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Clarence Page
We tend to respond in one of two ways to the news that a deranged gunman has fatally shot a group of people with an extraordinarily lethal weapon. Some people are simply horrified. Others wonder where they can buy one, too.
It is widely understood that, when it comes to guns, bad news often makes sales go up. So it should come as little surprise that the FBI reported a surge in Glock handgun sales in
There were 263 background checks in the state on Monday, the first weekday after the shootings, compared with 164 on a corresponding Monday last year. It is important to note that not all background checks lead to a completed sale, the FBI points out. Some people, for example, were disqualified for some reason. That's a relief, now that
Gun dealers told reporters that there also appeared to be a rise not only in handgun demand but also in the popularity of high-capacity clips like the one that allowed the
Such an extra-long magazine would have been outlawed by the 1994 assault weapons ban that expired in 2004. Rep.
But the word from
Has
He was paying tribute to the victims when he came to the particularly heartbreaking story of nine-year-old
"I want to live up to her expectations," he said. "I want our democracy to be as good as she imagined it. All of us -- we should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children's expectations."
He delivered that first line after a long pause -- and ended that passage with an even longer one, as the crowd cheered agreement. Noteworthy was a brief departure from his prepared text, which significantly deleted the word "us," turning the original, "I want us to live up to her expectations," into a poignantly personal promise that our self-improvement would begin with him.
It would be another great tragedy for our politics and our nation if we allowed that self-improvement to end with him. There's only so much we can do as individuals and as a nation to improve our tone and our laws, but I can hardly think of a more fitting memorial to all of the victims of the
Defenders of high-capacity magazines cite hypothetical excuses for their legalization, but we now have the very real story of
"If that had happened after 20 fewer bullets had been fired," said
How many more Glock shocks must we have, I wonder, before we once again outlaw an accessory that turns a handgun from reasonable self-protection into what Rep. McCarthy accurately calls a "weapon of mass destruction."
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