Americans stockpile guns after California massacre
SAN BERNARDINO—At a gun range in Atlanta on Sunday, four days after the deadliest Islamic State-inspired attack on American soil, Brandon Langley practiced firing his AR-15 semiautomatic assault rifle.
“If people were armed, it would have changed the outcome totally,” Langley said of Wednesday’s assault by a heavily armed couple who killed 14 people and wounded 21 in San Bernardino, California. “Instead of 14 victims, there would have been zero, except for those two (attackers).”
Many Americans agree and are stocking up on weapons after the country’s worst mass shooting in three years. Gun retailers are reporting surging sales, with customers saying they want to keep handguns and rifles on hand for self-defense in the event of another attack.
“Everyone is reporting up—every store, every salesman, every distributor,” said Ray Peters, manager of Range, Guns & Safes, a company that sells firearms and safes in Atlanta. “People are more aware of the need to protect themselves.”
Peters usually carries a pistol with him. But since last week’s shooting, he said he had added a Ruger semiautomatic rifle.
In a country where more people own more guns than anywhere else in the world, the shooting has reignited a longrunning debate over Americans’ constitutional right to bear arms and whether gun ownership should be curbed or expanded as a way to stop even more bloodshed.
A recent spate of mass shootings pushed those issues to the fore in the presidential campaign. Wednesday’s shooting followed an attack that killed three on Nov. 27 at a Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic and an Oct. 1 rampage by a gunman who killed 10 at an Oregon college. The events prompted Hillary Clinton, the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination, to renew her call to “stop gun violence” with new firearm purchase restrictions.
Conversely, those who top the polls for the Republican nomination, Donald Trump and Ben Carson, insist the answer to gun violence is to empower citizens to thwart such attacks by making it easier, not harder, to buy and carry weapon.
Critics of America’s gun laws pointed to an array of statistics that highlighted the risks of widespread gun ownership.
This included data compiled by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, an advocacy group in Washington, that showed, on average, 89 people died each day from gun violence in the United States and 32,514 people were killed on average each year.
But gun advocates said new regulations would not stop people determined to commit mass murder.