Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Glock and Load

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Greg Wolff, the owner of two Arizona gun shops, told his manager to get ready for a stampede of new customers after a Glock-wielding gunman killed six people at a Tucson shopping center on Jan. 8.

Wolff was right. Instead of hurting sales, the massacre had the $499 semi-automatic pistols -- popular with police, sport shooters and gangsters -- flying out the doors of his Glockmeister stores in Mesa and Phoenix.

“We’re at double our volume over what we usually do,” Wolff said two days after the shooting spree that also left 14 wounded, including Democratic Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who remains in critical condition.

[...]

“When something like this happens people get worried that the government is going to ban stuff,” Wolff said.

Arizona gun dealers say that among the biggest sellers in the past few days is the Glock 19 made by privately held Glock GmbH, based in Deutsch-Wagram, Austria, the model used in the shootings.

[...]

Arizona law allows anyone to carry a gun in public if it’s in full view, making it what’s known as an open-carry state. Until recently, gun store owners say, it was common to see people carrying weapons in grocery stores or coffee shops. That’s less true today, because last year that state passed a law allowing individuals to carry a concealed weapon without a permit.

Daniel Vise, senior attorney with the Brady Campaign, said Arizona received a score of two out of 100 on the organization’s rating of state gun laws, and that the rate of gun deaths in the state is one and a half times the national average.

[Bloomberg]

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