JACKSON - For the majority in Mississippi, "gun control" means hitting the target at which one is aiming the weapon.
As a gun owner, hunter and one who regards the Second Amendment as a necessary safeguard of both democracy and the defense of one's home and hearth, I tend to be skeptical of most efforts to institute governmental controls over the right to keep and bear arms.
But my career in journalism has taught me on countless occasions that in far too many cases, the wrong person - the emotionally disturbed, the mentally ill, the chemically dependent or the psychopath - ends up in possession of a firearm at great peril to innocent, law-abiding citizens.
The 1997 Pearl High School shooting is one such instance. In that rampage, 16-year-old Pearl teenager Luke Woodham first murdered his mother and then drove to school and killed ex-girlfriend Christina Menefee, 16, and her friend Lydia Dew, 17, before wounding seven others.
Woodham would later blame his murder spree on an unhappy childhood and plead insanity.
Then there was the 2003 shooting at the Lockheed Martin plant in Meridian. In that shooting, disgruntled worker Doug Williams had undergone psychological evaluation for a racially charged argument with a fellow worker less than two years before he went on a shooting rampage at the plant, killing six people and injuring eight before killing himself.
But there have been countless lower-profile murders I've covered over the years that garnered far less state or national media attention, but the results were no less deadly.
Those killings took place in domestic disturbances, barroom arguments, encounters between employers and angry employees and in other scenarios that are less predictable. Years ago, I covered a Mississippi murder case in which one brother killed another over which one of them got the last pork chop at Sunday dinner with their mother as an eyewitness.
Following the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history at Virginia Tech University on April 16, the Bush administration and Congress began working to get states to participate in a federal program designed to keep the mentally ill from buying guns.
Currently, only 22 states provide records of persons with disqualifying mental health histories to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, an FBI database that allows gun dealers nationwide to identify potentially dangerous gun customers before the sale.
The FBI database, set up by Congress as part of the 1993 Brady Bill, functions as a registry of those prohibited from buying guns for reasons ranging from illegal residence in the U.S. to dishonorable discharge from the armed services. The law bans gun sales to those "who have been adjudicated as a mental defective or have been committed to a mental institution."
Virginia Tech shooter Cho Seung-Hui was treated for mental problems while a student, but his case fell through the cracks despite Virginia's voluntarily participating in the NICS reports.
The U.S. House passed a bill last month, backed by the National Rifle Association, that would require state participation in the program and provide $750 million in funding for states over the next three years. The bill faces U.S. Senate action.
Mississippi's delegation should join the NRA in backing this bill. It's no panacea against gun crime, but it's aimed at the right target.
