US shootings unlikely to deter gun sales The gun counter at the Gander Mountain store in Thornton on the outskirts of Denver has a range of firearms to suit every taste: handguns, pistols and a broad selection of assault rifles are all on open display. Business was brisk this weekend as a steady stream of customers approached the counter for advice from a bearded sales manager. A family with two children examined a hunting rifle while a young couple inquired about a 9mm handgun. "I'm in the military and already have a gun but this one is for her," the tall young man with closely cropped hair told the Financial Times, gesturing towards his girlfriend. She laughed nervously. "He wants me to get it, so I'm going to get it," she said. It is unclear whether sales at the shop, which is next door to a Family Christian Stores outlet, were higher than normal: the FT was gruffly escorted from the premises by the angry sales manager before any increase could be established. Events in the early hours of last Friday at the Century 16 cinema in nearby Aurora, when 12 people at a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises were shot dead, may have convinced some anxious customers to invest in a gun. But there is another link between the Aurora shootings and the store in Thornton: one of three weapons used by the alleged perpetrator, 24-year-old James Holmes, was bought there. The ease with which Mr Holmes allegedly assembled an arsenal of weaponry, including an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, from legal suppliers such as Gander Mountain, over just two months has reopened a fractious national debate about America's relationship with firearms. In Colorado, where guns and hunting are an important part of the state's rugged identity, there is little support for new gun control restrictions: mass killings such as the 1999 massacre in Columbine high school, only 20 miles from Aurora, are dismissed as an aberration, the work of lone lunatics who would find a way to kill whether or not they had access to guns. "We have the right to bear arms in this country and if someone decides to use guns to do something bad . . . well, it's not the guns, it's the person," said Jose Rodriguez, who was visiting Gander Mountain with his wife and children, "I have guns and gun laws in this state are fine the way they are." What happened in Aurora was a tragedy but to buy a gun you have to have a background check and if you have anything bad on your record you can't buy the gun. Whether these checks are sufficiently rigorous is open to question: the state and federal background checks on Mr Holmes failed to detect anything unusual and he was cleared to buy three weapons and military-grade protective clothing - as well as 6,000 rounds of ammunition from an online store. "There should have been a red flag," said Austin Hackbarth, a young firefighter from Aurora. Mr Hackbarth was one of several mourners attending a tribute to the dead across the street from the cinema complex where the attacks took place. But he doubted that the cinema shooting would cause Colorado to reassess its relationship with guns. I'm a big-time hunter . . . I just love hunting. Why should one incident, or a few here and there, restrict everyone else's rights? There have been several mass shootings in the years since the Columbine attacks: 32 people were killed at Virginia Tech in 2007 when a lone gunman went on a rampage, while 13 died at a shooting at the Fort Hood military base in 2009. But the killings have done little to sway national opinion towards tighter restrictions on buying guns, such is the link between the right to bear arms and what it means to be American. That link has grown closer over the last two decades. In 1990 a Gallup poll revealed that close to 80 per cent of Americans supported tougher gun laws. But a recent national poll by the Pew Research Center found that 49 per cent of respondents favoured more "gun rights," with 45 per cent supporting tighter control. The surge in support for gun rights is reflected in the legislative landscape. A federal ban on assault weapons expired in 2004 and was not renewed: had it still been in force Mr Holmes would not have been able to buy the AR-15 which was allegedly used in Friday's attack. With support for gun rights on an upward trajectory, there has been little political appetite for tougher laws, says Kristen Rand, legislative director of the Violence Policy Center, a non-profit group that supports gun control. The recent killing of Trayvon Martin, the black teenager shot and killed by a neighbourhood watch captain in Florida, moved gun control back into the spotlight, she adds. There was definitely a change in the mood. But efforts to push gun control further up the political agenda continue to be stymied. It's definitely more challenging during a presidential election campaign. We have no expectations that the president will want to do anything regarding guns. Gun control supporters have taken to the airwaves in the aftermath of the Aurora shootings to make the case for tighter restrictions and there have been calls to re-introduce the assault weapons ban. But there are doubts about how much modifying existing laws could have done to prevent last week's massacre. "What kind of gun control law would have stopped the Aurora shooter from getting guns?" said Adam Winkler, a law professor at UCLA and the author of Gunfight, a book about gun control. The suspect had no known mental illness and no criminal record. The only gun control law that would have stopped him would have be a ban on the sale of guns. And that just isn't going to happen.