First Gun Control Law In A Decade

People claim that the Democrats have given up the gun debate, but maybe they're just being smarter about it.

The House Wednesday passed what could become the first major federal gun control law in over a decade, spurred by the Virginia Tech campus killings and buttressed by National Rifle Association help.

The bill, which was passed on a voice vote, would improve state reporting to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System to stop gun purchases by people, including criminals and those adjudicated as mentally ill, who are prohibited from possessing firearms.

This closes the loophole that allowed Seung-Hui Cho to buy guns in Virginia.

If you can get the NRA aboard on gun control legislation, you can strike a balance between Second Amendment rights (which I generally support) and ensuring public safety and the needs of law enforcement, without electoral consequences. The argument that "the Democrats are going to take your guns away" has little resonance when the NRA is signing on to their legislation. This is a game of inches, and so I'm happy that the Democrats appear to be playing it that way.

Democrats Do Something

While the conservative movement wants to blame the Virginia Tech shooting on everything liberal society has ever created (not the individual, of course - they're the party of personal responsibility), the Democrats actually want to do something about it:

Grappling with the deadliest shooting spree in U.S. history, lawmakers said Sunday they want to eliminate a gap between state and federal laws that can allow someone with a history of mental illness to buy guns [...]

Seung-Hui Cho, who gunned down 32 people on campus and killed himself Monday, was evaluated at a psychiatric hospital in late 2005 and deemed by a judge to present "an imminent danger to himself as a result of mental illness." That should have disqualified him from purchasing a gun under federal law, experts say.

But Virginia court officials insist that because the judge ordered only outpatient treatment — and did not commit Cho to a psychiatric hospital — they were not required to submit the information to be entered in the federal databases for background checks.

Lawmakers pushed Sunday to eliminate such breakdowns. They called for uniformity between state and federal reporting to make background checks more dependable.

That's the extent of the lessons that should be learned from this nightmare - fixing the loophole so that the law works the way it was intended. We can all stop pretending we're victims because it's offensive to the real ones, and our media can pack the hell up and go home. But at the very least, we should fix the flaw in the law that enabled this circumstance. That's the response of a political party that actually believes in government and doesn't hold it in contempt.

In short, this is why I'm a Democrat.

The Nuttiest Nut in the Tree

I'm a bit outraged out at comments from the right about the Virginia Tech shooting, but Dinesh D'Souza's contribution, that when bad things happen, atheists are nowhere to be found, is choice.

What's hilarious is that historically the Problem of Evil has always been a problem for the devout - how can an all-perfect, all-loving God allow evil in the world?

These insane ideologues have actually turned that on its head and now think that the Problem of Evil is a problem for ATHEISTS, as if evil's existence proves God's existence or something. And D'Souza KNOWS this, and even addresses it!

Many responders informed me that tragedies are normally considered a problem for religion, not atheism. Where is God when bad things happen? Yes, people, I know this. My point was that if evil and suffering are a problem for religion--and they are--they are an even bigger problem for atheism.

When there is a tragedy like the one at Virginia Tech, the ones who are suffering cannot help asking questions, "Why did this have to happen?" "Why is there so much evil in the world?" "How can I possibly go on after losing my child?" And so on.

My point was that atheism has nothing to offer in the face of tragedy except C'est la vie. Deal with it. Get over it. This is why the ceremonies were suffused with religious rhetoric. Only the language of religion seems appropriate to the magnitude of tragedy.

Maybe to you. You certainly never asked Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris what they would say to the mourners. And because you can't imagine a world without a God doesn't mean nobody else can. People ask those questions out of a human need to try and impose order on chaos, meaning on the meaningless. Needs do not imply existence. You're building the world that works for you and then insisting that somebody else built it. You believe in God because it makes you feel better. You are more comfortable in a world with Osama bin Laden (D'Souza has previously agreed with bin Laden's critique that American culture is depraved), with a God who is angry and vengeful and enforces strict codes on His subjects, than a world which is secular.

And you have taken a senseless tragedy where even our god-lovin' evangelical President couldn't make up any meaning to it and used it as a club with which to beat atheists for no reason.

Feel threatened?

