Coding Gun Control
<p>Gene Koo - April 21, 2007 @ 6:42 pm · Filed under <a href="http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/vvvv/tag/code-code/">Code / Code</a></p>
<p>A report in today's New York Times illustrates both the promise and the difficulties of (legal) code as (software) code (<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/21/us/21guns.html">U.S. Rules Made Killer Ineligible to Purchase Gun</a>). Apparently, slight discrepancies between the wording of Virginia and federal laws that disqualify the "mentally defective" from purchasing a handgun created a gap that enabled Seung-Hui Cho to purchase the weapons he used to carry out his killing spree:</p>
<blockquote>...[T]he form that Virginia courts use to notify state police about a mental health disqualification addresses only the state criteria, which list two potential categories that would warrant notification to the state police: someone who was "involuntarily committed" or ruled mentally "incapacitated."</blockquote>
<p>However, Mr. Cho belonged to a third category: "determination by a court, board, commission or other lawful authority" that as a result of mental illness, the person is a "danger to himself or others." Thus, a special justice's order that he seek outpatient care and that also declared him an imminent danger to himself was never transmitted to the federal system of handling background checks for handgun purchases.</p>
<p>The article mentions Representative Carolyn McCarthy's efforts to "automate their criminal history records so computer databases used to conduct background checks on gun buyers are more complete." McCarthy (who happens to represent my hometown) introduced in January <a href="http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?tab=summary&bill=h110-297">H.R. 297</a>. The bill would require state officials to report disqualifications to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) as well as provide funds to fund "establish or upgrade information and identification technologies for firearms eligibility determinations" and "improve the automation and transmittal to federal and state record repositories" disqualifying factors.</p>
<p>Monday's tragedy offers an extreme example of what happens when jurisdictions fail to reconcile discrepancies in their laws. The answer, however, doesn't really lie in information technology. Virginia laws didn't match federal laws, no matter what the technological implementation; no amount of software coding would have changed that. IT can speed up the transfer of information, but an information pipe with no connection on the other side would still be a road to nowhere. Fixing state-federal disconnects will require more than just software code: it will take monkeying around with old-fashioned legal code.</p>
<p>(See also <a href="http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/anderkoo/2007/04/19/the-vanity-of-reason-making-sense-of-the-virginia-tech-tragedy/">my personal response to the Virginia Tech shootings</a>).</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>Original Source: <a href="http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/vvvv/2007/04/21/coding-gun-control/">http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/vvvv/2007/04/21/coding-gun-control/</a></p>
<p>Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/">Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5</a>.</p>
Gene Koo
2007-06-06
Sara Hood
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5
Gene Koo (gkoo@cyber.law.harvard.edu)
eng
Shooting points to need for less restrictive gun laws
By: Danny Mistarz
Posted: 4/24/07
After the tragic events that took place at Virginia Tech April 16, the anti-Second Amendment crowd has once again reared its ugly head. The usual claims of guns causing violence and the necessity to ban personal ownership have come out. But what if one person, a student, a professor, the RA in the dorm, had been carrying a gun? Would dozens of lives have been spared?
The state of Virginia's legislature had a bill proposed last year, HB 1572, proposing that handguns be permitted on college campuses for those persons with proper permits and certification. The bill was shot down in subcommittee, never making it to the house floor. At the time, it was celebrated by a VT spokesman as a stride toward continued public safety. Was the wrong decision was made? Guns are used 2.5 million times in self-defense annually, saving approximately 2,575 lives for each life lost annually according to the Second Amendment Foundation; could HB 1572 gave saved thirty-one lives on the morning of April 16, or even just one?
Let's assume that guns were permitted on campus at Virginia Tech, and that one student or one professor in the engineering building was carrying that day. This coward would never have been able to level a gun on hundreds of his classmates had he known there was the possibility of having to defend himself. What if a student on the hall of the dormitory had a gun, just in the room for protection? Certainly the first two gunshots, would have been heard and within a minute of the start of a rampage, 31 lives could have been saved. All it would take is one person, carrying one gun.
No gun law could stop people who want to get guns from getting them any better than our current drug laws work. Perhaps the gun laws that need arguing against are the gun laws that limit us, not the laws that protect us.
Danny Mistarz
Pratt '09
--
Original Source: <a href=http://www.dukechronicle.com/home/index.cfm?event=displayArticlePrinterFriendly&uStory_id=8436d5a8-6250-459d-b726-78d5453835b3> Duke Chronicle - April 24, 2007</a>
Danny Mistarz
Duke Chronicle
2007-06-24
Sara Hood
David Graham <david.graham@duke.edu>
eng