Another Shooting and the Gun Debate Goes Nowhere

April 17, 2007 — -- Though the mass shooting at Virginia Tech is being called one of the worst in U.S. history, it certainly isn't the only high-profile shooting to spark national debate about the Second Amendment and the issue of gun control.

Politicians have mostly stuck to condolences and words of prayer for the grieving in the hours since the shooting, but if history is any indication, the debate will heat up again soon.

But that same history shows us that even in the face of unfathomable tragedies at the end of a gun barrel, the gears of law move slowly, and that in the end, they may not be very effective at protecting us anyway.

While laws are regularly debated, refined and enacted to prevent gun violence, the issue hasn't changed much in the last 50 years.

Several months before Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed President John F. Kennedy, debate had begun in the halls of Congress over the regulation of interstate firearms trafficking.

Then-Sen. Thomas J. Dodd of Connecticut, was pushing for the bill after a report showed that firearms were rapidly replacing switchblades and "zip guns" -- improvised guns usually firing one shot -- on city streets and were being widely distributed by mail order.

Even then, the well-organized and impassioned members of the National Rifle Association fought to ensure the bill didn't limit the rights of gun owners nationwide.

The assassinations of JFK and Martin Luther King, Jr. brought the issue to the lips and minds of politicians and the public, but it still remained a debate with no tangible results.

On Aug. 1, 1966, Charles Whitman, a former Marine and student at the University of Texas at Austin, climbed to the top of a tower on the university's campus and used a rifle to kill at least 12 people and injure more than 30 before being shot by police.

Again, the incident sparked debate, but still no laws were enacted.

It wasn't until the shooting of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, on June 5, 1968, that the rhetoric reached a fever pitch and went from talk to action.

"I think the time has come when we will have to follow the example of other civilized countries and make the registration of guns compulsory," Dodd told The New York Times in 1968. Unless this is done, he added, "I am profoundly afraid that our land will be the scene of more assassinations and assassination attempts."