The one-year anniversary of a tragic killing from South Bend, Indiana, illustrates many of the weaknesses in our gun laws: in a single incident, we have law enforcement officers being shot and killed, by someone who never should have been allowed to purchase a firearm in the first place, but who still passed a background check because of incomplete records, from a corrupt gun dealer at a gun show.

On April 24, 2007, South Bend Police Corporal Nick Polizzotto was shot and killed, and Patrolman Michael Norby was wounded, in a shootout at the Wooden Indian Motel.

They were shot by a man who had been involuntarily committed to a mental institution and who bought a gun at a gun show from a licensed dealer who later pleaded guilty and is now serving Federal prison time for falsifying Brady background check records.

Worse still, the gun dealer’s dishonesty was only part of the story. Because the states do such a poor job of providing records of the dangerously mentally ill to the Brady background check system, the shooter’s dangerous mental history didn’t prevent him from buying his gun.

The NICS Improvement Act – which gives states monetary incentives to supply records to the Brady background check system – should help prevent other mentally dangerous gun buyers from getting guns in the future from licensed gun dealers who follow the law.

Unlike West Virginia, however, which passed legislation less than a month ago to address this problem, states like Indiana have yet to forward any records of the dangerously mentally ill to NICS.

The following is from a powerful piece that ran last week on South Bend’s CBS affiliate, WSBT-TV. The video is here. You can read more about this tragic story here, here, and here.

A CLOSER LOOK AT THE LAW

It’s been 40 years since Congress banned the sale of firearms to anyone deemed “mentally defective” by a judge, and today, answering “yes” to “question 11-F” on a federal background check means an automatic disqualification for a handgun permit or purchase.

It reads, simply: “Have you ever been adjudicated mentally defective or involuntarily committed to a mental institution?”

It’s aimed at preventing scenes like the one that played out on the campus of Virginia Tech just over one year ago. The gunman there, Sung Hui Cho, was responsible for the worst massacre on a college campus in U.S. history.

Court records show Cho was also ordered to receive mental health treatment by a judge who also declared him “dangerously mentally ill.”

But he never went.

Even so, his background check came back clean.

So did Barnaby’s, the day after the gun he bought illegally was used to kill Polizzotto.

Former Bristol firearms dealer Ronald Wedge was sentenced to serve prison time for falsifying information on Barnaby’s application, and allowing him to buy the gun before his background check cleared.

But the fact remains, it did clear.

The question for lawmakers in both Indiana and Virginia one year ago, was why?

SEARCHING FOR ANSWERS

They quickly found that the answers lie in the mental health records kept by each state in the nation. Just over 30 states share some, or all of those records with the federal government. In our area, Illinois recently began sharing many of their records, and Michigan is one of the few states in the country that shares nearly all their records.

But some states share none of their mental health records. That means all records of treatment, including treatment ordered by a court, is not included in the FBI’s NICS database used to check the backgrounds of potential gun buyers.

In other words, in many cases, the FBI has no way of knowing whether or not that buyer has ever had any sign of mental illness.

One year ago, as Scott Barnaby pulled the trigger, Indiana was one of those states.
Today, it still is, and Nick’s brother Tony Polizzotto calls that unacceptable.

“It seems like a no brainer to me,” he said. “Half the states [still] don’t have this law in action. And it’s something that really needs to be brought to the forefront.”

In the wake of Polizzotto’s shooting and the campus shootings at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University, it has been brought to the forefront in the Hoosier state.

Brady Background checks make it harder for dangerous people to get guns, but they only work when the states send in the proper information. Indiana – indeed, most of the country – needs to do a much better job in reporting those who have been defined as “prohibited purchasers� by Federal law since 1968 to this database.

(Note to readers: This entry, along with past entries, has been co-posted on bradycampaign.org/blog and the Huffington Post.)

Forcing employers to allow guns at work? This is an idea only the gun lobby could like. Yet it is one they are trying to push into every state and workplace in America at the expense of your safety.

For several years, the NRA had been losing this fight, thanks to solid opposition from the business community, the Brady Center, the American Bar Association, and the vast majority of affected workers.

But earlier this month, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist – a potential running mate for John McCain – ignored that opposition, and concerns for private property rights, and signed his state’s guns-at-work bill into law.

If this law takes effect, it will certainly increase the risk of workplace violence for millions of Floridians who go to work every day. Far too often, disgruntled and dangerous employees in a moment of rage have retrieved guns from their cars to shoot coworkers and supervisors.

Consider too, that:

• A May 2005 study published in the American Journal of Public Health found that workplaces where guns were permitted were 5 to 7 times more likely to be the site of a workplace homicide compared to workplaces where guns were prohibited.

