The article touches on why they're so popular.
A negative for law enforcement is that the rifling of the barrel makes it almost impossible to match a bullet to an individual weapon with ballistic tests
favored as a concealed weapon because it is slightly smaller and lighter than similar caliber handguns
The clip -- still banned in some states and popular in Arizona, gun dealers say -- allegedly allowed Loughner to fire 33 rounds without reloading.
No handgun commercially available in the united states comes with a 30+ round clip. You have to either make them yourself or buy them separately.
Are.... are they buying the same model gun as him on purpose? Or are Glocks is that particular model Glock out of about 20 or so models just that damn popular among paranoid gov'ment-gon'-take-our-guns-away hicks?
I think the article is implying that they're buying the same model on purpose, but the reality is that the Glock is far and away the most popular modern pistol being sold in the united states today. It's second to none for reliability and accuracy, can be disassembled, cleaned and maintained without any special tools by someone who has never held a gun in their life, and can be bought at pretty much every gun store, pawn shop and sporting goods outlet in the country. Chances are pretty good that if your average gun store sold ten pistols a day, six-eight of them would be Glocks.
While I'll agree that he was only able to shoot as many people as he did because of the extended magazine, I don't agree with the sentiment that they should be taken away. Limiting ammo capacities in firearms has largely no impact on gun crime and severely limits the self defense capabilities of a handgun. Yes, you should only need one bullet to a stop a motherfucker in his tracks. And yeah, you're a manly, competent, dripping beef wall of alpha male testosterone, so why would you need more than 7 bullets? Let's go for a different argument. It's your wife in a dark alleyway, with no escape, and a rapist with a knife. She's panicking and he's moving fast. Can you be 100% certain, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she's going to be able to save herself? I hate to sound like an advertisement for extended magazines, but for fuck's sake, I'm not sure *I* could hit a moving target in an alleyway while panicking with just 7 bullets and I've been shooting guns since I was barely out of pull-ups.