Shooting Rekindles Issues of Gun Rights and Restrictions

Source: New York Times

Five weeks ago, a Virginia Tech student walked into a nondescript gun store next to a pawn shop in Roanoke, Va., and paid $571 for a Glock 9-millimeter handgun and a box of ammunition.

On Monday, the student, Cho Seung-Hui, made a horrible kind of history by using that gun and another pistol to go on a murderous rampage at the university, in Blacksburg, Va., before taking his own life.

As described by John Markell, the owner of the store, Roanoke Firearms, the purchase was a routine transaction. Virginia requires residents to present two forms of identification to buy a gun, as well pass a computerized background check, and Mr. Cho showed a salesman his driver’s license, a checkbook and his green card, because he had immigrated with his family from South Korea.

snip...

But Blaine Rummel, a board member of Virginians for Public Safety, an anti-gun group, disputed the notion that arming more people would reduce violence. “Virginia is second in the nation in the ease of getting handguns,” Mr. Rummel said. “If easy availability was a solution, Virginia Tech wouldn’t be in mourning today.”

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/18/us/18pistols.html

It would immediately throw Pres. 08 back into play for the Repukes and make regaining Congress a real possibility. It would energize the Right and split the Left.

I hope to God we don't take the bait, and I hope we stay focused on Iraq and hope we address the shooting by advocating for better mental health care and community outreach to troubled citizens.

I think we all know that new gun laws would not have prevented this - at least no law that has any chance of passing - no matter how much we wish the opposite were true.

The flame wars and oblivious attitude toward HR 1022 are staggering, as is the denial of the gun culture and their unbelievable sway over populations and elections, especially in the West and South.

This is now and always has been a loser. If we pursue it again, we lose again. There are bigger and more dangerous fights that we have to win; we'll never win this one.

On one side, I have seen someone close, who had multiple documented legal issues in his life, issues that should have precluded his ownership of any firearm, get them thirteen to the dozen in VA. I knew something was wrong then, and that something is wrong now.

On the other hand, let's get real: Guns are not gonna get banned. Full stop. Nah. Gah. Hah. Pen.

So, what do we do? How do we fix it?

After all, speaking from my previous experience as a psychiatric social worker and crisis counselor, the shooter was waving more red flags than a Communist Chinese Maoist Stadium Rally. Why did the systems that should have recognized the signals this kid was screaming at the top of his lungs break down?

Frankly, there is where the attention should be placed at this point. The kid was signaling frantically. Why were those signals ignored, especially in an educational institution where such things are supposed to be recognized and acted upon?

Three simple steps that most states require before you can put a car on the road and legally drive.

License - Include at least a cursory written exam and eye exam. I for one would feel safer if I knew most gun owners could read.
Register - Register that gun with a state and federal database. Should be a paper trail from manufacturer to seller to owner. Just like my 97 Accord.
Insure - Gun owners should be required to insure themselves against theft, misuse of their firearm, accidental death or injury
(someone else or themselves).

And whoever came up with the idea more guns would reduce violence was smoking some pretty strong stuff and should not be allowed to play with guns.

Another tax on gun ownership. I guess poor people don't deserve to have weapons. And you don't need a license or registration to own a car, just to drive one. Same with guns; you don't need a license to own them, but you do need to get a license and pass classes to carry one in public. Registration is the first step to confiscation; if fascism in America truly comes to pass, those registries will make things very easy for the oppressor's minions.

If you don't think guns can be used to stop violent attacks, read the list I posted here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=2810685&mesg_id=2811587

And read the material on defensive gun uses (about 2 million a year, compared with 16,000 or so gun homicides) here:

http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcdguse.html

If guns cause violence, why are many rural areas with extremely high ownership rates some of the safest in the country? Why are Washington DC and Chicago so violent?

But at least be honest about it...

Most rural areas are fairly homogenous.
You go to farming areas in central and southern Illinois, Nebraska, Indiana, etc and the perscentage of people related to one another is rather high.

