Regarding gun control: is the reaction to the VT shootings unique?

Great Debates
1

I have been somewhat surprised by the public’s reaction to the Virginia Tech shootings. In my recollection, similar events from the past were met with a massive, outraged roar from the gun-control lobby, and a few meek little squeaks from the gun lobby. The gun-control lobby uses such events as a platform to launch new attacks on gun rights, and the gun lobby can offer little defense.

There doesn’t seem to be anything especially unique about this shooting, other than the number of people killed. But for some reason, in this case, the roles have been reversed. The gun lobby is chattering loudly about how this could have been avoided if Virginia Tech was not a ‘gun-free zone’, and the gun-control lobby does not seem especially energetic in countering that point.

It used to be that, after a shooting like this, the impression I got of the public opinion was “This could have been avoided if guns were harder to get.” Today, it seems to be the opposite: “This could have been avoided if guns were easier to get.”

Am I missing something? What has changed?

2

Support for the anti-gun movement has been decreasing and support for the pro-gun rights movement has been increasing.

It’s exactly the kind of thing that I’d expect after the sunset of the miserable failure that was the so-called ‘Assault Weapons Ban’.

Democrats are also well aware that after the passage of the 1994 ‘Assault Weapons Ban’, they paid for it by losing control of Congress for twelve years.

3

Really? I mean, you really think that the assault weapons ban was the reason the GOP took congress in 1994?
The Contract with America, doesn’t mention the Assault Weapons Ban, or the second amendment at all. I couldn’t vote in 1994, so perhaps I’m just out of touch, but I don’t recall the AWB being an issue that would be noticed next to “family values,” welfare reform, and increasing defense spending even more.

Was the AWB a huge deal in your neck of the woods? I really don’t think it played that much of a role nationally.

4

I am a gun rights supporter. Still, I want to be realistic about what can be accomplished with guns.

The most that people are talking about here is the lifting of the ban on concealed weapons on campus. Now, I think that ban would still apply in residence halls - that seems to me to be a reasonable precaution. It also would only allow students and faculty over the age of 21 to carry - that is the law as it now stands, which again is reasonable.

That would leave comparatively few people with the right to carry on the Virginia Tech campus, and even fewer would have the inclination to do so. Therefore, an armed nutcase would still be able to begin a rampage.

Where a gun may help is in preventing a rampage from continuing once started. Several school shootings have been interrupted by students or faculty or other citizens who confronted the shooter with a gun:

[ul]2002 - Appalachian School of Law. School shooter disarmed by two students, one an off-duty police officer, who ran to retrieve their guns from their vehicles after hearing shots.[/ul]
[ul]1997 - Pearl, Mississippi. Luke Woodham killed 2 and wounded 7 in a high school. When the shooting began, assistant principal Joel Myrick sprinted 1/4 mile to his car to retrieve his pistol, parked far enough away from the school to comply with federal law, and ran back to subdue Woodham as he was trying do drive away from campus. Had he not done so, Woodham would have gone to the middle school to continue shooting children.[/ul]
[ul]1998 - Edinboro, Pennsylvania. Andrew Wurst opened fire on an eighth-grade dance, killing a teacher and wounding three others. The owner of the banquet hall, who lived next door, heard the shots, grabbed his shotgun and drew it of Wurst, disarming him and holding him until police arrived.[/ul]

It isn’t just school shootings. The recent mall shooting in Utah was ended by an off-duty policeman who happened to be there having dinner with his family, and had his service weapon on him.

So there it is, a realistic evaluation of what we can expect with regard to spree shootings in the presence of more responsible owned and handled firearms. There is some reason to believe that citizens can step in and end a spree before on-duty cops can mobilize.

5

I live in Iowa. It was a big deal here as our delegation was split on the votes. A prominent and otherwise pro-gun Congressman (D) voted in support of the AW ban in 1994 and was promptly defeated in the next election.

The AW ban was a grab at guns based on cosmetics only, and even in the pre-internet days of 1994 rose the ire of plenty of gun owners once it was passed. The rallying cry was “if they will ban our guns based on how they look, what we be banned next?”

Most gun owners found to their dismay that the republicans were not much better when it came to gun control. In twelve years of control, very little was done to restore rights that were felt to be taken away by previous presidents, including republican administrations.

6

It was huge. People here don’t call it the Assault Weapons Ban without tending to put the words ‘so-called’ in front of it. My neighbors probably all know that the term ‘assault weapon’ means ‘scary black rifle’ and was based entirely on cosmetic, not functional, features. They know that the ‘high capacity’ magazines that were ‘banned’ (only their manufacture was banned) were mostly standard capacity magazines designed to hold fifteen rounds, and that the ‘standard capacity’ magazines that were switched in are just plugged, disabled versions of the real ones.

