While the Constitution is not biblical it is the foundation of what makes this country so great. The loss of life on Monday was a tragedy and my thoughts and prayers go out to their families. However you have to realize that law enforcement in this country is stetched thin as it is. Look at New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Even the cops became criminals. At the end of the day it is your responsibility first to ensure your own safety. I for one am glad that we have the right to keep and bear arms and retain the ability to protect myself in the event that something should happen to me or my family. Part of the problem with today's society is that everyone expects someone else to take care of them and it sure seems the finger pointing is quick to follow if the outcome is not to their liking. Wake up America!

averge joe.. i find your last post very interesting. to tell the countries that mourned the loss at columbine, wept with us on 9/11, and joined a fight to defeat the "axis of evil" they have no right to an opinion about this is absurd. america has a history of imposing its beliefs on other countries (the last 4 yrs would prove this true, no?). are we not able to learn from other countries, too? or do we always have it right (the last 2 days would suggest no)? perhaps re-evaluating whether or not our founding fathers had access to gloc 9's or 22 caliber pistols when they wrote the constitution may help. i am all for having the right to protect/defend myself, but
revisions in the amendment may help me predict just what from.

I love how people think the Constitution gives them the right to bear arms. That's not what it says. It says, "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." Anyone who understands how the English language works can understand that the right to bear arms is for the militia, which the people have the right to join for the security of a free state. It doesn't say anyone can own a gun.
More to the point, it shouldn't take longer to buy a car than it does to buy a gun, which apparently is the case in Virginia. Violence begets violence and guns are violence - that's the bottom line.
Gun defenders make it sound like criminals are breaking into their homes every day or they are getting robbed on the street and need a gun to "protect" themselves and others. Give me a break. I've been robbed at gunpoint, and you know what happened...I lost some money and had to cancel some credit cards. But that was it. Criminals are a fact of life. But if I had tried to pull a gun on him, he probably would have shot me. I wonder what would have happened if handguns were illegal - oh, I know, I never would have been robbed in the first place.

The Second Amendment calls for the Right to Bear Arms under the premise that those bearing arms form a "Well Regulated Militia". This Amendment was added to the Bill of Rights to prevent a tyranical centralized government from overthrowing the populice using the military. It gave individual states the right to use their own armed militias to defend themselves.

THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO REASON THAT A FOREIGN CITIZEN POSSESSING A GREEN CARD SHOULD HAVE THE RIGHT TO PURCHASE A GUN. What a joke we have become.

Wish the story had more relevant info -- like where were those other 4 murders committed? And, what about other gun stores? How many murders do the typical Virginia shops average? And again, since VA has such a "terrible reputation" as a "gunrunner" state -- in part due to the whacko NYC mayor -- where are the murders committed by Virginia purchased guns occur?

Frankly, at best a very incomplete story -- which somehow manages to make the gun store look bad without any firm accusations. I know TV in particular deals in sound/picture bites, as opposed to in-depth reporting, but it sure would be nice once in awhile to see something resembling a thoroughly researched story emerge from some national media.

First I want to say that all the families of the victims have my condolences and that God needed them and that they are in a better place. A place where the is no more crying, pain, or hurt just peace. I know everyone have their opinion about guns and here is mine. We need to bann guns because they are easy to get and if they were not available than people like Mr. Cho wouldn't have been able to take 31 angels away. I notice someone had said that if we bann guns then we need to bann cars, planes, etc... He also rank the cause of deaths. Soemthing that stands out to me on that is that they were ACCIDENTS. Most of the ones cause by gun are not ACCIDENTS. Also cancer is something no one can control but guns are controled. No guns don't kill people, people kill people but if people didn't have guns then there will be less deaths in the US. I know everyone out there with a gun is not irresponsible but majority of them are and use them for the wrong reasons. So if we just get ride of them then we won,t have a problem. Like someone have said to me before, Don't play with the problem, get rid of the problem. As long as we keep playing with the problem how many more live will it take before we get rid of the problem.

What business does New York City Police have in Virginia? None. The taxpayers of New York City are getting screwed because of their socialist mayor that wants to push his agenda on the rest of the country.

Also, it sounds like the detectives that purchased the wapons commited federal felonies by making 'straw purchases'.

The business NYC has in Virginia is that drug dealers in NYC have been taking cheap drugs purchased in NYC down to VA and selling them for a huge mark-up, b/c drugs are more expensive in VA than NYC. Then the drug dealers buy guns in VA b/c they are cheap and bring them back to NYC and sell them for a huge mark-up. Mike Bloomberg isn't a socialist (in fact, he is a Republican) and is probably the best Mayor NYC has ever had. He is not trying to "push his agenda." He is trying to get criminals off the street, keep VA kids off drugs, and keep residents of NYC safe. Get your facts straight before making broad, ill-informed comments.

