LAS VEGAS — In a sea of rifles, handguns, knives and ammunition, thousands of gun enthusiasts gathered here Wednesday for the annual Shot Show, the nation’s largest gun trade show, where the convention’s sponsors decried gun laws and said there was something else to blame for the Jan. 8 deadly shooting rampage in Tucson: the mental health system.
The Shot Show sponsors as well as several exhibitors and others attending the sprawling event rejected suggestions of a connection between the attack and gun control legislation. Instead, they questioned why people around the man accused of the shootings, Jared L. Loughner — his parents, friends, teachers and the police — had not alerted mental health authorities about his apparent mental decline before the rampage that left 6 people dead and 13 injured.
“What happened wasn’t caused by the failure or absence of some gun control law,” said Lawrence G. Keane, senior vice president of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the organizer of the Shot Show. “It was caused by a breakdown in the public mental health system. The question is why wasn’t this individual dealt with when everyone around him apparently saw there were very real issues.”
“To my mind,” Mr. Keane added, “gun control is a failed social experiment, and it is time to move on.”
Mr. Keane offered that view as 57,000 people, an overflow crowd, turned out for the 50th anniversary of the convention, which spilled out of the Sands Convention Center and into the adjacent Venetian hotel. Throughout the day, the lively crowd —overwhelmingly male, representing gun shops, the military and law enforcement agencies — traipsed through fields of booths that displayed, among other things, rifles, ammunition, silencers, camouflage gear, knives, bulletproof vests, night goggles, holsters and, of course, pistols, including in pink and lavender.
People attending the show were explicitly barred from carrying personal firearms or ammunition.
The Tucson shootings complicated plans for the Shot Show. Sponsors said they had decided after the shootings not to get drawn into debates about gun control until they arrived here to an event that drew 2,200 members of the news media. Still, they said, there was never any doubt that the Shot Show would go on.
And there was little discussion of the events as the crowd surveyed this year’s wares, reflecting a consensus that there was little chance that the shootings would have political ramifications. “Congress is more pro-gun than at any time in recent memory,” Steve Sanetti, president of the shooting sports foundation, proclaimed in the daily newsletter of the convention, Shot Daily.
The carpeted expanse set aside for Glock — maker of the Glock 19 pistol that Mr. Loughner is accused of using — was one of the largest spaces at the convention, and it was bustling with people throughout the day. Two Glock employees, dressed in black, stood on a riser and offered tips on target shooting.
“How many Glock shooters do we have in the crowd?” asked Randi Rogers, one of the instructors, as she flexed a pistol in her arm, bending slightly at the knees. As just about every hand rose, Ms. Rogers smiled and said, “Oh, I like that.”
A Glock sales representative tending to potential customers as they looked at pistols, including a Glock 19, said they had been instructed by the company not to discuss the Tucson shootings or gun control.
“Tucson is a tragedy, but that’s all we have to say about it,” said the sales representative, Tony Musa. “I have no opinion about gun control.”
Mr. Musa referred questions to a Glock vice president, Josh Dorsey.
“Basically, all I can say is no thank you,” Mr. Dorsey said, adding that no one had raised the Tucson shootings with him.
Downstairs, Scherer Supply, an East Tennessee purveyor and maker of shooting supplies, displayed the same kind of extended magazines, including a 33-shot one, that was used in the Tucson shootings. Anthony Scherer, an owner of the company, shook his head vigorously when asked about gun control advocates who have called for restricting the sale of large magazines, which they said contributed to the extent of the carnage on Jan. 8.
“To point any fingers at the gun industry is ignorant,” Mr. Scherer said, as passers-by stopped to pick up and examine the magazines lined up on the counter. “That’s like pointing a finger at Ford and blaming them for car deaths.”
“It’s the same kind of panicked reaction you get after a hurricane,” he said. “It’s over, and everyone wants to get shutters.”
At the Smith and Wesson booth, Chris D’Amato, a Marine from Savannah, Ga., disputed the suggestion that a smaller magazine would have reduced the injuries in Tucson.
“I know where you’re going with that,” Mr. D’Amato said, when asked about the size of the magazine in one of the handguns he and his wife were admiring on a table of military and police guns. “It really doesn’t make much of a difference.”
Mr. Keane of the shooting sports foundation described this as a good time for gun enthusiasts, and said that fears that the Obama administration and a Democratic-controlled Congress would result in a round of new tough gun laws had not been realized.
“People are pleasantly surprised about where we are,” he said. “But we remain ever vigilant.”
Mr. Keane said his organization would support strengthening the federal background check for gun buyers, which he suggested had failed in the case of Mr. Loughner.
“I’m sure the dealer who sold him the gun would have liked to know that this person has had this mental health background,” he said.
Mark Thomas, a managing director with the foundation, said: “The scary thing here is that the things we’ve read, the things we’ve seen, people didn’t seem surprised at this, the way they said, ‘Yeah, he had changed over the last couple of years.’ If you cared about that person, why didn’t you take some action?”
Still, trying to toughen the federal background check system — which is intended to keep felons and people with records of mental health problems, among others, from buying guns — is a subject of debate among gun enthusiasts. They say they are concerned that it would create more obstacles for legitimate gun enthusiasts without deterring people who should not get weapons.
“The devil’s in the details,” Mr. Keane said.
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