Amid the gut-wrenching sorrow that swept the nation following the massacre at a theater in Aurora, Colo., gun sales following the early Friday morning assault rose sharply.
The day after James Holmes burst into the theater and began shooting, 1,243 people applied for the state-approved background checks. The day of the shooting 1,644 sought background checks to purchase a firearm, according to the Colorado Bureau of Investigations. That’s a 43 percent increase for the same period prior to the killings.
Why the sudden need to buy a firearm?
Perhaps it’s the fear of being in a vulnerable setting with no visible means of escape. Perhaps it has more to do with defending ones’ self.
Dick Rutan, owner of Gunners Den in suburban Arvada, Colo., said requests for concealed-weapon training certification “are off the hook.” His four-hour course in gun safety, required for certification for a concealed-weapons permit in Colorado, has drawn double the interest since Friday, according to the Denver Post.
“What they’re saying is: They want to have a chance. They want to have the ability to protect themselves and their families if they are in a situation like what happened in the movie theater,” Rutan said.
People seeking to own a gun was not limited to Colorado. King County, Wash., experienced a doubling of requests to carry a concealed pistol over the same period a year earlier.
A gun store in Smyrna, Ga., witnessed a 300 percent increase in the number of guns purchased on Saturday following the massacre when compared to sales the year prior.
Many are commenting that they do not want to be in a situation where they are not capable of defending themselves or their families.
Has this sudden urge to protect one’s self carried over to the Brainerd lakes area?
Baxter’s Gander Mountain gun department spokesperson said he was instructed not to comment to the media. However, Mills Fleet Farm in Baxter spokesman Jill Fish, sporting goods department head, said gun sales were “not out of the ordinary.”
Perhaps folks in the lakes area already possess hunting firearms and feel more secure in their environment.
Keith Hansen
Comments (27)
Add commentI can just imagine what a
I can just imagine what a mess it would have been if the gunman started shooting and then movie goers all over the theatre started shooting back. How many lives would be lost to "friendly fire"? Guess we'll never know.
Yes, God forbid anyone should try to protect themselves, eh?
Sounds like you prefer everyone just remain a victim, is that it?
Liberals like being victims and
Democrats need victims to have a purpose in life. If they don't have enough victims they will create them somehow.
This guy is a terrorist?
So what do you call the gang bangers that kill children in their safety of their own home and prevent others from feeling safe in their own home, yard or walking down the sidewalk of their neighborhoods for that matter? That's right ... they are victims of society and told so on a daily basis by highly compensated advocates that feel their pain.
Like the old Smith/Barney commercial..."We make our money the old fashion way...we earn it!" but with a different hook..."Keep'em down so we may prosper!"
Massacre is a good lesson on self reliance
It is good to see that people in Colorado are taking these threat seriously. In most cases the damage is done before the police ever arrive to pick up the pieces.
I wonder if some of the gun sale boost has anything to do with the United Nation gun control that Sec of State Hillary Clinton is about to sign tomorrow?
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/us-senators-threaten-to-block-...
There are more
people involved in shooting sports and self defense than ever before anywhere, eyolf. The Costitution doesn't mention sports or hunting but directly refers to self defense including against a tyrantical government. The liberal bait n switch isn't going to work.
Political cartoon in the Dispatch today
go buy a real paper and check it out.
James Madison at a desk writing, .."a well regulated Militia.."
and someone showing him a rapid fire assault rifle saying,
"James...check out this baby!!"
Or download it, free for now.
Lots of ink out there on guns and the NRA's lobby strength. It will fade until the next tragedy. You are all safe to arm yourselves.
Snow
Would that work the same way as the 1937 treaty rights then to?? The use of modern equipment back in the day & by the way I do have the paper infront of me.
They didn't have
corrupt unions controlling the democrat party back then either.
The unions aren't corrupt.
The unions aren't corrupt. The corruptions lies in the quiet groups like ALEC that are trying to take over our country.
Well all I know is that once I decided to move to the NE
side of Brainerd, first thing I did was buy a gun (or 2). Self reliance and protection are not dirty words!
Honestly
Fair n Balanced - you wasted no time climbing into the pulpit to point the finger at the "victimized" liberals! Maybe you, Fred Phelps and his ilk can get together to boycott the funerals of the slain "victims," you'll fit in like two peas in a pod -- spouting off hateful and erroneous slogans towards different "perceived" groups of people. Sounds perfect!
