"What happened?" (Carolyn McCarthy, Virginia Tech, and gun control)

[derby378]

From the Amendment II Democrats blog:

One question that I'd like to ask the Brady Campaign is, quite simply, "What happened?"

Back in December 2005, Brady Campaign communications director Peter Hamm was warning Congressional candidates, "Whether they like it or not, we're going to do everything in our power to make sure the gun issue is on the radar screen in a big way next year. They're going to need to talk about those things."

But even with the recent tragedy at Virginia Tech, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY), a long-standing stalwart of gun-control legislation who is pushing to enact a new ban on semi-automatic firearms, is starting to express some frustration over the issue. McCarthy has been asked to help broker a compromise in Congress that will result in new legislation to tighten the national background check system so that the mentally ill cannot obtain firearms, but she has recently stated that aside from this legislation, "We're not going to do anything more on guns - it's just not going to happen. This is a pro-gun Congress."

A Democratic pro-gun Congress.

Exactly how "pro-gun" the 110th Congress really is remains a matter of debate, but the fact that McCarthy would even make such a statement indicates that the Democratic Party is slowly undergoing a paradigm shift on gun legislation that will vex and perplex gun-control advocates and Democratic Party strategists alike. This trend warrants further investigation and study.

In the meantime, the surviving students and faculty at Virginia Tech, along with their families and loved ones, are also asking, "What happened?" As in, what happened in our legal framework that allowed Cho Seung-hui, who was clearly judged mentally incompetent in a court of law, to fall through the cracks of our legal system and purchase firearms?

The community at Virginia Tech has every right to get an answer to this question, and soon. For want of a small measure of vigilance, 32 innocent students and faculty have been gunned down, and the Hokies grieve their shared loss.

After all, the Second Amendment provision of "a well-regulated militia" was never intended to provide firearms to criminals or madmen. Tragically, Cho has proven to be both.

http://blog.myspace.com/a2dems

[jody]

1. Dems are finally supporting our party platform "We will protect Americans' Second Amendment

right to own firearms, and we will keep guns out of the hands of criminals and terrorists by fighting gun crime, reauthorizing the assault weapons ban, and closing the gun show loophole, as President Bush proposed and failed to do."

[derby378]

3. Well, except for that "reauthorizing the assault weapons ban" bit

No less than eight Democratic Senators stand ready to block HR 1022 if it should happen to pass the House.

[rodeodance]

2. Reid basically said the same this week ---as did Leahy this am.

[derby378]

4. I'm sorry I missed their comments

Could you provide links to the video and/or transcripts if you have them? Thanks.

[billbuckhead]

8. The will of the majority is subverted again by corporations

Most of the time the Democrats are as different from the Republicans as a Ford is to a Mercury. We have a failing 1 and 1/10 party system that has destroyed much of what's left of the goodness of our nation. For instance they only had 46 homicides with guns in Britain last year, a twenty year low while here in America that's less than a weeks worth and climbing. It's going to be hard for America to tell others around the world that we are peace loving can do kind of advanced people when we can't fix this problem. Think about it, USA is one of the last nations with a death penalty, has one of the highest prison populations per capita in the world, has the worst murder rate of all advanced nations because of easy access to guns with a death rate from guns similar to nations engaged in civil war. Soon we will be forced to have metal detectors at every major buildings from schools to churches. We lose and maim more Americans from guns in America every day than Iraq, Afghanistan and the "war on some terrorists" combined. We as a people are in denial about the slow motion cold civil war already going on in America. Who really sent those high paying jobs first to the south, then to Mexico and now to China? Who profited the most from Enron's rape of California? How did we elect a seemingly incompetent president with a bad resume with a minority of the vote? Why do we have nation where after one of the worst school mass murder shootings in history, the leading politicians stand on top the pile of still warm bodies and cheerlead the concept that anyone should be able to buy any gun? The gun regulation issue just seems to be one area where the rubber meets the road on corporate power in America. The Gun Owners of America had on their website after the VT shooting mass murder the assertion that "But not even senseless, brutal murder justifies taking away the God-given rights of the law-abiding." I'm sure their corporate fellow travelers feel the same way.



"Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the Covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment… laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind… as that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, institutions must advance also, to keep pace with the times… We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain forever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."
-- Thomas Jefferson, on reform of the Virginia Constitution

[napi21]

5. If you listened to the Sun. AM shows, I think it's obvious what

went wrong IN THIS VT CASE. A former FBI profiler was on FTN and he said he believed a big part of the problem in Va. was that a lot of people knew some things about this young man, but nobody knew enough. It was similar what we discovered in the Intelligence Depts. after 9/11. The FBI had some info, the CIA had some info, local police had some info, but enough of that info didn't come together in time to stop the attacks. In the VT case, teachers knew somethings, his parents knew somethings, the police knew somethings, the mental health community knew somethings, but enough of that info didn't come together to know how badly he needed MH treaatment. It also sounds like a few changes to Va. laws are necessary because the Court did at one time rule him to be in need of treatment, but Va. law says he had the right to refuse that treatment, and their privacy law says they can't report him to the police or the school authorities.

