Virginia Tech Killer Used Easy-To-Get Guns

(CBS)  A well-placed law enforcement source tells CBS News the weapons used in the massacre were a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun and .22-caliber pistol.

Both are readily available in gun shops across the United States and particularly accessible in the commonwealth of Virginia, which recently earned a C-minus rating by the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

"It's much too easy to get guns in the state of Virginia," said Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Center.

That's in part because there's no gun registration, no mandatory waiting period to purchase weapons. The only major restriction: a limit of one gun purchase per month.

It remains unclear where the shooter purchased his pistols, CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian reports.

But CBS News discovered there was a gun show just 25 miles from Blacksburg last weekend where 405 guns were sold.

The magazine containing ammunition for the 9 mm handgun can carry between eight and 24 bullets, rapidly fired, and quickly reloaded.

Today the National Rifle Association "expressed its deepest condolences" to all those "affected by this horrible tragedy."

Meanwhile, a former campus police chief at Virginia Tech told CBS News that in recent years the school had bucked the state legislature and hunting culture and took steps to safeguard its student population. It required all guns be checked with campus police, collecting hundreds at a time.

Ironically, the school specifically banned the possession of firearms in dormitories or classrooms — the exact locations of today's unthinkable violence.

[qednick]

Blaming guns??? If he had used Molotov cocktails would we be blaming (or asking for bans on) gasoline? I don't think so.

Me, personally, I would like to know why they were still allowing students onto campus after the first shootings two hours earlier.

[qednick]

Blaming guns??? If he had used Molotov cocktails would we be blaming (or asking for bans on) gasoline? I don't think so.

Me, personally, I would like to know why they were still allowing students onto campus after the first shootings two hours earlier.

[steve-uk]

I'm sorry but this story makes no sense to me.

If Virginia only allows people to buy one gun a month, and he had two guns, then clearly he didn't get one of them at the gunshow, so that's just hyperbole.

Plus if you know 405 guns were sold at the show (only last weekend), it's kind of hard to see how the gun laws in Virginia are so lax if the authorities know exactly how many guns are being sold, who they are being sold to, how many guns they have bought in the past month and the buyers have passed a background check (like everywhere else in the US).

I thought the "Brady Bill" which was passed with much hoopla was the answer to all these problems?

[dsjohnsonco]

So how did today's Va Tech. U. shooter manage to kill 32 people? For the answer we need look no further than the 16 dead in the 1984 MacDonald
shooting in San Ysidro, California.

Planing to commit many murders and then kill themselves, they were not worried about the anti-gun laws. The only people whom the gun
laws affected were the victims whom those laws rendered helpless and defenseless.

Deprived of the ability to defend themselves all those victims could do was helplessly depend on the police.
Especially pertinent is the Jan., 2002 shooting which took three lives at Virginia's Appalachian Law School.

Hearing the gunfire, dozens of law students fled in panic. But two students went to their cars where they had handguns which they used to disarm the killer and hold him for police.

But VA Tech U. has a "gun free zone" policy, meaning that no one (except the
killer) had a firearm anywhere on school grounds.

A bill that would have given college students and employees the right to carry handguns on campus died in the Genl Assembly. Va Tech spokesman Larry Hincker was happy to hear the bill was defeated. "I'm sure the university community is appreciative of the Genl Assembly's actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our
campus."

"Ironically, the school specifically banned the possession of firearms in dormitories or classrooms - the exact locations of today's unthinkable
violence."