In Tucson, Guns Have a Broad Constituency

In Tucson, Guns Have a Broad Constituency
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/us/11guns.html?_r=1

In Tucson, Guns Have a Broad Constituency
By JO BECKER and MICHAEL LUO
Published: January 10, 2011

TUCSON — “I have a Glock 9 millimeter, and I’m a pretty good shot.”

The quip, by Representative Gabrielle Giffords, was made in an interview last year with The New York Times, when tensions were running high in her district. It speaks not only to her ability to defend herself but also to the passionate gun culture in Arizona, which crosses political lines and is notable for its fierceness, even in the West.

Indeed, the federal judge who was killed on Saturday in the shootings here, John M. Roll, had his wife and many people who worked with him take lessons at the Marksman Pistol Institute, an indoor range downtown. One of the doctors who operated on Ms. Giffords after the shooting rampage was a member of the Pima Pistol Club, an outdoor range where federal and local law enforcement personnel were practicing on Monday.

Arizona’s gun laws stand out as among the most permissive in the country. Last year, Arizona became only the third state that does not require a permit to carry a concealed weapon. The state also enacted another measure that allowed workers to take their guns to work, even if their workplaces banned firearms, as long as they kept them in their locked vehicles.

In 2009, a law went into effect allowing people with concealed-weapons permits to take their guns into restaurants and bars.

It is unclear whether the attack on Saturday will do anything to shift attitudes about guns in this state. But at the federal level, gun control advocates have quickly zeroed in on the “high-capacity” ammunition magazine used by the suspect, Jared L. Loughner.

Gun magazines that hold more than 10 rounds were banned under the federal assault weapons ban until the statute expired at the end of 2004. Today, just six states and the District of Columbia limit the sale of such magazines.

Mr. Loughner was carrying two extended magazines that held 31 rounds each, as well as two "regular" magazines that were not high-capacity, when he opened fire with a semiautomatic pistol on a crowd outside a Tucson supermarket on Saturday, said Deputy Erin Gibson, a spokeswoman for the Pima County Sheriff's office. She added that deputies later recovered 31 shell casings.

It was only when he stopped to reload that bystanders were able to tackle him.

“The reason he was able to be tackled was he had to pause to reload,” said Dennis Henigan, vice president of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, a group that works to change gun laws and the gun industry. “The problem is, he didn’t have to pause to reload until he’d already expended 30 rounds.”

Representative Carolyn McCarthy, Democrat of New York, is preparing legislation to prohibit high-capacity magazines and could introduce a measure as early as this week, said Shams Tarek, a spokesman.

Mr. Tarek said Ms. McCarthy’s office had been in talks with the staff of Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey, about working together on the issue. “We’re trying to come up with something that’s reasonable, that has a chance to go somewhere,” Mr. Tarek said.

Public support for stricter gun control, however, has dropped significantly over the last couple of decades, and there is little evidence to suggest that mass shootings change opinions.

In a Gallup poll conducted in October, just 44 percent of Americans said the laws covering the sale of firearms should be made stricter, matching Gallup’s record low on the question set in 2009. The 1999 Columbine and 2007 Virginia Tech shootings appear to have had little, if any, effect on these views.

In Arizona, the liberalization of gun laws has accelerated over the last two years, after Jan Brewer, a Republican, succeeded Janet Napolitano, a Democrat, as governor in 2009, putting Republicans in control of both the Legislature and the governor’s office.

In the last two weeks, two bills were introduced relating to the right to carry guns on college campuses, one allowing professors to carry concealed weapons and one allowing anybody who can legally carry a gun to do so.

“Here in Arizona, it’s very difficult to change the culture,” said Hildy Saizow, president of Arizonans for Gun Safety. “But we’re going to try.”

Federal laws bar anyone who has been “adjudicated as a mental defective,” as well as those involuntarily committed to a mental health facility, from buying a gun. Administrators at Pima Community College banned Mr. Loughner from the school last year because they had concerns about his mental well-being, but the episode would not have risen to the level in which it would have shown up on a computerized background check, or legally barred him from buying a gun, legal experts said.

Similarly, federal law prohibits “unlawful” drug users and “addicts” from buying guns, based on recent convictions, or multiple arrests over the past five years. Mr. Loughner was arrested in 2007 for possession of drug paraphernalia; he successfully competed a court diversion program, which resulted in the charge’s being dropped from his record. He failed a drug test when trying to enlist in the Army in 2008, Pentagon officials said. But, it does not appear that any of this would have been enough to bar him from buying a gun, at least in Arizona.

A handful of other states, like New Jersey, Illinois and Massachusetts, where more extensive investigations of individuals seeking gun licenses are conducted, might have picked up some of these issues, said Josh Horwitz, executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence.

Mr. Loughner legally bought his Glock 19, the same type of 9 millimeter pistol that Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech gunman used, on Nov. 30 at Sportsman’s Warehouse in Tucson, according to law enforcement officials. Not long before the shooting on Saturday, Mr. Loughner went to a Wal-Mart in the city to buy gun ammunition, but left the store before the sales person came back with the bullets, according to a person with knowledge of the situation who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because of the criminal investigation.

The individual said that Mr. Loughner then bought the ammunition he had sought at another Wal-Mart in Tucson.

F.B.I. agents visited local gun ranges here on Monday, trying to reconstruct his movements after he bought his gun. At the Marksman Pistol Institute, an agent entered shortly before noon, questioning the owner over the dulled popping sounds of gunfire.

The owner, Barbara O’Connell, had already checked the logs. Mr. Loughner had not been there, according to her paperwork, and no one recalled seeing him. The story was the same at another outdoor range.

Most people at the ranges said that, if anything, the shooting would cause more people to carry guns as a means of self-defense, rather than cause a retrenchment in the form of stricter laws.

“The criminals are going to have guns, so why should we as law-abiding citizens be punished for what a criminal does?” said Ms. O’Connell.

Ms. O’Connell lamented the death of Judge Roll, who was well known at the range: “He knew how to shoot, but he’d just been to church, and he probably didn’t have his gun.”

Serge Kovaleski and Dalia Sussman contributed reporting from New York; Clayton R. Norman contributed from Tuscon.

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