Court Found Virginia Tech Gunman 'Mentally Ill' and 'Danger to Others' in 2005

How the hell was he able to purchase a firearm after this court ruling?

------------------

BLACKSBURG, Va. — Virginia Tech gunman Cho Seung-Hui was declared "mentally ill and in need of hospitalization" and posed "an imminent danger," according to a 2005 temporary detention order issued by a Virginia district court.

That revelation came to light Wednesday as the FBI confirmed that Cho had sent a package to NBC News containing photographs, videos and several written documents — including a manifesto.

Evil Fox Noise Link

a parking garage by the time the lawsuits are done.

I think you can easily pick them up at local VA flea markets like any other 'for sale' item. All that's required is for money to change hands.

Handguns are something that needs to be controlled more these days. I don't think shotguns and hunting rifles need to be controlled as much.

but this is the kind of information that needs to be there.

needs to be brought up to date considering 21st century realities. But the shrill voices who have no problem with most of the rest of the Bill of Rights being gutted by law or practice will not stand for or permit any encroachment on the broadest possible interpretation of 2nd Amendment as now written.

This was the NICBS' fuck-up

picked up by Faux after CNN ran with blurb re court decision...but no other word...wonder if true or like the Chinese student story?

gun? Also, couldn't one be detained if this is true?

can and does break down all the time. I do backgrounds, and you wouldn't believe what we have to do to really find out about a person. We truly have to go to each city, county and state the person has ever been in to get correct records. And sometimes, when the applicant actually fesses up in his app that he did such-and-such a thing and got arrested when he was 23, we can go to that county or city and NEVER FIND A RECORD OF IT. It's gone. Totally gone. There isn't money at the local level to keep up with all the paperwork.

trump having this info in a database where it would raise a red flag and disallow a gun purchase.

NY Times article from 2000:

Of the 100 episodes of rampage killings examined for this series by The New York Times, none better illustrates than the case of Lisa Duy just how difficult it can be to enforce a key provision of the nation's fundamental gun control law. That provision prohibits people who have been involuntarily committed to mental institutions from buying a handgun. But laws in most states guard the privacy of the mentally ill, and to protect them from stigma these statutes generally bar law-enforcement agencies from access to mental health records.

As a result, gun background checks of people with psychiatric problems typically fail to turn up their mental health history, a loophole that has contributed to the wave of school and workplace shootings of the last decade. In the 100 cases reviewed by The Times, the vast majority of them from the last 10 years, half the killers were people with a history of serious mental health problems, and at least eight had been involuntarily committed.

Now, fueled by those shootings, there is a growing debate pitting public-safety concerns against the rights of the mentally ill. This March, in the wake of the Duy shooting and another like it in April 1999, Utah became one of the few states that give law-enforcement agencies mental health information for background checks on prospective gun buyers. Connecticut acted similarly last fall, after a state lottery employee with a history of depression and psychiatric hospitalization killed four of his bosses and committed suicide in 1998.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9800EED8143EF932A25757C0A9669C8B63

WTF????

from purchasing a firearm. NICS (National Instant Criminal Background Check System)

I've met many people on internet forums that definitely should be listed as mentally unstable, particularly those with an abnormal fear of guns.

:sarcasm:

A temporary detention order is different from an involuntary commitment order. He was evidently examined by shrinks at some facility and then released. When a person is involuntarily committed, that is when they lose the right to buy fire arms.

All I can think of just now is about this boy's poor parents. I sure hope they have some support. I cannot imagine their state (not to mention the victims families)... but to raise a son and remember him as a bouncing baby boy and to have so much hope in him and then to have this happen and broadcast all over the world...The parents must be just devastated.
In a strange way this reminds me of when Charles Manson went on his spree. I guess I am old.