Virginia Legislature to Colleges: Since We're Not Going To Stop Gun Sales, Be Prepared

We love our Virginia legislature. In the wake of the massacre of Commonwealth citizens at Virginia Tech by a crazed gunman, families of the young (and old) victims lobbied for a couple of fairly simple and common sense steps to close loopholes in the state's gun laws.

Gun control!!! You gotta be kidding. The rural GOP members who still dominate the Va. House of Delegates would rather shoot it out in the Capitol building with their concealed weapons than let ANY piece of gun legislation get through (other than to loosen the gun laws and give a liability shield to gun dealers).

So, those proposals by the families, including one to require background checks for sales made at gun shows, have been killed by the General Assembly.

But have no fear, Virginia's legislators are not wholly unsympathetic to the Virginia Tech victims' fate. In their infinite wisdom, they do recognize that, having failed to do anything to prevent this from happening again, there likely will be more massacres of a similar type. So the General Assembly has passed a bill, just waiting for Governor Kaine's signature, that would require all colleges in the Commonwealth to have an emergency plan in place, updated every four years, for the inevitable repeat massacre. (See "Bill Requires Colleges To Have Emergency Plan" in today's Washington Post.)

The bill "will help parents and students feel more comfortable about returning to campuses," said Del. Anne B. Crockett-Stark (R-Wythe), one of those who opposes any type of gun sale restrictions.

Now, doesn't that make you feel better!

(FYI: the emergency planning measure is one of the recommendations of a panel that investigated the Virginia Tech shootings, and we support it; but we don't support the cynicism of legislators who turn a blind eye to other issues related to the massacre.)

Virginia Tech Tragedy

The news is numbing: one student, armed with pistols easily purchased anywhere in gun-happy Virginia, killed and injured more people, mostly young, on the Virginia Tech campus than a typical car-bomber in Iraq.

Our hearts go out to the victims' families and friends in this awful tragedy. We hope for comfort and healing to the injured who managed to survive. We await with trepidation for the names of the dead from our region, wondering if anyone we know will be touched by the loss of a loved one.

We now know that the killer was a Virginia Tech student, a senior in the English department. What motivated him to go on such a rampage? Why is it in our violent culture that people who are affronted--perhaps by a lover's jilt, or a worker's snub--feel compelled to take their revenge on randomly selected innocent victims?

Imagine if this happened every day. What a horror--and yet that is precisely the case in Iraq, a country with one-twelfth the population of the U.S.

What of the enablers--the gun fanatics who insist that there should be no regulation of firearms. The VPI killer was armed with a 9 mm pistol. At one time, federal law limited the size of the ammunition clip one could use with a 9 mm, but that law expired with the Bush/Cheney regime. Yet, the Enabler in Chief plans to attend the memorial service today at VPI. Will he evince a change of heart? Will he say this incident has forced him to look into his soul, to summon the willpower to stand up to the heartless lobbyists of the NRA, who insist that hunters need the leeway to shoot prairie dogs with automatic weapons?

There is no use for a 9 mm pistol other than to kill people. This is a large caliber weapon, and it shows in the Tech tragedy, where doctors have described as "horrific" the wounds they treated on those fortunate enough to survive the shootings.

It wasn't that long ago that Virginia was in the national eye for another shooting tragedy, when a mentally unstable young man in Fairfax County used semi-automatic weapons to outgun police officers, killing two.

Will this latest incident prompt any reconsideration in the Virginia legislature, any thought that maybe Virginia shouldn't be one of the easiest places in the U.S. to purchase just about any kind of firearm one pleases? Firearms that have nothing to do with legitimate hunting and everything to do with murder?

The tragedies pile up; the politicians mouth their hollow condolences. But nothing changes.

For the grieving families, their is no comfort. The lost children could've been ours. We shed our tears with you.