Las Vegas 911 center overwhelmed with “Person with Gun” calls due to Shot Show

The 2014 Shot Show kicked off yesterday. This year the show featured the début of a multiple new firearms, and tons of firearms industry celebrities. This year has also been a bane for Las Vegas dispatchers. Civilians all around the Sands Expo center keep calling 911 to report people with guns.

The Shot Show is the nations largest Trade Show and Confrence for the firearms industry. It supports civilian hunters, outdoors people, military, and law enforcement. According to their media kit Shot Show has over 1,600 vendor booths that will be visited by over 63,000 industry professionals. Admission to the Shot Show is restricted people who work in the industry or are directly affiliated to the industry. The general public and general firearms enthusiasts are not admitted.

With gun control being a hot button topic for much of 2013 citizens seem to be very uncomfortable around guns. Vegas vacationers appear to be completely on edge due to the 630,000 square feet of firearms sitting on the Vegas strip.

A source in the dispatch center told us this.

“It has been none stop. We actually have had to bring in extra call takes just to deal with the ‘person with a gun’ calls. Obviously we need to take each call seriously but for the next few days we will be asking qualifying questions.”

According to our source if a 911-call taker is told there is someone with a gun, they ask, “Are you at or close to the Sands”. If the answer is yes then the caller is placed on hold and transferred to secondary call takers. It is then the job of the secondary call takers to get as much information as possible.

“We are finding that with in about three questions we are able to identify that our caller is outside the Shot Show. There are signs everywhere advertising this event yet it seems no one is paying attention. The see guns at a distance and vapor lock kicks in. Out comes the cell phone and 911 is being dialed.”

Our source tells us one caller was not happy to hear there was a large firearms trade show going on.

“This one lady was adamant we send officers down to identify everyone at this event. She said she could in her words see thousands of guns a whole bunch of very sketchy looking psychopaths holding these guns. She was demanding that our officer run background checks on everyone in the exhibition hall. We hung up on her. She called back five more times. Eventually we did send an officer, to arrest her for abuse of 911.”

Shot Show vendors tell CallTheCops the flood of worried calls to 911 surprises them. But many also counter that on second thought nothing surprises them when it comes to ill-informed public and gun fear.