As a follow-up to this earlier article: Privacy
vs. Security vs. gun ownership rights Liberal cries for Gun Control don't
mesh with their concerns for privacy rights, you might really want to
take some time to read this:
... an article by the Associated Press (carried by IWon and others), which
includes this little nugget:
A judge's ruling on
Cho Seung-Hui's mental health should have barred him from purchasing the
handguns he used in the Virginia Tech massacre, according to federal
regulations. But it was unclear Thursday whether anybody had an obligation to
inform federal authorities about Cho's mental status because of loopholes in the
law that governs background checks.
Cho purchased two handguns in
February and March, and was subject to federal and state background checks both
times. The checks turned up no problems, despite a judge's ruling in December
2005 that Cho "presents an imminent danger to himself as a result of mental
illness."
"On the face of it, he should have been blocked under federal
law," said Denis Henigan, legal director of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun
Violence.
... and more still:
The 23-year-old
South Korean immigrant was evaluated by a psychiatric hospital after he was
accused of stalking two women and photographing female students in class with
his cell phone. His violence-filled writings were so disturbing that professors
begged him to get counseling.
The language of the ruling by Special
Justice Paul M. Barnett almost identically tracks federal regulations from the
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Those rules bar the sale of
guns to individuals who have been "adjudicated mentally defective."
The
definition outlined in the regulations is "a determination by a court ... or
other lawful authority that a person as a result of marked subnormal
intelligence, or mental illness ... is a danger to himself or to
others."
Virginia State Police send information on prohibited buyers to
the federal government. They maintain that the sale was legal under state law
and would have been barred only if the justice had committed Cho to a
psychiatric hospital. Barnett ordered outpatient treatment instead.
The
Virginia attorney general's office declined to discuss the application of gun
laws to Cho's case. Barnett also declined to comment.
The state uses a
slightly different standard than the federal government, barring sales to
individuals who have been judged "mentally
incapacitated."
... and even more as the article continues with this other important
information:
George Burke, a
spokesman for Democratic Rep. Carolyn McCarthy of New York, said millions of
criminal and mental-health records are not accessible to the National Instant
Criminal Background Check System, mostly because state and local governments
lack the money to submit the records.
McCarthy has sponsored legislation
since 2002 that would close loopholes in the national background check system
for gun purchases.
Initially states were required to provide all relevant
information to federal authorities when the instant background checks were
enacted, but a U.S. Supreme Court ruling relieved them of that
obligation.
Whew! That's a lot of info, I realize, but there's still more in the original
article and I wanted to make sure to keep things straight and not put words into
anyone's mouth here.
Where am I headed with all of this? Back to where I mentioned previously, in
the article about Privacy vs. Security vs. Gun Ownership. As evidenced here in
this news article, these issues were all at play and because of that, a man bent
on destruction was able to get a gun.
Now, lest you think I'm a rabid NRA nut job that thinks there should be no
restrictions on gun ownership, nothing is farther from the truth. I've
said before, and I'll repeat here that I think reasonable gun control is
fine. Requiring gun safety training before allowing individuals to get a
gun is fine. Background checks are fine. Waiting periods (reasonable
durations of no more than a month) are fine. And even closing these
loopholes would be fine.
What isn't needed here are knee jerk reactionary laws that are intended to
make people feel good and sound as if we are tightening up gun laws when in fact
we do nothing but make it more difficult for law abiding citizens to purchase
handguns for their own protection, for purposes of sport (target shooting,
hunting, etc.) or other good reasons.
We don't need the likes of Teddy Kennedy and others running out saying that
if George W. Bush hadn't let the assault weapons ban die (sorry for the bad pun)
then perhaps some people would still be alive today that were killed during the
rampage at Virginia Tech. If these people haven't noticed, the killer in
this particular case used weapons with fairly small clips, but was still able to
kill far too many people.
It does still leave me with questions in my mind about just how he was able
to fatally wound that many people with small arms fire, knowing that he likely
had to reload or must have somehow lined people up in some way that made it
easier for him to kill more than one person with each shot he fired. How
so many fatal shots were fired without somebody, anybody, trying to behave in a
heroic manner, trying to rush the shooter, and trying to take him out, or
otherwise finding a way out of the situation (throwing a chair, book, cup of
Starbucks coffee into the face of the shooter also comes to mind) is leaving me
scratching me head a bit.
Especially considering that college students usually feel somewhat
indestructible. I'm sure that thoughts of self-preservation kicked in, but
seeing a gunman firing shots all over and leaving yourself and others
potentially exposed without being able to slow him down somehow just seems
unimaginable. It seems like something would have happened before the body
count got so high.
I digress though, and it gets away from my original point that the something
that should have happened long before the incident occured could potentially
have happened if we didn't have so many rules and restrictions on the use of
vitally important -- but most definitely personal, and typically very private
and confidential -- information. If there weren't so many protections
built into the laws covering the privacy of the shooter, then perhaps some more
sharing of information may have happened and perhaps his mental health issues
and mental stability would have been duly noted well enough to have actually
prevented him from getting the weaponry he got. It may not have stopped
his efforts, it may have led him to use other means of destructions, but it
would certainly have kept him from using guns to do the deed with.
