Same Gun Dealer Sold to 2 Campus Killers

From the AP via the Huffington Post:

The online gun dealer who sold a weapon to the Virginia Tech shooter said it was an unnerving coincidence that he also sold handgun accessories to the man who killed five students at Northern Illinois University.

Eric Thompson said his Web site sold two empty 9 mm Glock magazines and a Glock holster to Steven Kazmierczak on Feb. 4, just 10 days before the 27-year-old opened fire in a classroom and killed five before committing suicide.

Another Web site run by Thompson's company also sold a Walther .22-caliber handgun to Seung-Hui Cho, who killed 32 people in April on the Virginia Tech campus before killing himself.

"I'm still blown away by the coincidences," Thompson said Friday. "I'm shaking. I can't believe somebody would order from us again and do this."

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The left has pulled away from its traditional gun control stance in recent years, and so have I. For liberals in general, my assumption has been that they've decided that, in our current era of conservative dominance, it's just too tough a battle to fight, and tends to alienate mainstream Americans who might be otherwise sympathetic to progressive causes. Me too, but I would also throw in Michael Moore's observation from his film Bowling for Columbine that Canada has similar guns per capita numbers, but dramatically lower gun homicide rates--perhaps the NRA is right when they say "people kill people," instead of the guns themselves.

None of this gets into how gun ownership appears to be as much of a part of American culture as Jesus and football, or how packing heat seems to be effective emotional therapy for citizens who increasingly feel powerless in the face of repressive corporate capitalism. And here in New Orleans, as a homicide wave that the NOPD can't seem to stop continues, I've spoken with numerous individuals who have very real fears about being victimized by out-of-control violence. Fuck, I work with a guy who recently survived being shot in the neck by a crazy war vet in a bizarre road rage incident.

So maybe Americans really do need their guns.

But as the above linked article reveals, as well as events like New York City's lawsuit against the New Jersey gun vendors responsible for a huge percentage of the Big Apple's illegal firearms, and countless other crime and safety issues, there are big problems with how our nation administrates and manages its vital gun culture. Until we can get past the straitjacketing, black and white, legal/illegal, bipolar, hysterical rhetoric of the pro-gun lobby, as the left has already done with its own hysterics on the issue, these deadly problems will continue.

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