Keeping Score

According to various conservative bloggers, the massacre at Virginia Tech happened because of:

Microsoft (for coming out with Counterstrike), Trent Reznor, collegiate grade inflation, the students were too wussy to fight back, the lack of God in the classroom, not enough concealed weapons, nobody listened to the shots closely enough to know when the shooter was out of bullets, not locking people up if they act in any way weird, co-ed dorms, being an English major (same link), the shooter was a closet Muslim, and whatever comes into Debbie Schlussel's head every five minutes.

I'm sure I'm missing a few, and for that I'm thrilled. Dumpster diving like this is giving me a headache.

UPDATE: The devil made him do it.

UPDATE II: This was a dumb statement by Obama. Mass murder is like outsourcing and Imus? I almost get the outsourcing thing, certainly more than Imus, but both are unfortunate statements.

UPDATE III: The massacre happened because too many people hate McDonald's.

And the massacre in no way happened because of a loophole in Viriginia's gun laws that allowed someone who "presents an imminent danger to himself as a result of mental illness" to buy two handguns.

UPDATE IV: It goes without saying that this was also the Democrats' fault.

Briefs

Let me offer the brief statement that, if a college student has been in trouble with police for stalking women and had definitive mental health problems and suicidal tendencies and was deemed a threat to himself and others, he maybe shouldn't be allowed to walk into a store and purchase two guns as easily as he did.

Let me also offer the statement that, if the same same student goes on a mass killing spree and in between shootings sends videos and writings and pictures to NBC News, it would probably behoove that news organization to NOT run them on their air, essentially validating the aims of a twisted mind who could easily spawn copycats if they knew their words, too, could make it onto the teevee.

My Blogging Doppleganger

I find myself agreeing with Matt Yglesias more and more these days. He's right, there's this cottage industry online of "don't politicize this tragedy" posts, when the only time you can have a national conversation on anything is when something so big happens that everybody manages to look up from American Idol long enough to take notice. Tragedies are, well, tragic, but a national discussion on gun control, or mental health, or whatever, is not going to happen just because it's July 7th. And I also agree with (and have been saying for two days) this:

The only thing I would note with something like the VT shootings is that as terrible as an incident like that is, it's simply not the case that spree killings are a significant problem in American life, statistically speaking. I believe the USA suffers from more spree killings than do other non-war-torn countries, but still very few people die that way. You could completely eliminate mass-murder in the United States and you wouldn't save very many lives. Which isn't to say that we shouldn't try to prevent this kind of thing. But it is to say that it doesn't make sense to engage in policy shifts with large costs (in terms of money or even just inconveniencing tons of people) in order to reduce the risk of something that's already very rare.

Which isn't that different than saying that we shouldn't freak out and take everybody's civil liberties away in the even more event of a terrorist attack.

If this didn't happen at Virginia Tech, the revelation that Governor Corzine's car was going 91mph on the Garden State Parkway when he was severely injured in an accident, and the fact that he wasn't wearing a seat belt, would be a major story, and it may have spurred a national debate on the importance of seat belt laws and personal responsibility in wearing them, and that would also be a good thing, despite the expected calls of "you're politicizing this tragedy!"

Other things I agree with Yglesias about: Pundits talk about blogger incivility because they feel threatened by the medium, and white people feel resentful and threatened by their status in the persecuted majority.

You Won't See It On Cable News

But 127 people 157 people have died in four separate bombings today in Baghdad, where a pleasant stroll down the street is just 100 Army soldiers and three Blackhawk helicopters away.

I know that the media has their sleuthing hats on and are giving Cho-Seung Hui the Citizen Kane treatment, finding out everything they could ever know about him. But FIVE TIMES as many people died on streets where we have hundreds of thousands young Americans. And by the way, gun advocates, they're all armed. And they still die.

UPDATE: The death squads are back.

If Instapundit Was Around In 1995

Bombing at the Oklahoma City Federal Building. Nobody seems to know what's happened yet, but these things do seem to take place in locations where it's not legal for people to carry bombs. Maybe the bomber could have been stopped by other people with bombs who could have bombed him before he got on with his bombing.

(I should add that he wasn't the worst offender of the right, the sickening nature of Debbie Schlussel's posts on the Virginia Tech tragedy, where she first tried to blame it on a "paki," then decided in her head that a slain Jewish faculty member wasn't getting as much credit as a Muslim kid who shot footage of the incident, are almost unspeakably malicious and stupid.)

