How do you feel about making it easier to flag people as crazy in the NICS system?

[Lonestar]

The more I am hearing about this guy and the people he went to school with the more I am getting frustrated. His roommates knew he was nuts, delusional and stalking women. Teachers seen that he was nuts, writing violent plays and signing his name with just a "?". Cops and Campus security knew this guy for various reasons. Every time he was referred to the campus counselor. The kicker is he told the one roommate that he was thinking about suicide, and the roommate called the campus cops and what did they do??? REFER HIM TO THE COUNSELOR , AGAIN?!?! The boy should have been committed for 48 hours or he should have been kicked out of school.

I'm not 100% sure if it is already done, but if you have a restraining order against you, that should pop up. However I don't think if you were ever involuntarily committed that will not show on your background check per HIPAA medical privacy act. That piece of info should be on the background check. You cannot rely on the guy to be honest when he is checking off the "are you mentally stable" question. Everyone should have the opportunity to heal, but if you were committed within the last year, I don't think it is safe for you to own a gun.

The first line of defense in keeping guns out of nutsjobs hands are the gun shop owners. I saw the interview of the guy who sold him the gun, and he looks troubled by what happened. Some shop owners would sell a gun to every Tom,Dick, and Harry that walk in, but I'm assuming this guy took pride in weeding out the bad guys and nutjobs. He seems upset that he did not catch the guys mental state. Every gun shop owner has the right to turn you away, if they think you are up to no good.

 

[JohnL2]

Now you are drifting towards Orwell territory my friend...

I know plenty of crazy people. Maybe not so much in a bad crazy but just by the grind of life. Life and people can do that to you.
We all know them. They're neurotic, a bit irrational on certain things. That's just people.
Now... you want to catalog and flag all these people??? How many lifetimes do you have?

Hell, I'll admit I'm a little crazy. Damn straight. But at least I am aware of it.
I like to think it keeps me from being boring.
Ultimately, it's how you carry yourself.

 

[Outlaw Man]

If someone is crazy enough to not be trusted with a gun why is that person allowed to roam the streets?


Honestly, I don't want someone analyzing me to see if I can be trusted with at gun. As soon as they don't like me or my ideas that answer will be "no." That is totally unacceptable.

I agree with abolishing NICS. I already have a gun. If I want to kill someone denying me a new gun isn't going to stop me. Of course, if I'm going to kill a bunch of people and then myself I'm not going to have any issues with stealing a gun, either.

 

[Autolycus]

So will this prevent crazy people from getting guns?

I mean the fact that a persons status as a felon prevents them from getting guns does, right?

No new laws are needed. Crazy people and criminals will find ways to do what they will regardless of the law or sanctions placed on them.

 

[bdutton]

The mroe I hear about the shooter the more I think that the VA Tech administration totally dropped the ball. The KNEW this guy was a whaco. He was being tutored privately because the other students could not stand to be in the same room with the guy. Students who did try to befriend him were given the cold shoulder. We was stalking girls.

There SHOULD have been a restraining order on him and that would have raised flags with the NICS.

 

[ARTiger]

More than being a gun issue, this is a problem of our view of the dangerously mentally ill as simply being sick like any other health condition.

People treated for serious mental health conditions such as schizophrenia, severe depression, etc. should have "records" just like convicted criminals. Not the soccer moms on anti-depressants but folks with real illnesses. The days of old style sanatariums where the truly wacky are confined are long past. Most of the mentally ill are treated on an outpatient basis and left to make their own way in society.

Since the psychiatrists surely will not cooperate in disclosing their patient information, one method would be to require positive ID and report sales on hard core psychiatric drugs dispensed. That information should then be included in NICS, driver licensing, etc.

As it is now, public schools are REQUIRED to allow most severely mentally ill children to attend classes along with everyone else lest they "discriminate". As the children age it becomes a situation where we have some really dangerous kids sitting right next to ours in school. This philosophy/mandate carries through to colleges and we end up with situations like what just happened.

There are no checks and balances to protect society at large from the severly mentally ill because we are so worried about discriminating against ANY class of people no matter their danger. Restricting their access to guns with more than a box to check on an ATF form obviously makes good common sense.

