Terrorism in America

My first thought regarding the events at Virginia Tech was that the acts by the killer were so egregious that maybe I should not comment. As time passes and more details unfold I am doing a bit of an about-face and posting some thoughts.

In the last day or so, the police investigators have revealed that Cho, in the space of 9 minutes, fired at least 176 rounds. That works out to one shot every 3.1 seconds. considering that he spent some time moving from room to room, the rate of fire is stunning. Before seeing that statistic, I had been thinking about how many shots he must have fired to kill and injure as many as he did. It is ridiculous, in my opinion, that one can go to a gun shop here in the US, fill out the appropriate forms and then buy weapons capable of delivering that much ordnance in such a short space of time. The gun lobby here has "fought" to protect our rights as "sportsmen" to have access to weapons. Now, what the "sporting" purpose might be in keeping a 9 mm handgun with hundreds of rounds of hollow-point ammo in one's home is beyond me.

Much has been made in the media about Cho's involuntary referral for outpatient therapy and how that was not communicated to the registry that is accessed to approve the sale of weapons to him. Supposedly, this "failure" allowed him to buy weapons in the first place. The only problem here is that this background check only occurs if you go to a gun shop. Now, thanks to the efforts of many who want to preserve our rights to have weapons, even had Cho been unable to buy at a gun shop he could have simply gone to a gun show. Sales at gun shows in Virginia require no such paperwork to be completed. Exercising his rights as a "collector" would allow him to buy whatever he wanted so long as he had cash or credit limit remaining on his charge card.

It is amazing that despite these sorts of incidents there is still an ease of availability for these types of weapons that is astonishing.