Virginia Tech Massacre

[ITALIANO]

Sonic Youth, when someone says that Americans use guns to hunt for their daily food and this is why a ban on guns would be unfair, well... how shall I put it... let's just say that he immediately loses my interest on any "brilliant" idea he can have on the subject - honestly.

[Sonic Youth]

It makes zero sense to apply solutions of social problems plaguing urban areas onto rural communities, and vice-versa. It makes about as little sense as taking someone's single-shot hunting rifle away because of the easy availability of semi-automatics.

Ok, Sonic Youth, this single-shot hunting rifle user will learn to play with other toys. Satisfied now? I mean, really, this American obsession with guns is shocking. You really can't imagine to live in a world without guns, can you? This is how deep this gets into the American psyche. Amazing.

There is no rational reason against total restriction on guns. And what you write comfirms it. It may sound banal, and laughable (and I feel a defensive reaction in your posts here) - like any revolutionary proposal which goes against a community's cultural habits, like for example the abolition of slavery - but like the abolition of slavery it is rational, and it could be done. The problems you refer to - like, not all the gun owners would be willing to give their weapons back - are, well, typical of any cultural revolution - but honestly they don't sound too difficult to solve, with time and patience and a careful control. (Just let your political powers devote less energy to the destiny of the world and more energy to these "banal" internal affairs). You are lucky, Sonic Youth - you live in a very young country, which - compared to other, more ancient ones - hasn't had time yet to go through truly big social, cultural changes (with a few exceptions of course), and this is why my modest proposal sounds terrifying to you and others on this board. Now I'll be for once really "condescending" - so don't accuse me of being so, I have admitted it - and say: trust an old European like me. It can be done.

As for Italy and our frequent political changes - I don't understand what it has to do with guns in America... oh, but for a moment I forgot that you were being defensive. We can discuss about it in another thread if you want.

And I'm not so naive to suggest that crime would magically vanish with this solution. As I've said often, the roots are deeper. But don't be sarcastic, please, when you say: you'll like this, Italiano, because it involves tackling a typically American social ill. You are too intelligent for this kind of approach and, honestly, I definitely am, too.

Does this mean you don't want to read my idea?

Nuts.

[Uri]

The fact that this has turn into a debate about gun control just proves Marco’s point. Violence in the US is not the result of the fact that means of destruction are wide spread there. The need, the desire to be the owner of weapons is the outcome of the fact that American society, culture, mythology are inherently violent. It’s reflected not only in the obvious – from imperialist foreign policy through police brutality to acts of individuals. A firm code of conduct almost all Americans seem to be following (there may be quite a few of those, but the need to have one in unanimous), the built in niceties, those automatic, precise, well rehearsed acts of cold politeness and of course the strict set of rules which turned the important, ground breaking revisionist thinking which is in the basis of political correctness into a fascist pettiness (let’s not even get into the dichotomy towards sex, which is extremely reveling) - it’s the way all these and many other distinctively American attitudes and manners are exercised by those who are educated, cultured, open minded and with the best of intentions that indicates a basic fear of letting it go, for the knowledge that the appearance of structure and discipline is only skin deep, and once one loosen up a little bit, there is no way to forecast what undercurrents will erupt. Those exquisitely detailed behavioral mechanisms (and for those of us who look from the outside they do look extremely mechanical at times) are needed where there’s a constant fear of all kind of demons, real and fabricated. And it’s a pity that even here, reflecting on last week tragedy, many had conveniently turn to this easy, tiered, almost formalistic debate on gun control, since by alienating yourselves from those gun loving, trigger happy rednecks you feel safe in your progressiveness and liberalism, and you don’t face the wider, more profound aspects which might be too close you.

[dws1982]

What I don't get is why pro-gun people aren't also lobbying for laws that prevent people with a history of mental illness from buying a gun.

Many are.

[anonymous1980]

What I don't get is why pro-gun people aren't also lobbying for laws that prevent people with a history of mental illness from buying a gun.

I mean, I'm all for law-abiding, responsible and sane citizens to choose to buy a gun for hunting, shooting as a sport or for personal protection but what I can't understand is the attitude of some gun advocates that any form of control or regulation is an affront or a violation of their right to own weapons.

