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| Janet Delana stands at the grave of her husband,Tex C. Delana, in Lexington, Mo., on Dec. 14, 2016. Tex Delana was shot and killed by his daughterColby Sue Weathers, who had paranoid schizophrenia.(Christopher Smith / The Washington Post) |
Do President Trump and Congressional Republicans have any sense of what’s right and what’s wrong. In respect to the possession of guns (and in many other ways as well) they do not. They have successfully blocked every effort to strengthen background checks and to ban the sale and possession of assault weapons and large capacity ammunition clips/magazines.
The Senate voted February 15 to block an Obama era regulation that prevents people with mental disorders from purchasing firearms.
Republican Representative Richard Hudson of North Carolina introduced a bill, the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017, which would allow anyone with a valid carry permit to use it in all 50 states, just like a driver's license.
With a Republican-controlled Congress and a pro-gun President Trump, the prospects of establishing a uniform nationwide right to carry law is probable. The prospects of stronger gun laws are not.
In the case of Janet Delana’s daughter, stronger gun laws could have prevented the killing of her husband.
This is her story. It’s an excerpt but please read the entire piece.
“She called the police. Then ATF. After that, the FBI.
“Janet Delana was desperate to stop her mentally ill adult daughter from buying another handgun.
Finally, Delana called the gun shop a few miles from her home, the one that had sold her daughter a black Hi-Point pistol a month earlier when her last disability check had arrived.
“The next check was coming.
Delana pleaded.
“Her daughter had been in and out of mental hospitals, she told the store manager, and was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. She had tried to kill herself. Her father had taken away the other gun, but Delana worried that her daughter would go back.
“‘I'm begging you,’ Delana said through tears. ‘I'm begging you as a mother, if she comes in, please don't sell her a gun.’
"’Something like what I bought last time,’ Colby Sue Weathers said to the manager, Derrick Dady.
“She seemed nervous, he would recall to police.
“Weathers had a diagnosis of mental illness, but she had never been identified as a threat to herself or others by a judge or ordered to an extended mental hospital stay - which meant she could pass the background check for her gun.
“The Hi-Point pistol and one box of ammunition cost Weathers $257.85 at the Odessa Gun & Pawn shop on the main drag of the small Missouri town about 40 miles east of Kansas City.
“Weathers headed back to the house the 38-year-old shared with her parents, stopping for a pack of unfiltered cigarettes along the way at a gas station. A firefighter who was an old acquaintance saw her acting skittishly and muttering.
“An hour after leaving the gun store, Weathers was back home where her father sat at a computer with his back to her.
“She shot.”
