For those who want to stop the "mentally ill" from firearms
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Bartholomew Roberts
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F4GIB said:
I think that misrepresents the issue just a wee little bit. As you'll notice, the title of the document is "Commitment Manual" and it is meant as legal guidance for psychiatric professionals who are dealing with committing someone to a mental institution. So to suggest that you must "avoid the mental health system" at all costs is simply ridiculous, especially since you noted in the very next line that voluntary treatment is completely exempt from the 922(g) restrictions.
No, it means in ordinary English that the facts of the case are important as to whether or not you fall under 922(g). If I yell at someone "I'm going to punch you in your fat face!" that is assault in Texas. If I punch someone in the face, that is also assault. If I pound their head against the concrete until their skull caves in, also assault. However, the different sets of facts are likely to result in different outcomes.
As a legal document, all the lawyer writing it can do is look at what cases have come before courts and guess as to how courts might handle similar situations. If your facts are different from those cases or few courts have handled a similar situation, then often the most you can say is "Maybe." You stated you were a lawyer earlier, so you must be familiar with this.
Are you suggesting that our government is doing the same thing currently? If not, are you suggesting that it is better not to commit the mentally ill at all rather than run that risk? If you are not making either of those arguments, then what? How would you suggest the issue of involuntary commitment be handled?
You mean the posting that was thoroughly debunked earlier in this thread?
NRA sold NICS because the alternative was the five-day waiting period provided by the Brady Bill legislation.
One aspect of the duties performed by the BATFE conflicts with your interpretation of your constitutional rights (unless of course you feel there is constitutional affordance of protection for home whiskey-making, pipe-bombing abortion clinics, etc.).
The police enforce arguably unconstitutional gun laws in addition to the rest of their duties; do you advocate their abolition as well?
pcosmar
member
CFriesen, That may be the meaning today, but it will very well be different tomorrow.
These and all other laws to restrict firearms, are about restrictions, not to protect ownership.
More restrictions will be added, they always are.
These and all other laws to restrict firearms, are about restrictions, not to protect ownership.
More restrictions will be added, they always are.
What will it be tomorrow?
And you are absolutely correct it is about restricting ownership; ownership by individuals who have DEMONSTRATED mental instability to the extent that they are a serious physical danger to themselves and others. Bizarre concept.
pcosmar
member
Anything a gun grabbing bureaucrat wants it to be.
The definition can be changed, without changing the law.
pacodelahoya
Member
You molon labe types just don't get it. The .gov is only here to help us as we are not able to help ourselves. Why, they would never dream of lying or playing politics or maybe taking a law written in regard to one thing and using it as a blanket to restrict all things(commerce clause). 
As for me, I'm gonna turn in all my guns as soon as they ask for em cuz you know if it saves just one child.....
Excuse me while I go practice my boot licking.
As for me, I'm gonna turn in all my guns as soon as they ask for em cuz you know if it saves just one child.....
Excuse me while I go practice my boot licking.
expvideo
Member
This is a tough question to answer, becuase it's a stepping stone in the direction of disarmament. While I think it is important for people that a judge or psychiatrist has determined to be a "danger to themselves and others", if you just ue the label "mentally ill", then soon enough the antis will have it so that "mentally ill" includes anyone who has ever been diagnosed with Bipolar disorder, ADHD, attention deficit disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, depression, or even anyone that's ever been prescribed prosac!
I think it's important that we push for restrictions against mentally ill people from obtaining weapons, but it's even more important that we keep a very tight leash on what is considered "mentally ill". I know a lot of people that have ADD or OCD, etc that are completely normal and I would trust with a handgun. But on the other hand there are a lot of people with severe paranoid schitsophrenia (sp?) that probably should be hospitallized and kept away from weapons.
My point is, barring "mentally ill" people from owning firearms is dangerous if you aren't careful of what we let the antis label as such. Because as it was said earlier in this thread, 26% of americans are mentally ill. That doesn't mean that all of them should be barred from firearms ownership.
Let's be very careful in arguing this. The issue with Cho wasn't the gun laws. if the judge had had him committed, like he SHOULD HAVE, then the NICS check would have been denied. It wasn't the law that was the problem. As usual, it was lenient sentencing.
pacodelahoya
Member
Let me get this straight, do you still beat your wife?
Bartholomew Roberts
Member
The law also applies to mental incompetency. What do we do with someone who is simply mentally incompetent but doesn't pose a danger to society? Should they be locked up? If they aren't locked up, should they have the right to buy a firearm by virtue of not being locked up?
Let me give another example. A lot of people with serious illness can function just fine with medication and therapy. There was a guy in Oklahoma I vaguely knew who was always a little strange but only began to show serious signs of illness in his mid-30s. He was put on medication and did just fine. He held down a job, paid taxes, drove a car. Off his meds, he had a tendency to wave a screwdriver or knife around and threaten people. He went off his meds twice in five years - both times he was shot by police (deservedly so sadly) and the second time was also a permanent cure for his illness and any other problems he was suffering from.
