The Gun Show Must Go On

Finn Torode
January 14, 2011

In Tucson, a congresswoman’s attempted assassination isn’t enough to halt a gun show. In fact, it helped boost business.

The Crossroads of the West gun show long ago had been scheduled to take place this weekend at the Pima County Fairgrounds in Tucson. The fact it started a week after the shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords and 19 others, a tragic event that seriously injured the congresswoman and killed six people, was an unfortunate coincidence.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the gun show. Rather than experience any kind of a backlash because of the Giffords shooting, which was committed using a Glock semi-automatic and a high-capacity ammunition magazine, the show had booming business.

The show, which is being held four times this year in Tucson, was predicting 5,000 participants. This weekend, an estimated 8,000 people showed up.

“Any time gun-owners in America feel their rights to use firearms lawfully may be challenged, they turn out in numbers,” said Bob Templeton, the creator and director of Crossroads of the West. Templeton’s company has 51 shows scheduled for this year, though more be added. Last year, they attracted 407,000 customers, according to the company’s website.

The Glock was a popular item this weekend.

Steve Zacher, its leading salesman, said: “Business is dramatically up. I put it down to the media exposure, which has focused attention on the brand, and the potential for new restrictions,” Steve Zacher, a Glock salesman, told Jon Swaine of London’s Telegraph, one of many reporters who spent the past week in Tucson covering the shooting and its aftermath. Zacher told Swaine he’d noticed “about a thousand per cent rise” in the sale of the kind of high-capacity magazine that was in use in the Giffords shooting.

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