Protesters demonstrate against a gun show at the Stamford Conn. Plaza Hotel. (Douglas Healy)
Defiant gun dealers ignored protesters and put their wares on sale at a controvesial arms expo held today an hour’s drive from the site of the Newton, Conn. elementary school massacre.
The eighth annual East Coast Fine Arms Show, held at the Stamford Plaza Hotel in Stamford, features about 250 tables and was held despite the objections of Stamford Mayor Michael Pavia, who called it “untimely and insensitive.”
Most of the weapons for sale are antiques — though some recently-made arms are available, including Connecticut Shotgun’s A-10 models, which went for as much as $19,300.
“I don’t see it as a problem because it’s the person who did it, not the gun,” said vendor Stuart English, 51, who hawks antique guns made before 1899.
“No one shoots up places with antique guns. If it was a modern gun show, I’d say it was insensitive.”
“I’m very comfortable being here,” added dealer Dave Kleiner, 70, who sells pricey antiques such as European dueling pistols, Kentucky rifles and Derringers. “This is primarily a collectors’ event rather than a shooters’ event.”
The show, which continues Sunday, is about 40 miles from Sandy Hook Elementary School, where psycho nerd Adam Lanza shot and killed 26 children and adults before killing himself. Lanza’s father, Peter Lanza, lives in Stamford.
A dozen protestors showed up at the hotel at around 1:45 p.m. — and were promptly booted from the premises.
“This was our opportunity to stand up and speak out and say that we’re not going to let the NRA get their way,” said Robin Druckman, 44, of Stamford.
And a relative of a survivor of the school shooting also blasted the show.
“It’s in very poor taste,” William Vollmer, husband of Sandy Hook Elementary teacher Janet Vollmer, told The Post.
Janet Vollmer locked her classroom door — saving 19 young lives — as Lanza rampaged through the school. She and her students survived the attack.
Since the Newtown bloodbath, gunshows have been canceled in the Connecticut cities of Danbury and Waterbury.
Twenty-eight people died in the Newtown attack — 20 children and six employees of Sandy Hook Elementary, the mother of the shooter, and the shooter himself.
gbuiso@nypost.com