Should this person have been locked up from the time of his initial diagnosis almost 10 years earlier? How about after the first incident (five years or so into the illness)?
Trifler
Member
Very well. I am not a Psychologist so I will accept your definition change.
I'm not either Trifler. I'm sorry if it sounded smarmy, it wasn't intended as such.
I just think most folks on either side of the debate hear trigger words(such as bipolar) that the media has brainwashed us all with and freak out without knowing the reality. Try walking into a room and telling folks you're a bipolar ex-Marine and see how many nervous glances you get. A lot of it is about fearing what we don't understand.
I took my RKBA for granted until the tragedy at VT. Now, I'm scrambling to catch up. I don't feel myself to be a threat to the public at large or myself...with or without firearms. I owe a lot to the discipline I learned as a marine and taking karate from a ruthless instructor for several years before being diagnosed. I can't vouch for anyone else.
I do feel very passionately about my rights and everyone's rights. Instead of a complicated and costly system that will not/(has not) gotten the job done I think we have to err on the side of freedom. And instead of giving up freedom for security....we have to give up some security for freedom.
TearsOfRage
Member
I think you kinda have to have OCD to be really good at some shooting sports.
They most certainly are when and where it is uncontrolled (or there is persistent transient uncontrollability) and accompanying and compelling acts and/or expressions of imminent risk of causing greivous physical injury or death to themselves or another person.
Bartholomew Roberts
Member
You would probably have been better framing it as "Does more gun control keep killers from killing?" The way you phrased it keeps the focus on firearms where the other side wants it to be instead of the point you are trying to make.
You can see the obvious dilemma though - if you argue that anyone who can't be trusted with a firearm be locked up, then you are arguing for a great deal of Americans to be locked up. If you suggest that they are able to roam free among us with no gun control, then you are saying that should roam free among us with access to firearms. That is a tough sell even on a gun rights board like this to people like me who own firearms that even some NRA members would be uncomfortable with. Do any of you honestly believe you can sell that to the public at large successfully?
Yet that is the argument that many here are demanding the NRA make in the wake of the Virginia Tech. Giving the choice of forcing the NRA to take up a fight it will certainly lose or face losing support and membership doesn't sound like something that will strengthen RKBA to me. It seems particularly foolish to demand that the NRA take a public stand on this when the bill has been dying quite nicely on its own the past five years.
It seems to me like a lot of people need to spend less time preaching to like-minded people on THR and more time preaching to their fence-sitting neighbors. If they did, I think they would have a more realistic viewpoint of why this is bad fight to have right now (especially when we don't have to fight it).
I agree, but I believe as you yourself have posted, many don't fully understand the newly proposed situation and are only going to go out and spread disinformation. I came here for discussion, information sharing and debate so I can prepare before I go out looking for converts.
Bartholomew Roberts
Member
Yes, that is a good point that I can't disagree with. You can't make an argument well if you don't know and understand both sides.
Bartholomew Roberts
Member
F4GIB, can you give an example where someone in the above circumstance was prohibited under 922(g)? Can you give any case where someone was prohibited under 922(g) without an adversarial hearing with counsel?
Before all the gun controls were enacted back in the early 60's and you could walk into a department store and buy a gun without permits or licences how much of a problem did we have with mentally ill people getting guns and going on shooting sprees? How many school shootings were there?
Vermont has basically no restrictions and they always rank as one of the safest places in the nation.
The anti-gun crowd will use every deceitful method they can to disarm us and many in our government are of the same ilk. It would be wise not to trust them and we should not allow any more laws and in fact we should demand removal of all ineffective laws.
The answer is whoever chooses to carry may carry and if someone does try to use a gun or any weapon with criminal intent they can be stopped on the spot.
Vermont has basically no restrictions and they always rank as one of the safest places in the nation.
The anti-gun crowd will use every deceitful method they can to disarm us and many in our government are of the same ilk. It would be wise not to trust them and we should not allow any more laws and in fact we should demand removal of all ineffective laws.
The answer is whoever chooses to carry may carry and if someone does try to use a gun or any weapon with criminal intent they can be stopped on the spot.
ctdonath
Member
Who gets to define "mentally ill"? and the consequences thereof?
Guys, mental illness does NOT neatly line up with Western philosophies of law, reason, freedoms, and rights as expressed in literary and legal documents. There are no clear dividing lines - heck, there aren't any decently straight fuzzy lines. There's also too much existing law and precedent that, as others noted, can very quickly make a very short one-way legal trip to lifetime prohibitions.
There WILL be errors in implementing a solution to the issue. Which errors would you rather live with? nuts with guns? or disarming the sane? There is no clean solution.
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