Artilce re background checks and records

[12many]

I usually don't post links, but I thought this was a good one about backgrounds checks, which I think are ok, and the recording keeping that certain people want to verify that a background check was done. Best article I have seen on this issue. Seems to me that record keeping = registration, which is not so good. But, do the gun stores keep the records of who buys what?

http://news.yahoo.com/deal-elusive-expanding-gun-background-checks-224444066--politics.html


Also, want to vent about the bill that provides money for video cameras in schools. How the heck is that going to help. That will not stop anything. I can't even beleive that is a serious proposal.

Seems to me like the issue is how best to we keep the guns out of the hands of the mentally ill people who do these teribble acts without violating the 2nd amendment rights of everyone else. The focus should not be the gun, but the mentally ill people.

 

[Twiki357]

"Record keeping that certain people want to verify that a background check was done."

That's what's called registration. That's what precedes confiscation.

 

[ThorinNNY]

Many years ago, people who had severe mental illnesses and posed a real danger to themselves and /or others were committed to mental hospitals where they received both long term treatment and custodial care.
That all changed when people like Senator Edward Kennedy, aka "Ted" pushed laws thru congress that mandated people who had mental illnesses were to to be placed in the least restrictive environment possible.
It lead to the closing of many mental hospitals, cuts in funding for the ones remaining. Severely ill people were discharged, given some pills and told to repoert to an outpatient clinic. Most never did report back and wound up as homelss people living on the streets and the clinics didn`t have the means to bring `em back.
Apparently, today it`s really tough to have a mentally ill person committed for long term treatment. It`s being run as a sort of catch and release program.And until mental health laws are changed cities are going to have to deal with ever worsening problems caused by people who are too sick to function in society and choose to live the precarious life of the mentally ill homeless vagrant.
We don`t need more gun laws , we need laws that allow dangerously ill people to be kept off the streets and under treatment and supervision in long term , secure residential care facilities.Most likely these poor souls are also suffering from a lot of physical ailments due to their greatly diminished capacity to care for themselves.

 

[Pietro Beretta]

That's what's called registration. That's what precedes confiscation.

With this Sequestration they can't afford the confiscation.

 

[Pietro Beretta]

Since we are venting:


One thing about the mental health issue is the dr. patient confidentiality. When information is going to get passed to the state - some people may purposefully not get treatment.

What happens when a Dr. fails to report someone that came in for some kind of mental care, and later committed a crime. Would the Dr. be held liable, what if the Dr. didn't have reasonable cause or belief that his patient may harm someone. Will a jury find it reasonable? Will it be reasonable 10 years after the Dr. visit.

The mental health issue is definitely a problem - as my wife said, someone that would go on a shooting rampage, has some kind of mental health problem. Did that person have signs of mental health issues before?

Heck - my wife says she will beat me with my own legs on a weekly basis - if she flew off the deep end and caused harm to someone - someone would probably say she always had mental health issues, just look at her statement of wanting to beat her husband with his own legs.

Its more than just mental health, something is wrong with America - no its not the guns, video games, moves. A quick look at other cultures will show that even with violent video games, movies, sex, drugs - Americans just have a disproportionate amount of violence for a "developed country."

A lot of people point to the swiss - every home carries guns - but then again, they don't have a standing army, and firearms are not taboo. Also, the argument can also be made that since their citizens are their army, they should be armed, and you cant compare the Swiss to Americans.

Perhaps its the social engineering programing that are public schools is to blame? What has changed in the last 60 or so years - world wars and woman going to work. We now have families where both parents have to work to get enough money on the table. We send our kids to school, to be taught and raised by the public school system - maybe this has something to do with it? Maybe we are not spending enough time with our kids?


Its not JUST mental health. Besides, someone has to go to a Dr. to get flagged for mental health.

Firearms are here to stay, controlling gun violence through regulation fails to stop the violence.

Pu$$y footing around these two issues, the left and right, is not going to help solve any problems.


:banghead:


But I don't have the answers.

 

[Pietro Beretta]

Pu$$y footing around these two issues, the left and right, is not going to help solve any problems.

