NYT: A Struggle to Disarm People Without Gun Rights (Mentally Ill, Domestic Violence, etc.)

[RamboLiberal]

By law, Roy Perez should not have had a gun three years ago when he shot his mother 16 times in their home in Baldwin Park, Calif., killing her, and then went next door and killed a woman and her 4-year-old daughter.

-----

In the wake of the Tucson shootings, much attention has been paid to various categories of people who are legally barred from buying handguns — those who have been “adjudicated as a mental defective,” have felony convictions, have committed domestic violence misdemeanors and so on. The focus has almost entirely been on gaps in the federal background check system that is supposed to deny guns to these prohibited buyers.

There is, however, another major blind spot in the system.

Tens of thousands of gun owners, like Mr. Perez, bought their weapons legally but under the law should no longer have them because of subsequent mental health or criminal issues. In Mr. Perez’s case, he had been held involuntarily by the authorities several times for psychiatric evaluation, which in California bars a person from possessing a gun for five years.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/06/us/06guns.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp

[defendandprotect]

1. Now categorizing the mentally ill as "terrorists"? Mentally ill re no more violent than anyone else

about 5% -- same as anyone else.

Meanwhile, what of all the males who have shot their wives or S/Os -- were they all

"mentally ill"?

[pnwmom]

4. They may not be. But people who suffer from certain illnesses

-- the Jared Louchners of the world -- shouldn't be trusted with access to guns.

[defendandprotect]

11. People who are mentally ill are no more violent than people who aren't ...

how many males every year shoot their wives or significant others --

how do you judge them -- ? After the fact?

In Canada, you have to register and be licensed to have a gun and you don't

get it until you complete mandatory training -- and then 28 days later, you

get a gun --- BUT ONLY IF YOUR WIFE, OR EX WIFE SAYS IT'S OK!


Many males use guns to shoot their wives or girlfriends -- that's certainly a

form of insanity we need to consider!!

[RSillsbee]

6. I would say yes by definition

Unless you think it's the rational act of a balanced mind to shoot people.

[HankyDubs]

7. you think all soldiers are insane?

I'm not a big fan of the military, but I wouldn't make a blanket statement like that.

[RSillsbee]

9. Have you ever shot anyone?

Unless you are a sociopath it messes w/ you.

I understand your point but even soldiers suffer the after effects of having(as opposed to choosing)to shooting people

[Euromutt]

10. It's one of the reasons the Nazis switched to first gas vans and then to the gas chambers

Particularly during the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, in which the SS Einsatzgruppen, reinforced with regular army personnel (and those from allied forces such as the Romanians), conducted mass shootings of Jews, Communist Party officials, Gypsies, etc. it was found that even the troops who fully bought into Nazi ideology suffered psychological ill-effects from carrying out the shootings.

Oh sure, the factors that it was taking too much time, manpower and ammunition played a part as well, but the fact remains that evidently the most ideological hardening cannot prevent a human being from being bothered by the act of murdering people who are not a threat to the well-being of themselves or their loved ones.

This fact is one of the reasons I consider LTC Dave Grossman's hypothesis of "killology" to be junk science; if even a fresh-faced Wehrmacht recruit, who had undergone at least five years of Hitler Youth conditioning prior to being inducted couldn't handle the idea that the people he was shooting were merely "sub-human," then how the fuck are Grossman's claims going to hold water?

[defendandprotect]

13. Thank you -- and ....

:applause: :applause: :applause:

[defendandprotect]

12. Basically, I think that these days, we're pretty much driving our soldiers insane ....

to get them to kill -- and, of course, after the killing, there's PTSD --

how many of them don't have it?

You really can't do harm to someone else without doing harm to yourself --

[HankyDubs]

2. I thank you

rambolibrul for taking a rational point of view and seeking to explore what kinds of steps we can take to decrease gun violence in our society.

[RamboLiberal]

3. I saw the faces of the mother and grandmother and friends

of a young 22 year old man, Garry Lee, gunned down in a karate studio by a racist mentally ill spree killer who should've never had a gun. I at the time was an instructor/student in one of our other schools. I had attended the wedding of the instructor of that school who saw his student shot down that day just because he was African-American.

So while I'm a gun owner I know a balance has to somehow be found that denies those who shouldn't possess guns from having them. A balance between privacy rights and the rights of the rest of us for police to be notified and confiscate the guns of those who may prove to be a danger to the public.

That awful day in Pittsburgh 5 good people lost their lives, 1 would die years later after being paralyzed. They were shot down simply because they were minorities and some nutty white man of privilege, son of immigrants himself, who believed some nutty RW non-white anti-immigrant crap decided to take his .357 magnum and go on a 2 hour 20+ mile killing spree.

Details of that awful April, 2000 day in Pittsburgh area. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Baumhammers

Also from ADL: Before his shooting spree, Baumhammers visited Tom Metzger’s WAR Web site. (Metzger later characterized him as "a white man" who "decided to deliver Aryan justice in a down home way.") Baumhammers also joined the E-mail mailing list of the hate rock band Aggressive Force, repeatedly visited the popular white supremacist site Stormfront, and downloaded material from hate sites created by members of the neo-Nazi National Alliance.

On the Web site for his fledgling Free Market Party, Baumhammers called for an end to non-white immigration. He stated that "almost all" present day immigration "is non-European," and "the effect of such massive waves of immigration has been disastrous for Americans of European ancestry." Commenting on the 2000 presidential candidacy of former Senator Bill Bradley, Baumhammers wrote, "because of his 'pet theme' of racial harmony and civil rights, European-Americans of all backgrounds should be leery of a Bradley presidency." Baumhammers asked the Council of Conservative Citizens, a prominent racist group, to provide a link from its site to his, and the Council complied.

http://www.adl.org/internet/extremism_rw/inspiring.asp

[bluerum]

5. Agreed. I am also a gun owner who is adamant about making regulation work.

[beevul]

8. Believe it or not, I also agree.

I however take a different tack than some.

I prefer to build a fence, a list of things that will neither be allowed nor tolerated.

Anything outside that fence, is fair game to regulate.

Anything inside = hands off.

I also think there are some controls which are wrongheaded, and done not with any intent to have any meaningful effect on crime or deaths, but are instead aimed at shrinking a culture which some folks do not like, do not approve of, and view as an obstacle.

I support background checks at retail. I support restrictions on violent criminals and felons, I support restrictions on domestic on abusers, provided the threshold is where one gets physical - nobody should be denied a fundamental right for shouting. I'm on the fence as to whether I support the NFA or not, some days I feel like I do, and some days not. I do not support the closing of the nfa registry however. I support the GCA of 1968.

I don't support "Assault weapons" bans", magazine bans, bans on importing semi-automatic rifles, registration, or licensing.

Yet some hereabouts would call me an "absolutist extremist".

I've also lost more friends than I can count on one hand to suicide with a gun, and more than I can count on both hands to suicide in general.

I think its a mistake to assume that people that support gun rights have somehow not seen or experienced what gun control supporters have. I don't think you have made that particular mistake, nor do I mean to imply otherwise, but I do think there are those that proceed from exactly that presumption.

[lawodevolution]

14. Shall-issue CCW is a fantastic common sense form of gun control also, I'm sure the pro gun control

People here would agree.