Friday, November 23, 2007
Editorial: Close the gun show loophole
Cho didn't buy his guns at a gun show. The next Cho could if background checks aren't required.
From the RoundTable blog
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Gun rights advocates reacted strongly to former state police superintendent Gerald Massengill's call for the General Assembly to close the gun show loophole in response to the massacre at Virginia Tech.
Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho didn't get his guns at a gun show, bloggers and others argued. The massacre shouldn't be used as an excuse to restrict private dealers from making sales at gun shows without first conducting a background check.
Massengill, who headed the panel appointed by Gov. Tim Kaine to investigate the tragedy, anticipated that response in a speech before The Virginia Center for Public Safety.
Cho, Massengill said, should not have been able to purchase his guns legally at local gun shops. He could because the fact that he had been judged a danger to himself or others and referred for mental health treatment never made it into the state's database.
Kaine issued an executive order to attempt to keep a similar oversight from happening in the future.
But had Cho been blocked, as he should have been, from purchasing a gun through a registered dealer, it would have been too easy for him to go to one of the numerous gun shows around the state to buy a gun from an unlicensed dealer, Massengill said.
"I guess I'm one of those people who sees the devastation that firearms bring; there's got to be reasonable checks and balances out there," Massengill said.
He's absolutely right. That Cho didn't get his guns from an unlicensed dealer at a gun show does nothing to change the fact that it is too easy to circumvent background checks at such shows.
Studies have found that as many as 35 percent of the dealers at gun shows aren't federally licensed, and thus aren't required to perform background checks on buyers
This loophole should have been closed long ago. The Tech massacre should prompt the General Assembly to close it now instead of waiting for another tragedy to better make the case.
