It is going to happen many more times.

The Americans with Disabilities Act opened up college campuses and universities to tens of thousands of mentally ill nutcases. That law made mental illness a disability that cannot be discriminated against.

There are also numerous other laws protecting the privacy of the mentally ill. These laws keep the rest of the population from knowing the number and the extent of the mental illness of those in places such as college campuses. Laws such as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.

People with mental illness have been granted all kinds of so-called "rights" by the government. That means society in recent years has less legal ability to protect itself from and against those among us with mental illness.

In places like college campuses, the college administrators have no legal authority to keep those with mental illness out of the student body. They even have further legal mandates to protect the privacy of those with mental illness and to also provide them with mental health services.

Virginia Tech for example had 2000 students last year seek mental health services. That is an awful lot of students considering the total student population is 25,000.

I've seen figures as high as 25% of students at some liberal arts colleges seeking mental health services.

Believe it or not, the law says we have no right to know what type of mental illness these people have and what type of treatment these people are seeking.

Even though Cho is dead and after murdering 32 other students and wounding a number of others, Virginia Tech is still protecting his privacy. They will not release his records.

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Since it's been established that had the law been followed Cho would never have been allowed to purchase his weapons, where are the NRA types who were posting in this thread? I'm not provoking you, I'm genuinely interested in your perspective on a documented nut like Cho being able, through inconsistent application of the law, miscommunication, or whatever it was, to "legally" buy guns.

The NRA doesn't have any problem with anyone being kept from purchasing a firearm because of mental illness or mental health issues as far as I know.

Regarding Cho's purchases, there isn't a clear cut definitive resolution regarding his purchases.

The gun shop certainly didn't break the law.

Cho was also ordered to attend outpatient mental health treatment. The doctors also just asked him if he had suicidal tendencies and he said "No". They basically just asked him a bunch of questions. How many nutcases answer "yes" to being asked if they are a nut? That's basically what happened in Cho's case. What good did any of that do? Those doctors sent him right back out the door as fast as he came in.

No mental health flags came up on his background check. I'm sure the State of Virginia will be looking into the technicalities of the law. Something should have come up regarding the judge sending him to outpatient services.

It may seem odd, but the privacy advocates of the mental health industry may have objections to what information is forwarded to the government regarding mental health services.

We'll have to wait and see how all this plays out with the the advocates for those with mental illness and their privacy rights and what information shows up on background checks.

The privacy advocates always claim if something negative shows up on a background check... such as one for a firearms purchase, it can also show up on a background check for employment.