Living for 32 documentary available on Vimeo.
Living for 32 is a documentary made by Collin Goddard, a survivor of the Virginia Tech shooting in which 32 college students and faculty were killed by Seung-Hui Cho using two semi-automatic handguns. Cho killed two students in a residence hall before going to Norris hall where he killed thirty more students and faculty. He was able to fire his guns 174 times in ten minutes before killing himself. Cho was able to buy his guns legally even though his psychologist reported him as a danger to himself and committed him to outpatient treatment for his psychosis because the law only applies to people force-ably committed to a psychiatric inpatient institution.
The documentary is illustrative of just how easy it is to buy guns at gun shows. Private sellers wander among the licensed dealers, some with signs on their guns offering them for sale. Gun enthusiasts are fond of saying that guns are the most heavily regulated commodity in the US. They are wrong. Guns are completely unregulated. If even one outlet is free of all regulation, there is no regulation anywhere. Oh, but the gunners say those sales are already illegal so no new laws are needed. If a law is completely unenforced and unenforceable there is no law.
That's the point of the gun lobby's involvement in writing laws, to make them unenforceable.
As a result of Collin's testimony before congress the NICS Reporting Improvement Act allocated $1.4 Billion for grants to states to fund the improvements. George W Bush signed that bill into law in January 2008. To date only $12 million has been spent. Gunners are fond of saying 'just enforce existing law' but their lobby infiltrates every level of government preventing that from happening. The funding languishes in the Senate Appropriations Committee because the NRA wants it that way. The NRA contributed $810,000 to campaigns in the 2014 election cycle alone. More than 90% went to Republicans. Thad Cochran, head of the Appropriators committee, received $10,000 in the 2014 election cycle from the NRA and Mitch McConnell's lifetime contributions are $20,000. The NRA OWNS the GOP.
Watch the documentary here:
https://vimeo.com/61145448