Rural areas experience less change than city areas do.

I have relatives that live in small towns in central and western Illinois as well as eastern Iowa. Outsiders are recognized almost instantly and the turnover rate in the population is negligible.

People that live in urban areas tend to be more isolated from each other because of the high turnover rate in the population.

Stressors that exist in urban environments, for the most part, are mush less, and in some cases, non-existant in most rural areas.

The high ownership of guns has very little to do with the low incidences of crime in rural areas. There are many more important ones out there.

If a full blown police state emerges you will not be able to stand up for a second against the overwhelming firepower that the government forces can aim at you. And they don't even need guns. They can microwave you in a second and your gun will drop in a flash from your hot fried hand. You're kidding yourself.

You shoot them in the back from a great distance, then run like hell and repeat the process later. Snipers have killed lots of US troops in Iraq, and the US has more scoped hunting rifles (aka sniper rifles) than Iraq. Assault rifles like the AK-47 are actually less useful in a sense, because they're made for close combat, which is something insurgents should avoid.

People make the point that you can't fight tanks and F-15s with small arms... well, oppressive fascist states don't use those things to do routine patrols. Sniping and other insurgency tactics are used to inflict a death of a thousand cuts on occupying forces and drop their morale. Oppressors would feel a lot more secure patrolling areas where they knew everyone was disarmed.

this is a fantasy on your part.

"They" BELIEVE you want to take away ALL of their guns and they BELIEVE they need them to fight the "Commies" or whoever.

You are taking the role of an atheist trying to convince a born again Christian that their belief is a myth. Score of the game: you lose.

He is a democrat who won the endorsement of the NRA and TSRA. It helped him to be progun.

Give up on the "I know the world would be better if we just took away your guns," attitude, and we've won half the battle.

You don't seem familiar with how martial law and resistance movements work. Obviously indivdual gun owners can't ever band together and take on the U.S. army in a stand up, organized fight to the end. Probably no group on Earth could. But they can take potshots at footsoldiers whenever an opportunity presents itself. That is hugely significant because most footsoldiers are not inantely eager to oppress their countrymen. They do so because it promises them a better life than those they are oppressing. But, constant fear of being sniped from a roof or shot in the back by a 12 year old with a .22 whose dad was just carted away will do alot to take away that incentive, it would in fact make the lives of said footsoldiers miserable. That in turn would probably weaken the tyrannical government's hold on the army, which would shorten its lifespan considerably.

Occasionally violence is the best solution. If the proverbial shit ever hits the fan in America, either because the government becomes oppressive or looses its power to maintain law and order, you will be glad the population is armed.

Garbage...you cannot fight fascism with your little popguns...

Tell that to the Afghanis who threw the Russians out using mostly 80 year old bolt action rifles.

Furthermore the US military is far more advanced than Soviet army that invaded Afghanistan.

Police power is being routed daily as we speak

the funerals of murder victims.

For 24/7 bodyguards protecting people who don't have the large amounts of disposable income necessary to keep and bear arms in your brave new world. Because if the government is going to price effective self-defense out of their reach, it had better be prepared to guarantee that they won't come to harm.

The state is not required to protect you if you are not in custody. The ruling that set this in stone was passed down after a lawsuit by a group of women who were repeatedly raped and beaten in their home and repeatedly called the cops, with none arriving until long after everything was over. It was in Washington DC IIRC. You and you alone are responsible for your protection, unless you've got the cash to hire bodyguards.

I've heard all kinds of amusing suggestions by anti-gunners as to how people should defend themselves. Many say you should immediately submit to mugging attempts and hope the crook doesn't mind leaving a witness. Iverglas, whose post is just below, once recommended curling up into a little ball as the best response to an attacker. Pardon me if I don't find your approach to this problem very rational.

Iverglas, whose post is just below, once recommended curling up into a little ball as the best response to an attacker.

Where the fuck did that come from?

