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Things That are Not Coincidences
By Jeff Fecke | February 17, 2008
So — funny story — Steven Kazmierczak, the shooter at Northern Illinois University? He bought his gun from the same online dealer who sold gun accessories to Seung-Hui Cho…the shooter at Virginia Tech:
Eric Thompson said his Web site, http://www.topglock.com, 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, http://www.thegunstore.com, 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.”
You can’t? Really? Because, you know, I can.
I don’t care if you’re a hardcore gun opponent, or a completely bonkers gun fetishist. Selling guns online is a recipe for disaster. It makes procuring a gun easy for someone who’s disturbed, someone who even a gun dealer might not sell to in person. Selling online? Simple — just click, and you’re done! It’s easy, it’s easy to game (after all, how hard is it to put in false information online?), and you don’t even have to get dressed.
This isn’t some crazy coincidence. No, it’s the obvious end result of online gun sales. If you make it really easy for disturbed individuals to purchase guns and accessories, disturbed individuals will purchase guns and accessories.
As for the shocked — shocked! — proprietor of these two websites (good job getting the URI into the article, sir!) probably should get out of the business if he’s really as broken up and near tears as he claims to be. But he won’t. After all, you don’t get into sales of Glocks if you’re opposed to a little thing like murder. And an advertisement like this…well, you can’t buy this kind of publicity.
The rest of us — the sane ones — may want to discuss at this point whether we want to allow guns to travel across state lines with no actual human interaction. It’s not much. But if it helps keep the next disturbed young man sitting in a dorm room unarmed, it will be worth it.
(Via.)
Topics: Gun Control, Virginia Tech | 1 Comment »
February 19th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
You’re short on facts.
If you order a gun online, you MUST have it shipped to a federally licensed dealer, who will then do the legally mandated background checks. It’s not legal to get a gun shipped across state lines to your house, unless you are a licensed dealer.
However, holsters and magazines are unregulated, so you can have those shipped to your home.