It seems about time to account for everything that allowed the mass murder this spring on the campus of Virginia Tech. Any one of a thousand different circumstances could have changed ever so slightly the life of Seung-Hui Cho and ultimately prevented the slaughter. A family more open and in touch with the feelings of this troubled child, a more prudent reign by the hand of his parents preventing his emersion in violent video games, a less indulgent attitude by the few people who attempted to engage him, or perhaps a more strident effort by teachers and authority figures might have deviated this monster from the collision course he was on.

But of all the constituent parts of this tragedy, none leaps out more glaringly than the fact that barring a legal loophole that allows federal law to trump Virginia state law, the gun sale to Mr. Cho by an arms merchant in Roanoke was completely legal. Cho passed the cursory background check required in Virginia in spite of the fact he had been under criminal investigation in the previous 18 months for stalking two fellow V-Tech students and had been found by a judge to be a threat to himself and others as well as the assessment of one of his teachers that he was the most disturbed human being she had ever encountered. He was even committed for observation but released with a prescription and the well wishes of the Doctors who treated him. He later walked into a gun store and out the same day with the semi-automatic weapon he would us to calamitous effect 3 weeks later.

Without question guns are dangerous. And while some would argue that a gun purchased legally by a responsible person for defensive intentions is a right we all enjoy in this country, it begs the question of whether it’s the “right” thing to do. Guns maintain their lethality regardless of the motives behind their acquisition.

I used to own handguns. I was most proud of my “Dirty Harry”, a stainless steel .44 magnum with a 6” barrel and a wooden stock. One day while I was at work someone came into my house and relieved me of my guns especially “Dirty Harry”. I have often wondered where that gun went and to what purpose was it utilized. Did it end up on the streets in the hands of a criminal? Was it used in the commission of a murder? I’ll never know. But what I intended to be self protection became instead, a source of potential threat to me and others

The U.S has the highest murder rate by handguns of any of the developed countries on the planet. There will be more murders in the U.S. by hand guns today and tomorrow than the UK will experience this year. Australia had 50 gun murders last year compared to almost 12,000 in the U.S: at that rate that’s a Virginia Tech killing spree every single day, day after day in our country. Film maker Michael Moore in his documentary “Bowling for Columbine” opined,” Are Americans gun crazy or just crazy?”

But it’s not just guns that are acquired legally that pose a threat; a prison inmate survey conducted in 2005 showed that of those inmates who used a gun during the commission of the crimes for which they were incarcerated, 80% of those weapons were acquired either from a friend a relative, or by an-illegal gun sale. This points out that the only way to reduce or eliminate the use of guns in crime is to reduce or eliminate the pool of guns available to criminals and potential criminals.

The legality and availability of handguns in this country are in stark contrast to research that has shown a direct correlation between handgun ownership and gun death. The more guns available, the more gun deaths in a given population. The same is true in other countries as well.

For example, the UK banned handguns in 1997 with the exception of replicas and air guns. Those legal guns now make up the largest category of guns used during the commission of crime in the UK. In other words criminals will use whatever weapon they have at their disposal.

I submit that while it is true that a baseball bat can be lethal in the hands of a determined criminal, Mr. Cho would not have attained the infamy now attached to his memory had he arrived on campus April 16,2007 with a Louisville slugger instead of the Glock he purchased legally nor would the county coroner be signing a purchase requisition for the replacement of 33 body bags.