Legal Research

Major Online Gun Dealer Touts Campus Self Defense Potential

By David Badertscher, PLL

Source: Crime and Justice News, March 5, 2008.

"Online gun dealer Eric Thompson of Green Bay, Wi., sold the guns used in the shootings at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University. He has no regrets, says the Los Angeles Times. He had no reason not to sell a pistol to Seung-hui Cho, who walked from class to class at Virginia Tech last April, methodically firing 174 rounds. Nor did he have cause to question the sale of magazines and a holster to Steven Kazmierczak, who last month opened fire at Northern Illinois University. "

"His Web sites log thousands of hits a day; hundreds of buyers call his toll-free line. 'I'm a businessman,' he says. 'It's a product. They have a right to have what they want to have.' He has an online forum, GunDebate.com. Thompson, 35, sells 8,700 types of firearms, priced as low as $70 for a surplus rifle and as high as $8,800 for a shoulder-fired, semiautomatic, long-range rifle that takes jumbo .50- caliber bullets. He believes that guns should be allowed on campuses. saying that a teacher or students might have saved lives by stopping or curtailing the Virginia Tech or Northern Illinois killers. 'Otherwise, it's 'Welcome to your killing spree,' ' Thompson says. 'Because there's nothing to stop these shooters.' " 

Los Angeles Times

Full post as published by New York Supreme Court Criminal Term Library on March 05, 2008 (boomark / email).