Bush Signs Gun Control Law

Even a pro-gun, NRA lovin' Republican like Bush has to recognize there is an occasional need for gun laws:

President George W. Bush signed the nation's first new gun-control legislation in 14 years Tuesday to help keep guns out of the hands of the dangerously mentally ill, and Rep. Carolyn McCarthy immediately announced she would take her crusade to the next step.

This time, she and others want to close the so-called "gun show loophole" that allows some dealers to sell firearms without background checks.

The Mineola Democrat, elected on a platform of gun control after her husband was slain in 1993 by a gunman on the Long Island Rail Road, said she hopes her next effort doesn't take as long.

[...]After years of being stalled in the Senate, the bill gained momentum in the spring after Virginia Tech student Seung-Hui Cho mowed down 32 people with two recently purchased guns -- even though a judge's finding that he was "a danger to himself" should have disqualified him from buying weapons. Cho killed himself after the rampage. In the Long Island case, the gunman also was able to purchase firearms despite his diagnosis as a paranoid schizophrenic.