Guns for the Asking
Virginia should have made it much more difficult for Cho Seung Hui to bear arms.

Friday, April 20, 2007

IT NOW APPEARS that Cho Seung Hui was able to buy the handguns he used in his murderous rampage Monday because Virginia failed to comply with its own procedures. The state has a policy of submitting mental health information to the federal background checks system, which should have flagged Mr. Cho as ineligible to purchase firearms based on a state magistrate's finding in December 2005 that he posed a threat to himself. But for reasons that remain obscure, the state apparently exempted records such as the magistrate's determination. That was a tragic mistake.

Virginia is among the nation's most gun-friendly states, and it would be nice to think that the massacre in Blacksburg might jar legislators from their complacent romance with firearms. Just this year, a bill in the legislature to prohibit people from carrying guns into day-care facilities died quietly in a Senate committee. And legislation to ban the purchase of guns from unlicensed dealers at gun shows -- with no background checks of any kind -- is defeated perennially.

The problem is not just Virginia. A majority of states have a similar gun-show loophole. Overall, an estimated 40 percent of guns that change hands in this country are bought and sold privately -- face to face, through classified ads and at gun shows. A determined purchaser need not buy from a gun store.

Still, why make it easy? A number of states, including New York and New Jersey, require background checks with teeth; they may include police inquiries and character references on a case-by-case basis -- a test Mr. Cho probably would have failed, given his behavioral problems at Virginia Tech. In the wake of the shootings, Congress is considering previously rejected legislation that would require more thorough reporting of pertinent information -- including mental health problems -- on background checks. It is lunacy to assume that the right to bear arms implies a right to do so unconditionally, with no meaningful waiting period or thorough examination of a purchaser's potential for violence. There is no assurance that tighter restrictions would have averted the slaughter on Virginia Tech's campus Monday. But surely, faced with a buyer of Mr. Cho's profile, a sane society should have thrown up obstacles to his obtaining deadly weapons.