Gun control of the Sarah Brady, Diane Feinstein, Chuck Schumer type is not popular here. It’s so unpopular that the recently proposed legislation in the PA House to lay a $10 tax, per year, on each and every firearm owned as well as requiring fingerprints and photographs for mere ownership of a firearm has resulted in a deluge of calls to state lawmakers. The bill originally (a month ago) had eight co-sponsors. It now has three. 89% of respondents to a TV poll answered ‘No’ to the question ‘Do you support this legislation?’.

The NRA is probably the largest single organization of firearms owners and firearms rights supporters in the US, but it’s not the only, and the members vote. Whether the politicians make a big deal of gun control or not, their voting records can be found easily enough.

You can bet that the 30 co-sponsors of HR 1022 have been noted, and HR 1859 (introduced on 4/16) has also been noticed. So has the timing of the bills, and that gun owners are unlikely to be voting for Carolyn McCarthy. Then again, she comes from what is largely considered in my hometown to be an anti-gun state: New York.

7

The gun-control lobby has never been meek. They are the most shrill, boisterous, arrogant people on the planet.

8

Pennsylvania is a strange case. The Democrats are very competitive there because of high union membership and the state’s ethnic and working class heritage.

Pennsylvania Democrats tend to be pro-gun, though, as do Republicans, due to a deeply entrenched hunting tradition in most parts of the state. Pennsylvania leads the country both in licensed hunters and in per capita NRA membership.

9

Let me ask this question. Giving all we now know about the perpetrator now, do you think the background check system in Virginia could be improved?

10

If this guy was actually judged mentally incompetent and the state of Virginia failed to make that record available to NICS, then that’s a problem that needs to be fixed.

NICS is a good system, when it contains accurate and current information.

11

What do we now know that would/should have come back in a background check?

Seriously, I haven’t been keeping up on this. Thanks.

12

Cho was not committed, merely detained for evaluation. Therefore, this data wouldn’t have shown up on a federal check.

Likewise, the numerous women he bothered never filed formal police complaints or restraining orders against him. The records of his awful behavior were administrative ones that would not have shown up in any kind of firearms record check.

Maybe we’ll learn more later. But it seems that a lot of folks were desperately trying not to escalate the situation with Cho, with the result that he escalated it by himself.

13

That is what I thought as well.

14

A magistrate of the state of Virgina declared him mentally ill. I don’t think that’s necessarily the same as incompetant.

This is a tough issue due to all the privacy issues but it may be that easy access to firearms and restrictive privacy law don’t work that well.

15

Strange. I tend to notice the gun lobby a lot more than I notice the gun control people. It seems to me that “arrogant” more accurately describes the gun lobby, as well.

16

This is excerpted from the Washington Post: " …Virginia failed to comply with its own procedures. The state has a policy of submitting mental health information to the federal background checks system, which should have flagged Mr. Cho as ineligible to purchase firearms based on a state magistrate’s finding in December 2005 that he posed a threat to himself. But for reasons that remain obscure, the state apparently exempted records such as the magistrate’s determination. That was a tragic mistake."

17

Please give examples of this arrogance.

18

Doh :smack: I totally wrote that backwards. I meant the gun-lobby is arrogant, not the gun-control lobby.

I gotta stop drinking.

19

BTW, they were saying on the news last night that his being adjudicated mentally ill should have shown up on the background check and should have prevented him from being allowed to purchase a gun. Sorry I don’t have an internet cite for that.

20

I’ve been struck by the same thing as the op.

Either side using a human tragedy to score political points for their POV is distasteful and hyperbole and hysterical exaggerations have been par for the course for both sides of the gun control debate. But it is of note that this time it has been the “gun rights”/anti-control side that has tried to exploit the tragedy to promote a POV.

My guess is the current political dynamic: the Dems are are tasting White House and they all know that the way to get there is for them to grab up as much middle ground as possible. That and keep the Pubbie base so disgusted with their own leadership that they stay home. They want to avoid polarizing issues that may drive some out of the middle and farther away from their moderate positions. Meanwhile the Pubbies are trying to at least circle the wagons of their base and energize their core. Fears of Big Gubbermint confiscating their weapons is a step for getting some of those core voters to turn out and suppport the entire Pubbie platform … lock stock and barrel so to speak.

Both sides know that movement on gun control is not in the cards in any near term future and that debate on it now is of no importance other than as a means of positioning themselves among the various population interests. It is cynically being used as a political tool.