Guns don't kill ....

NYT:

In a stark, puzzling contrast to the usual image of a rampaging gunman, Mr. Kazmierczak, 27, was described Friday as a successful student — “revered,” the authorities said, by his professors — who had served as a teaching assistant and received a dean’s award as an undergraduate here at Northern Illinois University, where he returned Thursday, killing himself and five students and wounding 16 others.

The gunman bought his weapons legally from a Champaign gun dealer, officials said. He also bought some accessories [ammunition] from the popular Internet dealer who sold a gun to the gunman in the Virginia Tech massacre last year.

ABC News:

The Remington shotgun and the Glock 9 mm were purchased Feb. 9, 2008. The Hi Point 380 was purchased Dec. 30, 2007 and the SIG Sauer 9 mm was purchased Aug. 6, 2007 from the same gun dealer.

Authorities were still checking where he obtained two other pistols, a 9 mm Sig Sauer and a Hi Point 380.

He brought the shotgun in a guitar case, police said, and hid the [handguns] underneath his jacket.

D.C. Gun Law Under Fire, Fox News, Monday, December 02, 2002

"If you look at the guns used in crime in the District and trace them to their origin, how many of those guns came from D.C.? Virtually none of them, they all came from Virginia and other states with much less restrictive gun laws than D.C. has,"

But Levy said that the only people being denied guns are law-abiding citizens. And he argues that the numbers skew in favor of those using them lawfully.

"All of the evidence that has been introduced suggests that guns are used about 2 million times a year for defensive purposes. There are only 500,000 gun-related acts of violence a year. So on a four-to-one basis guns are more widely used for self-defense than they are for committing acts of violence. And that suggests that if we had more guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens we would have less crime in D.C.," he said

House Votes to Repeal D.C. Gun Limits, September 30, 2004

The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a bill yesterday repealing most of the District's gun laws, in a vote that handed an election-season victory to gun rights groups and was denounced by the city's leaders as a historic violation of home rule.

By a vote of 250 to 171, the House passed the D.C. Personal Protection Act, which would end the District's 1976 ban on handguns and semiautomatic weapons, roll back registration requirements for ammunition and decriminalize possession of unregistered weapons and possession of guns in homes or workplaces.

The bill also would prohibit the mayor and D.C. Council from enacting gun limits that exceed federal law or "discourage . . . the private ownership or use of firearms."

Bill supporters note that the D.C. homicide rate was 72 percent higher in 2001 than it was in 1976, while the national rate had dropped by 36 percent.

Opponents say that the D.C. rate is at a 20-year low and has fallen 55 percent since 1994.

In a sign of how the politics of gun control have changed in Congress, the vote was almost the opposite of a 1999 House attempt to repeal the District's gun laws, which failed 250 to 175. Thirty-four House members -- 24 Republicans and 10 Democrats -- who voted five years ago to preserve the city laws switched sides and co-sponsored Souder's bill.

Repealing the DC Gun Ban by Rep. Ron Paul, MD, Before the US House of Representatives, October 4, 2004

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of HR 3193, the District of Columbia Personal Protection Act. I am a cosponsor of this legislation that ensures greater respect for the right to bear arms in Washington, D.C.....

The Case For Reforming The District of Columbia`s Gun Laws

D.C. Gun Case Will Affect All Americans,Thursday, February 14, 2008, By Col. Oliver North, FoxFan

the U.S. Supreme Court has a chance to both make our capital safer — and ensure that the Second Amendment to our Constitution is enshrined as an individual right for every law-abiding American.

the Department of Justice (DOJ), filed an egregiously weak amicus — friend of the court — brief in the case. The argument, submitted by U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement, essentially urges the Supremes to waffle on the issue and send the case back to the lower courts.

So this militiaman walks into the Senate with a loaded gun...


DC's gun control law in Supreme Court's sights


etc.

//