No sense at all
Rob Price

Ever since moving to New York from Virginia 16 years ago, I've been particularly curious about one thing: How easy, or hard, would it be to buy a pistol in my new home state?

As we've all learned in the last two weeks, it's quite easy to buy a pistol in Virginia. And I might as well come clean: While I was a student in Charlottesville, I bought a pistol for myself. I had grown up in a pistol shooting family. My father taught me how to shoot when I was a boy, and we spent hours in a stone quarry near our home, plinking aluminum cans, balloons and cardboard targets. I started shooting again while living in a rural area just outside town. My first target was a dessert cookbook I blamed for an egregious banana foster. I still have no regrets in the matter.

Now, In the wake of the shootings at Virginia Tech, where my wife and I taught English composition for six years, I've been talking with friends about gun control, an issue that is bound to get more play as we come to terms with the murders. I realized I really don't know much about gun control laws in New York, and if one is to really engage the issue seriously, it would be sensible to become acquainted with some facts.

I swung into action. "What do I have to do to buy a handgun?" I asked a woman in the Steuben County Clerk's Office. She told me what I already knew: I need a license. "But how do I get a license?" I said. First, she said, I need to pay $10 for an application. Then I need to fill out the application.

Now, do YOU know what's involved in filling out an application for a license to buy a handgun in Steuben County? I do now. Here is one requirement that makes it unlikely I will ever become a handgun owner while living in New York: The signatures of four acquaintances (all Steuben County residents) who can attest I am a person "of good moral character."

And here's a kicker: Each signature needs to be officially notarized. That means, assuming I can find four people who can attest to my moral character (no relatives allowed), each person also must be willing to accompany me to a notary public.

Is this a case of overdoing it? Given the few details we've learned about Cho seung-hui, I think not. As I understand it, Cho had his legal background checked for any criminal records. He was clean, as was I when I bought a pistol in Virginia 25 years ago. But Cho obviously would have had trouble finding four acquaintances willing to sign off on his character. Steuben County, it would seem, is safe from the Chos of this world.

Or is it? John Tunney, the district attorney of Steuben County, tells me the vast majority handguns used in crimes are purchased in an underground market. The guns enter that market through myriad routes, but initially they are stolen from legal gun owners, or gun retailers or gun manufacturers.

Requiring four acquaintances to attest to my good moral character will do nothing to disrupt that underground market. So the issue of gun control seems to break into two general areas: the passage of gun control laws that would keep a Cho seung-hui from loading himself up, or the passage of gun control laws that would make the United States a gun-free country.

I hope the former becomes a reality for the freewheeling state of Virginia. But the latter - a nationwide ban on handguns - just seems unlikely to me, even in the wake of something so horrific as the Virginia Tech shootings. The political will is not there; the political courage needed to stand up to lobbying groups like the NRA is not there. We continue to be a nation of people who like owning and shooting guns - the vestige of a long-gone frontier culture, for which we will continue paying a high price.

If you're trying to make any sense out of the Virginia Tech massacre, start there. Obviously, it doesn't make any sense at all.