Protestantism

» Migisi - Law loopholes!

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Can we justify demanding more gun restrictions when laws currently on the books aren't being enforced, or have loopholes big enough to drive a truck through? Let's get serious.
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Did He Buy the Guns Legally?
A federal background check cleared Virginia Tech shooter Cho Seung-Hui to buy weapons. It should have stopped him cold.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18217741/sit...
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Quote:
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"...But Kristen Rand, an analyst with the Violence Policy Center, a gun-control advocacy group, points out that the other criteria in the 1968 federal law-whether the gun applicant has been "adjudicated as a mentally defective"-seems to apply to Cho's circumstances. The definition of "mentally defective" under a federal regulation states that it applies to anybody who has been determined by a "court, board, commission or other lawful authority" to have been a "danger to himself or others." [Migisi: Cho had indeed been declared mentally ill by a magistrate in the Montgomery County Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court in 2005!]
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"...The gun lobby-typically opposed to any attempt to tighten federal gun controls-doesn't disagree. The National Rifle Association has decided to make no public comment about any aspect of the Virginia Tech tragedy, according to a spokesman. But a source close to the gun lobby (who asked not to be identified because of the organization's sensitivities about making any political points related to the tragedy), pointed out that pro-gun lobbyists and groups like the NRA have long supported adding all relevant mental-health records to background check databases. "We have no problem as long as one is adjudicated mentally incompetent [in denying gun purchases] and we have no problem with mental health records being part of the NICS," the source said. "The problem is not with the gun community. The problem is with the medical community" that has traditionally opposed making such records available on privacy grounds.
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"Whatever the reason, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy of New York, contends that every year thousands of gun purchases by mentally unstable and other unqualified people have been falling through the cracks. McCarthy has been sponsoring legislation that would offer incentives to states to report more records of mental illness and commitments to federal and state databases.
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"The issue isn't new. McCarthy began sponsoring the bill four years ago, after a mentally unstable constituent killed a few parishioners and a priest at a church in her Long Island district. Lawmakers in Washington are certainly aware of the problem. In 1998, a man named Russell Weston killed two police officers in a shootout at the U.S. Capitol, using a .38-caliber gun that he had acquired with a gun permit he got from his home state of Illinois. When he filled out his federal form, he answered, like Cho, that he had no record of mental illness. Illinois officials were unaware that Weston had been ordered to a mental institution for a 90-day evaluation in Montana two years earlier. Why didn't they know? Montana's strict privacy laws prevent the reporting of commitments to law enforcement. The gap in reporting was duly noted in some news stories at the time, and quickly forgotten, until this week." (end)
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-- posted by Migisi