[ITALIANO]

It makes zero sense to apply solutions of social problems plaguing urban areas onto rural communities, and vice-versa. It makes about as little sense as taking someone's single-shot hunting rifle away because of the easy availability of semi-automatics.

Ok, Sonic Youth, this single-shot hunting rifle user will learn to play with other toys. Satisfied now? I mean, really, this American obsession with guns is shocking. You really can't imagine to live in a world without guns, can you? This is how deep this gets into the American psyche. Amazing.

There is no rational reason against total restriction on guns. And what you write comfirms it. It may sound banal, and laughable (and I feel a defensive reaction in your posts here) - like any revolutionary proposal which goes against a community's cultural habits, like for example the abolition of slavery - but like the abolition of slavery it is rational, and it could be done. The problems you refer to - like, not all the gun owners would be willing to give their weapons back - are, well, typical of any cultural revolution - but honestly they don't sound too difficult to solve, with time and patience and a careful control. (Just let your political powers devote less energy to the destiny of the world and more energy to these "banal" internal affairs). You are lucky, Sonic Youth - you live in a very young country, which - compared to other, more ancient ones - hasn't had time yet to go through truly big social, cultural changes (with a few exceptions of course), and this is why my modest proposal sounds terrifying to you and others on this board. Now I'll be for once really "condescending" - so don't accuse me of being so, I have admitted it - and say: trust an old European like me. It can be done.

As for Italy and our frequent political changes - I don't understand what it has to do with guns in America... oh, but for a moment I forgot that you were being defensive. We can discuss about it in another thread if you want.

And I'm not so naive to suggest that crime would magically vanish with this solution. As I've said often, the roots are deeper. But don't be sarcastic, please, when you say: you'll like this, Italiano, because it involves tackling a typically American social ill. You are too intelligent for this kind of approach and, honestly, I definitely am, too.

[Sonic Youth]

Sonic, perhaps I'm being liberal with my definition but it's a very well known fact that Columbia administrators alter their language depending on who they are talking to.

When they are trying to recruit inner city kids or kids interested in urban themes, they refer to Columbia as being "in the middle of Harlem." When talking to kids from the Midwest and so forth, they say "Morningside Heights." Of course the latter term is the name of the neighborhood but let's be real - Columbia is close enough to Harlem to be affected by its history, its diversity and yes its social problems. I'm not alone in this. Many professors here refer to Columbia as existing "in the middle of Harlem." Yes it may be a liberal definition but it's not completely without merit.

Fine then, I'll be more accurate. Columbia is only an ass-crack space away from Harlem so it doesn't make a frigging bit of difference. Better? I guess whatever magical borders you think exist there must be preventing those two worlds from spilling into each other and therefore making Columbia "completely safe to walk around" (are you serious? I have friends and incidents that would indicate otherwise)

And anyway I agree with you that Harlem is having a comeback. I only conflated the two to address your point about people feeling differently about guns in the city versus the suburbs.

Hey Akash. Don't be liberal with your definitions and don't conflate. I tend to take what I read at face value.

And don't "quote" me if you're not going to get the quote right.

And since 99.9 percent of the population aren't columbia students, professors or alumni, don't assume that what's a "very well known fact" to you is going to be a very well known fact to anyone else. It was just an honest question, and politely asked, I thought. I didn't know what you were referring to.

And while we're at it, let's not take a phrase that professors use as bullshit public relations and use it as a Harlem-phobe's double-edged sword. What's more alarmist sounding than saying a neighborhood is "in the middle of Harlem?" Imagine the comfy suburban parents reading that in their kid's letter.

The fact remains that Morningside Heights is probably the safest neighborhood in all of Manhattan (other than the Upper East Side). This, despite the asserted proximity to Harlem. Maybe it doesn't seem so to someone who lived all but four of his years in the suburbs. In any event, this is why I'm not surprised that you felt no urge to carry a gun with you.

[Sonic Youth]

I see the logic in your argument that gun toting does not necessarily equal unsafe. However, by your own admission, a country's particular social problems are more indicative of whether or not said country is safe or unsafe and - for the sake of this hypothesis - can we assume then that America's particular social problems or what have you, makes it "unsafe?" If so, perhaps the only short term solution (until we can solve America's social ills) is a ban on guns. It won't solve every problem but given how easily people are killed or hurt in our country by guns, I can't really see how a ban could possibly be bad. If it even reduces those numbers by 50% or even 25%, that's still something to be grateful for.

