PHOTO BY PAULA MULLER
Lynnette Alameddine holds a photo of her son who was killed in the Virginia Tech shootings.
By GAYLA CAWLEY
SAUGUS — A local mother who lost her son in the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting said she was glued to the television during President Barack Obama’s speech Tuesday, when he unveiled his plan to reduce gun violence in the country.
Lynnette Alameddine, of Saugus, lost her son, Ross Alameddine, 20, in the mass shooting that occurred on April 16, 2007. On that day, Seung-Hui Cho shot and killed 32 people and critically injured 17 people on Virginia Tech’s campus before turning the gun and shooting himself in the head.
Alameddine said she was pleased with Obama’s executive action, which included a plan to expand background checks on those people looking to purchase a firearm. Under current law, only federally-licensed gun dealers must conduct background checks on buyers. The president said that at gun shows, websites and flea markets, sellers often decline to register as licensed dealers.
“I am very pleased with President Obama’s executive action,” Alameddine said. “It will save countless lives. It will prevent families from having their world turned upside down by a needless death from someone with a firearm, who never should have had one in the first place.”
Alameddine said there are 88 people killed by firearms in our nation every day. In 2007, when she first started doing advocacy work after losing her son, she said that number was at 32 deaths per day.
“This action is not going to stop everyone, but it will certainly prevent someone from losing their life,” Alameddine said. “Life is precious.”
Obama also plans to hire 200 more Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents and investigators to conduct background checks. He plans to do more to help those suffering from mental illness to get the help that they need and ensure that federal mental health records are submitted to the background check process.
Alameddine said Virginia Tech was the worst mass school shooting in U.S. history. She said Cho, a Virginia Tech student, should have been prohibited from buying a gun after a Virginia court adjudicated him to be a danger to himself in 2005 and sent him for psychiatric treatment.
Despite this court decision, Alameddine said Cho was able to go online and purchase two guns — a Glock and a Walther P22. She said his case “slipped through the cracks” as Cho went to pick up those weapons in a licensed gun store and was put through a background check by the owner, which came back clean. She said both of those guns were used in the massacre.
“My son and all the innocent victims would be alive today if Cho had been entered into the National Instant (Criminal) Background Check System as required by federal law,” Alameddine said.
Alameddine said the pain of losing her son, Ross, doesn’t go away and she thinks of him every day. However, she said her advocacy work to prevent future gun violence through working with groups like Everytown for Gun Safety helps with that pain. For that group, she and other survivors and families of shooting victims just collaborated with NBA stars, and Spike Lee, for a commercial called “End Gun Violence,” which ran during all NBA games on Christmas Day.
“It helps to know that I’m helping others,” Alameddine said.