Everybody's talking about it . . .

. . . so even though I have no particularly special insight to offer, I'm being encouraged to say something. This CNN report was sent to me by regular reader "Da Wife", with a strong hint that this is something I should be writing about. So, if retreading old ideas bores you, you can probably skip this item . . .

First, nothing I say here should be interpreted to mean that this most recent atrocity is anything less than horrible: it was. The killer has done everything he could to ensure his own place in a very special hell. I hope, in his case, that there is some form of afterlife . . . because he escaped too easily into death.

From the CNN article:

When Cho Seung-Hui purchased two handguns this year, he apparently followed the letter of the law to get the weapons he eventually used in a shooting rampage on the Virginia Tech campus.

On so many levels, it is pointless arguing about whether a change in state or federal gun laws would have changed anything here. The fact that he bought his guns legally is not particularly relevant. The weapons he bought would be trivially easy to obtain from illegal sources, although at higher prices (and I'm not even certain about that). They were not particularly unusual or unusually powerful weapons (despite much uninformed commentary in the media about "high powered pistols").

The source is unimportant.

Some questions have been raised over Cho's mental health and whether that should have prevented him from being able to purchase the handguns.

A Virginia judge in December 2005 deemed Cho "an imminent danger to himself because of mental illness" and ordered outpatient treatment for him, according to court documents. [. . .]

Virginia and federal law prohibit the sale of guns to anyone who has been sent unwillingly to a mental institution.

So the man had been found to be dangerous enough that he barely avoided being committed to a mental institution. He had, as the current euphemism has it, "issues".

Much of the rest of the article delineates how he legally purchased his weapons "staying just within the limit of one gun purchase per month", as if that has some relevance. It is unlikely that any such limit would have prevented this tragedy. Laws and regulations only deter the law-abiding and make the illegal transactions that much more profitable. They don't prevent illegal sales of firearms. Countries that have much more stringent controls over legal sales still have illegal black markets in weapons.

Criminal defense attorney Daniel Gotlin told CNN he believes the easiest way to prevent similar incidents in the future "is to not make guns so easily available to individuals with problems."

"Virginia has one of the easiest gun qualification laws in the whole United States," he said.

And Democratic Virginia Rep. Jim Moran said on the House floor: "It is simply too easy to obtain a firearm."

Lovely soundbites, but not relevant . . . because nothing was going to prevent this tragedy, only delay it. Let me say it again: laws do not deter anyone but the law-abiding, and they are especially irrelevant in cases of severe mental illness.

Update: As usual, Lileks has a better way to say that last point:

There is nothing to learn from listening to the killer. From looking at him or reading his writings or poking through his background or sticking mikes in the face of anyone who saw him across a cafeteria. Maybe it's just me, but when I first heard of the case I thought: sociopath. A modern word for the man without a soul, the man who either had it stolen by deed or smothered in the womb. I think you can make a sociopath, if you hurt them early enough in a way they can never get their hands around. Others are simply bad seeds from the womb on up, I suspect. No matter what you do, you get a vacant Narcissus with an infinite supply of masks, a clever manniken who cannot apprehend the humanity of others. He could only feel empathy for the object in the mirror, and it's hardly surprising this example spent his last hours posing for the camera. It was the only thing that understood him, and accepted him for the glorious, tragic creature he knew he was.