And now for another reason why I'm against a nationwide ban...

I used countries by way of example. We can be a little less macro, though. America is a vast, huge, diverse country and social problems are not distributed evenly. It makes zero sense to apply solutions of social problems plaguing urban areas onto rural communities, and vice-versa. It makes about as little sense as taking someone's single-shot hunting rifle away because of the easy availability of semi-automatics.

And I'll be frank, I could give a rat's ass about hunters or whatever stupid pleasure they get out of taking down a defenseless animal (I know that's not what you meant by bringing them up, I'm being tangential) - this is an issue that cannot easily be framed by other arguments because it involves the easy deaths of many innocent people. If there was ever a time when government should intervene strongly, it's here - not on illegal immigrants, not on gay TeleTubbies and not on Terry Schiavo. But guns? Yeah maybe they should be hard asses when it comes to guns.

Coincidentally, I was scanning some reviews of McCarthy's "The Road" earlier this evening, and found this passage.

"We can divide the contemporary American novel into two traditions, or two social classes. The Tough Guy tradition comes up from Fenimore Cooper, with a touch of Poe, through Melville, Faulkner and Hemingway. The Savant tradition comes from Hawthorne, especially through Henry James, Edith Wharton and Scott Fitzgerald. You could argue that the latter is liberal, east coast/New York, while the Tough Guys are gothic, reactionary, nihilistic, openly religious, southern or fundamentally rural.

"The Savants' blood line (curiously unrepresentative of Americans generally) has gained undoubted ascendancy in the literary firmament of the US. Upper middle class, urban and cosmopolitan, they or their own species review themselves. The current Tough Guys are a murder of great, hopelessly masculine, undomesticated writers, whose critical reputations have been and still are today cruelly divergent, adrift and largely unrewarded compared to the contemporary Savant school. In literature as in American life, success must be total and contrasted "failure" fatally dispiriting.

Alan Warner"

Everything's a culture war.

Not everyone in America hunts for recreation. Honest! Believe it or not, there are Americans who hunt for food. Alaskans live out in the wild and have to hunt enough meat in order to live through a winter. I'm sure 80%, hell maybe 95%, of hunters are reactionary assholes. But some of them, even the reactionaries, live in the wild, and kill, haul and butcher their own meat. It has nothing to do with fun, in that case. It has to do with necessity. And (unless you're a vegetarian) who kills your food for you? Go see "Fast Food Nation", and skip to the very end with the five minutes of documentary footage on a factory "kill floor." Which is the preferable option?

[Sonic Youth]

Even on this board, the perfectly understandable, too-obvious idea of an absolute restriction on weapons is received with mixed, cautious reactions - without any rational, convincing reason, or even without a reason at all: guns must be available because, well, they must. Karl Marx was right - in a capitalistic society the economical powers are subtle enough to convince citizens of the cultural need for what it produces - people truly think that this or that product is "unavoidable", "unmissable", while of course it isn't.

I couldn't agree with you more on this point! And thanks for being the only other person to point out that an absolute restriction on guns isn't a kooky idea or an undoing of any important civilian "right" other than (as you correctly put it) the right for the triumph of capitalism and demand creation.

Sonic and others are right that it may not solve the problem entirely,

I never said I was against it for that reason, and I never would because it's a blatant straw man argument, the same argument right wingers use to fight the idea of gun control. I would be fine with taking any measures that reduces, but doesn't eliminate, crime, since there's no such thing as a solution that would eliminate crime in its entirety. And if there is, you don't want to live in the society that comes up with it.

but there is no way to deny that this ban would greatly reduce the number of violent acts that occur each year.

I deny it. England and Australia have implemented gun bans some years ago, and their crime rate spiked. And at the current rate, it's going to take many years until it stabalizes.

And for every innocent person harmed by the obtaining of an illegal gun (which is indeed horrible and sad) there would be countless other lives spared because a citizenry would not be walking around like they were trying out for The Magnificent Seven.

