VA Tech Massacre Two-Year Anniversary
Via Jim Geraghty writing in NRO’s Campaign Spot
Preparing You for Today’s Inevitable Gun-Control Calls
Today is the two-year anniversary of the Virginia Tech shooting; you’re likely to hear more focus on gun control than usual.
Because of the high number of pro-gun Democrats in the House of Representatives, you don’t hear much clamor for the resinstatement of the assault-weapons ban from high-ranking congressional Democrats. (Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did say she wished it were still in effect while visiting Mexico recently.) However, you do hear various gun-control proposals touted as a necessary step to control Mexican drug-cartel violence on both sides of our southern border — often from the exact same folks who say that building a wall or fence and stepping up border security is xenophobic, hardline, paranoid, hateful, etc.
Perhaps inadvertently, the Washington Post did a nice job of illustrating some of the slippery numbers thrown around when the topic turns to guns used by Mexican drug cartels. In a front-page article today, Post reporter Spencer S. Hsu writes, “The financial sanctions provide an additional tool against the organizations, whose drug and gun trafficking has proved exceedingly difficult to curtail. Mexico, for example, has seized more than 35,000 firearms from narco-traffickers since December 2006, and both governments say 90 percent of the weapons originated in the United States.”
But a chart that illustrates the story notes that of the 35,000 weapons seized by the Mexican government in the past three years, only about 13,000 have been submitted to the U.S. for tracing. Of those, many are indeed made in the U.S., but only about 3,500 are imported through the U.S.; the others may have gone through other countries.
Furthermore, analysts looking at data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms for the past two years determined that only 17 percent of guns found at Mexican crime scenes have been traced back to the United States.
Nonetheless, you’ll still hear people invoking the so-called “gun-show loophole,” in the context of discussing both the Virginia Tech massacre and Mexican cartel violence. Of course, the Virginia Tech shooter did not get his weapons from a gun show. A federal law on the books actually prohibited his purchase of a firearm because he had been legally declared a danger to himself two years earlier, but a problem in sharing data between state and federal governments meant no restrictions came in when he submitted his information for a background check.
Nor would the so-called “assault-weapons ban” have made any impact on the Virginia Tech shooter, according to the university’s review panel: “The panel also considered whether the previous federal Assault Weapons Act of 1994 that banned 15-round magazines would have made a difference in the April 16 incidents. The law lapsed after 10 years, in October 2004, and had banned clips or magazines with over 10 rounds. The panel concluded that 10-round magazines that were legal would have not made much difference in the incident. Even pistols with rapid loaders could have been about as deadly in this situation.”
You may also hear the “gun-show loophole” blamed for Mexican drug violence, an equally implausible claim, particularly if we use the gun-control advocates’ own numbers. The much-disputed number used by gun-control supporters is that 2,000 guns a day move from the United States to Mexico, which would come out to 730,000 guns per year. Yet in two years of investigating, the ATF seized a grand total of 5,345 weapons from 202 investigative operations at gun shows. In other words, these two arguments from the gun-control crowd are contradictory — if the number of guns being smuggled is as enormous as they claim, unlicensed dealers at gun shows could only provide a tiny fraction of that number.
This doesn’t even get into the issue of the cartels’ use of weapons that are completely illegal in the United States, including light anti-tank weapons, fragmentation grenades, etc. . . .
In review, this article examines the outcome of the VA Tech Massacre if perpetrator Cho not had access to guns: No guns for Cho - What Then?
2 Responses to “VA Tech Massacre Two-Year Anniversary”
John on 19 Apr 2009 at 0136 #
Why does everyone keep looking into how Mr. Cho got the weapons he used instead of how society treated him which caused him to do this. Cho was bullied and teased for years and nobody ever stepped in to stop it. Cho was living in a society where men are treated as inferior to women and brainwashed from birth by feminism to believe that women should be respected, yet the bitches have sex with men who disrespect them and call all males who do try to be nice to them creeps and loosers. Bottom line, men such as Cho had no chance in hell of getting laid. Being deprived of a basic human need, as important to men as food and water, but of course, no one ever talks about that, since in this society only the womans needs are important. In his desperation, Cho then visited an escort, who, just like all the other women he tried the only way he knew how, to mate, rejected him… 3 weeks later, he went postal and the media is still saying “Will we ever understand”. I understood after about 10 minutes on Apr 16, 2007.
Minstrel on 19 Apr 2009 at 0945 #
So, let me get this straight - according to Wikipedia, the Korean Population in the US is 1,555,293. Assuming that this demographic conforms to the average population spread, 9 percent of that population falls into Cho’s age and gender. That’s about 140,000 Korean males that should have ‘gone postal’ due to this oppression theory.
I don’t buy it. Cho was just a one in 140,000 crazy motherfucker.