America's gun culture: inside the world's biggest firearms show

Sitting at his booth in a stickily hot Las Vegas convention centre, a muscly former policeman in his late 30s is draining the last of a Bloody Mary and recounting the horrific things guns can do.

"If you go back to school shootings, it all started with Columbine," says Mike Renaud, in between sips from his plastic cup. "The next guy wants to outdo it. Now they're shooting in movie theatres, malls, anywhere. You turn on the TV and it will say, 'A woman was killed today walking her baby in a stroller in the park,' 'A pregnant woman was murdered.' You leave your house, you've almost got to be on guard. And it's sad. It's sad that you've got to live that way."

But what if you don't have to? What if you, too, have a gun?

"I like to think the more good guys with guns, the better my chances are," Renaud continues. "Cos the bad guys are gonna have them."

That was his logic four years ago when he told his wife, a nurse called Tessa, to get a pistol when she started working nights at the hospital and worried about driving home alone. That was his logic when he decided to keep 10 guns at home in Louisiana, where the couple have six young children. And that was his logic when he booked the 4,800km round trip to Vegas, figuring there was a market for the strip of lace Tessa had adapted to hold a gun when she couldn't find a holster she could wear underneath her scrubs. He called their business Lethal Lace and he is selling the lace holster in a variety of colours for US$54.99 apiece.

Now browsers are stopping at the stand every couple of minutes, but there are still lingering concerns. Is it really responsible, as Tessa suggests, for women to carry a gun around the house inside their pyjamas?

"The world's not safe," she insists, before directly addressing the worries of fellow mothers. "You're not being a bad mother by having a gun around your kids, you're protecting them."