In the Christian Science Monitor Patchwork Nation blog, by Dante Chinni:
... So what are Americans’ attitudes toward gun control when looking through the lens of Patchwork Nation’s 11 community types? It turns out that more people seem to show sympathy for Obama’s views – especially in battleground communities that may be key in November.
In the latest county-by-county data available on the topic, a 2004 Annenberg survey question asked people whether the government should do more, less, or “about the same” when it came to restricting the “kinds of guns people can buy.” The response: A majority of people in nine of the 11 community types wanted more to be done. That is particularly true among residents in wealthy suburban counties (“Monied ’Burbs”), where 63 percent said they want more governmental restrictions on gun purchases.
These counties are likely to be crucial on Election Day. Home to more than 84 million people, “Monied ’Burbs” divided their votes between President Bush and Sen. John Kerry in 2004.
Increased gun restrictions are also favored in growing and diversifying counties (“Boom Towns”) – 62 percent of people there said they wanted the government to do “more.” Boom Town counties, too, figure to be a battleground community type in 2008. Both the McCain and Obama campaigns have already spent a lot of time visiting these locales.
This finding, of course, meshes with recent surveys showing that the American people favor more gun control along with the right to own a gun.
For example, the April 2008 Pew poll showed that 58% of Americans believe controlling gun ownership is more important than the right to own guns, even as 59% oppose a handgun ban.
Then there's the June 2008 CNN/Opinion Research poll showing 86% of Americans in favor of a waiting period, 79% in favor of gun registration, and 51% in favor of limiting the number of guns a person can own, even as 87% oppose a complete ban on all guns.
Even John McCain is now in favor of, or in the past voted to, close the gun show loophole, oppose the Tiahrt crime gun tracing restrictions, oppose the 24-hour destruction rule of Brady background check records, and oppose restrictions on ATF gun store audits.
In 2004, as part of the final Senate bill S. 1805 as amended, Sen. McCain also once voted to extend the assault weapons ban for 10 years (though he has since said he is against such a ban).
This is the political landscape of gun control after Heller, where reasonable restrictions on gun ownership make common sense to millions of Americans in both parties.
Apparently, the gun lobby in North Carolina couldn't help but water down a good idea: supply records of the dangerously mentally ill to the Brady background check system, or NICS, to help prevent them buying guns from licensed dealers (as the Virginia Tech shooter did).
Columnist Scott Mooneyham wrote about it in the Salisbury Post:
It was among the more ludicrous arguments made on the Senate floor in a while.
Sen. Doug Berger, a Franklin County Democrat, was speaking in favor of an amendment by the Senate's other Berger, minority leader Phil, that would water down a bill designed to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill.
Doug Berger's argument: What about someone who had just lost a spouse, who was now depressed, so depressed in fact that they wouldn't eat? Their depression and refusal to eat causes such alarm that a relative seeks to have the person involuntarily committed. A judge decides to commit the person to treatment, but on an outpatient basis.
Shouldn't that person be allowed a gun to protect himself or herself, Berger asked.
Sure, that's the type of depressed, despondent person that society needs to be encouraging to carry a gun.
“We were told that (the shooter), who killed five students and then himself at Northern Illinois University in February, was a sweet, unassuming, overachieving grad student who inexplicably snapped. He was not.”
This is the introduction to the David Vann article in the August 2008 issue of Esquire Magazine which I received last week (link not yet available UPDATE: read the story here). The story is captivating, frustrating, tragic and depressing.
The few news accounts about this article (for example, here and here) have focused on the shooter’s numerous suicide attempts while in high school – in December 1996, April 1997, November 1997 (fall of his senior year), and February 1998 – his sex life, and psychotic episodes.
The rest of the story is just as compelling, and indicative of all the warning signs exhibited by this mass killer:
Middle School – “picks (his dog) up by its hind legs and hurls it, hard, against the wall” before shooting his pellet gun at passing cars. Explodes “Drano bombs” under a neighbor’s porch.
High School – “with his “friends … [t]hey light chemicals on fire, blow shit up, shoot pellet guns, make out, smoke pot, sneak away to the porno stash in the trees. Whenever they shoot, (the killer) brags he has a membership with the NRA.”
Post-High School – numerous “escapes” from the Mary Hill Residence group home where his parents had him sent.
Army – pulled in for “a psych exam” and then placed in “the Army psych ward as a precaution against any suicide attempts” since they consider him “possibly a danger to himself or others.” This is followed by the shooter’s “uncharacterized discharge” from the military.
