The Accomplices: Sundance George and Butch Reid and the Virginia Tech Massacre
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
by Greg Palast
He had accomplices. Don't kid yourself: 23-year-old Cho Seung-hui didn't forge his two little pistols in his smithy shop.
He had a dealer, a guns-and-bullets pusher-man who put the heat in his hand, took the kid's money and
pocketed it with a grin.
"Whether you are looking for a pistol for affordable training or simply the excitement of shooting, the P22 is the pistol for you!"
That's the ad on the Walther website for the student-reaper, a Walther .22.
Not that Walther, or its fellow murder-maker, Glock, which crafted the other Weapon of Student Mass Destruction, the Glock 9mm, kept all of the killer kid's money. The gun makers religiously tithe a portion of their grim reapings to their friends in Washington.
This report isn't about gun control legislation or the right to bear arms or any of that sideways crap. This is about a group of co-conspirators who dropped two killing devices into the hands of someone who shouldn't have had access to a plastic spoon.
But before we bring in the suspects for questioning, let's pull back the camera lens for the bigger picture. Because what we saw at Virginia Tech was just a concentrated node of a larger, nationwide killing spree that goes on day after day in the USA. Eighty-thousand Americans take a bullet from a hand gun in any year. Thirty-thousand die. That's one thousand shooting deaths off-camera for each victim at Virginia Tech.
Sundance Bush is right now at the school for his photo op. The President is, "saddened and angered by these senseless acts of violence." But will our senseless and violent President do anything about it? He already has: On July 29, 2005, the US Senate passed, then Bush signed, a grant of immunity from lawsuits for Walther, Glock and other gun manufacturers.
Now, corporations that make hand-guns can't be sued for knowingly selling firearms to killers. Like that? No other industry has such wide lawsuit immunity -- not teachers, not doctors, not cops -- only gun makers.
Here's how Cho got his guns. It's a story you won't hear on CNN. It begins with something known as, The Iron Pipeline. At one end of the Pipeline are states like Alabama where gun laws are loosey-goosey. Gun makers including Glock stuff the 'Bama end of the pipe with far more guns than can ever be bought legally in that state, knowing full well that the guns will be illegally shipped up the pipeline into states where gun laws are tougher. Virginia law prevents "gun-trafficking"; in Alabama, they could care less.
In every state in America, a bar owner is liable to lawsuit if a bartender serves too many drinks and a customer dies in an auto accident. Hand a chainsaw to a child, you're in legal trouble. Until Bush signed the 2005 protect-the-gun-makers law, the same common law against negligent distribution applied to firearms.
Bush was aiming at Stephen Fox. Steven can describe feeling pieces of his brain fly from his skull after a mugger shot him. He's permanently paralyzed. A jury charged the makers of .25-caliber hand guns with negligent distribution -- and Bush went wild.
He was especially worked up because the City of New Orleans sued the gun makers for the cost of hospitalizing cops shot by armaments pooping out the end of the Iron Pipeline. The NAACP joined in the suit with the effrontery to demand the gun-pushers alter their marketing programs to keep their products out of the hands of maniacs and murderers.
Do the gun manufacturers know their .22's are being used for something other than hunting long-horned elk? Every year, the federal Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agency sends 800,000 requests to the gun companies to trace weapons found at crime scenes. As Fox's attorney told me, criminals are a much-valued, if unpublicized, market segment sought out and provisioned by these manufacturers.
But they're safe, the gun-makers, even if we aren't, because of Bush's immunity law. But Sundance Bush didn't act alone. There was Harry 'Butch' Reid, leader of the Senate Democrats, riding shotgun on the immunity bandwagon.
The Walther .22 comes from Austria. Hitler came from Austria, too. The Glock 9mm student-slayer comes from Germany. With the legal protection handed them by Bush and Reid, the two Teutonic weapons profiteers can skip free of legal judgment with that line well-practiced by their countrymen: "We were only taking orders -- for our product."
