Submitted by Mark Woods on February 10, 2013 - 2:21am Mark Woods' Blog

An interesting mix of bumper stickers on an interesting mix of vehicles, from pickups to Priuses, flowed into the parking lots around the Prime Osborn Convention Center last Saturday.

God and Guns, since 1776 ... Jesus was a community organizer ... Gun control means hitting your target ... Coexist.

Vehicle doors opened and a mix of people as interesting as the vehicles and stickers got out and walked toward the old train terminal. Some were dressed as if they were going hunting. Some were dressed as if they were going to church or maybe a business meeting. When asked why they were there, many gave a similar reason. The future and their hopes or fears.

Once inside, some headed to the first set of doors: a JAX2025 meeting.

More headed to the second set of doors: the North Florida Arms Collectors Gun, Knife and Militaria Show.

There are times when the convention center is home to one huge event, such as the auto show this weekend. But other times there are multiple events. And last Saturday, it was the juxtaposition in side-by-side exhibit halls that prompted me to head to the convention center. For starters, I was curious which would draw more people, a gun show or a community visioning meeting.

It wasn’t even close. JAX2025 had a decent turnout, but nothing like what was next door.

I'll let you decide what to make of that.

There has been quite a bit of publicity surrounding JAX2025. But if you aren’t familiar with it, the privately funded initiative basically has the goal of deciding what kind of community we want to be in 2025, then striving to make that a reality. More than 14,000 people filled out surveys. The next step is a series of “community visioning” meetings. This was the second one.

The hall was set up with circular tables, each one with nine chairs, to hold about 1,300 people. With about 450 people there, it was about a third full.

With the smell of fresh coffee in the air, people from a wide cross-section of Jacksonville sat at the tables and tried to hash out vision statements for a variety of topics. Education, downtown, governance, transportation, etc.

Mayor Alvin Brown wandered through the room, occasionally sitting down at a table and participating in the discussion. And while Ben Warner, president of the Jacksonville Community Council Inc., gave some instructions here and there, for the most part he stood back and watched.

“This is the stuff that makes me excited,” he said. “It’s hard work. It takes effort to join into a conversation, especially with people who come from different backgrounds, different political views. ... Half this room cancels out the other half on election day. And yet there are some things we can agree on. That’s what I think is most exciting about this.”

When the meeting ended, I left the exhibit hall and headed into the hallway. A steady stream of people were buying $8 tickets and heading next door to the gun show. A few stopped to talk to a couple from Live Oak sitting on a bench in the hallway, trying to sell several guns, including a Bushmaster AR-15 rifle.

Before Newtown, an AR-15 sold for an average of $1,100. After it was used in the massacre and instantly became the focus of gun control efforts, it has been described as the most wanted gun in America.

“What are you asking?” someone said.

“Three thousand,” the seller said. “But I got a thousand rounds of ammo. I got that slide bar that makes it an automatic. I got three 30-round clips, four 20-round clips and a case.”

“Isn’t Obama going to collect those?” someone said with laugh.

“Well, he’s going to have to come take them,” the woman next to the seller said.

“Three thousand?” someone else said, turning and heading toward the doors leading to the gun show. “Good luck with that, Bud.”

I bought a ticket and headed in, too, instantly noticing an enticingly sweet smell, which turned out to be coming from a cart selling cinnamon-glazed nuts.

This room not only was packed with rows of tables — more than 500, the promotional material said — it was crammed with people, milling about, checking out the merchandise. This crowd was predominantly male. But there were more than a few women and even several families.

Laura Schoenberger, co-organizer of the event, said that people started lining up before the doors opened at 9. By 9:15, they had sold 1,000 tickets. And that was just the start.

“This is more than usual,” she said. “Everything is more than usual. Everybody’s scared ... anxious to do what they can now, in case they can’t. You know what I mean? That’s what a lot of people are thinking. They might lose some of their rights, which would be a tragedy for this nation.”

Inside this exhibit hall, the future was as hot a topic as it was next door. Maybe hotter. So I wandered through the room and talked to a few people about the future. Not in terms of gun control, but instead raising the same basic questions being pondered next door.

What would you like to see change about Jacksonville in the next 12 years? What would you like to see remain the same?

In some ways, the answers were different from the JAX2025 gathering. Judging from this highly unscientific survey, there seemed to be less interest in downtown development and, in general, more pessimism about the future. But in other ways, there were similarities. They talked about maintaining the small town feel of Jacksonville, the river, education — all frequent topics in JAX2025.

Before leaving the hall, I had a good conversation with one of the men standing near the doors, trying to sell personal guns. Mike, a 52-year-old retired Navy veteran, had a sign taped to his SKS rifle that said “$850 OBO.”

He said he came to Jacksonville in 1984 and has lived in Arlington ever since. He has been on several organizations, working on visions for the future of Arlington. That, he said, should be the priority. Neighborhoods.

I asked if he was optimistic about the future of Jacksonville, guessing I would hear otherwise. But just as you couldn’t leap to conclusions based on what kind of vehicle someone arrived in — there were pickup-driving, gun owners in the JAX2025 meeting — you couldn’t simply say one room was optimistic about the future, the other pessimistic.

“Absolutely,” he said. “With what we have to offer the rest of the country? Absolutely, I’m optimistic.”