Railing against “new currency,” government “brainwash methods,” and his own mind-control abilities, Loughner’s mental health “prompted college officials to suspend him and tell his parents that he would have to get a mental health evaluation if he wanted to return to school.” However, despite evidence of his precarious mental state, Loughner walked into the Sportsman’s Warehouse in Tucson, passed a background check, and legally purchased a gun on Nov. 30, 2010.
Current federal laws prohibit selling weapons to the mentally ill but, as forensic psychiatrist Dr. Park Dietz notes, current gun control laws allow “no way to determine [someone] is a mentally ill person.” “The only thing the existing law does about that is quite absurd,” Dietz said, referring to the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms form which only asks the applicant whether “they had been adjudicated dangerously mentally ill.” What’s more, there is no waiting period in Arizona unless someone is flagged by the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). A measure even more unlikely to work in Arizona as the state is woefully behind in entering the 121,700 records of disqualifying mental illness into NICS, having entered only 4, 465 between 2008 and 2010.
But even with Loughner slipping through the system, the magazine clip he purchased with his gun wouldn’t have existed had gun laws been up to date. The now-expired assault weapons ban that existed from 1994 to 2004 prohibited gun manufacturers from marketing handguns with the high-capacity magazines Loughner used. Under the assault weapons ban, it was illegal to make or sell clips holding more than 10 rounds. The magazine used by Loughner held 31 rounds. The Brady Campaign said that, had he used a traditional magazine, “it would have drastically reduced the number of shots he got off” before reloading. While President Bush backed renewing the ban, it never passed Congress in 2004. The failure to address these gaps in gun control was not lost on conservative Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, who said the following on C-Span this morning:
KRISTOL: I think it really would be terrible if our political discourse gets further poisoned by the kind of debate about this assassination attempt and these murders. Can’t we just agree that these murders are terrible? We can have a reasonable debate about what could be done about security. We can have a reasonable debate about policy issues, like gun-control. I think that’s a perfectly reasonable thing to address. I wouldn’t do it the day after. It’s better to reflect a little bit about sensible legislation, but it’s not ridiculous for someone to say ‘let’s look at why this guy could got so many shots off so quickly.’ Maybe we should go back to at the assault weapons ban — I’m ambivalent about that, I think there are policy arguments on both sides — but that’s a kind of reasonable response.
Watch it (begins at 1:05):
While Kristol may recognize gun control as an important discussion, some conservative lawmakers remain adamantly opposed to such a “reasonable response.” Ignoring the failure of these laws, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) argues “we have state and federal laws on the books that already prohibit persons who have been deemed mentally insane” so “I don’t think we’re going to legislate our way out of the risk.” Believing Arizona’s weak gun laws were “unrelated to the shooting,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) stated more bluntly, “the weapons don’t kill people; it’s the individual that kills these people.”
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is leading a nationwide campaign against gun violence, said, the Tucson “shootings are just terrible examples, and a terrible reminder, of the gun violence that happens every single day in our country. … And so it will continue until we get serious about cracking down on illegal guns and protecting innocent people.”
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