"A court order from 2005 states that Virginia Tech killer Cho Seung-Hui was declared mentally ill and "an imminent danger to others," a district court clerk tells CNN... Developing..."

They knew he was an imminent threat yet choose to do nothing.

He was insane, and even worse, he was on heavy medication, which very easily could have made him even worse off.

And yet the libs still want to blame the guns.

Why is banning weapons even an issue? It is our Second Amentment right. Take away our Second Amentment Rights and what is next? This was an atrocious event, but will taking away rights included in the Bill of Rights make things better?

What's next? Well we slowly lose our rights to do anything. Pretty soon we'll be told how many children we are allowed to have. I'm bothered by the media referring to this as the largest mass murder in our country's history. Have we already forgotten 9/11? Unless I'm mistaken those innocent people were just going about their day - surely because a terrorist(s) did it doesn't make it murder. Why people choose to be naive is beyond me. Again, wake up America!

If guns makes (any) place safer then answer me this:
Why is it that every single western country has a lower homicide rate than the US.?

This article is about NYC Police committing a federal felonie by straw purchasing weapons and carrying them across state lines. So the law does not apply to the NYC government or Police Department. They are above the law and will not be prosecuted.

That is why our forefathers wroye the bill of writes and included the 2nd ammendment; to insure that despotic government can be checked.

Everyone here writing that the USA needs to be more mature like other western nations and confiscate all guns, please move to those great western nations and let your descendants reap the rewards of your superior thought processes.

Switzerland, not the USA has the highest incidence of gun ownership in the worldover 95% of households have weapons ranging from handguns to fully-automatic assault weapons. Their crime and murder rates are among the lowest in the world.
Durango, AZ in the USA passed a law that required all citizens to bear arms, and dropped any concealed weapons punishment. Their crime rate went to zero, and several career criminals left the area.
When the mentally ill can't get a gun, they may try arson in a crowded place, and chain the exits closed. Mass murder will happen whether there are guns or not. it is a human confition not an American one. When the Swiss have a murder rate double the American, I'll listen to the guns kill people rattle

Room is fairly bursting with strawmen, isn't it.

As mentioned above, he'd been involuntarily institutionalized. This was an illegal gun purchase, even in Virginia (and it seems to be astonishingly difficult to become ineligible to buy a gun in Virginia)

The gun store didn't check. Why didn't the gun store check? Because they didn't have to. Why didn't they have to? Because selling guns to shady people is a big source of revenue in Virginia (just a hair fewer than half the guns used to commit crimes in New York came from the funloving Old Dominion).

The only person who is responsible for this crime is the young man who committed it. A lot of people didn't manage to stop him.

John Markell could have, if he cared about the consequences of what he was putting on the street enough to make sure he was complying with what few gun laws he's asked to obey.

He didn't manage to do that.

The cities in the US with the the most gun control have the highest murder and crime rates. It has not and continues not to work in Australia, UK, and Canada. Wake up. The 2 groups of people who want to take guns away are Politicians and Criminals, go figure!!

Gun-control works:
+ in Australia, having 10% of the gun-killigs / citizen as the US.
+ in Canada, having about 20%
of the gunkilling of the US.
+ in the UK - where the cops are waling around without guns - because they dont need guns.!!

The 2.nd. Amendment is made to ensure a states right to have an army of its own - not to allow the NRA and the gun-lobby to rape the greatest country in the world.

Go figure !!

Yeah, ban all guns so that the only ones in the USA who have them are
1)criminals
and
2)Bush's government

That'll let me sleep easy.

Do european gun murder stats include all of the government run purges?

Hey Raid, interesting stats. I notice you focus on "gun killings" and not "killings". Gun or knife, dead is dead. How do the total murder rates compare? How about total murder rates (not just those with guns) in places like France, Switzerland where guns are more available than UK? Hell, shitloads of people own guns in Canada too. This is more complex than guns = murders ... there's something else going on the USA leading to all the violence.

Another question ... those european countries that banned guns, what did the murder rates look like before an after the bans? How about violent crime rates (which would include murder plus others) before and after.

Its tempting to think this stuff is simple but its not at all clear that the presense of guns has that much of an impact.

States that pass concealed carry laws for example usually see no change in the murder rates before to after. Not wild west shooting sprees like the gun grabbers predict, and not a drop in crime like the gun lovers predict.

Please pray for the victims' families, for our nation, and for our children. There is too much violence in this world and there always has been. We all need to listen to our hearts and stop arguing about guns. Our children are afraid. It is our responsibility as adults to teach our children the difference between right and wrong and to be good role models for them. There is too much violence in the media and in our culture. Think
about the children. They are our future.