College – the shooter’s roommate “tells everyone Steve’s a psycho.” The shooter complains about Illinois’ “Firearm Owner ID cards” comparing them “to the days of Hitler’s regime” and that “the government is trying to track us.”
Grad School – “He gets interested in buying guns. He applies for his firearms permit in December [2006] and receives it in January. He’s been out of the mental health system for five years now, so he’s eligible. (In the fall he’ll write a paper titled “(No) Crazies With Guns!” questioning whether people on antipsychotics should be allowed to buy firearms.) In February [2007] he buys a Glock .45-caliber handgun, a powerful weapon. He buys a shotgun and another handgun the next month. Goes to the shooting range instead of school.”
April 16, 2007 – After the Virginia Tech shootings, he’s “excited” and “all over this… studying everything” including where that killer “bought his guns.”
August 2007 – after an appointment with a social worker, “… he decides to buy guns. Perhaps it’s just a whim. Or maybe he’s concerned that his visit to the hospital will go on his mental health record and his gun license will be revoked. He drives to Tony’s Guns & Ammo, which is just Tony’s house. Steve trades in his Glock .45 caliber, his .22-caliber pistol, and his 20-gauge shotgun. He buys a Sig Sauer .380.”
Fall 2007 – “He starts his new job as a correctional officer at Rockville Correctional Facility in Indiana…. He enjoys parts of the training. They teach him how to use a Remington 12-gauge shotgun. He has to take a test detailing how to load and unload it.”
Christmas 2007 – “… goes to Tony’s Guns & Ammo, buys a Hi-Point .380 and a 12-gauge shotgun.”
February 3, 2008 – “… buys extra magazines for his .380 pistol.”
February 4, 2008 – “… buys gear from Bounty Hunter and Top Gun Supply.”
February 5, 2008 – “… he keeps buying. Two 9mm magazines and holsters from Able Ammo.”
February 6, 2008 – “… back to Tony’s Guns & Ammo. He buys a Glock 9mm and a Remington 12-gauge shotgun, a model similar to the one they trained him on at Rockville.”
February 11, 2008 – After he asks his roommate to stay home with him, but she declines because she has to go to work, “he saws off the barrel of the shotgun” and packs up “the two new guns, the extra magazines and holsters” (all the things “he’s hidden” from his roommate) but “leaves his old shotgun in the closet. It’s for skeet or birds, not designed for killing people.” The shooter has also “bought longer ammo clips for the pistols. They hold thirty-three rounds each. But the problem is they’re so long, he’ll have to carry the pistols in his hands. He won’t be able to use the holsters and hide everything under his coat.”
February 14, 2008 – Cole Hall Room 100 – “He keeps shooting, a few rounds at a time. Five dead. Eighteen injured…. He’s shot forty-seven bullets. One more shot. Then silence.”
*****
This story raises a lot of troubling issues, one of which is why we make it so easy for dangerous people to get guns.
Those who knew the shooter saw the danger signs, but no one checked with them before the shooter was allowed to accumulate his arsenal.
We should be able to stop foreseeable tragedies like this before they occur. What we’re doing now isn’t enough.
In the aftermath of the Supreme Court ruling on the Second Amendment, it's been my hope that it might be easier to find some common ground on steps to help reduce gun violence in this country now that the extremes of the gun control debate (gun confiscation on the one hand and the absolutist "any person, any place, any gun" on the other hand) have been rejected by the Court.
Some sense that this might be possible came out of a PRI (Public Radio International) show that I was part of a couple days ago. The "To the Point" show on Tuesday, July 1, hosted by Warren Olney involved a discussion of the Heller case and its implications for the future with Robert Levy from the Cato Institute, LA Chief of Police William Bratton, me, Chuck Michel (described for the show as the Chief Attorney for the NRA), and former Guns & Ammo magazine editor Whit Collins.
After I brought up the numerous permissible restrictions and limitations on the "right to keep and bear arms" outlined by Justice Scalia in Heller, including his references to possible licensing of gun owners and registration of guns, the host asked the NRA representative his thoughts as follows (at 25:00/50:04):
Warren Olney: What about registration and licensing?
