I have on occasion listened to Bill O'Reilly, and while I find his arguments better reasoned, with less vitriol than some of the other FoxNews personalities seem to have, I usually don't agree with his conclusions.

Which was why I was almost SHOCKED to learn that I was listening to a clip of O'Reilly arguing with a senator about this latest mass murder and the resultant discussions about gun control. Because I felt pretty much as O'Reilly felt.

Can you believe this? O'Reilly was arguing that there needed to be some sort of red flags raised when someone...ANYONE...purchases thousands of rounds of heavy duty ammunition from any dealer in any manner in the US. The senator (presumably a Republican and an NRA supporter) was arguing that it shouldn't be reported; that somehow it interfered with the rights of legal gun-owning Americans everywhere. O'Reilly asked, "How?" and did not, in my view, get a satisfactory answer.

O'Reilly's point was that some federal agency, be it the FBI or the BATF, should be notified and that any and every such purchase should be followed up on. Maybe the answer is, "Yes, sir, I purchased that much ammunition. I belong to a gun club, and there are 20 of us who go together and buy this bulk of ammunition to use for target shooting at our range," and then perhaps the agent could verify the club name and that this guy is actually a member, and mark that it was satisfactorily answered.

Or maybe the answer is sort of suspect. Maybe there is no good explanation, and in that case, perhaps deeper follow-up is indicated.

Maybe if this Colorado nutcase's purchase of that amount of ammo was reported, someone somewhere would have looked into his activities. If you're a Muslim-American and maybe are sending some money back to your family in Iran, you are watched as a potential funder of terrorists...but if you're an American buying tons of ammunition, it's fine - you don't need to answer to anyone!

I'm not a proponent of outlawing guns or anything like that. I think people should be able to own handguns, rifles, shotguns, any gun that has a legitimate use. I don't think people should be able to own their own personal rocket launcher or bazooka or whatever is out there. I don't think that automatic or semi-automatic weapons have a legitimate use. Perhaps I'm wrong, but from what I've seen and read, it seems like most people want them for paramilitary types of games, or so that in case the government does something like, oh, say, tell them they can't have guns, they can fight those government squadrons off with their assault weapons. Most of the time you hear about these types of weapons, however, seems to be when either there is some cult or paramilitary group holed up in the hills trying to stand off the government, or when some nutcase goes crazy and mows down a lot of innocent people.

I think it should be really HARD, at the very least, to get these types of weapons. It shouldn't be as easy as it apparently was for the nut in the Colorado movie mass murder. They shouldn't be readily available to anyone who wants one, at the very least. Is that unreasonable? I think it's more unreasonable to suggest that, in view of the harm people have caused using these weapons, they are not very dangerous and should be unregulated.

We seem to agree that drug use is dangerous, to one's self and to others around that person, and so drugs are outlawed. You have to go to a licensed prescriber and get a prescription for many drugs. Some, you can't even do that. You can get some dangerous drugs, but you have to have a legitimate reason for needing them.

You can't just get behind the wheel of an automobile and start driving, either. Cars are generally not thought of as weapons, but as many people die in car accidents as die from guns every year. As a driver, you have to prove competence and get a driver's license, and you also are (in most states, I think) required to carry insurance if you cause an accident. We don't consider this an affront to our personal rights. It just makes sense.

Shouldn't the same standards apply to gun ownership? At least?

(addition: I found this post by Barry Eisler about the VA Tech shootings; many of the same points are relevant to this situation.)

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