At the “Nation’s Gun Show” at the Dulles Expo Center in Chantilly, Virginia, this weekend, law-abiding Americans that own, use, and respect guns gathered as they do there every couple months to buy, sell and trade guns and all the paraphernalia that goes with them. What struck me when I went to the gun show wasn't that there may be a mass murderer lurking in the crowd, but the kind of people that come to these shows and why they come.

Gun control is a hot topic again, at least temporarily, in the aftermath of the Aurora, Colorado movie massacre. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Mayor Mike Bloomberg of New York, and a host of other liberals are calling for assault weapons ban, limits on large-capacity magazines and other measures they believe will reduce gun violence. Many also call for efforts to break the “iron grip” the National Rifle Association (NRA) lobby has on Washington, D.C.

As so many commentators have reminded us, however, the chances that any new gun control measures will pass Congress is practically nil because, for most members of Congress, the fastest way to lose an election is to advocate more gun control.

Those that advocate gun control blame this reality on the “cunning” and “evil” NRA. Perhaps if they took the time to come to the Chantilly gun show and spend a few hours talking to the people that visit these shows they would begin to understand that Americans don’t oppose gun control because of the NRA, but the NRA opposes gun control because of the American people and their historic relationship with guns.

Sure, the NRA is an advocate for the American fire-arms industry, which includes Smith and Wesson and Springfield Armory in liberal Massachusetts, but America wouldn’t have such a robust fire-arms industry if the American people didn’t create the demand for their products.

The overwhelming majority of men and women that buy guns and go to gun shows aren’t 20-something killers like Cho Seung-Hui, Jared Loughner, or James Holmes. They are older people with homes and families they want to protect that have been around guns all their lives. They are members of the law-enforcement and private security communities. They are people who know that so much of what they hear liberal pundits, that have never owned or fired a gun, say about guns on talk shows just isn’t true. And they are people that regularly vote in large numbers in congressional and presidential elections.

Sen. Feinstein and those like her that want to ban certain types of semi-automatic rifles argue that they have no purpose other than to kill people. “They are guns of war, and guns of war belong only on the battlefield.” Or, they are weapons the drug cartels use to kill innocent civilians and U.S. law-enforcement agents.

Guns of war and drug cartels are fully automatic weapons that Americans can own only if they meet strict requirements and pay a very steep tax. The majority of guns in illicit international gun trafficking, except for those the Department of Justice sent walking, aren’t those found at almost any gun store or gun show in America. They are obtained from governments that manufacture and sell them by the millions. More than 75 million fully automatic AK-47s have been manufactured by Russia and China or license-produced by other countries.

Furthermore, have those that oppose semi-automatic models readily available in the U.S. been to an indoor or an outdoor firing range lately and watched the fun and excitement people who own them get from shooting them? I doubt it.

Then there are those high-capacity magazines like the 100-round magazine James Holmes used until it jammed on him. I saw one of them at this week’s gun show. Few people buy them, however, because they are prone to jamming. They’re more a conversation piece. As any combat veteran can tell you, it’s possible to fire 100 rounds from 7 15-round magazines almost as fast as one 100-round magazine with less chance your weapon will jam.

So why not ban them? For the same reason those that support abortion oppose any restrictions—the slippery slope argument. Once you allow people who ban big gulps to determine what constitutes a high-capacity magazine it won’t be long until you are loading bullets one at a time.

Indeed, there are risks that come with gun rights in America—the most armed nation on earth. For every ten people in America there are 9 guns. Bad people will use guns to commit crimes, launch gang wars, and, on occasion, commit mass murder. However, it’s a risk the American people have chosen to take. They know that the right to own a gun, enshrined in the Constitution, whether it’s for sport, self-defense, or simply because they want to collect and admire them, comes at a price.

Does this mean Americans shouldn’t impose reasonable restrictions on their guns? Of course not. The states have passed and enforce numerous reasonable gun laws. The correlation, however, between gun laws and gun violence is weak. Chicago, Illinois, and Washington, D.C., have the strictest gun laws in America are among the cities with the highest rates of gun violence.

If we want to reduce gun violence in America we would do well to focus more on the people that use firearms to commit crimes than on the firearms themselves. And those politicians that don’t understand why Americans buy all manner of guns, I recommend they go to the next gun show in their city or state and talk with the law-abiding Americans that own, use and respect guns.