UPDATE: John Derbyshire is a lunatic. I love these conservatives who think they're heroes for telling strangers how they should act. They really think they're in a fucking video game and not real life. They're beneath contempt.

Aimless Thoughts

One of the big myths you've started to hear from the right in the wake of the Virginia Tech shooting is that the whole thing could have been averted if only the students were armed to the teeth. That goes hand-in-hand with the illogic from these people that guns are magical items that always strike their target, as easy as a bastard sword strikes the dragon with a roll of the 20-sided die in their D&D session.

Guns are actually imprecise objects that require a lot of training. On the battlefield, you have highly trained individuals carrying rifles, and yet there are plenty of friendly fire incidents. The commencement of a shooting incident in a public space is chaotic. People are running everywhere, the rush of sensory information prevents informed knowledge (think about how difficult it is to find two eyewitness reports that match up), and there is no clean and clear target to the shooter. If everybody started firing off at that stage, you'd end up killing everybody in the place.

A Kos diarist and experienced gun handler goes down this road as well:

Given that trained police officers, in several recent incidents, fired dozens of shots at several people and missed most of their shots, and, furthermore, given that no matter how cool and tough and certain and heroic you are or think you are, you CAN make a mistake, what the hell are you thinking?

Life isn't a movie and you're not Clint Eastwood. Target acquisition is a serious problem in any fire fight. The bad guys don't always wear black hats to make them easy to identify. People keep getting killed by mistake in combat (can anyone say Pat Tillman? or Giuliana Sgrena?). How do you identify the "Bad guys?" A few years ago an undercover New York cop was shot dead by a transit cop becasue one of them failed to obey the rules of engagement and know the signals identifying undercover cops.

In any fire fight, you can't always be sure you know the players. That's one reason cops and soldiers wear uniforms. And look what keeps happening in Iraq as the bad guys keep killing people while wearing good guy uniforms.

It's not like on TV. You never really know what's going on. You don't have a handy editor composing the shots so you cam keep track of what's what. Where are the shots coming from? Who's hidden? Who's working together? When six people are shooting and none of them know each other, how do you know whom to shoot?

The answer is you wouldn't, and these armchair cowboys who think that guns are the answer to all of our problems are out of their minds.

I would also say that yes, it's true, one unthinkable incident at a college shouldn't be used as a lever to push all the half-formed beliefs everyone on the Internet appears to have. Like I said, it's a tragedy, but an unbelievably rare tragedy, and while the search for meaning in the meaningless is part of the human condition, sometimes it's just... meaningless. No amount of security is going to be able to stop someone who has the will and no concern for his own life. Bloggers talk about this stuff because they talk about everything, and connecting it to policy is a natural process. I don't necessarily have a problem with that, but you have to understand that the world doesn't always work the way that you want it to work.

A Pretty Good Day In Iraq

Somebody had to say it:

Breaking news! At least 22 Virginia Tech students gunned down. Cable news channels are wild with activity as they pump up the coverage a focus on the latest "crisis". The media is commenting that this shooting is overwhelming the local medical facilities. Crisis is in the air. Well, at least it ain't Iraq.

Okay. Big deep breath. This is horrible and this is tragic and this gives us an idea of what it is like to live just one day in Iraq [...]

Let's total the score: at least 65 Iraqis dead in four attacks (today) vs. 22 Americans shot at Virginia Tech. Whoops, forgot the 20 kidnapped policemen. Can you imagine?

The next time you hear Dick Cheney or George Bush blame the public attitude regarding Iraq on the media's failure to report "good news", examine carefully our reaction to the shooting at Viginia Tech. Look at our collective shock. Our horrified reaction. The public sorrow. Yet, in truth, this is an exceptional, unusual day in America. It is not our common experience. But we cannot say the same about Iraq.