The Dems have been burned TOO MANY TIMES by their stance on gun control, and they are determined that won't happen in 08.

[-..__...]

6. It's about time the anti-RKBA supporters woke up and smelled the coffee.

Sob sisters like McCarthy can lament about it all they want... the subject of gun control in this Congress is a dead issue, as well it should be.

That being the case, my concern is that as organizations like the Brady Campaign, Violence Policy Center and Million Mom March grow increasingly frustrated, that they'll turn their attention more and more at enacting legislation at the state level.

That might not seem like not much of a problem to gun owners that reside in states that respect the 2nd amendment. However... I happen to live in MA (home of some of the most obscene gun control laws in the nation), and already they're in bed with our newly elected governor and legislature.

Work closely with the Brady Campaign to End Handgun Violence to advance its current national legislative priority and limit gun buyers to purchasing one firearm a month and 12 in a year.

http://www.patrickmurraytransition.org/reports/final/Public%20Safety%20Report.pdf

MA (Boston in particular), is experiencing record levels of crime and gang related firearms violence (the highest in the North East).

It matters little that the gun control laws passed in this state have had little to no effect on the current situation. The solution for these people (instead dealing with the root of the problem), is enacting even more rigorous and outrageous gun control laws.

The Brady Campaign and it's bootlickers in this state know it won't work, but they'll go along with it anyways just so they'll have some minor victory they can point to and use it to their advantage to raise more money.

[billbuckhead]

9. It's not "dead" issue as long as the bodies are piling up

and the NRA is operating out of the white house.

[marions ghost]

7. NOW is the time to ask these questions

this article was posted by another poster
http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/20070422/ZNYT02/7...

READ THIS article in the Tuscaloosa News-- the best I've read on exactly how he got his guns and ammunition.
---------------------------------

We need to accept that this was a huge failure of laws to offer protection to citizens.

Not even the most avid gun promoter can argue that if Cho had NOT been able to buy guns from the internet and a walk-in gun shop, and ammunition from a local firing range, also from Wal Mart and Dicks Sporting Goods--this would not have happened.

The fact is, Cho was so socially withdrawn that it would have been nearly impossible for him to convince any other person to make the purchases. He would not have been able to carry out a mass killing.

The simple facts about his life and his ability to easily acquire weapons is an indictment of Virginia gun laws and by implication the gun laws of most states.

We are leaving ourselves and our families completely unprotected from this kind of killer. We have better laws protecting us from slipping on a wet floor.

He could have been helped and he could have been stopped.

This to me is the message of what happened at Va Tech.

[Retired AF Dem]

10. A non FFL holder cannot just "buy" guns on the internet

In the past four months I have bought five guns I found on the internet. All five of them guns had to be shipped to a FFL dealer where the Federal paper work was completed, a NICS check done and paid the transfer fees.

[marions ghost]

11. OK so that was the second case in which

he might have been stopped but wasn't.

Link to this article:

http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/20070422/ZNYT02/704220418/1004

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

12. There was nothing in Cho's past to prevent the sale

He had not been convicted of any crime.

He had not been committed to a mental institution.

The FBI check was done, and there was nothing in his record to raise a red flag.

[marions ghost]

13. true...which is exactly why

the system has to change.

Obviously the system is completely inadequate to protect the public from a madman's ability to get a gun and all the ammo he wants. We need to accept that this is a societal failure. We --the responsible citizens of this country--are the ones who are insane if we let this continue.

This kid was raising red flags everywhere.

Like somebody said earlier, in New jersey he would not have been able to legally buy the guns. We need to ask ourselves how this system of background checks can be made much more effective. Obviously, it's a pathetic joke in Virginia.

Think about it--if there had been only a couple more hoops for him to jump through (which should be fine for the non-criminal gun owner) this most likely would not have happened.

The State of Virginia needs to answer for this.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

14. What would have stopped the sale in NJ?

I know nothing in MI would have stopped it.

[marions ghost]

15. According to a poster

last Wed or Thurs I believe, the system in New Jersey has more requirements and would have allowed questions to be asked of a university or employers, which would have identified him as troubled. It seems like the minimum that we can expect to be done for protection in a gun-oriented culture.

I tried to find it again but no luck. You'll have to research it. I'm not in NJ.