In the aftermath of last week's Arizona shooting which left six dead and thirteen injured, there has been endless speculating about Jared Loughner's mental state and his motivation for the massacre. The Tea Party, the districts marked in crosshairs, the openly hostile and hate-filled political environment have all been indicted as enormous contributing factors. Something that cannot be dismissed, however, is the fact that the shooter, a troubled, possibly mentally ill young man, had access to a Glock 19, a gun that allowed him to shoot 33 people without reloading.
An excerpt from Pollitt's latest Nation column:
"...whatever Loughner's demons turn out to be, what let him kill six people and wound fourteen was that he had access to a gun—and a magazine that let him shoot thirty-three bullets without reloading. (Indeed, the Glock 19 was the same model gun Seung-Hui Cho used to kill thirty-two people at Virginia Tech.) It's a little pathetic—has it really come to this, that it will be a huge uphill battle to ban something that has no purpose except to kill up to thirty-three people before anyone can stop you?"
Read the entire column online here.
