A gun show taking place this weekend near the site of Wednesday's horrific massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL is proudly offering AR-15s for sale, in spite of the weapon's role in the lethal attack, which killed 3 adults and 14 students.
According to the New York Post's Laurie Mizrahi, the organizers of a gun show in Hollywood, FL see no reason not to display and sell models of the AR-15, the type of semi-automatic weapon reportedly used by Nicholas Cruz to mow down his former classmates.
“What would not selling [the gun] have done?” said dealer Will McDough to the Post. “If he had a knife would you regulate the knife -- or the person standing behind it?”
Student Emma Gonzales pointed out in her riveting speech to an anti-gun violence rally on Saturday that Cruz would not have been able to kill nearly as many of her classmates if he'd been armed with a knife.
Gun show shopper Joe Arrington, 29, told the Post, "I don’t believe that any law that they would have added would have deterred what happened."
Gun shows are a favorite place for gun buyers and sellers to move new and used weapons, ammunition, scopes and accessories like the "bump stock" modification that enables semi-automatic guns to fire like automatic weapons. Background checks are not required at many gun shows, allowing people access to weapons they could not otherwise obtain.
The gunman who killed 59 people and injured dozens more in Las Vegas last fall used a bump stock to spray hundreds of rounds per minute. After that mass murder, a short-lived movement to ban bump stocks sprang up but was quashed by the NRA.
