Va. Tech killer should have been unable to buy handguns

raytri · #1 (**permalink**) 04-19-2007, 05:15 PM

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070420/...ooting_weapons

Quote:

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....

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."

There's nothing in Virginia state law barring the mentally ill from buying guns, unless they're committed to a psych ward. But federal law is tougher.

Unfortunately, there's a loophole:

Quote:

George Burke, a spokesman for Democratic Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (news, bio, voting record) 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.

So it's not so much a loophole, as a lack of money. But there is nothing requiring states and localities to share information with the Feds, so without proper funding, many don't. Meaning the National Instant Criminal Background Check System has some big holes in its database.

But McCarthy's efforts to change that have gone nowhere, thanks in part to opposition from groups like Gun Owners of America (notably, though, the NRA has not opposed it). Each time, her bill has passed the House but died in the Senate.
http://www.gunowners.org/
http://www.decaturdaily.com/decaturd...ncontrol.shtml
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/viewstor...20060830b.html

That said, the NRA has not been entirely on the sidelines here. Besides fighting efforts to institute background checks at gun shows, consider the "Supreme Court ruling" referenced in the article.

The line is somewhat inaccurate. The 1997 case, Printz v. United States, involved temporary measures intended to facilitate background checks between the time the Brady Bill was passed and 1998, when the NICS database would be established.
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Printz_v._United_States

It was rendered moot when the NICS went online.

But note: The NRA funded the lawsuit, which opposed the background checks as essentially an unfunded mandate on local police and sheriff departments. They won on those grounds, and have since fought aspects of NICS, notably the length of time that records can be retained after a purchase. It's down to 24 hours from the original 180 days. That means the FBI has just 24 hours after a purchase to find and fix a mistaken approval.

It's worth asking: If gun groups weren't so busy damaging the machinery of the background-check system, would 32 people be alive today? We're not talking gun bans -- we're talking about making sure we have a working system to keep guns out of the hands of people like Cho, on whom red flags have already been planted.

JP5 · #2 (**permalink**) 04-19-2007, 05:47 PM

Did you see the picture of him with the hammer? The knife? Granted, he might not have gotten so many, but had he struck while they slept in their dorms, he could have gotten almost as many. Remember Ted Bundy and how he killed the girls in that dorm? Point is, they have the will, they will find a way.

There's also a law in Virginia....and probably elsewhere....that prevents a college from kicking a student off campus because he/she has attempted suicide or sought help for mental problems. That needs to be changed. A college should be able to judge for themselves and make that decision if the person is so disruptive and threatening to other students. However, even changing that law will not prevent the student to come back onto campus----especially a large campus like Virginia Tech----and slaughering a bunch of students.

Many of the teachers here, as well as the students and counselors KNEW that Cho was a danger. One teacher refused to teach him because he was so disruptive and scary. And yet they were forced to continue putting up with him.....because the system required them to.

That's clearly wrong.

f100supersabr · #3 (**permalink**) 04-19-2007, 06:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JP5";p=&quot

...
There's also a law in Virginia....and probably elsewhere....that prevents a college from kicking a student off campus because he/she has attempted suicide or sought help for mental problems. That needs to be changed. A college should be able to judge for themselves and make that decision if the person is so disruptive and threatening to other students. However, even changing that law will not prevent the student to come back onto campus----especially a large campus like Virginia Tech----and slaughering a bunch of students.

Many of the teachers here, as well as the students and counselors KNEW that Cho was a danger. One teacher refused to teach him because he was so disruptive and scary. And yet they were forced to continue putting up with him.....because the system required them to.That's clearly wrong.

The problem of not being able to kick " a student off campus because he/she has attempted suicide or sought help for mental problems" is not just true for colleges but how about work places ! How many times has a fired worker come back and killed his former boses and former fellow employees. This is inherent in the privacy concept. There is a decision that we as a society need to make. Is privacy more important than safety ? Is the breaking of the veil of privacy worse than letting a mad person loose to kill people ?

I vote for safety and common sense !!!!!!

raytri · #4 (**permalink**) 04-19-2007, 06:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JP5";p=&quot

Did you see the picture of him with the hammer? The knife? Granted, he might not have gotten so many, but had he struck while they slept in their dorms, he could have gotten almost as many.

Oh, c'mon. He wouldn't have gotten anywhere near as many. Not to mention that people could have fought back or run away or locked their doors or gang-tackled him far more easily.

Quote:

Remember Ted Bundy and how he killed the girls in that dorm? Point is, they have the will, they will find a way.

If you're referring to the Florida sorority house killings, Bundy killed two people and severely injured two more -- a far cry from 32. He killed a lot more than that in total, of course, but it took him four years.

Quote:

Many of the teachers here, as well as the students and counselors KNEW that Cho was a danger. One teacher refused to teach him because he was so disruptive and scary. And yet they were forced to continue putting up with him.....because the system required them to.

I'm all for re-examining the existing system. But to some extent our hands are tied because it's not illegal to be disruptive and scary. There's a difficult line to walk between identifying walking time bombs and hassling people who have done nothing wrong and never will.