During the Jewish high holidays of 2001, just days after the attacks of 9-11, I sat in a service and heard the rabbi discuss how Israel had been dealing with this kind of terrorism on a consistent basis for years, if not decades. It was not in any way an attempt to minimize the tragedy of the attacks on the World Trade Center, it was a means to give perspective. That's what viewing today's tragedy through a similar prism does. 32 dead in the streets is a pretty good day in Iraq. That undeniable reality does not minimize the senseless tragedy we saw on our own streets today, best expressed on the front page of John Edwards' website today:

We are simply heartbroken by the deaths and injuries suffered at Virginia Tech. We know what an unspeakable, life-changing moment this is for these families and how, in this moment, it is hard to feel anything but overwhelming grief, much less the love and support around you. But the love and support is there. We pray that these families, these students, and the entire Virginia Tech community know that they are being embraced by a nation. There is a Methodist hymn that gave us solace in such a moment as this, and we repeat its final verse here, in hopes it will help these families, as it helped us:

In our end is our beginning; in our time, infinity;
In our doubt there is believing, in our life, eternity,
In our death, a resurrection; at the last, a victory,
Unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.

Our dearest wish is that this day could start again, with the promise of these young people alive. Knowing that cannot be, our prayer is for God’s grace and whatever measure of peace can be reached on this terrible day.

They've buried a child and they understand this like nobody else.

Let me look at this perspective on the flip side. This is the worst massacre in American history, worse than Columbine, worse than Charles Whitman at the University of Texas. It's a significantly rare act. And let me amend my earlier remarks, written in anger, and say that exceedingly rare events like this should not automatically trigger major changes in laws. Let's not flip out and react to this the way we reacted to 9-11 and used it as a means to take away all manner of civil liberties with the Patriot Act. I do think this should open a national converssation about gun control and the best means to prevent things like this from happening. But let's study instead of rushing to a bad conclusion (like trying to search everyone on campus 24 hours a day or something).

UPDATE: Two days ago, the death toll in Iraq was 289. Perspective.

No Gonzales Hearing Tomorrow

And that's the right thing to do given the horrific shootings at Virginia Tech today. Politics can wait.

Although, with each passing day, it gets worse and worse for him.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' assertion that he was not involved in identifying the eight U.S. attorneys who were asked to resign last year is at odds with a recently released internal Department of Justice e-mail, ABC News has learned.

That e-mail said that Gonzales supported firing one federal prosecutor six months before she was asked to leave [...]

When Gonzales appears before the committee, a central focus will be the extent of his involvement in the firings.

Gonzales has insisted he left those decisions to his staff, but ABC News has learned he was so concerned about U.S. attorney Carol Lam's lackluster record on immigration enforcement in San Diego that he supported firing her months before she was dismissed, according to a newly released e-mail from his former chief of staff.

The e-mail, which came from Gonzales aide Kyle Sampson, appeared to contradict the prepared written testimony Gonzales submitted to Congress over the weekend in advance of his Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday. In his prepared testimony, Gonzales said that during the months that his senior staff was evaluating U.S. attorneys, including Lam, "I did not make the decisions about who should or should not be asked to resign."

But the recently released e-mail from Sampson, dated June 1, 2006, indicated that Gonzales was actively involved in discussions about Lam and had decided to fire her if she did not improve. In the e-mail to other top Justice Department officials, Sampson outlined several steps that Gonzales suggested, culminating in Lam's replacement if she failed to bolster immigration enforcement.

I think the key is when the email is dated, after Lam had made known her intent to pursue the MZM/Dusty Foggo/Brent Wilkes/CIA leads that came out of the Duke Cunningham case. Not to mention the fact that Gonzales lied to Congress. Again. That should mean something.

This will all come out. But it's the right thing to give the nation a couple days' worth of a breather after these shootings.

Well That's Just Terrible

29 dead on the Virginia Tech campus as a gunman stalked a dorm and a classroom.

I'm with Aravosis:

Why is it legal in America for you to buy an AK-47? Oh that's right, it's your constitutional right to own an AK-47. I'm sure the founders, when considering their "original intent" that the Republicans always lecture us on, had in mind assault weapons when they were really writing about muskets. I don't know what kind of gun the shooter had, but it is far too easy for any nutjob to own a gun in this country, and it needs to stop.

I know that the Democratic Party has given up on fighting gun control, but I think there's a huge difference between protecting the Second Amendment and allowing unfettered access to guns for any maniac who wants one. And the goal should not be, as I'm sure we'll hear, arming MORE people. The goal should be reasonable criminal background checks, the likes of which occur to operate a firearm in any public capacity like police work or the FBI.

I'm eagerly awaiting when they're going to find Marilyn Manson and Judas Priest so they can blame this one on them as well. The only scenes of mass death that permeate television screens every night is in Iraq, so I'm all for changing the culture, as it were.