Mass shootings like the one that claimed 33 lives this week at Virginia Tech usually prompt demands for sweeping gun-control measures – calls which are quickly parried by gun-rights groups.
The ensuing political deadlock usually ensures there is little, if any, practical change in the law. The 1999 killings at Columbine High School did prompt Colorado voters to approve an initiative requiring that people who buy firearms at gun shows undergo the same criminal background checks they would if they bought the same weapon at a sporting goods store or gun shop. But Columbine didn’t result in any significant changes in federal law.
Now, in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings, Rep. John Dingell, D- Mich., who is pro gun rights, hopes to join forces with the National Rifle Association to bolster the existing background-check system to make it harder for mentally ill people to buy guns.
Mass murderer Cho Seung-Hui should not have been able to buy the two handguns he used to kill 32 students and teachers before he committed suicide. A 1968 federal law prohibits sales of guns to people deemed mentally ill by the legal system.
But even though a court ordered Cho into treatment in 2005, that fact was never reported by Virginia authorities to the federal background check system. Thus, Cho’s background check came up clean, and he was able to buy his lethal weapons.
Under the bill promoted by Dingell, states would be given money to help them supply the federal government with information on mental-illness adjudications and other run-ins with the law that would disqualify individuals from firearms purchases. For the first time, states would also face penalties if they failed to forward such required information to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.
The NRA has not opposed similar proposals in the past, and Dingell hopes to win its active endorsement now. We applaud his efforts, in part because such a law could save the lives of thousands of suicide victims.
The Harvard School of Public Health reports guns were used by more than half of the 32,439 Americans who committed suicide in 2004. We can’t say how many of those victims had been adjudicated mentally ill, but the share is obviously higher than among the general population.
Ninety percent of suicide attempts with guns succeed while only 2 or 3 percent of suicide attempts using drugs prove fatal. Thus, if Dingell’s efforts force only a fraction of those 17,000 victims of suicide by gun to try some less-effective method of killing themselves, it could save thousands of lives a year.
