April 27th / 29th, 2007
"Time for Gun Laws to Change"
High school and college campuses all have one thing in common. They are,
by design, accessible. Buses must be able to get in and out. So must
parents, teachers, and students. Following the Columbine massacre in which fifteen
children were shot to death, many public schools began locking their
ancillary doors to outsiders, and even installing metal detectors near the main
entrance. And colleges increasingly installed security code doors in dorms. But
such measures only provide a false sense of security. After all, most school
shootings are done by students who attend those schools and have both access
and opportunity to carry out their crazed mission. Such was the case at
Virginia Tech last week when Korean student Seung Hui Cho took thirty-three
lives, including his own. It was the worst such massacre in U.S. history, but
the worst may happen again unless we figure out an effective deterrent.
Cho purchased his two semi automatic handguns legally, undergoing instant
background checks on both occasions. But Cho was not red flagged because he:
was not a fugitive; had never been convicted of a violent crime or been
imprisoned; had never been convicted for use of unlawful drugs; was not an
illegal alien; was not the subject of a protective order; and had not been
convicted of any crime which involved the use of force. He should have been
denied a gun, though, because he was once involuntarily committed to a mental
instuitution. However, he slipped through the cracks, in part because the
judge didn’t actually adjudicate Cho to be a “mental defective”, and because
of a 1974 law that prohibits mental health professionals from sharing
certain patient information with law enforcement .
We obviously need to review how psych hospitals communicate with police,
colleges, and others, but we also need to change the conditions of the instant
background check to include not having been voluntarily committed. Don
Clark, former FBI Agent in charge, advocates such a change in the background
check system, and I agree. That’s because mentally disturbed people are usually
very intelligent, and clever enough to fool the system by agreeing to
voluntary treatments so they can still purchase a handgun.
In the midst of this debate about gun ownership, however, there are plenty
of people other than Cho who bear some responsibility for the Virginia Tech
massacre. The two girls who Cho stalked called police, but refused to press
charges. Had they done so, Cho would have certainly been convicted of at
least a misdomeaner, and would have been denied a gun. And how about the
students in Cho’s English class who were so frightened of him that they dropped the
course rather than filing a complaint with campus police. Then there are the
mental health professionals who supposedly evaluated Cho following the
stalking complaints, but failed to recognize the danger he posed to himself and to
others, and/ or failed to report their findings to authorities. And
finally, there are the Virginia Tech campus police who should have had the school
evacuated immediately after Cho shot two people in a dorm room. Instead, they
waited for over two and a half hours to notify students and faculty of the
incident.
But in the end, the debate over campus violence will come back to the same
issue: gun control.
The problem with gun laws is that, even if strengthened, they cannot stop a
mass murderer or a terrorist. Case in point, last year the Virginia General
Assembly voted down House bill 1572. It would have given college students and
employees the right to carry handguns on campus. Upon the measure’s defeat,
Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker told reporters, “I’m sure the
University community is appreciative of the General Assembly’s actions because this
will help parents, students, and faculty feel safe on campus”. Hincker,
like so many other trusting souls couldn’t have been more wrong in his naïve
assessment. The defeat of the legislation lulled the Hokie nation into a false
sense of security which exploded on April 17.
So what, then is the solution? Perhaps we need to take a page from the FAA
playbook. Following 9/11, airline pilots were allowed to carry firearms in
the cockpit. Since then, no commercial airliner has been highjacked by
terrorists. And just last week, North Carolina lawmakers began to look at a bill
that would allow Judges to keep firearms under their robes while in Court.
A day after the VPI tragedy, Larry Pratt, President of Gun owners of America
told CNN’s Anderson Cooper, “When will we learn that being defenseless is
a bad defense? Thanks to gun laws, a guy like Cho who has murder in his
heart, is not going to shoot up a police station. He goes looking for a safer
‘work environment’ where no one has firearms”. It should be noted that
Pratt is not a crazy radical. He is not a member of the KKK. He is a well
spoken, thoughtful man whose argument has merit. For further proof, just look at
two school shootings in which the body count was minimized thanks to peace
loving individuals who also carried firearms. An assistant principal in
Mississippi used his handgun to stop a potential mass murderer. And in Grundy,
Virginia, two law students at the Appalachian School of Law, rushed to their
cars, grabbed their guns, and killed an assailant who was only able to murder
three people, instead of fifteen or thirty.
I’ve grown pretty liberal in my old age, and I’ve never been a fan of the
NRA. In fact, back in 1993, Virginia Governor Doug Wilder had me spearhead an
advertising campaign to gain passage of the nation’s first handgun law. We
succeeded in spite of a media blitz against us by the NRA. But that law was
specifically aimed at stopping multiple firearm purchases by gangs who traded
guns for drugs up and down the east coast. The law served its purpose. It
was not, however, designed to take guns out of the hands of law abiding
citizens, and that brings us back to Pratt, and to the men in Mississippi and
Virginia who prevented school massacres because they were legally armed.
I am saddened to admit it, but the time has come for us to defend ourselves.
The bad guys and the deranged killers are the only ones bringing guns to
school, and, last week, thirty-two Virginia Tech students and faculty paid the
price for being defenseless.
That’s why I now urge campuses across the nation to act contrary to their
core beliefs, and start requiring faculty to be trained in the use of firearms,
and to allow them to carry guns in the classroom. To paraphrase Pratt,
crazy people like Cho are smart enough not to target victims who can return
fire. What I’m proposing has already worked in the air, and on the ground in
places like Mississippi and Grundy. Ironically, arming instructors might just
be the only measure we can take to bring real peace to school campuses.
Being defenseless is a bad defense.
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