What Price Gun Rights?
The easiest place to find liberal disgust at American gun laws in Tuesday’s Washington Post was in Kevin Sullivan’s roundup of international reaction from London. The headline was “Shock, Sympathy, And Denunciation Of U.S. Gun Laws: British Newspaper Asks, ‘What Price the Right to Bear Arms?'” One British expert even claimed you could easily buy automatic weapons along with your yogurt and bologna at the supermarket: “I think the reason it happens in America is there’s access to weapons — you can go into a supermarket and get powerful automatic weapons,” Keith Ashcroft, a psychologist, told the Press Association. Ashcroft said he believed such access, along with a culture that makes gun ownership seem normal, increases the likelihood of such attacks in the United States.Guns and butter? That might be true of a big chain store like a Target or Wal-Mart that has both, but “supermarket” isn’t usually the term that comes to mind then. I can’t buy an automatic weapon at the local Safeway.
