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One of the strictest gun laws in the nation went into effect in Maryland on Tuesday. The new law bans assault rifles and high capacity magazines, and makes Maryland one of only six states that requires handgun purchasers to get fingerprinted and take gun safety courses.

Gun owners in the state aren't happy, and in recent weeks, they've been flocking to snap up firearms. On Monday, outside Fred's Sporting Goods in Waldorf, there was a huge crowd and a countdown sign advertising: "1 day left."

The law is just a lot of "bureaucratic nonsense," says gun owner Leslie Cates. "I want to be able to own and have what I like and what I want, and I don't feel like the government should be able to tell me what I can and can't have and how I have to get it."

Gary Gilroy, also shopping at Fred's, says the new law infringes on his rights. "I think it's unconstitutional," he says. "It's against the Second Amendment."

A Surge Of Registrations

Joe Herbert, the store owner, says he was ready for the onslaught of customers ahead of the deadline. "I got full staff for the last week and a half ... working overtime," he says.

And, he says, he can't keep his shelves stocked. In recent weeks he's done about five times his usual sales.

It's been like this all over the state. Sgt. Marc Black, a spokesperson with the Maryland State Police, the organization responsible for processing background checks, says the office has been "working 21 hours a day, seven days a week."

As of September 20, he says, "we're looking at 106,000 applications."

That's more than double the number for all of 2011 and represents an unprecedented surge in gun purchases, he says.

The rush on firearms started after the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., when President Obama started pushing Congress to tighten federal gun laws. That didn't happen, but in Maryland, lawmakers got behind state legislation.

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A team of chemical weapons experts has arrived in Syria, where they will begin the long and complicated task of destroying the country's chemical weapons arsenal. Under a plan endorsed by the U.N. Security Council, the weapons are to be destroyed by next June.

Syria is wracked by a civil war that has killed more than 100,000 people and forced more than 2 million others to flee the country, according to recent U.N. figures.

The experts from the Netherlands-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons are expected to meet with Syria's foreign minister later today, the AP reports.

The OPCW team enters Syria one day after a U.N. inspections team departed. Led by Ake Sellstrom, that team had earlier concluded that poisonous sarin gas had been used in Syria in an Aug. 21 attack that left hundreds dead — a report that prompted a U.S.-Russia agreement to rid Syria of the weapons.

The U.N. team had returned to Syria for about a week to examine claims of at least six other chemical weapons attacks in Syria, spanning from March to August. It is due to present its final report on those incidents later this month.

As NPR's Parallels blog has reported, "dismantling a chemical weapons program is a laborious process."

After weeks of wondering what would happen, Americans now know:

1. Congress missed the midnight funding deadline for the new fiscal year, triggering disruptions in government operations.

2. That will slow economic growth, at least in the short term.

But just how far the damage will go is far from clear. Economists say they can't refine their predictions because they have no idea how long the shutdown might last or how many federal workers may be furloughed.

Among the questions they are pondering: If, as is now expected, the Labor Department fails to release the September unemployment report on Friday, will that lack of key data rattle investors?

"Getting some clarity would be a big relief for the markets," said John Canally, economist for LPL Financial, a Boston-based financial services firm.

Uncertainty about the scope and duration of the federal disruption reflects the division of responsibilities among branches of government. It's up to Congress to agree on a funding mechanism to reopen the government. But it's up to the Obama administration to determine exactly which workers are "essential" for the protection of life and property.

In some federal workplaces, the "essential" line might be bright and clear. For example, at the Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington, visitors will be turned away, but pandas will get fed.

But other calls will be much more complicated, and directions from supervisors have been murky so far, according to Michael Roberts, a Food and Drug Administration employee who serves as president of Chapter 212 of the NTEU, a union representing workers at several federal agencies.

"We've been getting conflicting information, with no clear guidance at the moment," Roberts said.