As a "democrat" (not sure I'm necessary a liberal, still waiting for the lab results to come back on that one) I won't have too much time to debate, though, because once I overcome my victim mentality and/or start to receive less attention, I'll make sure I go find the nearest looney and ask him to buy a bunch of guns and slaughter innocent people whilst simultaneously pushing legislation through that will much more greatly restrict firearms and munition sales.
Goodbye is right kitty.
That was one of the silliest statements I've ever read on here. Trying to do the Fred Phelps thing on me shows a lot of stupidity on your part. If you want to slander people directly get another Obama button and go destroy a building with the OWS folks. You would fit in well with them.
A thousand apologies
You seem to have missed the point completely and/or were born with a faulty if not completely dysfunctional sense of humor. And the OWS crowd can kiss my [filtered word], too.
The bottom line is how your very first comment on the subject pointlessly (and tactlessly) politicized an event that shouldn't have been in the first place. There's always a bad apple to spoil the bunch, but going on the offensive against a political party that had no culpability whatsoever just shows how incredibly lacking you are in the ability to think and reason independently, and you'll do well to remember that before the next time you post.
You are amusing.
I got this way by watching liberals insult everyone non-liberal for years. Your chosen party is saturated with those same liberals and union thugs, not to mention criminals like Eric Holder.
You'd do well to go get an education while you grow up and don't bother your elders anymore.
P.S.
The Democratic Party and the Liberal Press politicised this subject before all the injured were treated for their injuries.
As I said, be quiet.
Cravaack on PTV tonight suggested
that if MORE people in the Aurora theater had been armed the massacre might not have happened.
Really? Let's have everyone armed and pull our our guns in movie theatres (schools? dentist offices??) everyone DUCK there's going to be a shoot out!
Maybe not have a gun that can shoot 100 rounds for a start.
Just an idea............
It didn't shoot
100 rounds because it was a sporting rifle that wasn't clearanced enough to fire that many because it got too hot. An "assult rifle" is looser in clearances so that it can fire AUTOMATICLY 100s of rounds without jamming due to heat. How about you communists quit with the lies about incidents like this? Your attempts to cause hysteria amongst the people with no knowlege of firearms is almost criminal in nature.
P.S.
It also might have been a faulty magazine that caused it or both.
If he'd have just carried more factory 10 round magazines he may have been able to shoot it longer.
FnB (he he he) - the talking
FnB (he he he) - the talking heads you watch on the TV don't represent me as a person, anymore than the idiots that have kept the "Where was God during the Aurora massacre" topic alive since the corpses were still cooling. And don't call them my party. I consider myself a democrat, that doesn't mean I espouse every doctrine they jabber on about on CSPAN and political debates on news networks. I don't care much for Occupy Wall Street, for example -- it's counterproductive and the time wasted heckling police and raiding public property to use for campgrounds could be better used getting a job and judiciously managing their finances.
And anyone, liberal or conservative alike, should be ashamed of themselves for having steeped this issue in the political arena. It didn't work in Columbine, Virginia Tech, or even the Cold Spring shooting (for some perspective). It just made those who were TRULY affected (that is, the ones that didn't die) feel even more marginalized. No measure taken by congress will ever fully prevent crime. 'Oh well if we had stricter gun control laws...' says one side, the other, 'An armed populace is safer,' it's an exercise in futility. And in the broader spectrum, and I like to quote this a lot, Barry Goldwater has memorably said, "You can't legislate morality."
These issues are not strictly a). domestic problems or b). relatively new. Crazy, weapon-wielding lunatics have been around as long as we have been walking on two feet and scratching our hairy butts. It's up to society to take charge and learn collectively how to deal with it. Restricting freedom is more or less the same as squeezing one end of a very full water balloon and watching it swell on the other side. It will explode, and the mess goes everywhere. Some people need to realize that partisan stance on either side will have that effect because they rely on their politicians to think and feel for them.
