>Would prohibiting a law prohibiting people like Seung-Hui Cho from buying guns for a few years really be a step along the road to tyranny? If I'm understandin

>Would prohibiting a law prohibiting people like Seung-Hui Cho from buying guns for a few years really be a step along the road to tyranny? If I'm understanding your use of the double prohibiting correctly - maybe. The devil, of course, is in the details. Once you have a mechanism to declare people unfit to possess guns the reasons for such a declaration will grow in number. You need only look at the behavior of 20th century governments like the USSR to see the way psychiatry was used to marginalize people the government considered a threat. I don't remember the specifics of the Cho case - clearly if someone has made explicit threats or is hearing voices he shouldn't possess a firearm. But there's a huge grey area there - conditions like depression are pretty common in people who function perfectly normally.