Virginia is for (Gun) Lovers

Michael Daly writes in the NY Daily News:

Still love those guns, Virginia?

Ready to admit that it's madness for any psycho
to be able to saunter into a gun shop and acquire
firepower capable of killing 32 innocents?
Feel different now that the blood is the blood of
so many of your most promising young people?

You've been shrugging for decades as illegal guns
from your state plague our city, killing and
maiming and terrorizing New Yorkers by the
thousands, at one point comprising 47% of the
guns our cops recovered.

You even yukked it up with a "Bloomberg Gun
GiveAway" raffle at a gun shop that sold at least
22 guns used in crimes in New York.

You went into a tizzy when Mayor Bloomberg
sued some of your gun shops after undercover
agents made fraudulent "straw purchases."

Your idea of gun control has been to pass a law
making it illegal for undercover agents like those
Bloomberg sent South to make such buys.

You seemed to think it was no big deal when an
aide to your junior U.S. senator got caught
carrying an automatic pistol into the Capitol, you
having voted Sen. James Webb into office as an
avowed opponent of gun control.

You had a big debate this year about whether
Virginia Tech was wrong to discipline a student
who was caught carrying a licensed pistol to
class.

Never mind that a Virginia gun license is not half
as hard to get as a driving license.

Never mind that there are so many guns lying
around that an escaped jailbird managed to get
hold of one and kill a cop and a security guard at
the edge of the Virginia Tech campus at the start
of the school year.

Yesterday, the shooting was in the heart of the
campus, which suddenly felt like the the bleeding
heart of the whole nation.

(h/t James Wolcott)