• According to the most recent CDC data, murder is the leading cause of injury-related death for women in the workplace, while about three-quarters of work-related homicides are committed with firearms; and

• 60% of major employers said in a 2005 survey that disgruntled employees had threatened to assault or kill senior managers in the last year.

We should be making these workplace gun crimes harder to commit, not easier.

What can be done? The next step in Florida will be a lawsuit arguing that this dangerous law is unconstitutional. A federal judge in Oklahoma last year struck down a similar law in that state because it ran afoul of the federal duty shared by every employer in America to provide a safe workplace. Companies can hardly meet this obligation if they no longer have control over guns on their property.

The Brady Center, joined by two major safety and security professional organizations, recently filed a brief seeking affirmance of that decision, and we will certainly support the legal battle in Florida as well.

The 7.8 million Floridians who go to work every day, and who have the power to replace legislators that put the interests of the gun lobby ahead of their safety at work, need to make their voices heard.

(Note to readers: This entry, along with past entries, has been co-posted on bradycampaign.org/blog and the Huffington Post.)

On the one-year anniversary of the Virginia Tech shootings, Andy Goddard, the father of one of those injured on April 16, 2007, spoke in front of the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C. 

I felt that Andy’s comments were very eloquent and needed to be heard by others.

Following are the remarks delivered by Andy Goddard on April 16, 2008: 

A year ago today, as I watched the unfolding coverage of the tragedy at Virginia Tech, at about this time, I found out that my own son Colin had been shot multiple times.  A year ago tonight, I sat by his hospital bed and struggled with my emotions as I watched him lying bleeding amidst a tangle of wires, tubes and pipes all connected to the machines that were sustaining him.

I decided that, in exchange for him being spared, I would dedicate myself to the cause of preventing gun violence.

Today, I choose to stand here, in front of the Supreme Court, rather than by my son’s side in Blacksburg, because, at this time, the justices are deciding on what could be the most important case regarding guns in my lifetime.  While they have been asked to rule on the constitutionality of the DC handgun ban, they will also be examining the meaning of, and intent behind, the 2^nd amendment.  This involves far more than the parsing of an antiquated sentence.  I am not a constitutional scholar, or much of a historian, but it is obvious to me that our founding fathers took great care in crafting our constitution and used the language of the day with great skill.  They didn’t use words or phrases which they expected to be ignored or were of passing importance.  Those brave and intelligent men, put into words the aspirations and hopes of the fledgling nation and they addressed the most pressing of problems and threats that faced them at that time. 

I find it difficult to believe that they would have wanted to craft any language which would prevent future generations, of their descendants, from addressing the new and more complex problems that face our evolving society.  In those early days of flintlock muskets, our ancestors could not have imagined a future world where a deranged individual could murder so many people with such ease.  They probably could not imagine that weapons would become so powerful, so easy to conceal and so simple to use.  Regardless of whether the court rules that the 2nd amendment guarantees an individual right to own a gun for self defense or a collective right for communal defense, I hope and pray that the justices uphold the concept that no right is absolute, that no right comes without an equal amount of responsibility and that the expression “well regulated� is not totally ignored.  

Normally we expect strong leadership on difficult issues, but look at the current crop of Presidential candidates: their silence on this subject is deafening!  It seems to be the perception that, in political suicide, just as in actual suicide, nothing is as effective as guns!  OK America, it looks like “we the people� will have to work out this problem ourselves from the ground up.

In a few moments many of us will lie down to commemorate the 32 students and faculty that were murdered on that awful day one year ago in Blacksburg, but I want to remind you that today is also another anniversary, in fact it is many.  Today is the one week anniversary for the 32 Americans that were shot dead on April 9^th, the one month anniversary of the 32 that were shot dead on March 16^th this year. 

I know this because an average of 32 Americans are murdered with guns each and every day of the year and almost 200 others are wounded, with injuries ranging from minor all the way to permanent disabilities that last their entire lives. Sadly today is also the day before 32 more Americans will lose their lives to our national obsession with guns.  Tonight 32 people will go to bed for the last time and tomorrow 32 families will be ripped apart by bullets.

During the Lie in, and afterwards, I would like us all to think not only of the 32 Virginia Tech victims and the injured, but also of the other victims whose passing may not be as well memorialized. People whose murder is noted only on the inside pages of their local newspapers with a short paragraph, but who are equally mourned and missed by their relatives and friends.

It is too late now to stop the 32 people from dying today and even the 32 that will die tomorrow, but we must seek ways, that we can agree on, to do something about reducing this number in the near future.  Laws alone may not completely solve the problem, but neither will the unchecked proliferation of guns!  There are many common sense measures that need to be taken to reduce the ready supply of guns to criminals, terrorists, domestic abusers and the dangerously mentally ill.  We need to ask ourselves, what real benefit does an honest law abiding gun owner gain from protecting the right of unlicensed sellers at guns shows to sell dangerous weapons to complete strangers without a background check?  What responsible law abiding citizen needs to own an assault rifle or a 50 caliber sniper rifle for their personal defense?  