To the best of his understanding, many workers may be told to stay home for a few days but then could be recalled as "essential." For example, imports may start coming into this country without inspection — until someone determines that certain shipments represent "the highest level of risk," he said.

So exactly how high does a risk have to be before inspectors get called back? No one knows, and the answer may be a moving target, he said. "You would think we'd have an idea what's going on by now," Roberts said.

Even trying to determine how many people the government employs can be tough because of part-timers. A census report shows the government employs about 2.62 million people. And of those, perhaps 800,000 could be called nonessential, or at least that's the most commonly reported estimate.

IHS Global Insight economist Paul Edelstein says that if Congress were to keep the shutdown going for, say, three weeks or more, then the gross domestic product — i.e., the sum of all goods and services — would lose momentum. Instead of growing by the expected 2 percent this quarter, the economy might slow to just a 1.5 percent pace, he said.

That would translate into 75,000 fewer net jobs for the economy this fall, coming on top of the loss of income for those 800,000 workers' salaries.

The government shutdown will "throw a wrench into the gears" of a recovering economy, President Obama warned Monday.

FDA worker Roberts said the loss of federal paychecks will have an impact on many families, from park rangers to secretaries to inspectors. "We have people who are struggling and living paycheck to paycheck," he said. "They don't know when or if they will be paid."

That means lots of households will be cutting back on spending, and that worries store owners.

"Our industry is keenly concerned," said Greg Ferrara, spokesman for the National Grocers Association. "There's a lot riding on this for us."

Many restaurant owners are worried, too. Andy Thompson, a co-owner of the Thornton River Grille in Sperryville, Va., says many of his customers come to visit the nearby Shenandoah National Park — especially now during the peak of leaf-viewing tourist season.

If federal workers in Virginia lose paychecks and the park gates remain locked for long, then his restaurant could feel the pinch.

But he said business owners have come to expect poor economic results from Congress when it comes to orderly budget planning. "Everyone has that feeling: Why can't they get it together?" he said.

In the three years since President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law, it has survived more than 50 votes in Congress to defund or repeal it, a Supreme Court challenge, a presidential election and, as of Tuesday morning, a government shutdown. Much of the spending for the law is mandatory and won't be cut off.

But now, it must survive its own implementation.

Tuesday is the day that Obamacare goes operational. Americans can begin signing up for health insurance on online marketplaces known as exchanges.

And that begins a new chapter in the nearly five-year-old political battle over Obamacare, says GOP pollster Bill McInturff.

"What happens today is we're going to move from this policy debate about Obamacare to a reality outcome debate: What impact does it have on millions and millions of Americans, and do they judge it to be good or bad?" McInturff says. "And I believe attitudes will shift based on that reality of the outcome of Obamacare."

The Political Costs

The president is confident that attitudes will shift in his direction. Like the Green Eggs and Ham story invoked by Republican Sen. Ted Cruz — Obamacare's chief antagonist in Congress — Obama is certain that when Americans try it, they will like it.

"That's what's going to happen with the Affordable Care Act," the president has said. "And once it's working really well, I guarantee you they will not call it Obamacare."

But Obamacare — as it will be called for the foreseeable future — has already exacted a stiff political price from the president.

Opposition to the health care overhaul fueled the rise of the Tea Party, which led to the Democrats' historic loss of their House majority in 2010. But Republicans paid a political price, too. Their efforts to repeal the law in 2012 failed, and Democrats held on to the White House and the Senate.

Through it all, public opinion has been consistent — consistently negative about the law, even if voters don't want it defunded. Health care historian Jonathan Oberlander says that's why he's not sure even a flawless rollout will change perceptions.

"This is not a program like Medicare or Social Security; it is a program that really is a series of policies and regulations and subsidies," he says. "And that makes it difficult to explain to the uninsured what the benefits are, and I don't think it's going to be easy for Obamacare, regardless of how well or not it does in the next year to overcome that chasm."

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