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The powerful US gun lobby, far from being weakened by last week’s
campus shooting, actually has emerged stronger, gun advocates said,
stepping up their calls for a better-armed US citizenry to prevent
future attacks.
Gun rights advocates said that following the
massacre, in which 23-year-old Cho Seung-Hui fatally shot 32 victims
at Virginia Tech University, gun control forces will be hard pressed
to make the case for tighter restrictions.
“This is a huge nail in the coffin of gun
control,” said Philip Van Cleave, president of the gun rights
group Virginia Citizens Defense League.
“They had gun control on campus and it got all
those people killed, because nobody could defend themselves,” he
told AFP.
Van Cleave said the tragedy could give a boost
to a years-long effort in Virginia to pass legislation allowing
students to carry weapons on campus— especially since existing
laws failed to prevent Cho’s murderous rampage.
“Gun control failed. That student, under
university rules, was not to have a gun,” Van Cleave said.
“Come legislative season, which is in January,
we’re going to be fighting to get a bill put in . . . that would
let students that are over 21 with a permit . . . carry concealed
self-defense,” he said.
The legislation, which would also allow any
faculty member possessing a concealed carry permit to carry a
concealed weapon, has a “greatly enhanced” chance of passage
following the Virginia Tech shooting, Van Cleave said.
Former House of Representative Speaker Newt
Gingrich, on US television Sunday, also called for making guns more
accessible.
“There have been incidents of this kind of a
killer who were stopped, because in fact, people who are law-abiding
people, who are rational and people who are responsible had the
ability to stop them,” he told ABC television’s “This Week”
program.
The southern state of Virginia, where the
shootings occurred, allows anyone 21 years of age or older and
holding a concealed handgun permit to carry a weapon. That is not
true, however of college campuses, most of which have a strict
prohibition against carrying guns—much to the chagrin of the
state’s pro-gun activists.
Other gun rights advocates echo Van Cleave’s
view that had even one Virginia Tech student or faculty member been
armed, last week’s carnage might have been prevented.
“The only person who is responsible to defend
you is you—the police are incapable of defending each and every
one of us all the time,” said Mike Stollenwerk, 44, cofounder of
OpenCarry.org, a Virginia-based gun-rights networking group.
“Citizens have an inherent right to be able to
defend themselves,” he said, speaking last week to The Washington
Times newspaper.
Many observers had expected that the Virginia
Tech rampage would be a rallying cry for gun control activists, but
that has not turned out to be the case.
Even the mass killings at Colorado’s Columbine
High School in 1999 failed to result in gun-control legislation,
despite the emotional outcry over those shootings. The reaction has
been even more muted following last week’s tragedy—the deadliest
school shooting in US history.
US politicians have shown little inclination to
introduce new gun control legislation in a country where an
estimated 40 percent of US households own a gun and where for many
the constitutional right to bear arms is seen as sacred.
Reports that Cho’s past brush with mental
health authorities should have prevented him from being able to
purchase a firearm is prompting a legislative reaction, however.
US Sen. Chuck Schumer and Representative Carolyn
McCarthy on Sunday announced plans to introduce federal bill
requiring states to send critical mental health information to the
federal government, which would allow officials to screen out those
who don’t qualify to own firearms.
US media reported Sunday that a similar proposed
bill in California would impose mandatory background checks for
buyers of handgun ammunition, require a face-to-face purchase
instead of by mail, and require gun shops to store ammunition behind
counters.
And in Washington, at a Christian memorial
service at the National Cathedral, Reverend Howard Anderson called
for “the courage to say ‘no’ to those who would allow guns to
be sold so readily to those who might kill with them.”
--AFP
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