US School Shooting 'Sparks Rise In Gun Sales'

Parents of children at the Sandy Hook school have visited a gun store asking to buy weapons for protection in the wake of the shooting.

One gun shop owner in Newtown reported that a couple had been in his shop looking for something to help safeguard their family.

Sales of weapons have soared in the wake of Friday's shooting, according to anecdotal evidence from stores.

The same happened in July after the Colorado movie theatre massacre: the number of people getting approval to buy a guns increased by 43% in a week.

But at the same time there are widespread calls for the country's liberal gun control laws to be tightened.

It illustrates a complicated and often conflicting relationship with guns in a country where the right to bear arms is enshrined in the second amendment of the constitution.

Sky News Correspondent Tom Parmenter, in Newtown, said: "We spoke to the owner of one gun shop who told us that some parents from the school where the shooting took place on Friday had been into the gun shop to enquire about buying a weapon to allow them to defend themselves and their families."

Part of the problem with the country's gun laws is that each state has different rules.

In Connecticut, where the school shooting took place, it is illegal to buy the semi-automatic rifle used by gunman Adam Lanza and which delivers some 20-30 rounds at a fast pace.

Over the border in Pennsylvania, it is not, and legislation is liberal at a Federal level.

The semi-automatic has become the focus of the latest debate over gun control.

Senator Dianne Feinstein has said she will introduce legislation next year to ban new assault weapons, as well as big clips, drums and strips of more than 10 bullets.

The AF-15-style rifle, a Bushmaster .223, selected by Lanza is America's most popular rifle. It is essentially a civilian version of the type of guns used by troops in Afghanistan.

It has also become the weapon of choice for mass killings. It was used by the gunman in the cinema shooting in Colorado.

Tom Diaz, a senior policy analyst at the Violence Policy Centre, told the New York Times: "The people we're talking about, once they get into 'I want to kill a lot of people,' it's not a leap for them to see that these guns are made and designed for war."

But of the 12,664 murders in America last year, only 323 of those involved rifles. Handguns and shotguns kill far more. Lanza also took a 10-millimetre Glock and a 9-millimetre Sig Sauer with him to the school.

President Barack Obama is vowing to use "whatever power this office holds" to safeguard the nation's children, raising the prospect that he will pursue policy changes to stem gun violence.

However, he has not directly addressed the tightening of gun laws, at a time when sales are at a record high, and he faces an incredibly powerful National Rifle Association if he decides to take it on.

That gun lobby advances the argument that if more people are armed, then the country will be a safer place.

Republican Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas told Fox News that the principal of Sandy Hook, who died trying to stop Lanza, should herself have been armed.

He said: "I wish to God she had had an M-4 in her office, locked up so when she heard gunfire, she pulls it out and she didn't have to lunge heroically with nothing in her hands. But she takes him (the shooter) out, takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids."