It’s just a local article from the CBS Denver affiliate, but I have a hunch it actually speaks volumes about the state of gun control in our country:
The day after the shooting in Connecticut a lot of people in Colorado tried to buy a gun.
The Colorado Bureau of Investigation says it received 4,154 requests for background checks from potential buyers on Saturday. That was so many the CBI couldn’t process them all and the backlog grew to nearly 18 hours. The Unit could only process 3,001 checks on Saturday.
Extra staff was brought in over the weekend and workers are still trying to clear the backlog.
There are a lot of ways you could interpret this, and a lot of potential conclusions you could draw. (Some would probably be true, others might not be.) The one stark reality seems to be that, no matter how much Americans may fear guns in the hands of ruthless killers, they see putting a gun in their own hand a part of the solution.
That’s… very interesting.
Although one question is what kind(s) of gun(s) were they trying to purchase? I would say it’s possible for someone to support ownership of certain firearms — a rifle or shotgun for hunting, maybe a small handgun with concealed carry or just in home for safety — while also supporting tighter controls or a ban on “assault weapons.”
I’m not sure whether I’m one of them, but I think it is a logically consistent position to take.
Of course, I can see an alternate position where even a ban on assault weapons is untenable. I mean, I would guess that the vast majority of gun owners have no interest in being part of a militia, but one could argue that any invading military is likely to be using automatic weapons and therefore a militia restricted from likewise owning such weapons is no militia at all.