Denver residents flocked to the Tanner Gun Show on Sunday, checking out firearms, knives, ammunition, holsters and survival gear for sale — but vendors lamented lagging commerce that they blamed in part on a lack of urgency under President Donald Trump.
The tilt toward tougher gun control under President Barack Obama, they said, had led to brisker business.
Gun sales and attendance in the two-day Tanner show in the Denver Mart appeared “a lot less than it used to be in the Obama days,” said Nick Nitu, owner of Denver-based Performance Optics, offering scopes and other targeting devices.
Last week, Denver became the second city in the country, after Columbia, S.C., to ban sales of bump-stocks, a device that allows faster firing of semi-automatic weapons that was used by a gunman who on Oct. 1 killed 58 people and wounded more than 800 at a country music festival in Las Vegas. Colorado lawmakers now are considering a statewide ban on bump-stocks. California, Massachusetts and New Jersey have banned them, and lawmakers in several other states are considering action. Last week, Washington state senators approved a bill to ban bump-stocks after four Republicans joined Democrats.
It was hard to verify attendance at the Denver show. Tanner Gun Show coordinators declined to comment. One official said, “We don’t do press,” and contract security guards limited access at the show, which was open to the public until 4 p.m.
The Tanner show has been running since 1964, Colorado’s largest, promising “a much higher percentage of guns, knives and related items” than at any other show.
One vendor on Sunday said no bump-stocks were available.
Compared with other gun shows around the western United States, however, vendors in Denver said the Tanner event fares well, appealing to a relatively broad and sophisticated clientele. This year, vendor participation at the Las Vegas Gun Show — held near the Mandalay Bay hotel, where the shooter in October fired from the 32nd floor into a crowd of 22,000 concert-goers — is expected to decrease.
President Obama used executive power to require more gun sellers at gun shows and online to obtain licenses and conduct background checks. A loophole has let people buy firearms at gun shows without undergoing a background check. Obama tried to curb gun violence through stricter laws but Congress did not back legislation he pushed.
Over the past five years, more than 280 shootings have happened at U.S. schools, gun control advocates report.
Whether tougher controls are needed is an issue that rankles. Nitu pointed out that in the 1960s, when westerners often carried guns for hunting, there were practically no school shootings. But after the Columbine High School shooting in Colorado, media overage may have had the effect of encouraging emulators, he said.
“It’s not the guns. It’s the people,” Nitu said. ”Get down to the root of the problem. Parental control. It is gone.”
At another table, Kyle Hoffman of Osprey Global was packing up after a less-than-optimal weekend. Hoffman said sold about $6,000 of merchandise over two days, half what he usually sells at the Tanner show.
“I don’t think it is entirely Donald Trump’s fault that the sales are down,” he said. “But that’s definitely a factor, that the sense of urgency is down.”
Other factors sellers cited: robust competition from Amazon and other online sites and weakening interest in gun shows from a younger generation, Hoffman said.
“Young people in general aren’t that interested in firearms.”