Oh yeah? And how would you propose implementing this ban? Explain the logistics. Let's assume we can halt the manufacture of firearms. Smith & Wesson and all the other corporations are now shuttered. Good! But guess what. There are over 200,000,000 guns in possession right now. Would you get the National Guard to collect each and every one of them? And how would you find them? There is no national registry to account for each individual firearm. Would you have the FBI knock on the doors of everyone's homes? And then what? Have people willingly and voluntarily give up their guns? Some would, sure. The law abiders would. The ones planning to commit crimes with their guns wouldn't, so what good would that do? And there are those who don't plan on using their guns illegaly, but would lie about what they possessed anyway. I'd estimate that would be half the gun owners not willing to give them up, for whatever reason. So then what? Perhaps we get search warrants on everyone's home. And that would have to include the homes of non-gun owners, because we can't be too careful. Maybe we could use the latest in spy technology, spying on our citizens in order to successfully carry out this ban. Oh, and one more thing. Think of all the gun battles that will ensue in the effort to take those guns away. Think of all the dead people. Think of all the innocent passer-bys. And there will be a substantial number who will take up arms - after all, there's already a substanial number of NRA members. And according to the Second Amendment of the Constitution, they'll be justified. Not because they have the right to bear arms, but because they have the right to maintain a well-regulated militia against the tyranny of a government.

If there is something wrong in this argument, I'm willing to consider it. It's possible I missed something. But for now, I maintain that a gun ban is pointless to consider because there's no way to enforce it.

[Sonic Youth]

But even if they had done this, still they would have missed the main point. Even on this board, the perfectly understandable, too-obvious idea of an absolute restriction on weapons is received with mixed, cautious reactions - without any rational, convincing reason, or even without a reason at all: guns must be available because, well, they must. Karl Marx was right - in a capitalistic society the economical powers are subtle enough to convince citizens of the cultural need for what it produces - people truly think that this or that product is "unavoidable", "unmissable", while of course it isn't. Only - this being America - the product is a very dangerous one, and the economical power is that of the big firms which make these weapons, and have to profit by selling them.

Yet even this wouldn't be enough. Guns or not guns, it is, of course, a much deeper problem - something which has to do with some profound cultural aspects of your country, aspects which will have to be faced (but by whom?), otherwise will never be resolved. This tight connection between American society and the violence it produces has its reasons - so many and so complex that I can't go into them now. But Americans should. They can't go on looking elsewhere - otherwise there will be more Iraqs and (and, as rain bard correctly pointed out, this unfortunately seems to be much more tragic in their eyes) more Blacksburgs.

Italiano, I'm with you a hundred percent about what our primary concern should be, which is to come to terms with the root causes of violence, and any other social ills that plague this country. Some countries function very well with available firearms, some don't, as I've suggested before. There are complex social dynamics at work. At the very least, America's mental health services need a revamping. And we could use a revamped health care system in general, a revamped public education system, a revamped media, etc. And most of all, revamp the international policies and revamp our sense of international entitlement. And from all this revamping comes a revamped people, hopefully. Works for me.

But no, I don't approach the suggestion of banning guns with a mixed, cautious reaction. I'm outright against it. I don't own a gun and I never want to. I once agreed with you. I've made the same argument you have for years. I used to think I was so clever with the banal slogans like "Okay then, keep the guns. Let's ban the bullets instead!" But over the years, when I've thought about it and argued it with people, I eventually identified holes in my position that I couldn't cover over, and ultimately I reconsidered. I'm all for strict regulation, and the right wing gun nuts would say I'm infringing upon their rights with that suggestion. But I'm not for a gun ban. This means I part company with the staunch left-wing program that so many people here are on board with, and so few seem to deviate from. So be it. But no, I'm not arguing "we must have guns because... we must" because of a Karl Marx theory about a capitalistic society's delusional need for guns, although that may be how we got to this point. I'm not even arguing this because it would mean a break of America's "tribal habits" (although, you being Italian, I can understand your rather socialized perplexity on this point, what with your government switching on a regular basis while you all roll your eyes and tsk-tsk while accepting constant changes of policy because... well, that's just the way it is. We're not the only one's with conditioned viewpoints, y'know.) The only reason I'm arguing is because it's impossible to put into practice (and I'll explain why in a bit). Even if the majority of the country wants a nationwide gun ban - which they don't - it would be practically impossible to implement. And therefore, taking something that is impossible to follow through into consideration becomes nothing more than a fun, academic exercise, and I prefer a few beers with my academic exercises.

But I DO have a solution on how to cut down the majority of firearm casualties without taking anyone's gun away. In fact, my solution would eliminate a great deal of violence in many forms. And you'd like this one, Italiano, because it involves tackling a social ill that has plagued America in ways that it hasn't in other countries.