I should have said, JUST pu$$y footing around these two issues will not solve the problem. It may help, but there will always be some kind of heinous crime with a gun, knife, or bomb. I don't think JUST concentrating on those two issues is the complete picture.

 

[jim243]

The focus should not be the gun, but the mentally ill people.

No one disagrees with this, but how do you tell if someone is mentally ill? And to what degree of illness should be restricted?

If you have depression about losing your dog, are you mentally ill? If you lose a loved one are you mentally ill? If you do not walk under latters because it's bad luck, are you mentally ill? How do you tell if someone is mentally ill, do they have outward appearance differences than you or me? Is there a big red M branded on to their forehead that warns people that they have been judged mentally ill?

Here's the big one, how do you tell if someone is "criminally insane" and doesn't know the difference between right and wrong? These are the people that commit mass murders and cause all the problems that we are now experiencing about gun control.

If you have the answer, I am sure you would get a Nobel Prize for your work in medicine. And a pat on the back from the NRA.

Jim

 

[ThorinNNY]

jim asked," how do you tell if somone is criminally insane?"
You would probably have to devote your life to the study of psychiatry and mental illnesses to answer that one, and even then it would probably more a matter of experience and judgement than say a simple blood test which could prove that because the subject tests postive for substance X, they are both insane and dangerous.

But at the same time, it seems that shooters like Jared Loughner often give off subtle ( and sometimes overt signals) that they are seriously deranged and could possibly be dangerous. IIRC, Loughner had seen a school psychiatrist but nothing productive came from it. Was the psychiatrist guilty of negligence or worse ?

Maybe if people were given more facts (as opposed to wild speculation) about the nature of mental illness and were made aware of danger signals that should be reported to authorities they might have a better chance of preventing things like this from happening. But exactly which authority would you report someone you think is mentally ill and is a serious danger? Could you be sued if after reporting someone, authorities disagree with your threat assessment?

Simply barring people who have judged mentally incompetent from possession of firearms dosen`t neccesarily make them safe enough to left unsupervised. A mentally ill woman killed a man on a NYC subway platform by pushing him into the path of an oncoming train.

On occasion I`ve seen people who seemed to be acting very strangely- all I ever did was keep my distance from them and remain alert.

 

[12many]

Impossible to catch them all, but at the other end is the colorado shooter who was seeing a dr., having school problems, and the Dr. I believe referred him to the police. There is a trigger point for intervention. Another would have been the notebook, which sat in the mail room.

Did the arizone shooter's parents or other know he was mental and know he had a gun. What about some form of help to get guns out of his hands. Maybe raise awareness also, like the newtown shooter where the mom could have been warned / told that if you kid is having issues and stays in the basement all day / night playing shooter games, maybe you should not have guns or you must lock them up. She did not know but maybe if she was educated she would have done things differently.

The rule does not have to be perfect as some propose, but if it improved the problem by 50% it would be great. And it would not take guns away from everyone.

Like drunk driving, don't take booze or cars away from everyone, but agressively target those that are driving crazy or driving odd, and then investigate.

Maybe there are too many mental people out there.

 

[Loc n Load]

Mental Illness - the dividing line

Having retired from a 34 year career in law enforcement and having served in "high incident" jurisdictions, I can assure you that we have a HUGE mental illness issue in our society, but I know of dozens of professional people who have received therapy for depression, anger management, post traumatic stress syndrome, substance abuse issues, etc....these people certainly were not "crazy", but some people including their supervisors and agencies might have taken some type of punitive actions toward them if they had known that they were receiving therapy because of the negative connotation that the term "mental illness" implies. The mental health issue is a very real issue, and unfortunately a complex one that has developed because of a "deconstruction" of our mental health system by special interest group's during the past several decades.

 

[22-rimfire]

Mental health is what they should be focusing on.

Record keeping by the government is Registration. FFL dealers would not maintain records of gun transfers if they did not have to.

Regular non-gun people don't see an issue with a computerized registry as they see this kind of thing on TV shows such as NCIS where it is treated as a fact. The reality is much different from what is shown on TV.

Non-gun people have no problem with a person being required by law to complete transfers at a FFL dealer and the fee is perfectly fine with them. They would use the car license analogy which we all have gotten rather used to. But we are dealing with a constitutional issue with firearms.