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Always fresh on Gary Davis' mind is the image of a black man who was burned alive. It's from an old photograph; judging from the thin black ties and fedoras on the white men -- the ones standing over the corpse and smiling as if it were a trophy deer -- the picture was taken four or five decades ago, when Davis was growing up in the Missouri countryside. He often broods over the image, along with hundreds of others from the same era: burning crosses; women and children beaten by nightsticks; men ravaged by police dogs; people dangling by their necks from trees. "Growing up in the '50s and '60s you saw lots of situations where people were being attacked because they were trying to have the right to vote just for basic civil and human rights," he says today. "Every day it would be on the news. I told my father that when I grew up I would always do whatever is necessary to defend myself and my family against racist attacks like that."

Among his heroes are men who died fighting racism -- men such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X and Medgar Evers. Davis' home library, some 2,000 volumes strong, chronicles their lives as activists. Davis' life, too, is devoted to activism for civil rights. On this day, his freedom march runs right through a gun show in North Kansas City.

He pulls up in front of the KC Market Center in his big black Chevy pickup, which sports Bush-Cheney and John Ashcroft bumper stickers. His Missouri plates are one-of-a-kind, bearing six custom-stamped letters: THE NRA. "When I tried to get these plates ten years ago," says Davis, "I just assumed some good ol' boy would [already] have [them]." Davis steps out, towering six and a half feet above the concrete -- more than seven if you stretch the measuring tape from the gold tips of his cowboy boots to the top of his Chevy 409 baseball cap. His massive chest is wrapped in a canvas Carhart hunting jacket that's covered with sewn-on patches -- Missouri Mountain Man Trappers Association, Pioneer Gun Club and Lawrence brand shotgun shells, declared "the shot of champions." Davis' goatee is scraggly. Chipped plastic-framed glasses slant across his face.

Inside the hall he sheds his coat, revealing a black T-shirt honoring dead NASCAR driver Dale Earnhart. He tacks up an Earnhart poster and begins arranging a booth for his ongoing grassroots campaign -- draping a Western Missouri Shooters Alliance banner across a folding table, laying out stacks of brochures and piles of buttons and, for that added touch, displaying an AK-47.

He beckons gun shoppers to buy into a raffle for a shiny new rifle. "You know what we're gonna do with that dollar?" he asks a customer. "We're gonna stand up for your Second Amendment rights."

Davis has been president of the WMSA for three years, leading its largely white members in defense of their guns. The group, comprising mostly fellow Kansas Citians, actively opposes any gun restrictions offered at the city, county or state levels. One of its main goals is to get a concealed-weapons bill passed that would allow any Missourian who's not a convicted felon or, in Davis' words, "a mental derelict" to tuck a Glock into his shirt. The group isn't affiliated with any political party. But its members hunt for progun candidates and throw money and volunteer hours behind them.

Davis has been with the group for six years. He's been a lifetime member of the NRA for more than twenty years. The right to bear arms is about the only political issue he cares about. That puts him in company not sought by many black men. Among the hundreds of visitors to this gun show, all but two or three are white. Still, Davis seems to know everyone. From the bearded and beer-bellied Ozark Mountain types to the little old lady selling $5 bags of beef jerky -- they all nod and say hello.

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