Rules Should Have Barred Weapon Purchase
McLEAN, Va. (AP) - 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.
Cho purchased two handguns in February and March, and was subject to federal and state background checks both times. The checks turned up no problems, despite a judge’s ruling in December 2005 that Cho “presents an imminent danger to himself as a result of mental illness.”
“On the face of it, he should have been blocked under federal law,” said Denis Henigan, legal director of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
The 23-year-old South Korean immigrant was evaluated by a psychiatric hospital after he was accused of stalking two women and photographing female students in class with his cell phone. His violence-filled writings were so disturbing that professors begged him to get counseling.
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.”
Full Story Here:
Rules Should Have Barred Weapon Purchase
So, to all the flaming libbers, progressives and other assorted moonbats that are out there screaming that we must rid the USA of all the guns, sit on it you idiots…
We have more than enough gun laws in place, all we need to do is utilize them, and keep the guns out of the hands of a crazy like Cho…
No one in the chain took it upon themselves to actually report the fact that this guy was a full blown loony toon and he slipped thru the cracks, that wasn’t the fault of ANY gun regulation, it wasn’t the fault of the weapons themselves, hell, the pistols were harmless, just inert pieces of metal and composite material, so it wasn’t the guns fault, it was the fault of the powers that be, the psychiatric testing and evaluation personnel that didn’t feel obligated to commit this monster and then report him for what he was, a bag full of murderous psychosis, someone that was as explosively dangerous as they come…
Place the blame squarely where it belongs, on the murderer himself, and the system that allowed him to remain in the public domain, but don’t blame the guns, or millions of law abiding gun owners that have never fired a shot in anger…
April 19th, 2007 at 11:11 pm
Fred, part of the problem is the system that’s true. Part of the problem lies in the HIPPAA regs that protect your private health information. Those rules that keep your info private and you from getting screwed are the same ones that made sure that the shooter could get his guns, but do you really think that he would have given up if the gun store had turned him down? Hell he was in college so obviously he was at least decently intelligent so I’d bet that he’d figure out some way to get some weapons. I do agree with your post I just thought I’d give you a bit of the why.
That dude was evil pure and simple…
April 19th, 2007 at 11:28 pm
No, that guy would have obtained guns somewhere, just like ALL the crooks do…
April 20th, 2007 at 8:56 am
And Fred, it wasn’t a matter of no one was able to “identify” his ways or realize he was disturbed. Oh no. It was this fucked-up pussified culture of ours which mandated no one could “judge” him or “narc him out” or draw conclusions about his bizarre behavior. Oh GOSH no — how incredibly JUDGMENTAL would that have been, to have placed any form of American MORALITY on his South Korean CULTURE because, after all, all cultures are good and all cultures are BETTER cultures than those allowing white Euro males — everyone was thinking “shit, I can’t say anything, it’ll look like I was being judgmental because he’s South Korean and I CAN’T have ANYONE thinking that about ME. For shit’s sake, that’d KILL my academic career.”
No problem. Until HE killed others. . .
BZ
April 20th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
Tell ‘em, Fred.
Bloviating Zeppelin, you are spot on. The admin officials admitted they chose to send out EMAIL, for God’s sake, to warn vulnerable students, because they didn’t want to CAUSE CHAOS on the campus. Nice call, morons.
April 20th, 2007 at 12:37 pm
I just received my dad’s gun collection, a large collection I might say. Even though I will never shoot them, I will not allow them to be taken from me, ever.
I’m going to build a bunker with 10 foot solid concrete walls. I’m putting every gun in a gun-safe in that bunker and hire a armed guard to stand at the entrance 24/7. I’m going to make sure those little rascals don’t get out and kill someone. I figure if they’re kept in the dark, they won’t be able to grow legs or trigger fingers.
Because we all know that people don’t kill people, guns do.
April 20th, 2007 at 12:40 pm
April 20th, 2007 at 4:04 pm
Worlds fastest shotgun.
Take that asshole.
More on this over at: The Ranando Report
April 20th, 2007 at 4:09 pm
I have got to get me one of those!!
April 20th, 2007 at 10:23 pm
Always the same story. We couldn’t say anything because he yellow, brown, a Muzzie, Black, we were afraid of offending his racial/religious group. Now if he’d have been a white man we could have jacked the jail up and thrown him under it.
Remember when we had the sniper in the DC area and all the big deal ‘profilers’ were saying it was a white man 20 -35 most likely from the South and so on. Turned out he black and some-sort of Muzzie. Then all the ‘profilers got tight jaws’ and you heard no more from them (Definition of a profiler, “Just another man/woman who’s so lazy they won’t get a real job)
I don’t pull punches, Basti tells it like it is and not how people would like it to be. “He was a KOREAN/ASIAN! And I ain’t fond of any of them.”
April 20th, 2007 at 10:35 pm
Another story that has managed to get completely back wards. This is a case where law abiding citizens were denied their rights to carry. This is a story where so many died because no one was there who could quickly solve the problem. They had to wait and that cost lives.