April 27, 2010
Editorial

There are two tragic anniversaries this month. It is 11 years since two Colorado students gunned down 12 of their fellow classmates and one teacher at Columbine High School and three years since 32 students and faculty members were gunned down at Virginia Tech.

Those horrors haven’t slowed the gun lobby’s relentless push to weaken the nation’s already far too weak gun laws — or Congress’s eagerness to do the gun lobby’s bidding. Last week, House Democrats had to pull back legislation that would have finally given the District of Columbia a voting representative in Congress because of amendments tacked on to the bill that would have gutted local gun laws.

The only bright spot in all of this is that gun victims’ families and Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a bipartisan group led by Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City, are fighting back. They have begun a campaign to get Congress to close the loophole that has allowed criminals, troubled teens and the mentally ill to evade federal background checks and purchase weapons from unlicensed private dealers at weekend gun shows.

The Columbine shooters used four high-powered weapons obtained by a friend, no questions asked, from “hobbyist” gun-show dealers. These shows are a leading source of illegally trafficked guns — a large number of guns recovered in crimes come from states that do not require gun show background checks.

Senators Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, Jack Reed of Rhode Island and Dianne Feinstein of California, all Democrats, have introduced a bill that would close the loophole nationally. It now has 17 sponsors. Shamefully missing from the list are Senator Mark Udall of Colorado and Senators James Webb and Mark Warner of Virginia.

In a newspaper ad last week, Tom Mauser, whose son Daniel was murdered at Columbine, called on Senator Udall to sponsor the legislation. Relatives of victims and a survivor of the Virginia Tech massacre took out their own ad.

“Every day in the United States, 35 people are murdered with guns — that’s a Virginia Tech-sized massacre every single day,” they wrote in an open letter to the two senators from Virginia. “We have seen firsthand the incredible toll that gaps in the federal background check system have on public safety, and we live with the personal toll every single day of our lives.”

The mayors’ group also ran TV ads last week, pressing the three senators, and several others, to support the bill. In the House, meanwhile, three Virginia representatives have circulated a letter seeking co-sponsors for their pending Gun Show Loophole Closing Act.

Before any more tragedies happen, lawmakers need to stop listening to the gun lobby and start listening to their constituents. Mr. Udall? Mr. Warner? Mr. Webb?