After a Glock-wielding gunman killedsix people at a Tucson shopping center on Jan. 8, Greg Wolff,the owner of two Arizona gun shops, told his manager to getready for a stampede of new customers.

Wolff was right. Instead of hurting sales, the massacre hadthe $499 semi-automatic pistols -- popular with police, sportshooters and gangsters -- flying out the doors of hisGlockmeister stores in Mesa and Phoenix.

“We’re at double our volume over what we usually do,”Wolff said two days after the shooting spree that also left 14wounded, including Democratic Representative Gabrielle Giffords,who remains in critical condition.

A national debate over weaknesses in state and federal gunlaws stirred by the shooting has stoked fears among gun buyersthat stiffer restrictions may be coming from Congress, gundealers say. The result is that a deadly demonstration of theweapon’s effectiveness has also fired up sales of handguns inArizona and other states, according to federal law enforcementdata.

“When something like this happens people get worried thatthe government is going to ban stuff,” Wolff said.

Arizona gun dealers say that among the biggest sellers overthe past two days is the Glock 19 made by privately held GlockGmbH, based in Deutsch-Wagram, Austria, the model used in theshooting.

Sales Jump

One-day sales of handguns in Arizona jumped 60 percent to263 on Jan. 10 compared with 164 the corresponding Monday a yearago, the second-biggest increase of any state in the country,according to Federal Bureau of Investigation data.

Handgun sales rose 65 percent to 395 in Ohio; 16 percent to672 in California; 38 percent to 348 in Illinois; and 33 percentto 206 in New York, the FBI data show. Sales increasednationally about 5 percent, to 7,906 guns.

Federally tracked gun sales, which are drawn from sales ingun stores that require a federal background check, also jumpedfollowing the 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech, in which 32 peoplewere killed.

“Whenever there is a huge event, especially when it’sclose to home, people do tend to run out and buy something toprotect their family,” said Don Gallardo, a manager at ArizonaShooter’s World in Phoenix, who said that the number of peoplesigning up for the store’s concealed weapons class doubled overthe weekend. Gallardo said he expects handgun sales to climbsteadily throughout the week.

Permissive Laws

Jared Loughner, the 22-year-old accused in the shooting,has a petty criminal record, yet so far there’s no evidence thathis background contained anything that would have prevented himfrom buying a handgun in Arizona, where limits on owning andcarrying a gun are among the most permissive in the country,according to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, a gun-control advocacy group.

Critics have focused on the extended magazine used in theshooting. It was illegal until 2004 under the expired federalban on assault weapons. The clip -- still banned in some statesand popular in Arizona, gun dealers say -- allegedly allowedLoughner to fire 33 rounds without reloading.

Democratic Representative Carolyn McCarthy of New York saidthis week that she plans to introduce legislation that would banthe high-capacity magazine. McCarthy’s husband was one of sixpeople shot to death in 1993 by a lone gunman on a Long Islandrailroad train. Her son was among the 19 people wounded.

“The fact that the guy had a magazine that could carry 33rounds, he was not out to just kill. He was there to do a masskilling,” said Dr. Lawrence Kobilinsky, a forensics expert atJohn Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

Virginia Tech

Light and easy to use, a Glock 9 mm was also wielded by theVirginia Tech killer, Seung-Hui Cho, in a spree that left 32people dead. The gun is among the most popular sidearms for U.S.police departments. A negative for law enforcement is that therifling of the barrel makes it almost impossible to match abullet to an individual weapon with ballistic tests, Kobilinskysaid.

“It’s one of the greatest guns made in the history of theworld,” said Wolff, whose two stores sell Glock-made weaponsalmost exclusively.

When Loughner allegedly walked into Tucson’s Sportsman’sWarehouse last November to buy a Glock 19 -- favored as aconcealed weapon because it is slightly smaller and lighter thansimilar caliber handguns -- federal law would have required abackground check via the National Instant Criminal BackgroundCheck System, a telephone-based check administered by the FBI.

Background Check

Loughner would have had to present his driver’s license andanswer several questions, including queries on past drug use,domestic violence or felony convictions. Wolff said in mostcases the check takes less than five minutes and the number ofdenials he receives is a tiny fraction of the total.

Wolff called the shooting “horrible.” Nonetheless, it hascreated a surge of publicity for the gun, he said.

“It’s in the news now. I’m sure the Green Bay Packers areselling all kinds of jerseys today as well,” he said. “I justthink our state embraces guns.”

Arizona law allows anyone to carry a gun in public if it’sin full view, making it what’s known as an open-carry state.Until recently, gun store owners say, it was common to seepeople carrying weapons in grocery stores or coffee shops.That’s less true today, because last year that state passed alaw allowing individuals to carry a concealed weapon without apermit.

Gun Law Rating

Daniel Vise, senior attorney with the Brady Campaign, said Arizona received a score of two out of 100 on the organization’srating of state gun laws, and that the rate of gun deaths in thestate is one and a half times the national average.

Brady Campaign spokeswoman Caroline Brewer said that somestates require local law enforcement agencies to approve gunpermits, a system that would have given authorities a chance tofurther assess Loughner, whose behavior acquaintances havedescribed as erratic. Loughner tried to buy ammunition themorning of the shooting at a local Wal-Mart Stores Inc. outlet,then left during the sale process, according to a statement bythe company.

“If a clerk at Wal-Mart picked something up and refused tosell this guy some ammunition, we can certainly imagine that lawenforcement would have picked that up as well,” Brewer said.