But it's gonna have to wait for tomorrow. Sorry! It'll take too long to write.

[Sonic Youth]

by emphasizing that his gun purchases were within the boundaries of the law --which doesn't trump the argument that those boundaries are still far too loose--, and writing him off as simply "deranged" --as if there was some definable, clear marker that separates "crazy people" from the rest of us, who are completely and utterly "sane" despite the psychological contradictions we create in ourselves.

Since you wrote this, rain Bard, more info about this matter has been brought forward. Cho's parents checked him into a mental health institution two years earlier where he was evalutated and declared mentally unbalanced. Whether the marker is well-defined or not, he was apparently deemed by a magistrate to have crossed it.

This steals a little bit of my thunder when I maintained that gun control wouldn't have prevented him from making those purchases. Obviously there was a breakdown of the system. And yet... even if the system fell into place, I'm still not confident that Cho would have been prevented from buying those guns. The nature of one's mental illness may not necessarily indicate that he's a danger to society.

[Penelope]

Mass shootings more common since 1960s By MATT CRENSON, AP National Writer
20 minutes ago



Mass public shootings have become such a part of American life in recent decades that the most dramatic of them can be evoked from the nation's collective memory in a word or two: Luby's. Jonesboro. Columbine.

And now, Virginia Tech.

Since Aug. 1, 1966, when Charles Whitman climbed a 27-story tower on the University of Texas campus and started picking people off, at least 100 Americans have gone on shooting sprees.

And all through those years, the same questions have been asked: What is it about modern-day America that provokes such random violence? Is it the decline of traditional morals? The depiction of violence in entertainment? The ready availability of lethal firepower?

Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox blames guns, at least in part. He notes that seven of the eight deadliest mass public shootings have occurred in the past 25 years.

"I know that there were high-powered guns before," he said. "But this weaponry is just so much more pervasive than it was."

Australia had a spate of mass public shooting in the 1980s and '90s, culminating in 1996, when Martin Bryant opened fire at the Port Arthur Historical Site in Tasmania with an AR-15 assault rifle, killing 35 people.

Within two weeks the government had enacted strict gun control laws that included a ban on semiautomatic rifles. There has not been a mass shooting in Australia since.

Yet Grant Duwe, a criminologist with the Minnesota State Department of Corrections, said the availability of guns was not a factor in his exhaustive statistical study of mass murder during the 20th century.

Duwe found that the prevalence of mass murders, defined as the killing of four or more people in a 24-hour period, tends to mirror that of homicide generally. The increase in mass killings during the 1960s was accompanied by a doubling in the overall murder rate after the relatively peaceful 1940s and '50s.

In fact, Duwe found that mass murder was just as common during the 1920s and early 1930s as it is today. The difference is that then, mass murderers tended to be failed farmers who killed their families because they could no longer provide for them, then killed themselves. Their crimes embodied the despair and hopelessness of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, the sense that they and their families would be better off in the hereafter than in the here and now.

On Dec. 29, 1929, a 56-year-old tenant farmer from Vernon, Texas, named J.H. Haggard shot his five children, aged 6 to 18, in their beds as they slept. Then he killed himself. He left a note that said only, "All died. I had ruther be ded. Look in zellar."

Despondent men still kill their families today. But public shooters like Virginia Tech's Seung-Hui Cho are different. They are angrier and tend to blame society for their failures, sometimes singling out members of particular ethnic or socio-economic groups.

"It's society's fault ... Society disgusts me," Kimveer Gill wrote in his blog the day before he shot six people to death and injured 19 in Montreal last year.

In the videos and essays he left behind, Cho ranted about privileged students and their debauched behavior.

He also mentioned the Columbine killings, referring to Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris as "martyrs." Imitation undoubtedly plays a role in mass shootings as well, said Daniel A. Cohen, a historian at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

"Certain types of crimes gain cultural resonance in certain periods," Cohen said.

So many post office employees gunned down their co-workers during the 1980s and early '90s that they spawned a neologism. To "go postal," according to the Webster's New World College Dictionary, is "to become deranged or go berserk."

The most recent postal shooting was in January 2006 when Jennifer San Marco, a former employee who had been fired a few years earlier because of her worsening mental state, walked into a letter sorting facility in Goleta, Calif., and killed six people with a handgun.

