Barrage of people at gun show

So many people crowded into the South Towne Expo Center in Sandy for the first day of the West's largest gun show Saturday that the women taking tickets at the door didn't even have time for a bathroom break.

"It's chaos," Sylvia Henrickson of Murray, who has worked the doors of the popular gun show for the past eight years, said shortly after noon. "We've been here since 8 o'clock. We haven't had a break. ... They're just continuous."

The reason the Crossroads of the West gun show that ends Sunday is attracting so many people? Bill Scott of the Utah Shooting Sports Council flier pointed to a council flier featuring an image of President-elect Barack Obama waving a rifle while saying, "I want your guns."

Scott said the attendance was driven by fears that the new Democratic administration will ban semiautomatic assault rifles like AK-47s. Within the first hour of the show, he said, some 400 people had signed up to receive the council's e-mail alerts on gun legislation.

"It's amazing the awareness that's been raised. It's a political rally as much as a gun show," Scott said as people lined up at the council's booth. "I've never seen anything like this, even in the Clinton years."

Nor had Leeza Ridd, owner of Center Street Brass in Provo.

"It feels like pandemonium," Ridd said between ringing up sales at her packed ammunition booth. "I've sold close to a million rounds this morning."

Usually, Ridd said she's lucky to sell half that much ammunition over both days of a gun show. But before noon, Ridd said she'd already sold out of some popular ammunition.

"All my protective rounds went first thing," she said.

Steve Palano, a gunsmith for Barlow's Custom Guns in West Valley City, said only a couple of semiautomatic assault rifles had sold by midday.

"It's early," Palano said. "Look at the show. ... It's twice as busy as it normally is."

A smiling Rachel Pulsipher, a pharmacy technician from Lehi, was holding an AR-15 semiautomatic assault rifle she'd purchased for about $1,000.

"It was on a wish list," Pulsipher said. "Not mine — mine would be for something small I could fit in my purse."

Janeen Todd of Sandy, who recently was laid off from a brokerage firm, said she was just looking Saturday. Todd said she'd decided to attend her first-ever gun show because the election got her thinking about buying a gun for self-protection.