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Yet another unsettling backlash of the Arizona shooting: glock pistols, just like the one used to attack kill six people last Saturday, are now flying off the shelves. Michael Riley at Bloomberg reports that one-day handgun sales have risen 65 percent in Ohio,16 percent in California, 38 percent in Illinois, 33 percent in New York and 60 percent in Arizona from last year. Since Saturday the attendance list for a concealed weapons class at the Arizona Shooter’s World in Phoenix has already doubled. Riley quotes the stores manager who explains, "Whenever there is a huge event, especially when it's close to home, people tend to run out and buy something to protect their family."

Bloggers are unnerved by this information, offering reactions and explanations for the sudden urgency to purchase weapons.

Are There Any Non-Violent Solutions? Oly Mike at The Left Coaster blog searches for the proper response to the weekend’s violent attack. “Go out and buy a glock for family protection?” He proposes. “No, I don’t think so. I am not interested in solutions that require firearms.”

This is Not Helping Arizona’s Case Daily Intel’s Nitasha Tiku thinks the increased gun sales prove “Laughner’s not the only crazy one...Gun laws aside, it seems like Loughner would have been mentally disturbed regardless of what state he lived in or the level of rancor or political discourse. But massacre-motivated glock-grabs don’t exactly help Arizona’s reputation.”

NRA Has Nothing to Worry About At The Moderate Voice, Robert Stein recounts his shooting experience as a soldier in World War II and during a brief hunting escapade. After his only gun, a relic from his time in Germany, was discovered by his son, he dispersed its parts in Manhattan garbage cans. “A flurry of activity post-Tucson reawakens the sense of wonder at how bearing arms against targets that don’t shoot back has become a sacred right in America,” he writes.

The NRA has no need to worry. In Arizona, instead of a public recoiling from the bloodshed, there is a surge in sales of the semi-automatic Glock pistols used in the shootings. (Having to fire one shot at a time into a crowd is so inconvenient.)



Shooting: Good Publicity for the Gun Industry Jason Linkins tries to explain the rush to purchase guns in response to the brutal shooting at The Huffington Post. He suggests:

It’s as good an example as anything to demonstrate that there really is no such thing as bad publicity, only an implacable, gnawing cynicism that permeates our existence and sends us, sobbing, into a fetal position.

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