Gun Lovers Find Plenty to Like at NRA’s Exhibit : Weapons: Enthusiasts ignore legal setbacks to get close to some of the best firearms made.

“I definitely like the feel of that,” Duane Rowland muttered to himself as he stared down the scope of an imposing .44 magnum pistol that would have made Dirty Harry proud.

Carefully, the Huntington Beach charter bus driver squeezed the trigger, lurching backward ever so slightly as he imagined a direct hit on an imaginary spot on the wall at the Anaheim Convention Center.

“That’s my gun,” Rowland, an occasional big-game hunter, said as he rested the firearm with its 9 1/2-inch barrel gently onto the table. “It’s perfect.”

For Rowland and several thousand other people at the opening of the National Rifle Assn.’s three-day weapons exhibit, it was a day to dabble in perfection--to get a glimpse of some of the best firearms made.

At a time of rising public concern over crime issues, gun enthusiasts have been thrown on the defensive by increasingly successful efforts to limit access to some firearms. In the eyes of their critics and the media, complained Jack Greenlees, a retired Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy, “We’re zealots and fanatics and crazies.”

But none of that seemed to matter Friday as Southern Californians and others from around the country, in Anaheim for the NRA’s annual convention, viewed the latest in handguns, rifles, crossbows and firearms paraphernalia from about 200 exhibitors in one of the biggest shows of its kind in the nation.

Collectors combed the exhibition hall in search of that elusive 19th-Century pistol or ogled other antique weaponry, such as a glistening replica of a George Washington battle sword. Cops came to see what they might be facing on the streets because, as retired San Diego County Sheriff’s Deputy John Cooper asserted, “The crooks don’t care about the bans; they’ve got the guns.”

Mothers brought small children to the exhibit, keeping them busy with books on display on children’s gun safety and with a nearby shooting range--five shots for 50 cents.

In the evening, an expected 1,500 NRA members and supporters attended a rally to kick off a campaign aimed at raising more than $1 million and making the NRA’s presence felt more powerfully in California’s voting booths in November.

State NRA leaders plan to target still-unspecified legislators who have taken anti-gun positions on key issues--specifically the passage of two unique pieces of legislation that made some types of semiautomatic assault rifles illegal in California and put into place a 15-day waiting period for the purchase of all firearms.

In an interview, Wayne R. La Pierre Jr., executive director of the NRA’s lobbying arm, said that the NRA was displeased with even some of its past supporters, including U.S. Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.), a candidate for governor who voted last month in favor of a semiautomatic weapons ban that passed the Senate. The bill has now been stalled by opponents.

The effects of California’s newly enacted gun restrictions could be seen at the exhibition with a scarcity of some types of semiautomatic weapons. Some out-of-state gun dealers said they were uncertain about the timetable for enactment of California’s new law and about what semiautomatics would pass muster under it, so they just left them all at home.

But there were plenty of other guns to go around--Remingtons, Rugers, Smith & Wessons, Colts and the latest in many other big-name models.

For Greenlees, the retired L.A. sheriff’s deputy, it was an $800 Century Model 100, a 6 1/2-inch revolver first discharged in the late 1800s, that caught his eye. The large gun, he explained, seems custom-made for an oversized Civil War-era holster that he acquired.

“I looked down (at the display case) and realized that was the one I’d been looking for,” he said. “I have to have it. . . . I’ll just keep it for my collection.”