Where's the faux outrage now?

[NewHampshireDem]

Apparently, the worst thing in the world would have been for some students to have a peaceful event to mark the death of VT students:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=118&topic_id=166427&mesg_id=166427

But when the MAN WHO SOLD THE GUNS THAT KILLED THOSE STUDENTS comes to campus ... crickets ... crickets ... crickets ...

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Gun_Dealer_Causes_Stir_at_Virginia_0425.html

Well, I'm waiting.

[mcctatas]

1. He is a publicity whore...

after the VT shootings, he was on our local news for a week straigh, and it turns out that he also sold stuff the Northern Illinois shooter, the shameless fucker was all over the news again!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/02/17/same-gun-dealer-sold-to-2_n_87050.html

[krispos42]

2. Well, it's not in good taste

But certainly nothing to get outraged out. I didn't get "outraged" at the Brady Campaign protests, either.



There was no intimate connection between the dealer and the shooter. The dealer followed all particulars of the law in good faith.

In fact, for him to have sold the gun to Cho, the Wisconson dealer would have had to mail the gun to a Virginia dealer, who would then perform the Virginia-mandated background check to Cho (for a fee) before transferring the pistol to him.

Since there were two seperate gun dealers involved in this transaction, it isn't fair to blame only the Wisconsin dealer.

[DonP]

3. He was invited by a recognized student group

Or are we not allowed to have any differing points of view on campus anymore?

I graduated from NIU and spent the last couple of months dealing with that every day. I understand and respect the frustration and blind anger that those parents must be feeling, struggling to find a reason or some source to hold responsible for their pain to focus on.

There's a few folks though, myself included, that think that the administrators that were so proud and smug a few months before the shootings of declaring V Tech a "Gun Free Zone" should be the ones hanging their heads in shame as well.

This dealer obeyed all the existing laws that apply and sold a legal product, through legal channels, and a person with a history of serious mental health issues, who had been ignored by a number of high profile faculty members and RA's ans well as some of his fellow students who; "didn't want him to be stigmatized" let it slide rather than alert authorities or mental health professionals to a potential problem. There's plenty of blame to go around on this. To single out the one guy that seems to have actually followed all the rules is pretty slanted.

The part that I still haven't had explained is why, if the dealer actually sold a gun by mail/internet as claimed in the article, he's not in jail for breaking the GCA of 1968? You can't sell guns by mail without shipping the gun from one Class 1 FFL to another. Or did he ship the .22 to another FFL class 1 dealer who handled the Brady check, and delivered the gun to Cho? If he did, where is that guy? I still haven't seen the details in any of these stories.

I guess it sounds scarier to get ignorant folks to think anyone can buy guns online and have them mailed to you.

[jmg257]

4. I was just checking that out. Thompson is president of a bunch

of online gun-related sites. On the specific one Cho used, the "How to Buy Online" instructions:

"Contact a local dealer and arrange for them to conduct the transfer.
Be sure that they are aware that a firearm will be sent to them on your behalf, and that they agree to this. Also, be sure that any and all fees associated with the transfer are agreed upon prior to the order being placed."

Have the dealer fax their FFL.
Our fax number is 920-569-4252. They can also mail it to us at:
TGSCOM, Inc
ATTN: FFL
1449 S Broadway
Green Bay, WI 54304

You can place the order online via our secure website 24 hours a day 7 days a week, or contact us during business hours at 1-866-456-2522 to place your order.

Sit back and relax while we do the rest.
We will call you when your firearm ships. Your firearm is shipped with a copy of our FFL (Federal Firearms License), as well as your contact information so that your local dealer has no problem contacting you upon arrival."

http://www.thegunsource.com/store/Content.aspx?cKey=Buy_Guns_Online

I have not found further info yet on who the actual FTF dealer was; I do not THINK Thompson's group would mail order a pistol knowing is a flagrant violation of federal law, but...


Edit: not too hard to find:

"Eric Thompson’s company, TGSCOM Inc., sold Virginia Tech shooter Cho Seung-Hui a Walther P22 through the Web site..." (from site above)

"Cho bought one of the guns he used in the shootings from an out-of-state dealer, according to Joe Dowdy, the owner of the pawnshop across the street from campus where Cho picked up the Walther P22 pistol on February 9."

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/19/gun.laws/index.html

[Testament]

32. Yeah...SO?

Those instructions are so people know how to follow the law so his employees don't have to waste time telling people how to go about it. In the end, it's no different than going to a gun store, seeing that they don't have you want, telling what you want, they order it for you, and you do your paperwork and get the gun. The paperwork for a gun bought online and a gun bought out of inventory in the store is the same.

[jmg257]

33. SO...It seems Thompson did indeed follow the law and send the gun to a local FFL.

The thought that he apparently has a lot of his livelyhood riding on his FFL, and that the listing of the correct legal steps to follow was right there on the site, lead me to believe that would likely be the case, but I did not KNOW that for sure until I followed up a bit (see the edit).

To ME this would seem an important point, for it appeared re: the subject of the thread some people were blaming Thompson for "selling Cho the gun", when it would be upon the pawnshop FFL to do all the correct background checks etc. (which it appears he did too).

