Report: Tucson Shooting Spurs Glock Sales Surge

Roanoke Firearms store owner John Markell holds a Glock 19 handgun, the model used in both the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre and the recent shootings in Tucson, Ariz. Sales of the handgun surged after both events.

/ Getty Images

Glock pistols have long since entered pop culture vernacular thanks to gangster rap and their widespread popularity among law enforcement all over the world.

They were a revolutionary handgun when their Austrian manufacturer, Glock GMBH, first put them on the market 20 years ago, because they were made with a high-tech polymer instead of steel, making them lightweight and reliable.

Now, however, a more grisly event has led to a new rise in Glock's popularity: a shooting in Arizona by a mentally disturbed 22-year-old suspect who used his Glock handgun to quickly kill six people and wound 14 more.

Special Section: Tragedy in Tucson

One-day sales of handguns in Arizona jumped 60 percent, two days after the shooting, according to Federal Bureau of Investigation data, reports Bloomberg News. Ohio saw the biggest jump in handgun sales, while Illinois, New York and California also saw siginificant increases. Nationally, one-day handgun sales rose 5 percent.

Of all the pistols sold, Arizona gun dealers told Bloomberg that the Glock model used in the Tucson shooting was among the most popular.

Major news events involving a shooting usually spur gun sales, Bloomberg reports, like after the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007 that saw 32 people killed by a mentally disturbed gunman also wielding a Glock.

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"Whenever there is a huge event, especially when it's close to home, people do tend to run out and buy something to protect their family," Don Gallardo, a manager at Arizona Shooter's World in Phoenix, told Bloomberg. Gallardo said he expects handgun sales to climb steadily throughout the week.

[RedWings_ninety_one]

Sad: people are killed by a certain weapon and thus the sales of said weapon go up....? This makes no sense and is really sad

[Phxfire]

Couldn't agree with you more, RedWings.

[ottopadron]

Amazing how quickly people start shifting blame from the killer to the tools of the killer.

Make everything dangerous illegal... wait, everything can be dangerous in the hands of a crazy man!

Remember the Romans? They had no guns back then... I'm sure there were no murders back then.

[Phxfire]

That NRA propaganda has never made sense. Take cars...they are not marketed as a weapon, either for protection or for offensive use, they are not the weapon of choice for most lunatics, they don't 'accidently' go off and kill a child/family member/best friend, you don't have 4 year-olds using them thinking its a toy, etc etc etc. Now, let's look at knives...for the most part they are not marketed as weapons, they have a use outside of carnage, they also rarely 'go off' accidently, in most homes they are out of reach of children and not left loaded next to the bed/chair/couch, ready to use. What else???? Oh, right, household cleaning supplies as poison...they are not glorified to children on TV, they can't be pointed at someone and go off, its not a weapon of choice for the angry at the world killer...

[melchg07]

Wonderful. Not only do people have to be alert to lunatics shooting up places we now have to be alert to the hero wannabe's who'll likely try to step in and fire away. Mind you that while these people may have passes safety courses and fired at a target many times.......firing in a real life situation is different and they don't have the training our officers have.

Ever hear of buck fever? Yeah its when a hunter who has been a marksman at a target completely misses the shot when put in a real life situation and it occurs frequently. Now couple that with a crowded situation that has broke into chaos......yeah...I feel so much safer that these people are going out buy all these guns.

[erasmus111]

"Ever hear of buck fever? Yeah its when a hunter who has been a marksman at a target completely misses the shot when put in a real life situation and it occurs frequently."


buck fever - nervous excitement of an inexperienced hunter


Yes, and what usually happens is their hand starts waving wildly and the gun goes off repeatedly. In this kind of situation, who knows how many more would have been killed.



"Mind you that while these people may have passes safety courses..."


Uhhhh, if you take note of your gun laws, in most states you don't have to pass a course of any kind. That's the scary part.

Of course, like you said, the chances are it wouldn't make a lot of difference, anyways.

[thanksgreed]

I can't imagine being that afraid....

[esq777]

Nice. Now there are even more nuts running around with guns. Funny how the right wing freaks argue that unlimited access to guns make us safer yet with all those rednecks in AZ packing heat, none of them stopped, let alone prevented, the shooter from blazing away with impunity.

[ralphing]

What model did he use, the Glock 17?

[lilbear925]

It won't be long before the Dems latch onto the fact that this individual took a taxi to the attack site -- and then they'll want to ban taxis. It could just have easily been any other firearms manufacturer other than Glock.

[wyodutch]

The Right to Keep and Bear Arms has little to do with hunting, target-shooting or even self-defense. As much as the liberal media and the statists may complain about it, America is, always has been, a nation of armed citizens. As Hubert Humphrey (Democrat Senator and Presidential candidate) said...
.
"Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear arms... [the] right of citizens to bear arms is just one more guarantee against arbitrary government, and one more safeguard against a tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible."

[newsbarn]

Really? Then why did Wyatt Earp ban carrying guns in Tombstone? Guess he was one of those wacko liberals....hahahahaha

[erasmus111]

"One-day sales of handguns in Arizona jumped 60 percent, two days after the shooting..."


Sick.

[canislupus16]

Great (not). There goes the price of guns and ammo again - sky high, thanks to the hoarders and loonies. Just when people finally realized Obamarama wasn't going to do a dam_ thing to take away their guns. You'd think people never heard of 2A.