It is time to declassify guns as objects of worship and treat them as dangerous tools that should only be owned by responsible people, who can operated them in a safe and responsible manner.

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness remain the aspirations of all Americans, but none of these is available to those that lose their lives, or their health, to gun violence.  Our founding fathers did not expect us to live our lives staring into the barrel of a gun - just waiting for someone to pull the trigger.

(Note to readers: This entry, along with past entries, has been co-posted on bradycampaign.org/blog and the Huffington Post.)

Wednesday, April 16, marked the one-year anniversary of the tragic shootings at Virginia Tech, where 32 people were murdered and 17 wounded by an individual who never should have gained access to guns.

Survivors and family members of those killed and injured in that shooting joined students, parents, and concerned citizens across America to remember the lives lost on April 16, 2007, and to comfort those who bear the scars, both physical and emotional, of that day.

In remembrance events across the country, groups of at least 32 people lay silently on the ground (following the example of Abby Spangler, founder of ProtestEasyGuns.com), rang bells, read names, or said prayers to remember the victims and to demonstrate their outrage at weak gun laws in America. Virginia Tech family members and survivors like the Samaha family, the Read family, the Goddard family, the Habtu family, the Pohle family, and others were an integral part of these events.

In almost 32 states, and on at least 32 college campuses (including Virginia Tech), Americans remembered the lives lost one year ago, and then expressed their dismay over our unwillingness to do something more to reduce the toll of 30,000 gun deaths in this country.

From Portland, Maine to Phoenix, Arizona; from Los Angeles, California to Washington, DC; from Dallas, Texas to Duluth, Minnesota and many points in between – in cities like Bloomington, Cincinnati, Colorado Springs, Kalamazoo, Tuscaloosa and Winston-Salem – Americans sent a message to their elected officials:

We need to make it harder for dangerous people to get dangerous weapons by doing things like strengthening our background check system and closing the gun show loophole.

America is turning a corner on the gun issue, and Wednesday was another example of that.

(Note to readers: This entry, along with past entries, has been co-posted on bradycampaign.org/blog and the Huffington Post.)

A couple nights ago we honored several amazing individuals who have stepped forward in the last year to advocate for common-sense gun laws in this country.

The Brady Center awarded Col. Gerald Massengill the James S. Brady Law Enforcement Award for his work as chair of the Virginia Tech Review Panel. This group made strong recommendations to close the gun show loophole, report all records of the dangerously mentally ill to the Brady background check system, and allow colleges and universities to keep their campuses gun-free.

We also awarded Abigail Spangler the Brady Center Advocate Award for the grassroots movement of concerned citizens she has inspired – including students, parents, and people from all walks of life – who have been willing to demonstrate publicly their desire to strengthen America’s woefully inadequate gun laws. Like many of us, she was moved to tears by the shocking events of April 16, 2007. Unlike many of us, she decided to do something about it.

She started ProtestEasyguns.com, and anyone can with participate or help organize one of their events. All you need are 32 people who agree that it should be harder for dangerous people to get dangerous weapons. This symbolizes the total number of murdered at Virginia Tech, as well as the number murdered by guns every day in this country. These individuals lie down on the ground in a public place silently for just a few minutes, to symbolize the amount of time it took for the Virginia Tech shooter to get his guns.

We expect over 50 of these or similar events to take place across the country this coming Wednesday, the one-year anniversary of the Virginia Tech shootings. If any of these are in your area, I encourage you to participate.

Finally, and most important last Wednesday night, we heard the voices of Virginia Tech family members Joseph Samaha and Pat Craig. Joe lost his daughter Reema in Norris Hall and Pat lost her nephew Ryan Clark at the West Ambler Johnston residence hall. Joe and Pat – two truly courageous individuals – gave talks that those in attendance said were among the most moving they had heard in a very long time.

I’ve been involved in politics since I was a child, and since that time I’ve heard more speeches than I can count. But listening to Joe Samaha and Pat Craig reminded me of the oft-quoted story recounted by Adlai Stevenson many years ago:

“Do you remember that in classical times when Cicero finished speaking, the people said, ‘How well he spoke’– but when Demosthenes had finished speaking, the people said, ‘Let us march.’â€�

Joe Samaha and Pat Craig moved us all to march to do everything we can to help prevent other families from having to endure the pain they’ve endured this past year, by strengthening America’s gun laws.

It was an honor just to be with all these individuals.

(Note to readers: This entry, along with past entries, has been co-posted on bradycampaign.org/blog and the Huffington Post.)