This Glock 19 loaded with a 33-round high-capacity magazine is exactly the same make and model used by accused mass murderer Jared Lee Loughner to kill six people and wound 14, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.
Banned in six states, including New York and New Jersey, the extra-large clips continue to be sold freely throughout the rest of the country.
“High-capacity magazines were involved in virtually every mass shooting in the US,” said Kristin Rand, legislative director of the gun-control advocacy group Violence Policy Center.
“Ammunition is completely unregulated. There is no production-reporting requirements or background checks. It is impossible to determine how many [magazines] are out there.”
The magazines were illegal under the Federal Assault Weapons Ban between 1994 and 2004, but when that law expired, they re-emerged — supplied by Glock and a bevy of “after-market” suppliers — on the open market, including in Loughner’s native Arizona.
“They [manufacturers] are still eligible to sell them because of the sunset of the assault-weapon ban,” said Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms spokesman Joe Green.
For instance, gunbroker.com — which one gun enthusiast described as the “e-Bay for gun collectors and gun merchants” — has multiple offerings for the Glock-issued 33-round magazine similar to Loughner’s.
Another company, Spear Distributors Inc., of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., offers a new Glock 33-round magazine for $34.95 — and notes that it has 20 such items for sale.
In a bizarre development, Glocks, including the model 19, have been flying off the shelves in Arizona since Saturday’s massacre.
“We’re at double our volume over what we usually do,” Greg Wolff, who owns two Arizona gun shops, told Bloomberg News.
“When something like this happens, people get worried that the government is going to ban stuff.”
New York saw its own major increase in handgun sales Monday, just two days after the shooting — 33 percent compared to the same day last year. The national sales increase was about 5 percent, the news agency said.
In New York, possession of the magazines carries a penalty of up to seven years in prison. There were 69 busts involving them last year, down from 78 s in 2009 and 83 in 2008.
Meanwhile, carrying a gun within 1,000 feet of federal lawmakers would be illegal under a bill Rep. Peter King (R-LI) said he’d introduce.