Instapundit writes about the immigration debate, quoting Mark Steyn to the effect that immigrant advocates who seek to allow their constituents to exit “the shadows” don’t really want to exit them so much that they have to pay taxes like the rest of us — and that, amazingly (but not), the new immigration proposal offers them just that:

[T]his captures the disconnect between Washington officialdom’s view of citizenship, and the view held by actual citizens, something that I think is at the core of the immigration debate. More than hostility to illegal immigrants, I think a lot of the backlash is driven by the sense that Washington insiders don’t really value what ordinary law-abiding people do by way of living their lives and, you know, abiding by the law.

A nice point.  That and rising hostility to just about everything about “Washington insiders.”

This morning I attended a breakfast seminar on insurance issues relating to technology, two areas of my interest and practice, sponsored by the Lowenstein Sandler PC, the great New Jersey law firm where I — after spending years as an “associate” — became a lawyer. It is one of the seemingly scores of firms where I have worked (it’s really something only slightly more than half a dozen) and I have not stayed in close touch. I went to a reunion once, which was nice; but you usually move apart from people personally when you part from them professionally, and all the more so when they are moving along at a different speed from yours entirely.

I watched with wonder when its star litigator, Ted Wells, pulled out of the Lowenstein orbit and basically was plopped by God into the leadership of the law firm that regards itself as His very own, Paul Weiss. I knew him, a little, and it while it was because Lowenstein could not contain Ted’s practice that he moved across the Hudson, it was, as my friend and mentor Bruce Shoulson would remark whenever asked, a fine testament (and a fine bit of business) that someone of Ted’s stature stayed at a firm in the suburbs of Essex County as long as he did. Ted became a little more famous earlier this year when he represented Scooter Libby, and his high level of achievement was as usual a reminder of my bittersweet relationship with our old firm.

But Lowenstein, Sandler, Kohl, Fisher & Boylan, a Professional Corporation, which was what the firm was called when I worked there and when Lowenstein, Sandler, Kohl, Fisher and Boylan were all firmly ensconced in their offices in Roseland, New Jersey, is never all that far from my mind. It is high up in my crowded “what if” file (I did leave under my own power, but the next stop was a disaster only slightly of my own device) and also in most cases the place where I refer people looking for the best New Jersey lawyers, especially in corporate law, even though I worked at another very fine firm in the state later, and for longer.

Another reason I never forgot Lowenstein, though, was Lowenstein — Alan Lowenstein, the firm’s founder, who was already in semi-retirement when I worked there but was in and around and very much the avuncular firm presence during that time. We would eat in the cafeteria together from time to time, and he was generous with his time and his attention, this man old enough to be my grandfather who had founded a firm that then had about 120 lawyers, half of its present size. He even seemed to have genuine insight into me, my career and what my future strategy might be, and he was probably right about it. It was a little like the relationship I had fostered with the great former Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals, Stanley Fuld, when he was of counsel at the white shoe New York firm where I had started my career, where no one under 40 but me seemed to realize who was padding around the halls looking for a reason to be needed. But only a little; Mr. Lowenstein was not quite so Olympian, nor so old, and in no way so bored.

Over time, though, the name partners of the firm moved into various other forms of retirement, including Matt Boylan, the name partner to whom I was closest (both in terms of our relationship and our styles of work) and who was probably my biggest fan in the firm both during and after my service there. Now the firm leadership was largely made up of lawyers who had been associates, even new hires, when I was there, and it was less, not more, comfortable for me because of that. But this time I decided to accept the invitation to a seminar because it was so closely allied to my practice interests, and while it was a bit dreary — as any talk involving insurance in a room largely full of risk managers will be — it was worth it for what I learned.

And on the way back I remembered vaguely that a few weeks ago I had wondered how Mr. Lowenstein was doing, and whether I would know when his time came, and if I would be able to honor him for the small part he played in making a callow litigation associate feel like a mensch in a great institution.

Alan Lowenstein died yesterday at age 93.

Did you wonder about this minor detail: That Seung-Hui Cho was pretty much worked up by “mental health professionals” and yet got an instant green light on his federal “background check” before buying the guns he used to commit 30 murders? I’m sure you did. Here’s how:

A court-ordered mental health evaluation of Virginia Tech mass-murderer Seung-Hui Cho in December 2005 found him “mentally ill and in need of hospitalization” and “an imminent danger to self and others.” But that never showed up in computer records when he went to buy his gun.

“We ran a state police background check,” said Roanoke Firearms store owner John Markell, whose store sold Cho a Glock 19 handgun. “It came back clean.”

Federal law is fairly clear. According to the “Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act” that became law in 1993, anyone who “[h]as been adjudicated as a mental defective or committed to a mental institution” is prohibiting from purchasing a firearm.

The definition of a “mental defective” includes anyone whom “a court, board, commission, or other lawful authority” has determined to be “a danger to himself or other” because of “marked subnormal intelligence, or mental illness, incompetency, condition, or disease.”

Cho might seem to qualify as a “mental defective” by that definition, but FBI spokesman Steve Fischer said it’s up to each state to determine who qualifies a “mental defective.” And Virginia chooses to draw its lines in a way that didn’t include Cho, even though he was found “mentally ill” and “a danger to self and others.”

That sounds kind of like some bad line drawing. Very, very bad.

This has very little to do with gun control and everything to do with the very delicate interlocking relationships between civil liberties, mental health, medicine, government, finance — and the people who wear the hats with all those names on them.

Still, if you have a standard, regardless of what words are used to label it, that is the mental-health criterion for whether someone is allowed to buy a gun, and some government agency, somewhere, makes a finding that a given person is “mentally ill” and “a danger to self and others,” it’s just negligent not to recognize that this criterion has been met — and to apply it.

And gun control advocates, here’s where you chime in and say: This is just another example of what happens when we depend on government to protect us (new link) whether on guns or anything else. “Don’t worry,” says the state. “One thing we can promise you is no nuts are going to buy guns legally any more.”

“Don’t worry” is what children, husbands and the government say when you should “Worry.”

UPDATE: Krauthammer deals with some of the issues (via Insty).

When you’re a carpenter, of course. And when you’re a Second Amendment enthusiast — the real kind, not the mildly interested in the topic kind such as I am — every nightmare shooting is proof of how bad gun regulation is. But a smart guy like Instapundit?:

These things do seem to take place in locations where it’s not legal for people with carry permits to carry guns, though, and I believe that’s the case where the Virginia Tech campus is concerned. I certainly wish that someone had been in a position to shoot this guy at the outset.

. . . . And reader John Lucas, who works with a Virginia law firm, emails that Va. Tech is a “gun-free zone.” Well, for those who follow the law. There was an effort to change that but it failed: “A bill that would have given college students and employees the right to carry handguns on campus died with nary a shot being fired in the General Assembly.” That’s unfortunate.

Glenn, Glenn, Glenn! College students are not cowboys or sharpshooters! What are you thinking? College students barely wear clothes and you want them packing heat and picking off crazed mass murderers? And professors? Give me a break!

I like the concept of “concealed carry” for streets… bars…. places where adults can get in trouble. (I’ve never touched a gun but I’m told they’re useful.) The empirical support for it as a policy is solid. But let’s not get ridiculous — implementing it here almost certainly would not have saved anyone today.*

Gun control doesn’t kill people. People kill people.

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*Last clause added for clarity.  I am not arguing for gun control.  I am arguing against fantasy.