Gun enthusiasts, vendors gather for SHOT Show

Robert Keller spent much of Tuesday talking up the attributes of the shotguns and rifles carried by his Las Vegas-based company, which is displaying its wares at the SHOT Show, the gun industry's premier trade show now under way at the Sands Expo and Convention Center.

Keller, general manager of MSR Distribution Co., will tell you everything you want to know about shotguns, but if you ask about the recent mass school shooting in Connecticut, neither he nor others at the show have much to say.

Keller deferred questions to the show's sponsor, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which has a central office just three miles from Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., where 20 students and six educators were killed in a shooting spree Dec. 14.

"I recognize that this is a very different and more somber message than I usually give on an evening when we celebrate our industry, the oldest in America," said Steve Sanetti, CEO and president for the foundation, to a banquet audience Tuesday night. "You didn't cause the monstrous crimes in Newtown, and neither did we."

The gunman, Adam Lanza, 20, killed himself after the massacre. Police said before that, Lanza had killed his mother at the home they shared in Newtown.

Today, President Barack Obama plans to unveil a package of gun control proposals. But as the SHOT Show got under way, many participants weren't eager to discuss the tragedy that launched the national debate.

"We're not really going to comment on (Newtown)," said Matt Tracy of McMillan Firearms Manufacturing, a maker of tactical rifles in Phoenix.

Typically, the SHOT Show and its attendance of about 60,000 stands out as one of the biggest events of a typically crowded January convention and meeting calendar. The show not only leases out the entire Sands Expo and Convention Center to more than 1,600 exhibitors, it keeps a waiting list of companies trying to get in.

Sanetti spent much of his speech ticking off the steps undertaken by the foundation and others that he said promoted gun safety.

Sanetti did not schedule a meeting with registered media members, a typical feature of past shows. The foundation staff also clamped down on issuing media credentials after an onslaught of requests followed the Connecticut shooting, but spokesman Michael Bazinet said that hundreds of media members are attending.

Still, the show generated a lot of activity for an opening day, said Rick Wood, the federal firearms license manager for Black Powder Products of Duluth, Ga.

"It's been busier this year than it was last year," he said.

With louder gun control talk coming out of Washington, D.C., he said recent sales have been brisk. "We've got more orders than we can fill right now," he said. "We don't want to overload ourselves."

New regulations "might even help us because it might bring some type of mandatory safety training," said Larry Gray, the managing partner of FT Technologies based in Beatty . The company's Fulcrum Target System builds remote-controlled targets used for training police and military officers.

While not buying into conspiracy theories, Gray believes Obama has wanted an opportunity to impose stronger gun laws. "When you have the shooting of 7 -year-old kids and teachers, this was the perfect massacre for him to do what he is going to do now," Gray said.

Contact reporter Tim O'Reiley at toreiley@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5290.