The smoke hadn’t even cleared from Steven Kazmierczak’s massacre before the Brady Campaign and VPC started using it as a springboard for their agenda. Both groups blamed supposedly lax firearms laws for the shooting.
What they failed to mention is that Illinois has some of the strictest laws in the country when it comes to guns.
You want a waiting period? Illinois has one. It’s 72 hours for handguns. You want all sales registered? They’ve got that. Individual cities can (and do) ban guns. In fact, it’s virtually impossible to transport a gun across the state without running afoul of one local ordinance or another. They’ve closed the fictional “gun show loophole,” and the state does not have any provision for civilian carry of firearms, concealed or otherwise.
So, Illinois, like DC and New York, should be a violence-free utopia, right?
Guess again. Illinois, and its capital in particular, can be quite unpleasant. Gun control hasn’t done anything but empower criminals and psychotics, while stripping the law-abiding of their basic right to self defense.
So when a madman walks into a classroom and opens fire, he knows his victims are unarmed and unable to put up any resistance whatsoever. Same as Columbine, the Atlanta Courthouse, Westroads Mall and every other venue in which a mass shooting has occurred.
Of course, that doesn’t stop the gun-control movement. Like any other position built on lies and distortion, theirs can’t stand up to scrutiny, so it’s best to deflect that as quickly as possible. Marty Langley (who won’t return my calls, by the way) wrote a paragraph consoling the victims of the Northern Illinois University shootings, then segued directly into a political screed.
So, how does he plan to prevent this from happening again? He claims, “we must begin to ratchet down the firepower that is available to civilians,” then outlines a number of suggestions that, if they’d been in force, wouldn’t have done any good anyway.
The first: “An effective ban on all semiautomatic assault weapons. In addition, the Bush Administration should act immediately to better enforce the existing federal ban on the importation of foreign-made assault weapons.”
It’s worth noting that none of the weapons used by Kazmierczak fell under that definition. He had three handguns and a shotgun. Incidentally, none of Cho’s weapons fit the bill of “assault weapon,” either.
The second: “A complete ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 rounds.”
There’s no indication that any of the weapons used had “high-capacity” magazines. He had a Glock 19 and an unspecified SIG, but those likely came with 10-rounders, given that they were sold in Illinois.
Number three: “Ensure that all gun sales at gun shows are subject to a background check.”
Again, Illinois already does this.
Lastly: “Establish a system whereby university officials are notified when a student purchases a gun from a gun dealer.”
And here’s the meat of it: trample any rights or expectations of privacy that gun owners might have. After all, how would such a measure work? Is the local gunshop expected to have the administration for every local school on speed-dial?
No. Obviously, the scheme would involve having purchases phoned in to a government agency, resulting in de facto registration (which, again, Illinos already has). The potential stigma and threat of having your name entered into a database like a sex offender is enough to make many people think twice about buying a gun in a case like that.
And that’s exactly what Langley and his sort want. If they can’t get an outright ban, they can at least harass people into not buying them in the first place.
None of this, of course, stops criminals, who will simply circumvent the existing channels, as they’ve always done.
No, guns weren’t the problem here. Perhaps we’d be better served asking about Kazmierczak’s mental health issues and medication. The consensus seems to be that he had some sort of psychotic break due to withdrawals from antidepressants.
Our country has a terrible record of treating mental illness, and rather than research better methods, we choose to overmedicate. Every personality flaw imaginable is given a clinical name, along with an accompanying prescription. Could it be that our quick-fix approach to mental health, along with our general tendency to turn to chemicals for solace, is what’s really setting people off?
Incidents like this aren’t caused by weapons. They’re caused by defects of personality and flawed morality. You can scapegoat all you want, but guns (or rap music, videogames, etc) aren’t the problem, and even if we’re not all honest enough to admit it, the truth doesn’t change.