GovernmentCheese · #5 (**permalink**) 04-19-2007, 07:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by raytri";p=&quot

Quote:

Originally Posted by JP5";p=&quot

Did you see the picture of him with the hammer? The knife? Granted, he might not have gotten so many, but had he struck while they slept in their dorms, he could have gotten almost as many.

Oh, c'mon. He wouldn't have gotten anywhere near as many. Not to mention that people could have fought back or run away or locked their doors or gang-tackled him far more easily.

Quote:

Remember Ted Bundy and how he killed the girls in that dorm? Point is, they have the will, they will find a way.

If you're referring to the Florida sorority house killings, Bundy killed two people and severely injured two more -- a far cry from 32. He killed a lot more than that in total, of course, but it took him four years.

Quote:

Many of the teachers here, as well as the students and counselors KNEW that Cho was a danger. One teacher refused to teach him because he was so disruptive and scary. And yet they were forced to continue putting up with him.....because the system required them to.

I'm all for re-examining the existing system. But to some extent our hands are tied because it's not illegal to be disruptive and scary. There's a difficult line to walk between identifying walking time bombs and hassling people who have done nothing wrong and never will.

what the heck ray...

gmb92 · #6 (**permalink**) 04-19-2007, 08:52 PM

If there's any legislation that might result from this crime, it might be this:

Quote:

McCarthy has been sponsoring legislation that would offer incentives to states to report more records of mental illness and commitments to federal and state databases.

The issue isn’t new. McCarthy began sponsoring the bill four years ago, after a mentally unstable constituent killed a few parishioners and a priest at a church in her Long Island district. Lawmakers in Washington are certainly aware of the problem. In 1998, a man named Russell Weston killed two police officers in a shootout at the U.S. Capitol, using a .38-caliber gun that he had acquired with a gun permit he got from his home state of Illinois. When he filled out his federal form, he answered, like Cho, that he had no record of mental illness. Illinois officials were unaware that Weston had been ordered to a mental institution for a 90-day evaluation in Montana two years earlier. Why didn't they know? Montana's strict privacy laws prevent the reporting of commitments to law enforcement. The gap in reporting was duly noted in some news stories at the time, and quickly forgotten, until this week.

Seems more than reasonable to me. Gun nuts should concede this one and not just because of this incident. Another link on this:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18217741/site/newsweek/

Quote:

According to court records that surfaced Wednesday, April 18, Cho had begun to show clear signs of mental instability long before he bought the guns. A Virginia magistrate issued a temporary detention order for Ho in December 2005. In so doing, the magistrate found that Cho presented “an imminent danger to self or others as a result of mental illness, or is so seriously mentally ill as to be substantially unable to care for self and is incapable of volunteering or unwilling to volunteer for treatment.”

Hindsight's always 20/20 but I think authorities should err on the side of caution when dealing with these types of individuals.

DuH2 · #7 (**permalink**) 04-19-2007, 09:15 PM

Shrug he could have gone out and bought some from the resident crack head/gangbanger types.

Guns are like money and drugs..there is always someone who will trade the later for the former.
Gun running is probably the 3rd biggest "illicit" smuggling activity in the USA after Narcotics and Tobacco.

IOW If someone wants a gun they will get a gun....

As for the mental health he was "investigated" and found to not be a menace.
So Raytri IF I tell the state your a nut and they check up on you ..and find nothing...you can never buy a gun again?

Past all that---

Criminals or nutballs like this..

Well...

They don't tend to give a (*)(*)(*)(*) what the law says.

Just thought I'd point that out

SpankyTheWhale · #8 (**permalink**) 04-19-2007, 09:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gmb92";p=&quot

If there's any legislation that might result from this crime, it might be this:

Quote:

McCarthy has been sponsoring legislation that would offer incentives to states to report more records of mental illness and commitments to federal and state databases.

The issue isn’t new. McCarthy began sponsoring the bill four years ago, after a mentally unstable constituent killed a few parishioners and a priest at a church in her Long Island district. Lawmakers in Washington are certainly aware of the problem. In 1998, a man named Russell Weston killed two police officers in a shootout at the U.S. Capitol, using a .38-caliber gun that he had acquired with a gun permit he got from his home state of Illinois. When he filled out his federal form, he answered, like Cho, that he had no record of mental illness. Illinois officials were unaware that Weston had been ordered to a mental institution for a 90-day evaluation in Montana two years earlier. Why didn't they know? Montana's strict privacy laws prevent the reporting of commitments to law enforcement. The gap in reporting was duly noted in some news stories at the time, and quickly forgotten, until this week.

Seems more than reasonable to me. Gun nuts should concede this one and not just because of this incident. Another link on this:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18217741/site/newsweek/

Quote:

According to court records that surfaced Wednesday, April 18, Cho had begun to show clear signs of mental instability long before he bought the guns. A Virginia magistrate issued a temporary detention order for Ho in December 2005. In so doing, the magistrate found that Cho presented “an imminent danger to self or others as a result of mental illness, or is so seriously mentally ill as to be substantially unable to care for self and is incapable of volunteering or unwilling to volunteer for treatment.”

