Las Vegas was never just about the gambling. It’s about guns too. Because sometimes you want a sure thing. “Which will it be, sir, the multiple grenade launcher or the pistol-grip repeating shotgun?”

They say there are more guns than human beings in America and most of them were at the “Shot Show” in Las Vegas when I was there last year. Wedged between a couple of casinos and a replica of the Grand Canal in Venice, Shot (Shooting Hunting Outdoor Trade) is the firearm industry’s biggest shop window in America, and therefore probably on earth. It occupied several floors of a building the size of Wembley Stadium.

I tried to get the numbers straight, but I doubt anyone could: it was like trying to count grains of sand on the beach or stars in the sky. Except these were all extremely lethal weapons.

Everybody there was trying to be somebody and with one of these in your hands you felt as though you really could be, if only for a moment. Winchester, Springfield, Beretta, Glock, Sig Sauer, Mossberg, Heckler & Koch: the names themselves were bewitching.

For a certified gun nut, Las Vegas is an Aladdin’s cave. It’s like being a kleptomaniac let loose in Harrods. There is a definite nostalgia factor too when you have on offer a Colt Six-Shooter and an upgraded AK-47.

Las Vegas shooting: Who is gunman Stephen Paddock?

It was like the opposite of Woodstock. There was little here in the way of peace and love, and no visible hippies either, but at the same time there was a sense of a high in the air, the aphrodisiac frenzy induced by the smell of powder and gun oil and toys for boys.

A number of otherwise sane women, dressed in cowgirl outfits or camouflage gear, were coiling themselves semi-erotically around extremely large barrels. One woman I met there was not only a hunter and fitness fanatic but was also in training for a bodybuilding competition and tried to sell me on the joys of the Weatherby Vanguard rifle and some assorted handguns.

I watched promotional movies of people creeping up behind assorted critters and then getting themselves filmed in a warm embrace with their dying victims, and grinning their heads off. Isn’t killing fun, was the gist.

There were a lot of trigger-happy heroes and urban cowboys at the Shot Show’s NRA (National Rifle Association) enclave. None of them were great fans of Hillary Clinton. They all turned out to be constitutional experts, especially where the Second Amendment is concerned, with its “right to bear arms”. In fact there was a general consensus that it was unpatriotic not to bear arms.

Las Vegas shooting: What we know so far

If I felt like joining, there was a special deal on and they were throwing in a subscription to “American Rifle”. More than once I heard the argument that if only everyone in the nation had a decent gun in their pocket (better still, several guns) then there would be no more mass shootings. Potential shooters would be too afraid of other shooters gunning them down. That is the best theory the NRA has been able to come up with. There aren’t yet quite enough guns in America. The more the merrier.

I remember that I couldn’t find my way out of the show. It was so enormous I kept going round and round. In the end I had to ask somebody where the exit was. Maybe there really is no way out, I started to think.

The Las Vegas gun show is a microcosm of America, a locked-and-loaded nation with the safety permanently off. As the ad said, this really is “Remington Country”. I, a rank amateur, with only a passing acquaintance with weaponry, could very readily kit myself out like Rambo. It was hard not to.

Las Vegas is testimony to the militarisation of an entire society. And talking of exits, it is easy to see how tempting it must be to make a really spectacular one, a mass exit that no one will ever forget.

Las Vegas shooting – in pictures Show all 15 1 /15 Las Vegas shooting – in pictures Las Vegas shooting – in pictures People scramble for shelter at the Route 91 Harvest country music festival after gun fire was heard Getty Las Vegas shooting – in pictures People carry a person at the Route 91 Harvest country music festival after shots were fired David Becker/Getty Las Vegas shooting – in pictures People run from the Route 91 Harvest country music festival after gun fire was heard David Becker/Getty Las Vegas shooting – in pictures A handout photo released via Twitter by Eiki Hrafnsson (@EirikurH) showing concertgoers running away from the scene (C) after shots range out at the Route 91 Harvest festival on Las Vegas Boulevard EPA/Eiki Hrafnsson Las Vegas shooting – in pictures People lie on the ground at the Route 91 Harvest country music festival after hearing gun fire Getty Las Vegas shooting – in pictures A man in a wheelchair is taken away from the Route 91 Harvest country music festival after hearing gun fire David Becker/Getty Las Vegas shooting – in pictures People stand on the street outside the Mandalay Bay hotel near the scene of the Route 91 Harvest festival on Las Vegas Boulevard EPA/Paul Buck Las Vegas shooting – in pictures FBI agents confer in front of the Tropicana hotel-casino after a mass shooting during a music festival on the Las Vegas Strip Reuters/Las Vegas Sun/Steve Marcus Las Vegas shooting – in pictures Las Vegas police run by a banner on the fence at the Route 91 Harvest country music festival grounds after shots were fired David Becker/Getty Las Vegas shooting – in pictures An injured person is tended to in the intersection of Tropicana Ave. and Las Vegas Boulevard after a mass shooting at a country music festival Ethan Miller/Getty Las Vegas shooting – in pictures Metro Police officers pass by the front of the Tropicana hotel-casino after a mass shooting at a music festival on the Las Vegas Strip Reuters/Las Vegas Sun/Steve Marcus Las Vegas shooting – in pictures A woman sits on a curb at the scene of a shooting outside of a music festival along the Las Vegas Strip AP/John Locher Las Vegas shooting – in pictures A cowboy hat lays in the street after shots were fired near a country music festival in Las Vegas Getty Las Vegas shooting – in pictures Las Vegas Metro Police and medical workers stage in the intersection of Tropicana Avenue and Las Vegas Boulevard South after a mass shooting at a music festival on the Las Vegas Strip Reuters/Las Vegas Sun/Steve Marcus Las Vegas shooting – in pictures Sheriff Joe Lombardo (2-R) speaking during a press briefing in the aftermath of the active shooter incident on Las Vegas Boulevard EPA

At the Venetian complex, I could take a gondola beneath a painted sky and climb up St Mark’s Campanile. As I walked back up the Strip in the sun, courted by Elvis and Mickey Mouse and Darth Vader, I thought to myself that the bewildering sense that nothing is real, that everything here is fake, makes reaching for a gun just that little bit easier. It feels as if everything is a hallucination, a dream or a delusion. Maybe only the cold, hard metal in your hand feels real, the final truth.