A spokesperson for NBC Sports has reportedly confirmed that the network will remain a top sponsor for the nation's largest gun trade show. Organizers have billed the event, which comes during a fierce debate over strengthening gun laws, as a show of industry strength in the face of such laws.

Bloomberg News reports that the spokesman further stated that the network participates as a sponsor “as part of our commitment to our outdoor-programming block”:

NBC Sports Network will remain the 2013 SHOT Show New Product Center Sponsor, said Greg Hughes, a spokesman for the channel. One of NBC's marquee broadcasters, Bob Costas, criticized gun laws weeks before the Connecticut shooting, after the murder-suicide of a Kansas City Chiefs football player.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation Inc.'s SHOT Show last year billed itself as “more than about selling and buying; it's a powerful display of industry unity and its resolve to meet any challenge affecting the right to make, sell and own firearms.” The NSSF is headquartered in Newtown, Connecticut, where a gunman killed 20 children and six adults in an elementary school on Dec. 14 with a semiautomatic rifle.

NBC Sports Network, formerly called Versus, has been a sponsor of the show for “several years,” according to Hughes. The cable channel airs hunting and fishing shows and participates as a sponsor “as part of our commitment to our outdoor-programming block,” Hughes said in a telephone interview.

Media Matters first reported on the network's sponsorship of the Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trade Show (SHOT Show) earlier today. In addition to hunting rifles, the gun manufacturers and dealers who attend the SHOT Show will view an array of assault rifles, tactical shotguns, and pistols with high-capacity magazines.

According to the event's organizer, the gun manufacturer and dealer trade association National Shooting Sports Foundation, “Any SHOT attendee will tell you the show is more than about selling and buying; it's a powerful display of industry unity and its resolve to meet any challenge affecting the right to make, sell and own firearms.”

The event appears to promote the same dangerous “gun culture” that NBC Sports' Bob Costas referenced in his now-famous Football Night in America commentary following the murder-suicide committed by Kansas City Chiefs football player Jovan Belcher.