Terrifying: Gun Sales Surge in Arizona After Shooting
The weapon that let Jared Loughner fire 31 shots is flying off the shelves
of Arizona gun stores.
By Tana Geneva
January 21, 2011
The horrific shooting in Tucson has predictably prompted criticism of
the lax gun laws that allowed a guy with documented mental problems to buy a
semiautomatic weapon. So, naturally the state's gun lovers are frantically
arming themselves to the teeth, in case stricter gun control (like not
letting the mentally ill own assault weapons) is imposed.
Bloomberg reporter Michael Riley talked to an Arizona gun store owner who
reported that gun sales surged after Saturday's shooting. The most popular
item? The model of Glock that allowed Jared Loughner to spray 31 bullets
into the crowd before being disarmed. FBI data shows gun sales in Arizona
jumped 60 percent on January 10 compared to that day last year, and 5
percent nationally.
The store owner foresaw the uptick in business, telling his employees to
expect a stampede of customers following the massacre. Apparently the same
thing happened after Virginia Tech.
In a review of mass shootings over the past 20 years, the Violence Policy
Center found that many of the most notorious large-scale killings involved
weapons with ammunition magazines that hold up to 100 rounds. In a press
release VPC legislative director Kristen Rand pointed out, "The Arizona
attack joins a long list of mass shootings made possible by the easy
availability of ammunition magazines that can hold up to 100 rounds:
Columbine, Virginia Tech, Luby's, Wedgewood Baptist Church, Stockton, and
all too many others."
Sen. Frank Lautenberg and Rep. Carolyn McCarthy are currently working on
legislation to ban high-capacity ammunition clips. "The only reason to have
33 bullets loaded in a handgun is to kill a lot of people very quickly.
These high-capacity clips simply should not be on the market," Lautenberg
said.
A federal law banning assault weapons expired in 2004, leaving it up to
states to impose restrictions on the manufacture and sale of the weapons.
Arizona, obviously, opted not to. The state currently has some of the most
lenient gun laws in the country, according to University of Arizona law
professor and gun law expert Gabriel Chin, interviewed on NPR. Chin said
Arizona is "a state where the idea is that everyone who is an adult and a
citizen or a lawful permanent resident is entitled to carry guns and own
firearms." The state has no restrictions on assault weapons and a state
permit is not required to purchase a gun.
Thanks to legislation signed by the state's notoriously right-wing Governor
Jan Brewer, it's also legal to carry a concealed weapon without a permit.
Brewer also pushed a law allowing loaded weapons into bars. And in an
interesting interpretation of property rights, the governor made it illegal
for property owners to ban weapons from parking areas (as long as they're
locked in vehicles).
Since the massacre, Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik has earned national
praise (as well as the enmity of the country's shock jocks) for pointing out
how right-wing rhetoric has created a climate of hate that encourages
violent impulses. In an interview with Amy Goodman Sunday, Dupnik also
denounced Arizona's extreme gun culture, calling the state the "Tombstone"
of America.
"I think [Arizona] is victimized by the gun lobby. Our legislators don't
seem capable of doing anything reasonable when it comes to weapons in this
state," he told Goodman.
Tana Ganeva is an AlterNet editor. Follow her on Twitter. You can email her
at tanaalternet@gmail.com.
***
http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MA13Ak03.html
Masters of hate locked and loaded
By Pepe Escobar
Asia Times: January 23, 2011
NEW YORK - There is an eerie, direct connection between hate rhetoric
reaching a fever pitch in the United States, the shooting of Arizona
Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, calls to take out WikiLeaks founder
Julian Assange and the ninth anniversary of the infamous US detention
facility at Guantanamo in Cuba. This disturbing connection should send
shivers down the spine of anyone even remotely concerned with human
rights. Yet it doesn't. At least not in the US.
Assange will be back in court in London on February 7 for a full two-day
hearing on his possible extradition to Sweden, connected to the ultra-murky
case of alleged broken condoms and "sex by surprise", co-starred in by two
Assange groupies in sultry
Stockholm last August.
Yet Assange's lawyers wasted no time in getting to the heart of the matter:
if he is extradited to Sweden, the US government will pull out all the stops
to extradite him to the US. Assange could then face the death penalty, or
its "war on terror" twin - forever languishing in legal limbo in Guantanamo.
For the US, the fact that human-rights treaties prohibit extradition under
these conditions is a minor detail.
Gullible, well-intentioned souls may remember that US President Barack Obama
promised to close Guantanamo. That won't happen. The US Congress will
destroy any possibility of transferring "enemy combatants" to the US
mainland so they can have a proper trial. The White House is about to
condemn at least 40 of these prisoners to Guantanamo forever - no formal
charge, no trial, just a black void. And Bagram, in Afghanistan, will follow
the same path. Forget about the US constitution and international law.
Human rights had to be a crucial part of the seven-point Assange defense
strategy - as a possible extradition violates Article 3 of the European
Convention on Human Rights. Thus Assange's legal team, in their 35-page
skeleton summary of their strategy, had to stress the concrete possibility
of Assange being subjected to illegal rendition and the "real risk that he
could be made subject to the death penalty. It is well known that
prominent figures have implied, if not stated outright, that Mr Assange
should be executed."
And to press the point on global public opinion, WikiLeaks itself put out a
press release drawing the inevitable parallel between the "take out Assange"
rhetoric (former governor of Alaska Sarah Palin would say "reload", and then
shoot) and the overall US right-wing hate-master narrative that culminated,
for now, in the shooting of Giffords. Palin is mentioned as she has urged
the Obama administration to "hunt down the WikiLeaks chief like the
Taliban".
The road ahead spells radicalization - as hate festers amid a configuration
briefly described by Assange himself as "Orwellian". As much as the attacks
on WikiLeaks have never been stronger, so has been the global support. And
there's more to come. Only 2017 US diplomatic cables have been published
so far (at this pace the full monty won't be released before the end of the
decade). Bank of America is the next mega-target. And there's still the
treasure troves on China, the United Nations and yes, Guantanamo.
Although the partnership between WikiLeaks and some global media
publications seems to have found a point of equilibrium, in journalistic
terms a war is bound to keep raging between those who defend the
media as - the term spells it out - mediating institution, and those who
support the WikiLeaks ethos of unloading slivers of reality with minimal
intervention. Although nothing beats raw information, some editing and
contextualization is essential. It's up to the reading public to compare
the raw and the filtered versions.
Much more worrying is WikiLeaks' crucial point - if politicians and media
personalities in the US are promoting homicide they should be legally
pursued for it - does not resonate in the US as much as in the rest of the
world. Inevitably, as WikiLeaks argues, if the group continues to be
stigmatized as a sort of new al-Qaeda, other tragedies similar to Tucson,
Arizona, are bound to happen.
There's no evidence US hatemongers festering in the politics/talk show
crossover swamp are about to be chastised. There's no evidence Republican
party leaders will publicly take a stand against the "take out" rhetoric.
The Arizona massacre that killed six people and wounded 14 others is
already being dismissed en masse in right-wing circles as the usual
isolated act of the usual deranged loner.
Thus, there's no evidence the graphic, endemic, accelerating rush to fascism
in American society is about to be seriously addressed. Abandon all hope
those who yearn for an adult, serene, rational debate in American
politics.It's a sorry affair, and one that French political thinker and
historian Alexis de Tocqueville predicted over a century and a half ago, in
"Democracy in America."
Today it's Giffords. Tomorrow it could be Assange. But the real target is
all of us.
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is
Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and
Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book,
just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).
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