Eight days after the massacre of 20 first-graders at Sandy Hook Elementary, where each child was shot with a Bushmaster .223, The Nation's Gun Show, the biggest east of the Mississippi, opened.
"A line already snaked around the building shortly after the three-day event began at 3 p.m., and the parking lot was jammed" at the Dulles Expo Center in Chantilly, Va., wrote Justin Jouvenal of The Washington Post:
"With an AK-47 slung over one shoulder, Marco Hernandez offered one word when asked why he was in the overflow crowd at the gun show."
"Obama," he said. "I wouldn't be here if it weren't for the possible gun ban."
And this is the story across America since Sandy Hook.
The weapon most in demand at Chantilly?
The AR-15 black rifle, a version of which was used to slaughter the innocents in Newtown. At Chantilly, their price doubled in hours to $1,800. Gun stores have sold out their inventory.
Yet for weeks after Sandy Hook, journalists and politicians from the president to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who were making the case for a new assault weapons ban, dominated the airwaves. Those calling for reinstatement of the ban that was in effect from 1994 to 2004 had the national audience almost entirely to themselves.
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