Gun industry converges in Las Vegas, months after mass shooting
The firearms industry's largest trade show will be held a few miles from where the mass shooting that killed 59 concertgoers took place last fall.
By LISA MARIE PANEAssociated Press
A man inspects rifles at the 2013 SHOT Show in Las Vegas. Mainstream media and the public are barred from this year's show, held near the site of a mass shooting last fall. Associated Press/Julie Jacobson
The gun industry is holding its biggest annual trade show this week just a few miles from the site where a gunman slaughtered 58 concertgoers outside his high-rise Las Vegas hotel room in October using a host of weapons, many fitted with bump stocks that enabled them to mimic fully automatic fire.
Gun control advocates pointed to the irony of the location and planned a protest to renew calls for tighter gun sale regulations, including expanded background checks.
"We're trying to show the connection between the industry that makes all the money and the damage that their products cause," Lee Goodman, an organizer with Chicago-based Peaceful Communities, said Tuesday. His organization advocates for a rewrite of the Second Amendment right to own guns.
What exactly will be displayed at the exhibition spaces at the National Shooting Sports Foundation's SHOT Show convention will be a bit of a mystery, shielded from the public and, this year, members of the general-interest media.
SHOT Show has been held for 40 years, half that time in Las Vegas, and this year's gathering was scheduled well before the bloodshed last fall. It will have some 13 miles of aisles featuring products from more than 1,700 companies. More than 65,000 visitors are expected at the gathering, where deals worth millions are struck.
The general public is not allowed to roam the aisles; the only people who can attend are those with direct ties to the industry. Although a few reporters from general-interest news organizations attended in recent years, NSSF this year restricted access to about 2,500 journalists from trade publications and media.
The show's location and timing 31/2 months after Stephen Paddock's attack have heightened awareness of the event.
"The gun industry has not been responsible and responsive to addressing the gun violence issue in America," said Po Murray, chairwoman of the Newtown Action Alliance, in the Connecticut town where 20 children and six educators died in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in December 2012.
Michael Bazinet, NSSF director of public affairs, said that while those attending are well aware of the tragedy that occurred nearby, "they also know that legal gun ownership and the lawful commerce of arms is something quite removed from the act of an individual such as this. And that's not to diminish the tragedy at all. But people come to the show do make that distinction."
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