Hindsight's always 20/20 but I think authorities should err on the side of caution when dealing with these types of individuals.

The problem with all forms of gun control in country's with relatively benevolent legal systems is that all you can do about the guns is control the legality of their ownership and operation. You cannot actually control the usage of weaponry because if somebody wants something, almost anything, they can and usually will find a way to do it. Consider abortion: (This is a new analogy I have constructed, so if it is completely unreasonable or irrelevant, don't hesitate to point it out.)

Whenever somebody tries to make abortions illegal, the pro-choicers and the feminists and a bunch of other special interest (grass-roots?) organizations, as well as ordinary people, decry the idea. They claim that if abortion is criminalized, all that means is that reputable, sanitary hospitals cannot perform the operation. They say that what will end up happening is that women (and girls, angeringly) will either try to perform it themselves, via makeshift devices such as clothes hangers, or they will end up going to some back-alley quack without any real expertise. A plethora of women will end up getting infections, sustaining horrible injuries, or even die due to the inadequate conditions and procedures that they would have to endure and undergo. All those women could have been saved if they just had the ability to go to a proper hospital so that they would have the procedure done safely and cleanly.

Now, enter the gun. The same people who seem to recognize the frailty of laws and occasional pointlessness of legality somehow do an about-face. They fail to realize that, just like with abortion, if someone wants a gun, they will get it in some way or another. They will find a way, and usually there isn't much of a web you have to go through to get one through the underground. If you criminalize gun ownership, people who want guns will either get it themselves by stealing or some other illegal seizure of property, or they will get it from some non-upstanding source for which there is not necessarily a guarantee of product-safety or reliability. In fact, just like abortion-desirers, the gun-desirers who have certain expertise can even make their own tool, a tool which would obviously lack a guarantee of safety and might have specifications that a regular gun would only dream of.

That is a big reason that I am strongly against gun control. Similar to anti-abortion legislation, even the well meaning gun control laws only end up doing a disservice or worse to the regular, average, normal, just wants a gun for whatever reason, citizen.

gmb92 · #9 (**permalink**) 04-20-2007, 07:22 AM

[quote="SpankyTheWhale";p="364551"]

Quote:

Originally Posted by gmb92";p=&quot

If there's any legislation that might result from this crime, it might be this:

The problem with all forms of gun control in country's with relatively benevolent legal systems is that all you can do about the guns is control the legality of their ownership and operation. You cannot actually control the usage of weaponry because if somebody wants something, almost anything, they can and usually will find a way to do it. Consider abortion: (This is a new analogy I have constructed, so if it is completely unreasonable or irrelevant, don't hesitate to point it out.)

Whenever somebody tries to make abortions illegal, the pro-choicers and the feminists and a bunch of other special interest (grass-roots?) organizations, as well as ordinary people, decry the idea. They claim that if abortion is criminalized, all that means is that reputable, sanitary hospitals cannot perform the operation. They say that what will end up happening is that women (and girls, angeringly) will either try to perform it themselves, via makeshift devices such as clothes hangers, or they will end up going to some back-alley quack without any real expertise. A plethora of women will end up getting infections, sustaining horrible injuries, or even die due to the inadequate conditions and procedures that they would have to endure and undergo. All those women could have been saved if they just had the ability to go to a proper hospital so that they would have the procedure done safely and cleanly.

Now, enter the gun. The same people who seem to recognize the frailty of laws and occasional pointlessness of legality somehow do an about-face. They fail to realize that, just like with abortion, if someone wants a gun, they will get it in some way or another. They will find a way, and usually there isn't much of a web you have to go through to get one through the underground. If you criminalize gun ownership, people who want guns will either get it themselves by stealing or some other illegal seizure of property, or they will get it from some non-upstanding source for which there is not necessarily a guarantee of product-safety or reliability. In fact, just like abortion-desirers, the gun-desirers who have certain expertise can even make their own tool, a tool which would obviously lack a guarantee of safety and might have specifications that a regular gun would only dream of.

That is a big reason that I am strongly against gun control. Similar to anti-abortion legislation, even the well meaning gun control laws only end up doing a disservice or worse to the regular, average, normal, just wants a gun for whatever reason, citizen.

While I understand this analogy (can be applied to drugs too), the issue here is whether or not to allow the legal purchase of guns to those determined to be mentally unstable, not regular average people. I don't see the harm of being on the safe side on this issue or that any disservice of consequence will be done to "normal" people.

If you criminalize abortion, you would certainly have illegal practices and back-alley procedures but you'd also see a substantial overall drop in abortions. You could say the same about adultery if you instituted the death penalty for such a sin so the end doesn't justify the means in these cases in my view. Similarly, in Cho's case, not allowing him to legally purchase guns would reduce the chances that he would obtain these weapons although certainly not prevent him entirely. The means would be justified.

merjoem32 · #10 (**permalink**) 04-20-2007, 07:32 AM

He could still have gotten hold of guns even if the loopholes do not exist. Gang members and other criminal can obtain guns illegally, and the killer could have gotten them because he was so determined to kill.

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