OhHellWithIt's Journal: Guns and drugs

I bought some pseudoephedrine hydrochloride tablets yesterday. I had to show my driver's license to the pharmacist and have my name and address entered in a book, like I was buying some dangerous drug, maybe Oxycontin or morphine. Until a year or so ago, these cheap little tablets were freely available in bottles of 100 right there on the shelf with all the other cold and allergy remedies. Now they're blister-packed and kept behind the counter the way they used to keep the condoms, because some jerks out there figured out they could make "crystal meth" with these tablets. The pills are a godsend for people like me with allergies and sinus problems. But the largest box CVS will sell me contains 96 tablets, which is not quite a ten-day supply.

Coincidentally, yesterday was also the day that my kid's math teacher returned to school. The teacher lost her daughter in the shootings at Virginia Tech on April 16th. As you know, the shootings were perpetrated by a deranged university student who legally bought his handguns and a bunch of ammunition from gun stores in Virginia.

Watching the druggist fill out the blanks in the book, I mused on the facts that here in Virginia, any idiot without a criminal record can buy one gun a month and ammunition enough to kill thirty people, but I can't even buy a fortnight's supply of non-prescription decongestant tablets. And I also mused on the fact that Virginia gun dealers object to sting tactics intended to weed out the bad gun dealers, who will happily sell firearms, no questions asked, to Virginia residents who will in turn sell them to people who cannot legally buy them in Virginia. Some of these "straw purchases" end up being used by criminals, just the way some of the little red tablets I take for sinus problems end up being used to make dangerous illegal drugs. Is this screwed up, or what?

I further mused on another fact that came out in the papers last fall, that the number of people hunting in Virginia is declining. I haven't, however, heard anything about gun sales being flat or declining. The divergence of the two curves implies that more guns are being sold that will never be used for the honorable practice of putting meat on the table, but may be used to kill people instead. Meanwhile, the National Rifle Association and the gun industry fight tooth and nail against anything that would make it more difficult for the wrong people to get guns.

I know that even something like gun registration or a waiting period would not have prevented the tragedy on April 16th, but I also know that it would have been less likely had guns not been so easy to obtain. The more guns there are, with no accountability to the owners, the more of them can fall into the hands of criminals and whackos. It ticks me off.

The next time you have to sign your name to get your non-prescription drugs, remember the absurdity that in Virginia you can buy a gun to knock over the drug store, without a waiting period. And if the guy ahead of you in line is fuming about having to wait and present ID to buy a common non-prescription medication, it's probably me.