What transpired at Virginia Tech was tragic and never would have happened if the psychologists and counselors who treated Mr. Cho had performed their due diligence and reported their findings, thus making him ineligible to purchase a firearm. The current system that is law does work when all persons along the chain perform dutifully.
What irony that in 2005, 18 months prior to these senseless killings, Virginia Tech proclaimed its campus a “gun free zone” by instituting a weapons ban, touting the rule as a means to keep its student body safe and to give all VT parents peace of mind as to the security of their loved ones. If only one law-abiding Virginia Tech student or faculty member had the constitutional right to carry a concealed firearm, perhaps this massacre would have been lessened, or averted all together.
When a truly disturbed, mentally-unstable person sets out to commit murder, such as Mr. Cho, it is almost impossible to safeguard the public, no matter how draconian the laws are that restrict firearm possession. In fact, municipalities with the strictest gun laws always are at the top of the list of most murders per capita: Washington, D.C., New Orleans, St. Louis, Newark, Detroit, etc.
More do-nothing, feel-good firearm legislation only disarms the law-abiding populace, making them ripe targets for criminals to murder, rape, rob and assault. Let’s concentrate on making the current laws as foolproof as possible, not heaping upon our law enforcement officers more bureaucracy and unfunded mandates.
Jon A. Rembold
Snohomish
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