Green Bay Gun Dealer Sold NIU Killer AND Virginia Tech Killer Items For Rampages
Virginia Tech Shooter
The news is amazing. And this points to one large area where many have argued for a long time that tougher, tighter gun laws need to be enacted. Gun dealers make money, and parents get to buy coffins for their loved ones. No way in hell should either of these men been able to buy guns. If the type of required tougher background check that many have advocated for years been in place with these shameless gun dealers, many things would be different for several families this weekend. A gun dealer should not be allowed to sell and profit in his manner. When things like this happen there needs to be accountability, and the gun dealer needs to loose his business.
If a day care center had kids continually drowning in the bathtub they would be closed. If a nurse kept administering the wrong medications she would be fired. There also needs to be accountability for gun dealers who sell to those who commit these types crimes.
The Green Bay, Wis., gun dealer who sold Northern Illinois University killer Stephen Kazmierczak empty magazines and a holster for a semi-automatic pistol also sold a gun to the killer in the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
I was just shocked,” said Eric Thompson, 34, whose company TGSCOM Inc. sells weapons over the Internet. “There are over 90,000 licensed dealers in the U.S.”
Thompson’s company sold a Walther .22-caliber handgun to Seung-Hui Cho, who killed 32 people last April at Virginia Tech before killing himself. The gun was delivered through a Virginia dealer, who was required to do a background check on Cho, Thompson said.
Kazmierczak bought his weapons from Tony’s Guns and Ammo in Champaign, sources say. The shop is in a working-class neighborhood.
Signs in the front yard say “Tony’s Guns and Ammo.” The shop is in a fenced-in building behind a home.
On the front door is a sticker that says “Guns Save Lives” — a sentiment shared by Thompson, who said preventing NIU students from carrying guns is “perhaps a mistake.”
Technorati Tags: ChicagoSunTimes, GreenBay, GunDealers, GunDeaths, NIU, VirginiaTech
“If a day care center had kids continually drowning in the bathtub they would be closed. If a nurse kept administering the wrong medications she would be fired”
I am supriesed these aint-gun idoits are not trying to out law bathtubs and medications
Look at countries where citizens can’t own guns. Criminals still carry weapons, some of them still have guns. The result is that more people DIE from muggings, etc. Texas has very “free” gun laws, compared to Washington D.C. that allows no guns; can you guess which state has more gun crimes? Funny how that works.
People kill other people. If they can’t use guns they will use knives. If you take 4 college level chemistry classes you can start making and understanding HOW to make incendiary weapons (note that they teach you things so you won’t blow yourself up in the lab). Note that any idiot with a computer can learn how to quickly copy a recipe to cause a lot of trouble.
If responsible citizens were allowed to carry guns just about anywhere, there would be less gun related deaths. If one person in the room had a gun, besides him , a lot less people would have died.
By your reasoning, McDonalds should be out of business too. They take a lot longer, but they kill too.
f that whole thing about how the gun dealer should loose his business he is just the middle man its not his fault that people are fucking nuts and kill other human beings people kill people it has happened for thousands of years and the dont need guns to do it they just seem to be more convenient and its not the average legal gun owners fault that criminals can illegally obtain firearms easily.
So what exactly are you asking for? An online dealer transferred the firearm to a dealer local to the purchaser. That local dealer performed a background check on the buyer. That’s no different than if the buyer had purchased the gun directly from that local dealer. What’s the problem here? Or is it just news because it was an online dealer?
As far as magazines and holsters are concerned, they are not regulated items (in most places). There is no requirement for a background check. The dealer did nothing wrong.
As far as legal accountability, unless a law was broken, a manufacturer, wholesaler, or dealer should *NOT* be held accountable. Or maybe you disagree that people should be accountable for their own actions. If I buy a pack of pencils from you, and subsequently write threatening letters to the US President, can you be held accountable? Should a gas station that sold gasoline to a reckless driver be held accountable for subsequent wrecks caused by that driver? Where do you draw the line? How can a business control what a customer does with a legally purchased product after the fact? And *should* businesses even try?
Why do you seem to argue that people are not responsible for their own actions? Do you really feel that people in general are too stupid to realize the consequences of their actions?
Ahhh….no.
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The seller didn’t create any mess. First off, any transfer of a firearm, under federal law, requires the completion of the FBI (NICS) background check. What an online seller like TGSCOM does is send the firearm to a local (local to the purchaser) federally-licensed dealer to hold for the purchaser and complete the federal background check. That local dealer then completes the background check, and releases the firearm to the purchaser if it clears.
The background check has been federal law for ten years, is used by every licensed dealer (at least those who want to avoid a long federal prison term), and was completed in the case of Cho (the fact that the state of Virginia didn’t release Cho’s court history to the feds is not something that any dealer controls). In this case, TGSCOM sold accessories, not firearms, to Kazmierczak. Kazmierczak got his weapons, legally, from a local Illinois dealer after completing both the federal and the Illinois state processes, the latter of which is among the most stringent in the nation (and contributes to Illinois being cited by the Brady Campaign as #9 out of 50 states in its approval of state gun laws).
TGSCOM’s website is the top hit on Google if one searches “glock accessories”, and one of the top 5 if one searches “glock”. Glock pistols are probably the best selling semiautomatic pistols in the United States to both law enforcement and private citizens. Given the Internet’s trend in creating something of a “national marketplace”, it’s not that unusual that this one online business would handle a relatively large share of the Glock-related business.
In any case, the K-Mart case, selling a weapon to an intoxicated person likely violated a whole range of laws, and was unreasonably negligent in any case, making legal liability understandable. Otherwise, in the case of legitimate businesses that conduct lawful and responsible business, and cannot be reasonably held for the unforeseeable consequences of what some person might do with their merchandise, they should not be held liable. The Congress agreed on this point in the last few years, and outlawed that little industry of barratry and champerty that was trying to use the courts for back-door gun control.
There are many..many reasons to have legal accountability of gun sellers for violent acts committed with their products. This evening a group of us were talking over this whole issue, and one recalled a large verdict against K-Mart when they sold a shotgun to an intoxicated person, who then shot someone else. The K-Mart story jogged my memory and I think there were several cases where that store was held liable for gun type cases. If memory is correct there was also a case concerning bullets.
You do understand that the reason we have the need to go after ones that sell the guns is to insure the money is there to aid the victims. And their families. And to make our society safer.
The whole reason for these legal avenues is to insure that someone pays for the mess made by the seller.
“If a day care center had kids continually drowning in the bathtub they would be closed. If a nurse kept administering the wrong medications she would be fired. There also needs to be accountability for gun dealers who sell to those who commit these types crimes.”
children drowning is a crime since the day care center is not providing proper supervision. Giving wrong medication is fired because she broke one of the FIVE wrongs, which is cause for immediate firing. A gun dealer legally selling has broken no laws and is not responsible because a person goes off his meds.
The hysterical rantings of the anti gun crowd is irrational and totally out of line.