Despite the fact that the bodies of the 15 Columbine High School victims are still warm -- and regardless of the fact that several adolescent victims of the April 20 tragedy still languish in local hospitals' intensive care units -- the NRA held its annual convention here Saturday, just miles from the deadliest high school gun slaughter in American history.

Others, however, deferred to the raw nerves still frayed in the wake of the slaughter. Colorado legislators opted to table two NRA-backed state bills. Gothy apocalyptic singer Marilyn Manson canceled the final five shows of his tour, including his concert at nearby Red Rocks. United Artists Theaters removed the teen horror spoof "Idle Hands" from all of its Colorado theaters, and the local NBC affiliate has opted not to broadcast "Atomic Train," which features trench coat-wearing killers brandishing sawed-off shotguns.

But NRA leaders decided that their show must go on just 15 miles from the scene of the shooting, despite repeated requests from Denver Mayor Wellington Webb that they cancel their annual meeting. Though it modified and shrunk the size and scope of its event, the NRA's annual meeting of members occurred as scheduled, starting Saturday at 10 a.m.

But here in Denver, the presence of guns, or at least their effects, could be felt long before NRA president Charlton Heston began his opening remarks.

Despair hangs in the air of this city like a haunting fog. There's the weather, for one. While much of the country is enjoying sunshine, in Denver Mother Nature has set an appropriate stage. The clouds are thick and dingy and hover ominously close to the ground. The air is bone-chillingly cold -- quite unusual for Denver in May.

Sorrow is everywhere you look or listen. Radio stations play messages from mourning high school kids, replacing the normal Friday night shout-outs with deeply heartfelt, often sobbing, condolences to their friends at Columbine High School.

These emotions brought 3,000 men, women and children huddled together at the Capitol Saturday morning to protest the NRA's presence. But there was more than political protest on the agenda. This city is in pain. On Friday, at a local park where an Illinois carpenter had erected 15 crucifixes in honor of the dead, the father of slain student Daniel Rohrbough tore down and chopped up the two crucifixes that stood in memory of killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.

"I don't think any thinking person in this country is going to disagree with me," said Brian Rohrbough. "We never ever honor a murderer in the same place as the memorial for his victims."

Here in Denver, citizens are angry and doleful and they feel helpless; they are looking for comfort and reassurance and, yes, someone to blame.

By pressing on with its convention, the NRA has made itself an easy villain. The organization throws its considerable weight behind the defeat of every seemingly rational gun control law, be it banning guns from school properties or requiring that guns come with child safety locks. Just days before the Littleton disaster, Colorado legislators were preparing to allow the state's citizens the right to carry loaded concealed weapons. The NRA was also pushing forward a provision denying cities and counties in Colorado the ability to enact their own restrictions on guns if their citizens so desired.

The front steps of the Capitol swelled with protesters holding signs saying, "Shame on the NRA," "Hey NRA, this town ain't big enough for the two of us -- why don't you leave?" and "Charlton Heston -- Bad wig, bad actor, bad ideas, bad timing."

Rev. Lucia Guzman, executive director of the Colorado Council of Churches, led the crowd in a rendition of the song "We Are a Gentle and Angry People." Rabbi Steven Foster of Congregation Emanuel suggested that the congruent timing of the slaughter with the NRA meeting may have been "a divine coincidence. Maybe it's God's way of telling us that we need ... to move forward and make this a more gentle place to live."

Speakers decried the NRA and its hold on the legislators who work in the majestic gray building behind the podium, though the protest became a national call for more controls on guns.

Charles and Maryleigh Blek and their son Timothy made the trek from Southern California to mourn the loss of their son Matthew, who was shot in New York City on June 29, 1994. Charles Blek argued that guns needed basic safety standards. "It's far better to child-proof a gun then it is to bullet-proof a child," he observed. But, he said, the NRA has made it so that teddy bears and toasters have more safety standards than guns.

His wife was more forthright: "We love our children more than you love your damn guns," she said to the NRA members three blocks away, hurt and anger echoing in her throat.

By far the most moving moment of the protest came when Tom Mauser walked through the crowd and up onto the steps of the Capitol, clutching his sign, which read: "Don't let my son Daniel's death be in vain. Reduce the violence" on one side, and on the other, "My son Daniel died at Columbine. He'd expect me to be here today."

Friends of Mauser from his job at the Colorado Department of Transportation weren't sure that he was going to attend. "He had a tough, tough day yesterday," said one.

Mauser took a deep breath and thanked the community for its love and support. "Those who say that I shouldn't be here because I'm being exploited -- that this is part of what Sen. [Trent] Lott called a 'knee-jerk reaction' -- I assure you, I am not being exploited ... If my son Daniel wasn't one of the victims, he would want me to take him here today.

"Something is wrong in this country when a child can grab a gun so easily and shoot a bullet into the middle of a child's face, as my son experienced," Mauser said, pointing at the enlarged photograph of his son that he had fastened to his sign. "The time has come to realize that a TEC-9 semiautomatic assault weapon with a 30-bullet magazine, like the one that was used to kill my son, is not used to kill deer." After speaking, tears trickled from his eyes and as he exhaled whatever remaining strength he had in him seemed to float from his body.

Representatives of the Colorado Coalition Against Gun Violence, which organized the rally, pointed out that they didn't contact Mauser or any other Columbine community members in deference to their need to mourn. Mauser contacted them and asked to participate in the rally, they said.

Mauser was followed by folk singer Cheryl Wheeler, who wrote a gun-control anthem called "If It Were Up to Me" after the Jonesboro, Ark., shootings.

At 10 a.m., the protesters observed a moment of silence in memory of the victims. At that same moment, three blocks away at the Adam's Mark Hotel, approximately 4,000 NRA members filed past a small sign advertising a hotel service -- which read, "Here's Your Wake-Up Call" -- through phalanxes of cops and into the Plaza Ballroom. As the NRA convened its annual meeting inside, the protesters marched to the hotel and formed a human chain around its perimeter.

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