Now, I'm very skeptical of the program to begin with. If someone is too mentally ill to own a firearm, they're too mentally ill to be out amongst the general population. A firearm is but a single tool with which a deranged person can inflict mayhem on their fellow man; prohibiting someone from owning a firearm on the basis of mental illness does nothing to stop them from plowing their car into a crowd, stabbing people at random, or any number of other ways of inflicting mayhem, injury, or death.ATLANTA — More than half the states are not complying with a post-Virginia Tech law that requires them to share the names of mentally ill people with a system of national background checks to prevent them from buying guns, an Associated Press review has found.
The deadline for complying with the three-year-old law was last month. But nine states haven't supplied any names to the database. Seventeen others have sent in fewer than 25, meaning gun dealers around the U.S. could be running names of would-be buyers against a woefully incomplete list.
However, it provides a jim-dandy backdoor method of slowly removing guns from the hands of the law-abiding. Start with "grave danger to themselves or others", then add in domestic violence, etc. Before you know it, wanting to own a gun will be a sign of mental image worthy of disqualification... Again, as with felons who have served their jail sentence, if they're stable enough to walk among the rest of us, they should not be barred the ownership of one type of tool.
And one last parting shot:
The states that have failed to submit any mental health records are: Alaska, Delaware, Idaho, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and South Dakota.Yeah. The "you're more likely to live here" state of MA, with its draconian gun laws has not complied with the law.
Let me get my shocked face.
That is all.
8 comments:
And all of those are ACLU hotbeds... Just sayin...
But you know what REALLY sucks?
My state of New York has not only *complied*, but has complied to the tune of over 100,000 names...
Thats *one hundred thousand*...
And Herr Bloomberg is *complaining* that other states aren't doing their part to supply names to NY, so that NY can use the database to keep illegal guns off the streets...
::sigh:: I so wish I could afford to move to Virginia....
"If someone is too mentally ill to own a firearm, they're too mentally ill to be out amongst the general population."
Unfortunately, untrue. Due to the abject failure of our mental health system to actually treat the mentally ill instead of and endless cycle of warehousing them, medicating, discharge, no followup care, decompensation, warehousing them...
... there are so many dangerous mentally ill people walking the streets in every city that it should scare the shit out of all of us.
But I'd rather deal with the occasional one obtaining a weapon than the idea of the state barring people from ownership before they're actually adjudicated mentally incompetent.
Jay, you know that this is a topic near and dear to my heart. I actually think it's (arguably) a reasonable law. Remember, this is a court ruling that a person is mentally ill. That's harder than you might think, as TOTWTYTR points out.
I can see how this would trigger "slippery slope" alarms in people (as Dragon points out), but from what I know of the law, it doesn't seem (ahem) crazy.
I wonder if this will lower our (AK's) Brady score?
;)
My second thought after reading this was "At least Jay and I don't have to worry about being Gun Nuts". Hah !
I have a friend who is schizophrenic (and a bona fide genius). He is prohibited from purchasing firearms, which he agrees with as he does sometimes lose judgment. However, I have noted time and time again that his judgment is vastly superior to the "average" or typical American. He is far more aware of his actions and how they affect other people, and despite the raging craziness, his perception is more accurate. I suspect his reluctance to have firearms actually stems from the fact that he's a Californian (and not from the freer parts of the state).
I've had medical professionals tell me that under the HIPPA Act, they don't believe they can legally share mental health info with NICS since it is considered part of their medical record.
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