Criminologist Fox speculates that the increasing popularity of workplace killings, and public shootings generally, may be partly due to decreasing economic security and increasing inequality. America increasingly rewards its winners with a disproportionate share of wealth and adoration, while treating its losers to a heaping helping of public shame.

"We ridicule them. We vote them off the island. We laugh at them on `American Idol,'" Fox said.

But there has also been an erosion of community in America over the past half-century, and many scholars believe it has contributed to the rise in mass shootings.

"One would think that there's some new component to alienation or isolation," said Jeffrey S. Adler, a professor of history and criminology at the University of Florida.

People used to live in closer proximity to their families and be more involved with civic and religious institutions. They were less likely to move from one part of the country to another, finding themselves strangers in an unfamiliar environment.

Even so, the small-town America of yesteryear wasn't completely immune. On March 6, 1915, businessman Monroe Phillips, who had lived in Brunswick, Ga., for 12 years, killed six people and wounded 32 before being shot dead by a local attorney. Phillips' weapon: an automatic shotgun.

Remarkably, violence in today's media seems to have little to do with mass public shootings. Only a handful of them have ever cited violent video games or movies as inspiration for their crimes. Often they are so isolated and socially awkward that they are indifferent to popular culture.

Ultimately, it is impossible to attribute the rise in mass shootings to any single cause. The crimes only account for a tiny fraction of homicides.

And a significant fraction of those who commit them, including Cho, either kill themselves or are killed by police before they can be questioned by investigators.

[danfrank]

A letter to the editor in today's San Francisco Chronicle:

Editor -- Like so many, I am saddened by the awful events at Virginia Tech. But I also feel a troubling anger that is not directed at the killer himself. I mean no disrespect to those now grieving their lost loved ones. However, I am deeply unsettled by your April 18 headline, "A nation asks why." Which nation is that? America?

The nation that responded to Sept. 11 with an indiscriminate, retaliatory rampage on two other nations? I don't think we, as a nation, have a clear idea of how civilized people should respond when we feel wronged. So I have the awful sense that Cho Seung-Hui may be a reflection of ourselves, more than most of us would want to believe.


ROB COSTIN
San Francisco

[Penelope]

Remembering the victims.

I look at that, at those glorious smiles, eager faces, unknown futures -- all lost -- and I start to cry, and then become unbelievably angry.

I haven't even been able to follow this on the news; I watched a bit Monday and Tuesday night, but I was so grief-stricken, so appalled that it happened again that I couldn't watch anymore.

Marco, Akash, Uri, they are, for the most part, correct. I can quibble a bit with Marco -- each nation has its own flaws about which they are hesitant to address; my beloved France is unbelievably hypocritical about the prevalent racism in their society, and Turkey has countless issues that they're not facing up to -- but he is right that there is an aspect of American culture that is at fault here.

The anti-abortion crowd likens America to a "culture of death," and while I am pro-choice, I think that appelation is, sadly, correct. Perhaps that's the influence of a fundamentalist, apocalyptic evangelism that threads its way throughout American history. Perhaps it's because, unlike Europe, which has experienced centuries of war and death in their very homelands, America's experience was brief and long ago.

Perhaps it's due to American notions of masculinity, which often strike me as far more extreme than anywhere else I've ever been -- I mean, male friends walk down the streets of Istanbul holding hands, but here in the states, such activity could cost them their lives.

I don't know anymore. My thoughts are jumbled. You know, I was a loner in high school, bullied in junior high, but I didn't respond by fantasizing about killing people -- I just withdrew into the romantic epics of Belva Plain and the world of Falcon Crest, and remained hopeful that someday I would find a more pleasant, receptive world, and I have.

I just don't know what to do about this.

[Damien]

I think what a lot of non-Americans don't understand is that many of us (myself included) would love to have a society in which guns were completely banned. But in a country as as steeped in gun mythology and weapon worship as America (and I don't think it's just coincidence that guns are phallic), that is not gonna happen, and it's terribly naive even to entertain such a thought. So the most the enlightened citizenry here can do is to push for as tight gun laws as possible. (It also doesn't help that different states have different rules. For instance, New York has stringent anti-gun laws, but the majority of weapons used here come from the very lax state of Virginia.)