Warning shots: the attempted assassination of an Arizona congresswoman has reignited the long debate over guns in America.

• Author: Smith, Patricia
• Position: Cover story

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Jared Loughner was rejected by Army recruiters after he failed a drug test. Following a series of incidents that alarmed teachers and other students, he was suspended from Pima Community College in Tucson, Arizona. To return, he was told, he'd need a letter from a mental health professional saying he was not a threat.

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Yet he was able to walk into a Sportsman's Warehouse store in Tucson on November 30 and legally buy a semiautomatic Glock pistol. He was also able to buy high-capacity ammunition clips at Walmart--perfectly legally.

On January 8, Loughner used that gun and ammunition to shoot Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in the head outside a Tucson supermarket and then fire into the crowd, killing six and wounding 13, including Giffords, who survived the attack.

The shooting has reignited the debate over guns in America and whether U.S. gun control laws are too weak. Gun control advocates and many law enforcement officials say regulation is critical to keeping the public safe, while gun-control opponents point to the guarantee of the "right to keep and bear arms" in the Second Amendment of the Constitution.

Loughner had two extended ammunition clips that held 31 rounds each when he opened fire. It was only when he stopped to reload his weapon that bystanders were able to tackle him.

"The reason he was able to be tackled was he had to pause to reload," says Dennis Henigan, vice president of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, a gun control advocacy group. "The problem is, he didn't have to pause to reload until he'd already expended 30 rounds."

Such high-capacity magazines are the focus of gun control advocates in the wake of the Tucson shooting. Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy of New York, whose husband was shot and killed in 1993 by a deranged gunman on a commuter train, has introduced legislation to prohibit the manufacture and sale of high-capacity magazines.

Gun magazines that hold more than 10 rounds were banned as part of a federal assault-weapons ban until that law expired in 2004. Today, only six states--California, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York--and the District of Columbia limit the sale of such magazines.

Second Amendment

The debate over guns in America has its roots in the Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments to the Constitution, adopted in 1791 in response to fears that the Constitution gave too much power to the new federal government in Washington.

Long one of the most disputed passages in the Constitution, the Second Amendment reads, in its entirety: "A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the fight of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

In 2008, more than 200 years after the Framers wrote it, the Supreme Court finally ruled on what the Second Amendment means: It applies, the Court said, to individuals, not just to militias. That case, District of Columbia v. Heller, struck down a hand gun ban in Washington, D.C., and established an...