I'm not a gun guy. I've never owned one, never fired one, never even held one. Just not something that I was interested in, I guess. I don't know if any of my friends or brothers owns a gun, but I don't think any of them could be a gun nut. You know what I mean, one of those guys who lives for gun shows and has all sorts of firearms in the house.
And seeing as I don't even live in the US it would hardly be an issue for me if the gun laws in the US were tightened. I could well imagine that a ban on plastic bags would have a bigger impact on my life.
So, having laid out where I'm coming from, I have to say that it seems to me that Virginia's gun laws were too lax based on everything we've learned about Cho Seung-Hui. When a guy who was judged to be "mentally ill" by a psychiatric hospital doctor is still able to buy guns something's not right. Isn't this really a no-brainer?
It really annoys me to be on the side of the European chorus, but come on. This guy was a psycho and he was still able to buy guns. What? You don't like my use of "psycho"? Well, that's part of the problem too. He was a psycho, but I suspect that people are so afraid of 'offending' anyone that the language is less stark than necessary when confronting a problem like Cho.
The students were afraid of him, some of his teachers were afraid of him, a doctor diagnosed him as "mentally ill" and still the college didn't kick him out or even notify his family that he was mentally unwell. That can only be thanks to political correctness.
It's a perfect storm. A psycho like Cho gets treated with kid gloves thanks to political correctness and libertarian gun laws allow him to buy two semi-automatic handguns. Uggh.
