I’ve noticed a lot more blogs lately picking up on the gun control thing. This keeps things interesting, at least, but I wish they’d come up with their own material. When was the last time you saw one of us linking to crap at the NRA? They are usually a week behind us.
 For two examples, 1) keeping guns out of the hands of mentally impaired veterans (who, after all, know how to use them); and 2) letting the ATF track guns used in crimes back to their point of sale. The NRA vigorously opposes both of these controls, for “reasons” that strike us as benefiting absolutely no one, except (in the second case) gun dealers who knowingly traffic with persons buying firearms for criminal purposes.
Many of those veterans added are no longer suffering from mental illness. They were added as a matter of course by the Clinton administration. Veterans still suffering from mental illnesses will still not be eligible to purchase a firearm under this bill.
The ATF can still trace guns used in crimes to their source. The NRA supports that. What they don’t support are people having access to the trace data for matters not relating to criminal investigations. That’s what Tiahrt does. The ATF supports it. So does the Fraternal Order of Police.
Indeed, the NRA thinks that the massacre at Virginia Tech could have been prevented if every student and teacher there had carried a handgun. Perhaps that massacre could have — who knows? — but the notion of arming 18-24 year olds, at the very time that “drugs and alcohol use and suicide and mental health issues all peak” is, well, CRACKPOT CRAZY.
No one thinks that every student or teacher should carry a handgun. I would oppose any effort to hand out guns to students. What we do support is removing legal barriers that prevent people who hold concealed weapons licenses from carrying on college and university campuses. Maybe you think that’s crackpot crazy too, but I have news for you, people over 21 years of age can get a license that allows them to carry most other places. Will it prevent VT tech style incidents? Maybe not.  But if you ban them, then definitely not. VT’s rule against guns on campus didn’t stop Cho.
After all, as the Brady Center schools report observes, on the whole “college campuses are safer than the communities that surround them, precisely because those institutions have barred or tightly controlled firearms.
Or, because like where I went to college, in West Philadelphia, outside of campus is, shall we say, not the nicest of areas. It has nothing to do with campus policy on firearms, and everything to do with most college students not being miscreants. Do you think muggers bother to read the student manual?
Right now, by the way, the Brady Center could use your support to help fight the strong possibility that activist judges –this is rich — will strike down Washington, D. C.’s and eventually every major city’s most effective gun laws.
It’s activism to uphold the Bill of Rights? I’ll remember that next time Congress starts prattling about making more restrictions on speech, and the courts strike it down.
Explore the Brady site to see how you can help in this fight . . . unless, of course, you believe the bumper sticker that greeted me on the rear of a hunter’s pickup when I returned to Pine Mountain from Blacksburg after the shooting spree at Virginia Tech on April 16 took our son Jamie’s life: “Gun Control: Simple Solutions for Simple Minds.”
I prefer SayUncle’s favorite saying: “Gun Control: It’s what you do instead of something”.  I don’t think everyone who supports gun control has a simple mind, I just think they don’t really know much about the issue, and desperately want to believe a lot of things that aren’t true.
Feel free to head over and comment, but please be polite.
