From the Amendment II Democrats blog:
One question that I'd like to ask the Brady Campaign is, quite simply, "What happened?"
Back in December 2005, Brady Campaign communications director Peter Hamm was warning Congressional candidates, "Whether they like it or not, we're going to do everything in our power to make sure the gun issue is on the radar screen in a big way next year. They're going to need to talk about those things."
But even with the recent tragedy at Virginia Tech, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY), a long-standing stalwart of gun-control legislation who is pushing to enact a new ban on semi-automatic firearms, is starting to express some frustration over the issue. McCarthy has been asked to help broker a compromise in Congress that will result in new legislation to tighten the national background check system so that the mentally ill cannot obtain firearms, but she has recently stated that aside from this legislation, "We're not going to do anything more on guns - it's just not going to happen. This is a pro-gun Congress."
A Democratic pro-gun Congress.
Exactly how "pro-gun" the 110th Congress really is remains a matter of debate, but the fact that McCarthy would even make such a statement indicates that the Democratic Party is slowly undergoing a paradigm shift on gun legislation that will vex and perplex gun-control advocates and Democratic Party strategists alike. This trend warrants further investigation and study.
In the meantime, the surviving students and faculty at Virginia Tech, along with their families and loved ones, are also asking, "What happened?" As in, what happened in our legal framework that allowed Cho Seung-hui, who was clearly judged mentally incompetent in a court of law, to fall through the cracks of our legal system and purchase firearms?
The community at Virginia Tech has every right to get an answer to this question, and soon. For want of a small measure of vigilance, 32 innocent students and faculty have been gunned down, and the Hokies grieve their shared loss.
After all, the Second Amendment provision of "a well-regulated militia" was never intended to provide firearms to criminals or madmen. Tragically, Cho has proven to be both.
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