LAS VEGAS — The head of a weapons industry group said law-abiding gun owners didn’t cause a gunman to shoot 20 schoolchildren and six adults last month in his company’s Connecticut hometown, and neither did the industry.
National Shooting Sports Foundation chief Steve Sanetti is calling weapons manufacturers, sellers and owners “misunderstood.”
In comments prepared for his Tuesday state-of-the-industry speech in Las Vegas, Sanetti refers several times to the Newtown, Conn., shooting.
The speech is part of the foundation’s 35th annual SHOT Show of products and services new to what it calls a growing and profitable $4.1 billion industry.
The group said it has issued credentials to nearly 60,000 industry professionals, recreational gun owners and law enforcers to attend.
Sanetti said, “You didn’t cause the monstrous crime in Newtown, and neither did we.”