More than that we need to fund mental health programs adequately and demand that really dangerous folks are confined when necessary and at least monitored. Access to guns for the genuinely crazy is not the entire problem so much as access to open society as a whole. Will never happen though.

The whole liberal/civil rights clique would go ape **** about the discrimination. They need to realize though that there's a steep price to be paid for their bleeding heart neglect of this situation. Sadly 32 people just paid an installment of the cost.

 

[foghornl]

NOT! ! ! !


The NICS system is goofy enough as it is. Any tampering/tweaking/modifying to "fix" the thing will only mess it up worse than it currently is.


{Software Basic Thingy 101...any upgrade is a 'downgrade' in terms of reliability and usefulness}

 

[Michael Courtney]

If a person is so loony as to not trust them with a gun, neither should they be trusted to vote. The rights of citizenship go together. There must be due process for removing the rights of citizenship, and this should be determined on a case-by-case basis before a court of law where the citizen in question has the usual rights to representation and to compel testimony on his behalf.

Michael Courtney

 

[MD_Willington]

CCCP did this, and far worse things than being denied a firearm happened to those poor individuals, slippery slope, double edged sword etcetera...

Think of it this way... they flip it around and figure you're likely to become a drunk driver because you rented a few kegs for some BBQ's...

Guess what if they perverted that ruling far enough, you're stuck with a bus pass, banned from automobile ownership and stuck attenting mandatory AA meetings...

 

[gm]

I believe any run ins that involves violence of any sort,i.e. domestic violence,restraining orders,assault/battery ect are already included,but this still would only have prevented him from LEGALLY getting a weapon,he could just as easily found another means to carry out the event,i.e.explosives.


The problem is that some folks can use the fact that you have a hobby in firearms and use that against you, should you get on the bad side of a neighbor or family member.Then it becomes a whole other issue but these things are already used so my answer is no.


I agree with oleg.

 

[Pixel]

No way. It's far too slippery a slope from "flagged for going insane and killing nuns" to "flagged because he acted like an a-hole to the wrong doctor/judge/LEO" to "flagged because he thinks people should be able to defend themselves using deadly force and obviously, THAT is NUTS."

Also, I am completely opposed to government tracking of not just mental health treatment, but gov't tracking of ANY medical treatment I receive. Failing public health menaces like tuberculosis, my health is the business of two people: myself and my doctor.

 

[ryoushi]

It's amazing the similarites between the Virginia Tech shooter Cho Seung Hui and Virginia Senator, James Webb. Webb has written disturbing material containg graphic violence and pedophilia. Webb also owns guns and extra magazines. Most disturbing of all, Webb has a history of being an anti-social, violence prone hothead.

I hope the people in charge of Senate security are taking this threat to the public's safety seriously.

 

[hso]

It essentially already covers this to the extent that it can without violating civil rights (more than it does already).

What failed were the individuals that should have potentially had him charged with felony arson or charged with stalking or filed for a restraining order or had him non-voluntarily commited for evaluation. Those would have then gone into the database that NICS would have seen and he would have been denied on the purchase. Heck, if a couple of things had happened that needed to he would possibly have been in custody before he had a chance to do this. The failure isn't with NICS, but the folks that let him go and go and go.

 

[budney]

How do you feel about making it easier to flag people as crazy in the NICS system?

I don't care what they do with the NICS system. As long as the shut it down completely.

--Len.

 

[SteveS]

The whole liberal/civil rights clique would go ape **** about the discrimination. They need to realize though that there's a steep price to be paid for their bleeding heart neglect of this situation. Sadly 32 people just paid an installment of the cost.

So, exactly who should be locked up in sanatariums? Should it be people that have actually done something, or should it be people that maybe will do something? I guess it is ok to trample some civil rights if it will make people feel safer.

I am for providing effective treatment and protecting the public, but there are good reasons why many of the sanitariums were closed and not all of them are financial. Some of the conditions were inhuman. I think we need to think carefully before we start suggesting that people be confined.