FYI on the Assault Rifle
An M16 or AR-15 style assault rifle (or their FN / European made counterparts) can fire a MASSIVE amount of rounds, to the point of being blistering hot and still function. At the critical temperatures where the lower receiver (where the rounds are stripped into the chamber) becomes scaldingly hot, you're more likely to risk a cook-off in the magazine than you are a misfire. This of course excludes service weapons that are very old and have not had their parts in the upper receiver replaced or repaired by a repair specialist (in basic training this is a common problem as the care provided to a service rifle that fires blanks 60-plus % of the time is not as urgent as a weapon that is being used regularly in combat situations). In addition, even with the AWB sunset having passed over us years ago, the tax stamp and FFL licensure is prohibitively expensive for a person to just want to buy a few hundred bucks worth of parts to include a trigger group and fire sear, which would enable an assault-style rifle to have burst or fully automatic function.
Seeing as how his weapon had been more recently purchased, the best bet was the magazine. Armed forces model assault rifles usually use 20 or 30 round vertical feed magazines, the drum uses a rotary design which is more complicated because of its intrinsic property of having more complicated parts. And more importantly, MORE MOVING PARTS.
Ahem,
This was a civilian AR 15 not an M 16. And I said:It also might have been a faulty magazine that caused it or both.
If he'd have just carried more factory 10 round magazines he may have been able to shoot it longer."
All your fancy language was wasted there pal. Some cook-offs are from a loaded round sitting in a hot barrel.And I've had rifles that had to be fired several hundred times before they were broken in enough to feed properly. I don't think he had the time to do that.I happen to have shot a couple of weapons over the years also.
Hnngh, brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrahhh, unf.
Now that I cleared my throat too...there isn't really that much difference in construction and materials used between the AR-15 and M-16s. If you've ever taken one apart and cleaned one, you'd know that. I've also shot a few weapons over the years.
Let me also remind you of the opening statement wherein you said it "didn't shoot 100 rounds because it was a sporting rifle that wasn't clearanced to shoot that many rounds because it'd get too hot." I've seen drill instructors fire upwards of 450+ rounds continuously, from 30 round mags out of ANCIENT (relatively) M16A2 service rifles, no jams at all. The rifle was so hot it was causing the grass and leaves underneath it to smolder when they set it on the ground after firing the surplus rounds off. The civilian AR rifles can come in a variety of calibers, and caliber conversion kits up to a .50 caliber M33. The AR-15 used in the theater shooting fired a 5.56 mm (NATO) or .223 Remington cartridge. Beyond that and some cosmetic differences, the firing pin, extractor and receivers are designed the same with differences only noted for different calibers. AR-15s and M-16 style rifles are for the most part very reliable so long as they are regularly maintained, and there's always the old SPORTS system (acronym) which usually rectifies any problem not involving the physical destruction of the weapon itself.
A "sporting" version of an assault rifle only means that it uses a smaller magazine and, sometimes, sometimes not is missing the pistol grip (the Saiga 7.62x39 mm / 12/16/20 ga "hunting" rifles / shotguns, which are exactly the same as an AK with a few adjustments and no pistol grip / option for a pistol grip is a shining example) -- weapons which have a pistol-style grip and a certain barrel length will require a handgun permit to purchase.
You should understand, then, that when an original design (take for example the H&K MP5/MP5K or SP89 as a civilian variant) is obtained from another company, they are either obtaining spare tooling dies, fabrication and assembly machinery, or the specs to build their own. So far as firing mechanisms and internal workings of firearms, they're usually minimally adjusted. JUST...an FYI.
Well old friend,
I was aware of 75 % of your last post some years ago.This forum would be the last place that I would discuss weapons on so you can have the floor with your braggery. The libs on here would like nothing more than to sic some government agency on you if you speak one wrong word. Don't forget, gays don't scare them but armed law abiding American citizens do. You can PM me if you want to continue this discussion.
You know 12 people are dead right now, and could care less
about the politics of the situation. I would have to agree with snow on this one. A dark theater with everyone shooting at once; God forbid. How many would have been shot then? And while I am not a gun control freak, do civilians really need a gun that can shoot a 100 rounds? Can you imagine hunting like that; how much of the deer would be left?
No
Civilians do not need 100 round "C" or "B" magazines (whatever they call them). One bullet is enough to kill anything with a sufficiently competent operator. The issue should never have been politicized in the first place. People are dead, or crippled, and their friends and families are heartbroken and destroyed. Legislation won't fix this. There's an objective view on the gun control issue that I hold myself, but I'll let it be now out of respect for the people who care about the imporant point: people died.