"Fixed that for you."
You get my point, though, that there's some Heisenberg/Loaded Question aspect to the very notion of analyzing (let alone approving!) others' sanity; the fact you are asking the question biases the result.
I'm not saying psychiatrists can't be objective or beneficial, what I'm saying is the type of arrangements these sorts of laws create tend to result in what is essentially a conflict of interest that works against the patient.
"That is how our legal system works. Until they commit a crime and are sentenced during the course of due process to a punishment that includes the loss of rights, a person has full rights."
Sadly, that's not good enough for many people, who cannot abide risk; perceived or otherwise. Very much like gun control, nut control is just 'one of those things' that gets many people to say and do anything that promises self-preservation. The way I have come to rationalize the theoretical toleration of a nut job who could crack and kill me and others at a moment's notice*, has a few facets:
-I respect the nut job as a human being, deserving of the attendant respect and freedom, so long as he reciprocates (personal freedom argument)
-Though his actions could cut short the freedom of myself and others, the greater loss is the real or practical loss of freedom for us all in anticipation of his actions (utilitarian argument)
-There is too much practical difficulty in setting up anything but an arbitrary threshold, before the point violent action has taken place. Ockham's Razor would suggest this is because such a concept is incorrect (logical argument)
-Expanding upon the last point but at a larger scale, there is no way the fixed criteria we would require for a just ruling to be applied to myriad different illnesses (to say nothing of individuals) --by a board of unfamiliar strangers, no less-- and reliably identify & disposition potential threats of this nature without relying almost entirely on a bias towards false positives to remove them from society (legal argument).
-Further, the only way to reliably identify & disposition these threats, provided there
was some perfect Machine God that could tally an individual's deeds, feel their soul, and cast judgment upon their being, it could only arrive at the conclusion after first violating their humanity, utterly. And in such case the result is negative, how do you then reconcile this existential humiliation? (spiritual argument)
TCB
*Not a very intuitive statement, that
. And despite my musings, I fully expect I would be very uncomfortable in such a circumstance, probably prompting me to remove mine/myself from the situation of perceived risk.
"We don't take away 2a rights as a kneejerk reaction to other treatable diseases, do we?"
We've gotten dangerously close to that with Ebola, recently. Being quarantined to a hospital or urban hell-hole isn't exactly a ringing endorsement of your right to bear arms. Unlike 'nuts,' Ebola can actually be diagnosed reliably, given a fairly short time period. The observation window for 'nuts' never really ends, it seems.
"I don't care if they bark at the moon while wearing a coat made out of beer cartons."
Hey! I resemble(d) that remark last week!