Not from my keyboard, unless I was in one of my rare moments of finding myself dryly hilarious ...

Source and quotation, please. You really don't get to play "iverglas is a moron" without actually having a card to lay on the table, you know.

Just so's you know, when I was abducted in a locked car with no interior door or window handles, I progressively leaned on the horn and screamed, attempted to kick out a window (windshield glass beats plastic sandals), grabbed me a handful of flesh and squeezed and twisted, unfortunately missing what I was actually aiming at but leaving a big old bruise, and played dead only when I was starting to lose consciousness from the hands closed around my throat, as I calculated the odds (being a novice expert in the field at the time) of having encountered not just a sexual assailant but a murderer. They're way low, but I'm pretty sure I'd hit the jackpot, and that had I accepted the invitation for a walk in the woods a little later instead of hitting the gravel running in bare feet, we wouldn't be having this little chat.

I didn't have a gun. But then (internet reports to the contrary), neither did he. He went to jail, I got called to the bar ... and one of those wouldn't have happened if he'd had a gun. If we'd both had guns, we could have entertained ourselves shooting each other dead in the front seat of a sealed vehicle ... assuming, of course, that he was stupid enough not to have drawn first.

You recommend that the proper way to respond to someone kicking you while you're down is to cover up all your vulnerable spots:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=118&topic_id=129988#130072

Looks like you rolled the dice and won with your attacker. Hundreds of other women aren't as lucky, but you seem to think it's fine that they should trust to luck instead of shifting the odds in their favor. Your anecdote-based claims that rapists and home invaders aren't dangerous is pretty lame in the face of the fact that many people have been killed by those types of criminals. I've personally spoken with two women who have pulled CCWs and driven away men who approached them with ill intent, and I'd say that's a much better defense than playing dead.

So, I say (this being the post your link took me to):

Was the attacker in our scenario a "gangbanger? Nope. An unpleasantly crazy person.

Was the attacker in our scenario making a serious attempt to kill? We don't know. Given the apparent complete absence of any injury worth mentioning to the victim of the attack, it would seem doubtful, since from all accounts the attacker had the opportunity to do serious harm.

Was there more than one attacker in our scenario? Nope.

If one sharp blow to the back of one's head is enough to kill one (which of course it is), why would someone being subjected to such an attack not be protecting the back of his/her head, or whatever location of a potentially fatal or very injurious blow the attacker was aiming at?

No other scenario, real or imagined, is of any consequence here. The question is: what was REALLY happening in THIS instance? I don't know, you don't know. I just find a number of things about the event to be really quite dodgy.

Starting with why a person carrying a concealed firearm got into a slanging match with a crazy person in a mall that escalated into an assault.

The silence on that point hereabouts is truly deafening.

... and you say:

Iverglas, whose post is just below, once recommended curling up into a little ball as the best response to an attacker.

And you really think you've substantiated that little allegation? I'm minded of something I saw in my hand at that link:

dissemble and cheat

I asked why a person who had chosen to engage an obviously crazy person in a slanging match in a mall ... while carring a firearm ... had chosen to pull out said firearm and shoot said crazy person dead when said crazy person knocked him down and started kicking him in said crowded mall, if the attack was so vicious that it indeed required a homicide to avert it. Me, I would have been using my arms to protect my head from the blows.

Allow me to quote myself: "No other scenario, real or imagined, is of any consequence here."

Meaning: no, you don't get to take what I said about THAT SCENARIO and pretend to the world in some other time and place that I recommended curling up into a little ball as the best response to an attacker.

I've personally spoken with two women who have pulled CCWs and driven away men who approached them with ill intent ...

How fortunate for them that they encountered such stupid criminals. I'd think the smart ones would approach them with ill intent and a gun.

... and I'd say that's a much better defense than playing dead.

