[Undertoad]

A leadership sighting this afternoon. Gov. Rendell was served up the opportunity to connect the Amish shooter's crime with new gun control legislation. Ed Rendell is one of the most anti-gun politicians you will find. But instead of taking the political road, scaring the public in order to move the legislation, he flatly shut the connection down with his honest response: no, even our hardest gun control won't stop the crazies.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIP...03/cnr.03.html

QUESTION: Governor, the state legislature is debating some gun control (INAUDIBLE) the next couple of days. Has...

RENDELL: The question, the state legislature is debating some gun control measures in the next several days, will this change the dynamic? I'm not sure what the thinking of the state legislature is, and I believe, with all my heart, that Pennsylvania needs stronger gun control legislation.

But, I think we should all understand no proposed law, none that I would think of or none that I've seen, could have ruled out this situation. This individual, as the Colonel said, has never had a criminal record, has no evidence on record of mental instability that would barred him from going into a gun shop and buying a handgun or a shotgun, et cetera. So he could have purchased these guns lawfully. We don't know that.

QUESTION: We do know that he purchased the 9-millimeter lawfully?

RENDELL: He purchased the 9-millimeter handgun lawfully. So there is no law out there -- I mean, our biggest push in the legislature is to eliminate straw purchasing. But no one, a month or anything, would have stopped this from happening.

We have -- you know, we have real problems in our society, because we tend to be so much more violent than almost any other country in the world, but -- and I think there are laws that can improve that. But it would be disingenuous for gun control advocates, myself included, to say that this demonstrates for better, stronger laws.