Wednesday, July 25, 2012
In the three days after the Aurora, CO movie theater bloodbath, applications for the background checks needed to legally buy a gun soared 43% from the previous week.
The shooting at the cinema screened the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises, left 12 people dead and 58 injured. 20 victims remain hospitalized, including six in critical condition..
Just the stats.
According to data released by the Colorado Bureau of Investigations, 880 people applied for the state-approved background checks on Friday, 13 July, days before the shooting.
On Friday, 29 July, the day following the shooting, the number was 1,216, and on the Saturday, 1,243. In total, 2,887 people were approved to buy a gun over the weekend, an increase of 43.5% on the weekend before, said the bureau.
The bureau’s figures cannot confirm how many people then bought a firearm, but gun shop owners also reported a rise in sales.
Dick Rutan, owner of Gunners Den in the Colorado town of Arvada, said sales were “off the hook”.
He told the Denver Post, “What they’re saying is, they want to have a chance. They want to have the ability to protect themselves and their families if they are in a situation like what happened in the movie theater.”
SOURCE: BBC News
From the Left 
People in Colorado have suffered Columbine and now Aurora. They don’t feel safe and they don’t think the police can adequately respond to a situation in a public setting like a theater or restaurant when a gunman attempts to take out innocent people. I am curious if Americans in other states feel similarly?
I’m 68 years old. I’ve never fired a gun and I’ve never owned a gun. I expect to live out my days with no association with firearms.
The Pajamas Media and religious right keeps pushing the meme that President Obama is “coming to take away your guns.”
Of course, Obama is one of the most NRA-friendly presidents in recent memory. He signed the bill permitting firearms in our beautiful, national parks. In fact, in this election season he refuses to even discuss banning armor-piercing bullets and assault weapons.
The gun nuts have nothing to fear from President Obama.
The irony is both Obama and Romney, at one time, supported a ban on assault weapons. Obama, when he ran for president in 2008 and Romney, when he was governor of Massachusetts.
But both men have morphed into moral cowards on the issue.
If 2012 weren’t an election year, President Obama would be dragged kicking and screaming into the gun debate. But politicians are pussies and nothing gets in the way of their campaign. Even 12 dead movie goers in Denver.
I heard a conspiracy loon this morning on rightwing radio assert James Holmes is actually a paid, government operative hired to shoot a large number of innocent people as a pretext for the Obama administration to swoop in and take away American’s beloved firearms.
You can’t make it up. These people are certifiable.
The Real Adam – You’re 100% spot-on. When it concerns the gun nuts, you can’t make it up.
I have to take exception to Dick Rutan, owner of Gunners Den.
The last thing I want as a member of a movie, theater or concert audience, is hundreds or even thousands of people shooting at each other. Rutan’s thinking is flawed and dangerous.
Just what I want in a crowded movie theater: 1,500 people armed with guns and rifles. Are people insane?
The picture says it all? Guns for dad, mom and the kids.
People in Colorado had access to guns BEFORE the cinema shooting, but this didn’t stop the massacre.
Roger Ebert wrote this:
“The theory is that gun ownership makes us safer. That doesn’t seem to be working out for us. The body count rises. In Chicago we have a murder wave going on. Gun ownership doesn’t bring safety when both sides are shooting at each other. Nationally, most guns fired in homes kill people who live there, including children, and do not kill home invaders. The death toll in Aurora only represented half the daily U.S. average in deaths by gunfire. In a year, guns murdered 468 people in Australia, England, Germany and in Canada put together, and 9,484 in the United States.”