[iverglas]

8. fyi

The organizers of the Lie-In were students on the campus.

Did you have a point there somewhere?

There must be something else you can whine about, even if that didn't work.


To single out the one guy that seems to have actually followed all the rules is pretty slanted.

One might actually think that the person singling himself out is himself. I think.

[bossy22]

10. i was under the impression

"The organizers of the Lie-In were students on the campus."

from what i read it sounded like the brady campaign recruited students from VT for the lie in

[iverglas]

20. yes, I'm sure

they just lurked around the quad accosting random students until someone finally agreed to let them use his/her name ...

Yeesh.

[Tejas]

22. you're starting to catch on

to how Brady Inc works.

congrats!

[iverglas]

23. I already knew

what some people seem to think other people will swallow as being civil discourse.

Thanks all the same.

[Tejas]

28. mood swings?

I 1) "I hope this may have helped you with whatever it was you seem to have had up your nose there."

+

I 2) "what some people seem to think other people will swallow as being civil discourse."



or different day?

LOL!

[bossy22]

27. hey other organizations do that

the set up booths in commons/quads and ask: Hi im from blah blah, would you like to sign our petition and join our rally

[jmg257]

12. Even I will take "Self Serving" for $200 on this one...

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“I’ve spent the past weekend feeling absolutely terrible that my company has been linked to both of these heinous crimes,” said Eric Thompson, president of TGSCOM Inc. “I assume it is just an unfortunate coincidence, but I also believe I now have a special responsibility to do all I can to try and prevent further loss of life.”


High Capacity Magazines
...




http://www.thegunsource.com/store


Strange. Sincere? I just don't know. Lawful? OK. ...but still seems strange, and creepy.


edit: adjusted flow

[iverglas]

25. I'm hearing echoes

Or are we not allowed to have any differing points of view on campus anymore?

Channeling David Horowitz ...

[bossy22]

5. do i think its in bad taste

yes...do i have a problem with it- no...the student group has right to invite who they want to speak at their events.

[iverglas]

6. yer $%#@ kiddin me

But not.

Dealer Eric Thompson spoke at the school Thursday night as part of a weeklong demonstration in favor of allowing people to carry concealed weapons at colleges.

"For people who want to arm themselves, there shouldn't be policies in place to stop them," Thompson told about 60 students who attended his talk. There were only a few anti-gun questions posed to Thompson, and none of the protests school officials prepared for.

... "I just have a feeling there's a special responsibility I've been given," he said, "to try to help change people's opinions."

Messiah complex, anyone? Or just plain good business sense. Hmm. You be the judge.


We're missing the best part here, though:

Members of the student group <Students for concealed carry>, which claims a membership of 25,000 nationwide and 200 at Virginia Tech, are wearing empty holsters to classes this week to protest laws and policies that restrict concealed weapons on campuses. Thompson said donations from his customers helped him provide hundreds of holsters on nearly 30 college campuses.

Gee. That timing is just coincidental, I guess. Not crass and ugly at all.

[bossy22]

7. don't see your problem with this statement

"Members of the student group <Students for concealed carry>, which claims a membership of 25,000 nationwide and 200 at Virginia Tech, are wearing empty holsters to classes this week to protest laws and policies that restrict concealed weapons on campuses. Thompson said donations from his customers helped him provide hundreds of holsters on nearly 30 college campuses."

he was donating these to student groups who wanted them

free speech is free fucking speech- you can't have your cake and eat it too

[iverglas]

9. I'll just bet you don't

I'll bet you have no recollection at all of how insensitive and rude those Lie-In organizers were to be holding an event timed to coincide with the anniversary of the mass murders.

So why would you have to notice that these self-indulgent, self-centred, self-absorbed, self-promoting little twerps are doing EXACTLY THE SAME THING? -- except they're demonstrating in favour of nobody's interests but their own.


What you're actually on about there, I wouldn't know.



edited for clarity

[bossy22]

11. get those reading glasses checked

before you go on any further why don't you check what i had to say in post 5....but to make life easy i will just say it here- do i think its wrong and in bad taste- hell yeah. Would i try to stop them- no...because in my mind that goes against what a university life- which encourages freedom of expression and ideas- is all about. Is it wrong to ask him not to come- no its not- but its wrong to try to forcivly prevent him from comming.

so to reiterate- we are on the same page on this one- but as usual your double standards show.

[iverglas]

13. I wish I could get some of the ones you have, I really do

I copied the paragraph relating to the shenanigans of the brats with the empty holsters.

Underneath it, I put my comment:

Gee. That timing is just coincidental, I guess. Not crass and ugly at all.

That was *my* point. That it was just strangely coincidental that they had timed their crass, ugly demonstration to coincide with the anniversary of the murders.

It had to be, because otherwise there'd be screeches of dismay and disdain hereabouts -- because that is exactly what there was regarding the timing of the proposed Lie-In.

Your "response" to that post had NOTHING TO DO with my point.

He was donating, free speech, blah blah.

NOTHING TO DO with my point: that their timing was crass and rude. Way, way crasser and ruder than anything the Lie-In organizers could be accused of.

