Just as Jared Loughner, the madman who nearly killed Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and murdered several others, including a federal judge, at a town hall in Arizona at the beginning of this year, took advantage of lax American gun laws to purchase high capacity magazines, apparently the man who killed over 60 people in Norway last week, Anders Behring Breivik, bought his ammo from this side of the Atlantic.
“The easy availability of high-capacity ammo magazines in the U.S. has once again helped enable a large-scale massacre, this time with a shocking 68 people killed,” Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY), the leading gun-control advocate in Congress, said.
“This is another tragic example of our lack of commonsense gun laws failing us with deadly consequences, allowing a cold-blooded killer to easily acquire the tools of mass murder even from another country. How many more innocent people need to die before we realize that some simple, commonsense gun safety laws in the United States could actually save lives?”
Likewise, Violence Policy Center Legislative Director Kristen Rand intoned, “America’s militarized gun industry is now in the business of exporting U.S.-style gun violence. The Norwegian terrorist who shot and killed 68 people knew to look to the United States when he wanted military-style high-capacity ammunition magazines. It is urgent that we act now to prevent a similar terrorist incident on American soil by passing Representative McCarthy’s bill to restrict high-capacity magazines.”
Gun control groups have had no luck moving a renewal of the Assault Weapons ban, which passed under Bill Clinton in 1994 before George W. Bush refused to renew it in 2004, through Congress, either in 2009-10 or, unsurprisingly, the Tea Party-infused one currently in session. They haven’t had help from Barack Obama, who has embraced the post-Al Gore paradigm of avoiding discussion of gun control like the plague to placate white conservatives.
