"In no other decent country could any civilian, let alone a deranged one, legally get his hands on a Glock semi-automatic."

From The Economist: "SARAH PALIN once urged her supporters not to retreat but to reload. In the run-up to last year’s mid-terms her website carried a map of vulnerable Democrat-held seats, each marked with the cross-hairs of a gun-sight. Sharron Angle, a Republican candidate in that election, once said that the federal government needed “second-amendment remedies”—the second being the one about the right to bear arms. Right-wing radio and television hosts routinely indulge in the language of armed resistance to the tyranny that resides in Washington, DC, as though Barack Obama were a reincarnation of the hated King George III and they were the heroes of the revolution.

None of this is useful or clever—and it is no less awful because the American left is also guilty of crass hyperbole. But it is a big (and so far unjustified) leap to blame the woeful state of American political discourse for the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords, a congresswoman, and the killing of six people in Tucson, Arizona, on January 8th (see article). Worse, by focusing on this issue, America is ignoring the real culprit: its gun laws....Such talk certainly makes it harder for America’s two political parties to co-operate in tackling urgent questions such as their nation’s gargantuan debt, or its slide in the world education rankings. And, in the country with the developed world’s highest murder rate and easiest access to guns, violent political rhetoric that paints government as an enemy to be fought is troubling."

I'm very sad that glock sales skyrocketed after the Tucson shootings. Argh. We need better gun control laws.