My grandfather (who died when i was 3 – I am now 66) said that gun control was the worst possible thing for the people. He pointed out the high death rate in New York City for crimes with guns and noted the New York had (even at that time) the Sullivan Law which was one of the most stringent gun control laws on the books in the 1940s. He said that the criminals could ALWAYS get guns no matter how they were ‘outlawed’.

The people who would be affected by ‘gun control’ are the very people who would not commit a crime using a gun although admittedly people are killed accidentally by guns. But then, when I used to grow roses, there was a big stink over a well known horticulturist who died after drinking a big slug of Orthene insecticide which he had stupidly put in an iced tea glass! There was talk at that time about outlawing Orthene, but there is no legislative cure for stupidity!

Secondly, at one time, I had two relatives who were in the New York State mental health system. Both were unable to live unsupervised lives, my uncle because of a brain injury which made him incompetent and my grandmother who had what we now understand as a degenerative disease of the brain. At that time, New York State had one of the best – if not THE best – mental healthcare program in the nation. Then along came the ‘civil liberties’ folks who carried on about the poor ‘inmates’ and their lack of freedom – that was about the time that drugs were being produced that allowed some mentally ill people to live fairly normal lives IF THEY TOOK THEIR MEDICATION! The then Governor Rockefeller – seeing a way to save money – took up the cudgels for these ‘poor folks’ and their ‘rights’ and closed the great hospitals which had cared for my uncle and grandmother. Fortunately, we found another facility for my grandmother where she stayed until she died, but we never learned what happened to my uncle. Probably he was ‘released’ to die in the streets somewhere without a place to sleep, a hot meal or even a cigarette. So much for ‘rights’!

Now New York has no better ‘mental health facilities’ than any other state and many is the ‘homeless person’ who really belongs in custodial care rather than sleeping in a box in some alley or pushing some poor college student in front of a train because the voices told him to do it!

That is my understanding too, but I want to wait and see why it wasn’t flagged on the purchase, before rushing to judgement on it. Not enough info.

I do think that the first thing we need is better enforcement of existing law, and more even application of laws on the books.

As for arming professors, I don’t much like that idea, personally. I think it a mistake to introduce more weapons into the classroom. I suspect that will lead to more mistakes, more confusion, and perhaps more – not less – casualties.

The central response cop might be a good idea.

Dave Powell

We need to do a better job of enforcing the laws we have on the books.

As to campus security, that’s a tough nut to crack. A couple ideas–give some professors training and allow them to have a weapon in their offices; or, increase the size of the campus police and station an armed officer in an office in selected academic buildings with the responsibility to respond to all the buildings in their area. I’m sure there are much better ideas out there, but I’d like to explore them before we start taking rights away from everyone.

Regards,
Cash
Virginia Tech ’79

Anything or any action that puts fellow citizens at risk or causes them to feel unsafe needs to be looked at closely and regulated if necessary.

Some years back when the issue of gun show sales came up, there was a concern in my community that a private gun owner could set up a table and sell firearms without doing a background check. A referendum was created that established the need for background checks on all firearms sales and it passed with about 82% in favor. Among the voters, roughly 70% who voted in favor were gun owners.

With our population growing and density increasing, the need for safety also increases and arming everyone is certainly not the means to achieve a peaceful society.

1) I don’t know if VA is a concealed carry state, but I am glad that no student was carrying. The worst nightmare any cop can imagine is to run onto a crime scene where many people are waving guns and shooting: who are the criminals and who are the brave citizens?

2) Preventing such actions means infringing some right, somewhere. Do we deny liberty to troubled people in case they snap? Where is the line between “acceptable” anti-social behavior (sullen, surly, keeps to himself) and unacceptable? Waiting until a crime is committed is not exactly the answer – by then he’s already killing.

So which is the greater infringement? Denying liberty via involuntary commitment, say, in a mental health facility for “odd” behavior, or denying someone his 2nd Amendment rights?

Personally, I am fine with gun ownership – provided we can devise a rigorous standard of licencing and registration. No gun show loopholes, no private sale loopholes, etc. If you buy a gun, you are responsible for it’s subsequent history. We can facilitate private sales via gun stores who can provide the necessary background checks, for example: If your prospective buyer fails that check and you sell it to him anyway, or if you skip that part, and the gun is later used in a crime, you must bear some responsiblity for transferring the weapon.

Another aspect to this is how quickly some folks want to exorcise the culture of violent themes. Is Hollywood to blame? Rap? PC Games? Possibly. I am not willing to say that a culture immersed in violent revenge fantasies is not somehow also a little bit culpable when those fantasies play out.

That said, I think that Free Speech is also a right, and question whether it should be infringed. In fact, I think Free Speech is a necessary component of our system, and we should be really careful about monkeying with it.

So it boils down to which right do we infringe in trying to prevent future killings?

1) Life, Liberty, Pursuit of happiness?

2) Free Speech?

3) Gun ownership?

It is clear that none of these things can be entirely unfettered in a society. But which do we fetter most?

Me, I vote for gun ownership. That would seem to have the least collateral damage.

Dave Powell

I share a number of your opinions, primarily that our current system is terribly insufficient, but I think that merely to throw up our hands and do nothing because “nothing will stop people from committing violent acts” is an abdication of our collective responsibility. In my mind, the course of action is this: Class III (or whatever the collector firearms license is, which is hard to get) collectors, military, and police / security agencies own handguns. Period. No one else. Same for assault weapons. Period. Hunting weapons are not affected, and let’s not mince words or argue semantics, we all know what those are, and we can specify. Clearly it will take time, and will likely be impossible to get them all, but don’t we have to try? Spare me the “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” arguments. People who commit these acts use certain types of firearms because they are concealable or have a large ammo capacity.

If you want to call this “gun control,” go ahead. I’m a patriotic citizen who treasures my constitutional rights, and I come from a place/family that has hunted and owned guns for a long time. I own guns, and I hunt. I’m not the least bit afraid of the Government coming in a black helicopter to take away my stuff. If we continue to do nothing, we will continue these horrible discussions. Just this morning I heard on the news that a high school student took a gun to school, killed someone, and then killed himself.
Charles

Your points are all valid, and will throw in this tidbit. Recently the NYPD collected 83 guns in a crackdown, and guess where they all came from…Virginia. I, like you am amazed to see some talking head saying students should be allowed to be armed on Campus. Yeah, there’s a fine solution.

What’s harder for me to understand, especially watching the videos he sent to NBC just how noone at the school had any clue about how disturbed he really was. That stuff is unbelieveable to watch, and you can see this was no random act.

Regards from the Garden State,

Steve Basic

I’m in New Orleans and am exhausted. I will respond to you guys tomorrow night from Austin.

Thanks for all of the insightful comments.

Eric

Best (especially to those in mourning)
Rob

This concept that I mentioned above may be easier said than done as I’m not sure of the specifics in the design and implementation of a more thorough gun-buying procedure, but if they can do background checks for government clearances and the like, there has to be some kind of system that could be put in place. Something BETTER than what we have now. This guy had both a documented history of mental-illness, and multiple police inquiries and complaints on his record, yet he was still able to buy a gun without setting off any alarms. Clearly this procedure FAILED.

Regardless, if anything remotely positive can come out of this heartbreaking atrocity, there has to be a concerted effort by everyone involved to learn from their mistakes, make the necessary changes, and do whatever it takes to help prevent future tragedies.