Chuck Michel: I think that, well, that’s a very interesting question. The problem has always been that registration and licensing led to confiscation and I think, I still think registration and licensing is really - it’s problematic in multiple respects, privacy reasons and that kind of thing, but I think that now that, you know - there are a lot of people in the gun control movement who are really gun ban, banners. They’re in favor of civilian disarmament. Those folks are never going to get their way now as a result of this opinion, so I think licensing and registration is, it’s going to be tougher to defend, or, I should say tougher to criticize.”
Olney: Oh so, in other words, licensing and registration are more likely to be upheld?
Michel: Yes, particularly if it’s – and I’m not saying I necessarily agree with that – but particularly if there are actual licenses issued. A lot of times, what the problem with licensing and registration is that the system is abused. It’s set up, theoretically, to actually issue a license, but you can’t really get one. That was sort of the situation in Washington, D.C. So those licensing schemes which are illusory I think are all going to be struck down. If you have actual, a good faith licensing system in place that complies with due process notions, and you know, procedural notions of constitutionality, then I think those will probably stand.
After this, the radio host asked for my response:
Olney: …Paul Helmke, back to you, Brady Center To Prevent Gun Violence, what are you hearing from Chuck Michel that either reassures or disturbs you about what’s gonna happen next?
Paul Helmke: Well, I was very happy to hear the comments about licensing and registration because really that could be one of the crucial things that could help make our communities safer. If we knew who had the guns and where they were, and made sure that they passed some basic level of testing, knowledge of the laws before they had the guns, that makes sense. We’re not a gun ban organization. We don’t push for gun bans. But we do feel that things like licensing and registration, real licensing and registration, things like background checks, restrictions on military style weapons, can make a difference here, and I think Justice Scalia allows that. And for the – for Chuck at least – and the NRA hopefully to recognize that licensing and registration might make sense, I think is a step forward. My hope with this whole decision is that by eliminating the extremes, the extreme on the one side of a gun ban, and the extreme on the other side of “anybody can have any gun, anywhere, any place, any time” – by eliminating the extremes, maybe we can get this middle-of-the-road, common-sense discussion in the middle, and try to figure out what really works here.
Then the host returned to Mr. Michel as follows:
Olney: Chuck Michel, when people say “military-style” we hear about assault weapons, you said something earlier about various classes being banned, is that an area where you think there will be litigation?
Michel: Well, let me just first clarify, so I don’t get overly criticized by the members of the NRA that may be listening, you can’t license a civil right. So, I’m not talking about a license to own a gun or to have a gun. There are certain types of licensing which will survive and others that won’t….
I’m not sure what kind of license Mr. Michel thought he was talking about, but his original statement speaks for itself.
From Heller's attorney’s statement at the March 18 oral argument…
“We don't have a problem with the concept of licensing... So long as the licensing law is not enforced in an arbitrary and capricious manner, so long as there are some hopefully objective standards and hopefully some process....”
…to Justice Scalia memorializing that statement in his opinion…
Respondent conceded at oral argument that he does not “have a problem with . . . licensing” and that the District’s law is permissible so long as it is “not enforced in an arbitrary and capricious manner.”
… Assuming that Heller is not disqualified from the exercise of Second Amendment rights, the District must permit him to register his handgun and must issue him a license to carry it in the home.
…to one of the NRA's chief lawyers now saying positive things about the possibility of gun licensing and registration, maybe we really are on the way to finding some common ground here.
We still make it too easy for dangerous people to get guns. Now that gun confiscation is off the table, maybe we can start finding some areas of agreement that will help make us all safer.
An armed man took hostages this morning in the Morrison County Courthouse, with shots being fired and the suspect dead, authorities said.
Little Falls Mayor Cathy VanRisseghem said the gunman was shot and killed. City Council President Mike LeMieur said he heard from other sources that the gunman walked into the courthouse about 10:20 a.m. and was shot about a half-hour later. The gunman was taken to a St. Gabriel's Hospital, where he died, LeMieur said.
The Ramsey County medical examiner's office said this afternoon that it will be conducting the autopsy to determine a cause and manner of death, possibly within the next day.
According to the Morrison County Record, Gordon Wheeler Sr. entered the county board meeting and held members hostage. The board had ordered closed Wheeler's sex-oriented businesses. He allegedly concealed a handgun in a red bandana, the newspaper said.
The Sheriff's Office said that after it was alerted that a "gunman was holding hostages" in the county board room its officers and personnel from the Little Falls Police Department, Minnesota State Patrol and State Department of Natural Resources secured the area and removed civilians and county workers.
The courthouse complex was closed and will remain so for the rest of the day, the Sheriff's Office said.
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