President Obama
had his town hall on guns on CNN last night and repeated again, futilely, that he is not out to take anyone’s guns away, save perhaps those of criminals.

No matter. Any mention or use of guns  in mass slaughter is an excuse to buy still more guns, as local reporting by KTHV makes clear. Gun stores are forever busy because — well, why? One gun shop owner says first-time assault weapon buyers in their 70s and 80s bought before “they can’t.” Really.

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The KTHV reporting quotes ATF figures estimating some 41 guns for every 1,000 (a number I inadvertently dropped out in initial post) Arkansas residents, third highest gun ownership rate in the U.S. (If only our education results were so high.) That number sounds low to me, judging by social media chatter and abusive phone callers. On the other hand, maybe there is a silent majority of unarmed. Polls show a huge majority favor Obama’s modest gun control ideas, even if not a single Republican politician in Arkansas is anything but apoplectic about them.

Obama also writes about guns in an op-ed today in the New York Times. He says major change in gun regulation isn’t likely any time soon, but he’ll keep trying.

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Even as I continue to take every action possible as president, I will also take every action I can as a citizen. I will not campaign for, vote for or support any candidate, even in my own party, who does not support common-sense gun reform. And if the 90 percent of Americans who do support common-sense gun reforms join me, we will elect 

All of us have a role to play — including gun owners. We need the vast majority of responsible gun owners who grieve with us after every mass shooting, who support common-sense gun safety and who feel that their views are not being properly represented, to stand with us and demand that leaders heed the voices of the people they are supposed to represent.

UPDATE: Benji Hardy was skeptical of that gun statistic and searched around. He said ATF figures don’t appear to include handguns, which, of course, lowers the per-resident gun count substantially. He said the ATF figures are based on this:

The ATF record – which doesn’t include pistols – covers the sale and transfer of the following weapons:

machine guns
short-barreled rifles and shotguns,
suppressors
destructive devices like bombs and grenades
concealable devices with the ability to discharge a shot through the energy of an explosive
any firearm with a bore over half an inch that has not been determined to have a legitimate sporting us

e.

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