ROME — At a police convention in October, Matteo Salvini, the most powerful figure in Italy’s populist government, ran his hands over an enormous military-grade sniper rifle and posed with a submachine gun. Before elections this year, he campaigned at a gun show and signed a cooperation pledge with a group advocating looser gun laws in Italy.

“It’s tradition,” Mr. Salvini said of hunting and responsible gun ownership when he signed the pledge. “It’s culture.”

Italian culture, linked in the popular imagination with fine art, fashion and good food, does not typically conjure up the image of assault weapons. But in September, the government loosened gun laws, making it possible to own more guns like the AR-15, an assault rifle that has been used in numerous mass shootings in the United States, most recently a Pennsylvania synagogue where 11 were killed.

Opponents of Mr. Salvini wonder why he would want to import the freewheeling gun culture so associated with the United States, which is far and away the developed world’s leader in mass shootings and other gun-related violence. The easy answer seems to be politics.