. So we feel like they have a good plan in place.”
Giovanni’s old-school costume Mad Max features a pretty authentic-looking gun.
“This is an airsoft, sawed-off, double barrel shotgun. It does break open just like a real one. The shells look pretty real,” he says.
Giovanni says he’s already skipped another convention that banned props. It’s a decision he hopes he’ll never have to make with Dragon Con.
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