You chose to read some meaning into my post that simply could not possibly have been read in it. I didn't say anything about what the weirdo in question was doing. I didn't say anything about anybody's right to wander around an educational institution with the personal decorations of their choice attached to their bodies. I didn't say anything about any of that. I said:

Gee. That timing is just coincidental, I guess. Not crass and ugly at all.

You may wish I'd said something that called for a comment about free speech, or something that called for a comment about anything else you might want to comment on.

But I didn't.

And if we were on the same page, then there we were. And there was I, not saying anything about free speech or anything else that provided any remotely related springboard for your finger-wagging about free speech -- "you can't have your cake and eat it too" -- or whatever you were getting at about the donation of holsters. Not remotely related to anything I said.

[gorfle]

15. Well said.

free speech is free fucking speech- you can't have your cake and eat it too

Well said!

[iverglas]

18. how come I'm feeling so very un-ignored

Ignoring is the sincerest form of flattery, I guess.

A little self-control might go a long way, on the other hand.

[gorfle]

14. It was in good taste.

Even the one protester at the event said she felt the speaker presented himself well.

The event was sponsored by Students for Concealed Carry, and I agree with their position that people with CCW permits should be allowed on college campuses armed just like they are nearly everywhere else.

Whats the matter? We don't like the first amendment now either?

[iiibbb]

16. I wasn't outraged for either.

Free speech is free speech.

Like abortion rights, gun rights is just one of those issues where I'm glad I'm a social libertarian because it's easy to be consistent about the government's place in peoples' personal lives.... specifically it should be out of them.

The merit and onus of concealed carry or abortion pretty much cancel each other out. Most people argue one side or the other. For me, when in doubt, I side with greater liberty.

The fact of the matter is that had students been permitted to carry arms the day of that Massacre, the percentage of the populace that actually carries (probably about 1-2% in Virginia) would not likely have changed the outcome. Not only that, there are a large percentage of people who carry who would not intervene or engage a madman unless they were directly confronted (although as many claim they would). Their sidearm is for personal defense. A gun is the last line on a wide spectrum of responses to an attack... and most of us know it.


I was at Virginia Tech that day. It is likely that Cho passed within a 100 ft of my office on his way to the post office that morning. I have a permit. I didn't/don't carry to work because it's not allowed. I rarely carry, and I haven't changed my behavior since the VT event. There are very specific circumstances that I carry that are related to very specific circumstances that I have been exposed. A VT type massacre just isn't on the radar.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

17. He did sell the guns in accordance with the law.

It's not like Cho walked in to his store and said, "I'm crazy and I need some guns to go on a shooting rampage." It's kind of hard to fault this dealer. If he committed a crime then put him in jail.

David

[iverglas]

19. I swear ...

Back when I was an undergraduate, there was a fellow who used to sort of hang around with us. "Us" was locally famous, the bunch of hippies/lefties living in the big mansion on the hill in the centre of downtown, so we attracted all sorts. Anyhow, he was a different sort of fellow.

I remember one fine spring evening when four of us were loitering around out on the terraced lawns, having some sort of intense, smoke-filled/fueled discussion, and the fellow - I don't recall his name, if I knew it - said something when there was a brief lull. All other talk came to a halt. And what he had said floated there in the space between us all, and I looked at it, and if you looked at it from just the right angle, you could see how it could be leveraged into the conversation we were having. There were words in common, and you could just catch a glimpse of the ectoplasm connecting it to the conversation; fragile and translucent, but it was there.

He seemed happy enough.

[bossy22]

26. niiice story

i now see it

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

29. Kind of like your post.

[Tejas]

21. We're too busy

with reading the constant condescending statements/editorials of the "university spokeman" (Hincker) who thinks students are idiots for wanting CCW on campus, statements/editorials that have been made by him for over a year now.

[iverglas]

24. ""university spokesman""?

Clever of you to quote that, but ordinarily there wouldn't really be any need for the quotation marks. They look kinda like "Supreme Court Justice" Scalia would look (be still your beating heart). As in: kinda dumb.

http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/commentary/wb/81277

Hincker is the associate vice president for university relations at Virginia Tech.

I'll take that to mean something along the lines of "university relations with the outside world".

Which would mean that he speaks for the university in its dealings with the outside world.

Which would make him, in the quaint archaic speech still apparently popular on that side of the border, the "spokesman for the university" -- and then, employing that useful noun phrase device we have in English, the "university spokesman".

I hope this may have helped you with whatever it was you seem to have had up your nose there.

'Tis a sad day, though, when the denizens of this place aren't their usual straightforward, even-handed, clear-eyed, equal-opportunity-self-righteous selves. Those selves must indeed have been stressed to the max by Mr. Hinker's words, not to have been able to spare a drop of outrage for the hugely rude and callous gesture by this jerk and the brats he rode in on.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

30. I'm glad you posted the lies written by the associate vice president for university relations at VT.

Or at least a link to them. You always preach against people saying what other people said and look Hincker goes and does it.

David

[SteveM]

31. Actually, it was in bad taste. Only thing good is he waited a bit.

But the Brady Bunch? Law Vegas wedding all the way!