Gun grabbers shoot blanks in latest stunt

The Associated Press represents itself as an unbiased purveyor of news. So I reserve the right to be disappointed -- if not truly shocked or even surprised -- when I see the time-honored news service embracing some of the ridiculous but currently fashionable presumptions of the ignorant and politically correct.

This past week, the SHOT show returned to Las Vegas. This is the annual sales convention of the Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trades -- a $28 billion American industry -- staged here by the Connecticut-based National Shooting Sports Foundation.

An AP reporter attended the first day of the convention on Tuesday. She reported that she saw "shinning [sic] displays of M-14s" (which are in fact scarce as hens' teeth, licensed as Class 3 machine guns because they'll fire full-auto -- it's equally possible she was looking at semi-auto M-1As) and "long range rifles" (always the best kind).

The third paragraph of her report states: "That there are renewed calls for tougher gun restrictions after a Jan. 8 shooting rampage in Arizona killed six people and wounded 13 others -- including apparent assassination target Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz.-- did little to dampen spirits at the giant show."

Just to make sure the reader didn't miss the juxtaposition of these two events -- so ironically related in the mind of the reporter -- the sixth paragraph of the piece expands on the "related" subject: "Jared Loughner, 22, the suspected Arizona shooter, legally purchased a Glock 19 two months before police say he opened fire at a Giffords district meet-and-greet outside a Tucson store.

"Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, a New York Democrat, introduced legislation in Washington Tuesday that seeks to ban large-capacity magazines such as those recovered at the Arizona crime scene. Her husband was killed and her son seriously wounded in a 1993 shooting on the Long Island Railroad."

The cynical way Rep. McCarthy used the death of her estranged husband to win election is now ancient history.

Meantime, at the risk of sounding ghoulish, Rep. Giffords is alive today -- thank heavens -- because the twerp in Tucson used a Glock 19 with that big, sexy magazine full of pathetic 9 mm rounds. Doctors have said she would not have survived a similar hit from a round of .45 or even, presumably, .40.

When magazines were limited to 10 rounds, meaning a single round had to do the job, manufacturers concentrated on and more people bought .40s and .45s.

But the main point here is the way this report makes it sound as though the organizers of the SHOT show should somehow be ashamed or embarrassed to go on with their event, a mere 10 days after the Arizona shootings.

This is like saying a Las Vegas hardware trade show went on as scheduled, with no apparent "dampening of spirits," no shame or embarrassment, despite the fact some lunatic used a hammer to commit a murder in Idaho last week.

Can we sense the imposition of some previously established views, here?

The clear implication is that another Jared Loughner could have walked into the SHOT show at the Sands Expo and Convention Center in Las Vegas last week, bought another Glock 19 handgun, along with magazines and ammunition, and promptly carried it outside and used it to do wrong.

But that's simply not true. The SHOT show is a trade show, "licensee to licensee." It's not a retail "gun show." (We still have those here, thank goodness. There's one at Cashman Center this weekend.)

But unlike "gun shows," the SHOT show has never been open to the general public. To get credentials, each of this year's 58,000 attendees (excepting members of the press) had to convince organizers they were legitimate retail buyers for legitimate retail outdoor stores, gun dealerships or police agencies interested in seeing the wares of the 16,000 vendors from 103 countries who exhibit there.

Attendees at the SHOT show may carry away shopping bags full of fancy brochures, maybe the occasional souvenir plastic duck call or baseball cap, but they carry away no firearms. Exhibitors hope they will place orders for rifles, deer-hunting tree stands, duck calls, tents, boots, police or military load-bearing belts, etc., which are then shipped from distant warehouses only after the buyer demonstrates he has all required licenses and permits.

In fact, if the section of the SHOT show devoted to marketing products exclusively to police agencies were set aside as a free-standing trade show, "It would be the second-largest law enforcement show in the United States," says Lawrence Keane, senior vice president and general counsel of the Shooting Sports Foundation.

So it's highly likely that the next time a police sniper gets the go-ahead to take out a bad guy who's holding a gun to the head of a hostage in the aftermath of a botched bank robbery, that officer -- who I hope we can all agree is the "good guy" in this scenario -- will be using a rifle, a telescopic sight, an electronic range-finder, and possibly even a brand of bullet and cartridge that first came to the attention of his department at the SHOT show.

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority says the SHOT show brings $51.8 million in nongaming revenues to the region each time it spends four days here. And if our hotels didn't entice some of those guys to also drop some quarters in a slot machine while they were here, our guys are in the wrong line of work.

"The show is 30 years old. It's most frequently in Las Vegas because that's where the participants want to be," Mr. Keane told me Wednesday.

"We bring into Las Vegas and the greater Clark County area economic activity and tax revenues probably approaching if not exceeding $80 million during the four days of the show. Something that happened in Tucson is utterly unrelated. ... And (the fact that) some anti-gun groups would seek to exploit this tragedy to advance their misguided political agenda is disappointing but not surprising."

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Review-Journal, and author of the novel "The Black Arrow." See www.vinsuprynowicz.com.