Kristen Franke’s “Packin’ Neat” stall was a surprise hit at the National Rifle Association’s usually chest-thumping annual convention.
The women who lined up to enquire after Mrs Franke’s pink leather holsters and leopard-print handbags – designed specifically to conceal handguns – suggested a swift trade.
“I told my husband when we married that ours wouldn’t be a gun household, but that all changed when I became a victim of a crime,” Mrs Franke told The Telegraph of what gave her the inspiration for her bespoke family-run Florida company.
“I went from: ‘I don’t want a gun in my house,’ to: ‘I’m not going anywhere without it,” said Mrs Franke, standing next to her 16-year-old daughter, Brooke. “Once something like that happens to you, you have a different perspective.”
This year’s NRA convention in Houston, Texas, is taking place 250 miles from Uvalde’s Robb Elementary School – the site of Tuesday’s deadly shooting.
The collision of the gun lobby’s gathering with a mass school shooting echoed the aftermath of the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado.
But the national debate around firearms has changed dramatically since the NRA’s days under Charlton Heston, as has the demographic of those who are purchasing them.
The stereotype of the Heston-esque, cowboy hat-wearing gunslinger is no longer reflective of America’s gun-owning population.
Of the 7.5 million who bought firearms in the last two years, half were female – up from 22 per cent in 2017. One-fifth were black and one-fifth Hispanic, according to a recent survey by Northeastern University.
Mrs Franke’s customers tell her they are looking to protect themselves from seemingly ever-growing and evolving threats Americans are now facing.
The US has experienced one of its most tumultuous periods in recent history – from the Covid pandemic and contested presidential election, to protests over racial injustice and rising levels of violent crime.
“Women call me all the time and tell me: ‘My husband has always carried but now I want to know my options,’” said Mrs Franke. “We’re in a different world now.”
Over at the Remington Arms stand, a woman in her 60s browsing for her first gun is directed to a 9mm FN Compact Tactical pistol. “Good for concealed carry,” a representative tells her. “I just want something with a lighter trigger, something small,” she said, as her son looked on.
Among the most well-attended stalls is “Secret Compartment Furniture”, which markets desks and tables designed to conceal weapons to women looking to “protect your valuables and loved ones”.
It is not just women who are turning to weapons for personal protection. The group with the highest increase in new gun owners is black Americans – up by a 58.2 per cent during the first six months of 2020 versus the same period the year before, said the National Shooting Sports Foundation..
For decades, firearms manufacturers have – in both subtle and not so subtle ways – convinced white people that they need to buy arsenals to protect themselves from people of colour.
More recently, due in part to shootings perpetrated by those heavily armed white gun owners, minorities have responded by arming themselves in greater numbers.
The Uvalde killings came less than two weeks after a white supremacist shot dead 10 black shoppers at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.
Monique Hall, a 29-year-old new NRA member from Houston, bought her first gun aged 23 but has added several more to her collection in the last few years, as tensions have risen.
“I carry every day – a 9mm Springfield Hellcat Pro, and most of my friends do too,” said Mrs Hall, a warehouse labourer attending her first gun convention with partner, Myia Sosa.
“If you look at the police response in Uvalde, you understand why people arm themselves. You can’t depend on anyone, you’ve got to look out for yourself.”
Black militias and groups like the Not F—ing Around Coalition have marched in places like Georgia and Kentucky during recent demonstrations demanding justice for George Floyd.
Rather than prompting a rethink of its love of guns, police killings, mass shootings and general breakdowns of societal order have proved to be a boon for the US gun industry.
High-profile shootings, according to experts, feed into the top reason gun owners say they purchase firearms – worry over personal safety.
The three highest months for background checks for guns were March 2020, when the coronavirus outbreak was declared; December 2012, after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting; and in December 2015, following a mass shooting in San Bernardino, California. A huge spike was also recorded in June 2020, after Floyd’s murder by Minneasotan police officers.
With each atrocity that came after Sandy Hook, the prospect of any meaningful gun control faded – in large part due to the NRA’s influence over Congress. Restrictions in some states, like Texas, have even been loosened – allowing more people to own more guns more easily.
Overall, however, today’s gun owners are still largely white, 73 per cent, and male, 63 per cent.
And one of the three top-selling guns among this demographic at the convention is the AR-15, the assault-style rifle used by the Robb Elementary School gunman.
Before the assault weapons ban went into effect in 1994, there were about 400,000 AR-15 style rifles in America. Today, there are 20 million.
While handguns account for more deaths per year in the US, AR-15s are frequently used in high-profile mass shootings.
Daniel Defence, the company which sold Salvador Ramos his guns shortly after his 18th birthday, bowed out of the convention in respect to Uvalde’s victims. But plenty of other manufacturers are showcasing them here in Houston.
Teenagers around Ramos’ age play around with various models of the semi-automatic. “I like how it feels,” said Matt Donato, a student, while looking through its scope.
Part of the reason for the popularity of AR-15s – dubbed “the most beloved and most vilified rifle” – is that they are known to be both incredibly powerful and highly customisable, with owners able to add scopes, tactical gear and large-capacity magazines.
They have few practical purposes beyond target practice and shooting competitions.
When The Telegraph asked Mr Donato – who had travelled to Houston from Ohio, more than 1,000 miles away – what he wanted the gun for, he shrugged and replied that he had seen it on social media site TikTok.
“It shows you’re not messing,” he said.
