The legacy of Danny and Cho
Danny was the son of old friends. He was away at college and suffering from depression, but privacy rules barred school authorities from telling his parents that the medication he was taking could cause suicidal impulses.
One day Danny walked into a local gun shop, bought a weapon and killed himself in the parking lot.
We thought of Danny the day a young man slaughtered 32 students and faculty members at Virginia Tech and then committed suicide. Both Danny and Cho Seung-Hui were deranged. Both bought guns as easily as buying shoes. Both should have been stopped from doing so.
During a pause in his bloody rampage, Cho mailed a packet of photos and videos to NBC, which then ran a small portion of the material on its evening news. Critics were outraged, with many echoing the complaint of conservative activist William Bennett: “I don’t think it does any good, and it certainly has the likelihood of doing harm. We don’t need it thrust in our face.”
Bennett is wrong.
Cho’s video does do some good, or at least it should. Two questions have now been thrust in the country’s face that demand attention. How can laws be changed to make it more difficult for mental patients to buy guns? How can college officials be given more power to deal with students who pose a threat to the larger community?
The public airing of Cho’s horrific video rubbed a very raw nerve. But in our view, NBC acted responsibly. They did not grab Cho’s tape and simply throw it on the air. They consulted first with law enforcement officials and then broadcast only a small portion, leaving out the more incendiary and profane parts.
The right goal for any news organization is to find the proper balance between censorship and sensationalism. The news value of Cho’s words and pictures was undeniable. It is not the media’s job to shield the public from material that is “offensive and disturbing,” as long as that material is handled carefully and has some larger meaning.
Bodies falling from the World Trade Center burned a deeply disturbing image in the public mind, but they conveyed the full horror of the terrorist attack. Pictures of dead American soldiers in Iraq might be offensive to war supporters, but they inform the public of the mission’s true cost.
Cho’s story, amplified by his homemade horror movie, has revealed a critical flaw in the system for checking the background of gun buyers. In 2005, the young man was detained by police, examined at a psychiatric hospital, and deemed “mentally ill” by doctors there.
But under Virginia law, Cho was still qualified to purchase two handguns. He was not blocked by federal law, which requires buyers to certify that they have never been judged “mentally defective.”
Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling of Virginia told Fox News that the whole legal situation is murky and confused. Experts don’t agree on what state law requires, he said, and Virginia’s statute conflicts with the national standard.
That has to change. States need to tighten and clarify their rules. Democrats on Capitol Hill are drafting a measure to bolster and finance the system for reporting mental illness to a federal firearms registry. They worry about the power of the gun lobby, but the benefits on this issue are worth the risks. Their position is supported by 83 percent of those surveyed by ABC news.
Laws that bar discrimination based on mental illness are important. But the legacy of Danny and Cho is that other stakeholders — parents, fellow students, the larger community — have rights, too. That’s why college and law enforcement officials need more authority to identify threats to public safety, and keep guns out of their hands.
Steve and Cokie Roberts can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected].