A Day at the Gunshow

Are gun laws too lenient?
Updated: 4/22/2007 8:29 PM
By: Cait McVey

…those looking to add to their collection face some of the strictest gun laws in the country. In New York, you have to go through a background check to get a permit to purchase a handgun, and another one to carry it. This can be a lengthy process.

“You just can’t walk into a gun show and walk out with a bunch of handguns. Not in the state of New York,” NYS Arms Collection Association VP Larry Loveland said.

Gun laws are different in every state. Some are more lenient than others. For example, in Virginia, all you need is an instant background check and the proper ID to buy a handgun. This makes you wonder if those laws had been stricter, could the Virginia Tech shooting have been prevented?

“I don’t think anything would’ve stopped this guy,” NYS Arms Collector Association Lloyd Barden said.

“You cannot legislate morality,” Loveland added.

Instead, Loveland blames loopholes in background check laws. He said Virginia gun laws would’ve prevented Cho from buying a gun if his background check showed his history of mental illness. But, Cho was never committed to a psychiatric hospital. He was only treated as an outpatient.

“He was not committed there by a judge, so there were no records there that would turn up during a background check,” Loveland said.

Loveland said those laws need to be changed, not the gun laws. He said the majority of people like those at the gun show act responsibly and shouldn’t be penalized for those who don’t.

My Dad and I went, along with my Daughter, to the Syracuse Gun Show last Sunday. We intended to buy a starter gun for my daughter. After some looking to find just the right thing we settled on a Remington,single shot, bolt action, .22. It was just the right length in the stock and had a safety that was acceptable (most single shot rifles have a half cock safety which isn’t conducive to getting a sense of the whole process as I see it).

My wife, smart one that she is, confiscated my credit card under suspicious motives before I left for Syracuse, so my father put up the money for the gun. At $100 dollars it was a pretty good deal, almost twenty years ago I picked up my first, an old WW2 trainer (.22 cal Mossberg with a tube feed magazine) for $70. We went with the owners wife over to the federally licensed firearms dealer’s table to get the background check done, and there’s where we ran into trouble.

You see, at a gun show in New York State–or at least this particular one–no one leaves the building with any firearm without having first been run through the National Instant Background Check (NIC). The man in the red jacket is Larry Loveland (as identified in the above article) the Federal Firearms License (FFL) Holder responsible for running names through the system. When the checks were made for the gun we were trying to purchase, they came back denied. The first thing that went through my mind was the situations people have had to deal with with the no-fly list. The second was how could it be that Cho Seung-Hui passed these checks and we didn’t? It was explained that by law what ever triggered the denial could not be revealed, and that it could have been something as simple as a backlogged server.

Part II: The Loophole

.50 Cal	AR-15	SKS

I’m running through these events from last weekend not without the knowledge that the shootings at Virginia Tech are still fresh in everyones mind. Nor am I in a vacuum when it comes to the views on firearms that some in this strata of the blogosphere have. I don’t like to be associated with knee-jerk reactions any more than the next person, whether they come from the left or the right. Individuals like Newt Gingrich and John Derbyshire exemplify the worst of this tendancy.

The simple fact is, Cho Seung-Hui was an extremely mentally disturbed person with an illness, not a political agenda. As the article notes, Loveland, “blames loopholes in background check laws. After he ran the checks we were unable to purchase the gun there at the fairgrounds, and had to make arrangements to pick up the gun later this week. If a person wants a gun in this country they can get one. If a person is determined to kill someone in this country–with or without a gun–they have plenty of ways to accomplish that, unfortunately. Abortion, guns, drugs; you cannot legislate morality.

The solution to these problems is not banning more guns. The solution is to address the underlying socio-economic causes. The mental health crisis (part of the over all health crisis) in this country was at the root of the Virginia Tech Massacre and, “…in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,” we must address it in a reasonable and timely manner.

Various Pistols	M4, Mini-14	$3000 a piece