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This report is adapted from, "Just Put Down that Lawsuit, Pardner, and No One Gets Hurt" in the Class War section of the new edition of Greg Palast's bestseller, "ARMED MADHOUSE: Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of A White House Gone Wild." Order it now at www.GregPalast.com before its official release next week.
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You are an idiot. There is no place to start in how many things are wrong with this. You connect Hitler to everything that comes out of Austria and Germany. Then, you want gun manufacturers held responsible for crimes they did not influence whatsoever. Millions of people carry these handguns in self-defense but the manufacturers aren't rewarded when their gun is used to save lives, only victimized as a scapegoat.
Sir, it's not the gun's fault, or the makers of the guns fault. Objects made of steel and plastic do nothing without the hands of sick individuals like Cho Seung-hui. A gun does not pick itself up, load itself and pull the trigger.
You need to get your facts straight.
"This report isn't about gun control legislation or the right to bear arms or any of that sideways crap." You call legislation and the right to keep and bear arms "sideways crap." I take it that you don't care much for your rights other than your right to free speech, so that you can write useless blather like you have done here.
"Now, corporations that make hand-guns can't be sued for knowingly selling firearms to killers. Like that? No other industry has such wide lawsuit immunity -- not teachers, not doctors, not cops -- only gun makers."
The reason the people manufacturing firearms are not liable for the deaths of every soul from a bullet fired from their creations is because it is in no way their fault. Can you not see, or do you ignore the fact that the one who is responsible for killing another person is the person pulling the trigger.
Guns don't kill people, swords don't kill people, drugs and pills don't kill people. PEOPLE kill people. Actions of people cause death.
If you were put in a position where you needed to defend yourself from a person there was no reasoning with, what would you do? I take it you would simply take a bullet rather than defend your own life, and possibly protect those lives of the people around you.
You end your article with this particular gem. "The Walther .22 comes from Austria. Hitler came from Austria, too. The Glock 9mm student-slayer comes from Germany." This type of non-sequitur logic is absolutely useless. You logical fallacies are quite amazing. Statements of this type are dangerously stupid, and sir, the one thing you can't fix is stupidity.
You have to be whacked to talk out of your ass like that. I could understand that if the gun is faulty then you throw a lawsuit. But the gun only kills people if it's in a person's hands. You are talking in such a small scale it's unbeleivable. Why don't you talk about how brazil and england banned guns and crime rate rose almost 125%. Get your facts straight. Oh and by the way,I would love to see a .22 caliber pistol bring down an elk jack ass.
I would rather have a firearm and never use it, then to need one and never have it .
ps. One bullet left, Save it for yourself.
your a fucking moron... you want to stop mass killings and stop school shooting... arm teachers and professors and have hand gun training classes at the college to teach people how to defend themselves and other with a gun.
There are so many things wrong with this article, I can't even cover them all, but I will point this one idiocy out for you. Comparing lawsuits against firearms manufacturers to malpractice or other similar types of lawsuits is a pointless and ignorant thing to do. When a surgeon gets drunk and tries to operate on someone, it's his responsibility to pay for his stupid and deadly actions. If a bartender knows someone is too drunk, it's his responsibility to stop giving him drinks and make sure he doesn't drive home from the bar. When a firearms company makes and sells a gun, they are required by law to ensure that the person who buys it can do so legally. They have no control over what is done with it after they sell it (legally). The companies don't sell illegally because it's more profitable for them to sell to law abiding citizens than criminals. The issue and the responsibility for illegal firearms sales lies with FFL dealers (and unlicensed dealers) who sell firearms they bought legally from companies to unauthorized purchasers. You don't sue alcohol companies because their alcohol was the type served by the bartender to the over-intoxicated patron, do you? Blame the people who need blaming, instead of making things harder for the rest of us by dragging firearms manufacturers through a legal and financial shit-hole.