But do instruct me on how I might have pulled a firearm while being choked and already semi-conscious ... that being, after all, the point at which I "played dead", a handy brief way of saying that I stopped resisting the force being used against me. 'Cause yes, I'm sure that had the assailant had a gun (which, if I had had one, I'm sure he would have had, in that alternate bizarro universe), he just wouldn't have gone to all the trouble of strangling me before producing it ...

Hundreds of other women aren't as lucky, but you seem to think it's fine that they should trust to luck instead of shifting the odds in their favor.

You seem to be confused, if I choose to be charitable, but we all now how pointless it is to try to assist you and your little friends, so you're on your own. Let me know if you figure it out.

pay for public transit for all the people who can't afford cars to get them to jobs so they can earn the money to feed and clothe and house their families ... or your health insurance premiums pay for medical care for all the people who can't afford to pay doctors when they or their kids are sick ...

Because if the government is going to price effective self-defense out of their reach, it had better be prepared to guarantee that they won't come to harm.

Yeah, kinda like ...

We don't require a written (literacy) test for automobiles. I know in NC and i think NY, if you can't read, someone will read the test to you and you answer...

We don't require a written (literacy) test for automobiles.

No, a "written test" is not a "literacy test". It is a test that an illiterate person could not take without assistance, but it is not a literacy test.


I know in NC and i think NY, if you can't read, someone will read the test to you and you answer.

And the same could not be read into the proposal for a written test for firearms licences because ...?


Now, I like the idea of beginner's licences ...

...in fact, driver's license renewal is all about taking the written test. I can't think that it wouldn't be the same in other states!

Including English.

http://www.dmv.org/ca-california/driver-handbook.php

These measures would have a dis proportionally adverse effect on poor and minority gun owners. With limited resources the poor and minorities would not be able to fully exercise their Second Amendment rights.

"Gun control," while it sounds rational, faces the reality that the country is awash in weapons. No one really knows how many - although I've seen a figure of 200 million (probably more.) Short of house to house searches and confiscations - which will not happen - this will remain the reality.

A more practical solution, proposed by the late Democratic Senator Patrick Moynahan, is ammunition control. If the production and distribution of ammunition could be better regulated, it might have the effect of starving the beast.

In Canada, a valid firearms licence is required in order to buy both firearms and ammunition.

The little flaw in the system became glaringly apparent in Canada's capital several years ago when a gaggle of teenaged thugs broke into a house, stole a legally owned but illegally stored firearm, bought themselves some ammunition for it, and went driving down the main drag at lunch time on a sunny day, shooting at civil servants and killing a visiting Brit engineer. They couldn't do that now.

Of course, since the pig gun owner was never prosecuted, an opportunity was missed to impress upon all them law-abidin' gun owners that they'd better actually obey the law when it comes to secure storage (which includes storing ammunition separately) or they'd be having a problem.


The fact that one change isn't going to fix the entire problem overnight is not a reason not to start. Requiring a licence to purchase and possess firearms and ammunition, and requiring registration of firearms, starting now, is better than not doing it at all. The longest voyage, the single step, and all that.

guns are more important to too many people for them to be restricted.

ration medicine, recreational drugs, sex, information - but NOT guns - appears to be the irrational idea.

even here where i agree with most of the people most of the time.

depressing.

I think the bigger debate should be about the state of mental health care in this country. This guy obviously needed mental help-- perhaps a long-term stay somewhere where he would not harm himself or others-- and oversight by mental health professionals-- but didn't get it.

I have mentally ill children myself, and my insurance covers very little of my expenses for them. Nothing seems to warrant long-term care, including their jumping out of moving cars, suicide attempts, holding chef's knives in family members' faces, etc... All of which have happened in my household and all of which have elicited a big "ho hum" by my insurer and by public service providers.

Public services for the mentally ill, especially long-term inpatient treatment, is practically non-existent.

in all of this is how did someone who was in the system for mental illness buy a gun?

Why didn't this person turn up on some kind of watch list? He should never have been allowed to by a gun legally.

Mz Pip
:dem:

The issue is mental health and education, it has nothing to do with gun control.