Arizona congresswoman shot

So we should refuse the kid the ability to exercise a Constitutional right because Ballotechnic has a bad feeling about him?

Where is the line. When does social oddity turn to potential killer that needs to be locked away. Do we put the strange goth kids away or how about the kid that spends all day in library reading books instead of talking to friends. Do we only put them way when they make abortion jokes or do we do it when they make racist jokes or jokes about putting babies in microwaves. How many people are kicked out of school or not allowed into the military? Are we really going to check on all of them to make sure they are of sound mind.

Malor wrote:

So we should refuse the kid the ability to exercise a Constitutional right because Ballotechnic has a bad feeling about him?

I'm not advocating incarceration because of his troubles, I spent time working with troubles kids and know the various routes they can take. But it's my understanding that under current federal law only a felony record will prohibit him or anyone similar from purchasing a gun. More specifically, my point is that at the moment he has a number of documented incidentsthat should prohibit him from purchasing a gun, yet because they are not severe enough (ie felonies) he is still allowed to do so.

Baron Of Hell wrote:

Where is the line. How many people are kicked out of school or not allowed into the military? Are we really going to check on all of them to make sure they are of sound mind.

The line or being allowed to purchase or not, based on previously documented psychological reasons (not psych tests for everyone), can be drawn up by a qualified panel of psychiatric experts from both sides of the issue. I would think the NRA certainly does not want this type of publicity and scrutiny.

Or we can just wait until some nebulous, statistically significant threshold is passed and do something then.

And before we start slinging the constitution back and forth, back when the Constitution was written "lunatics" were locked away in prisons to rot and die.

Jonman wrote:
Higgledy wrote:
Paleocon wrote:
Jonman wrote:
Yonder wrote:
Jonman wrote:
Yonder wrote:

England doesn't have any land borders

Tell that to the Scots and the Welsh.

England, the UK, it's all the same :D.

Shut it, you Amerexicadian!

The entire UK is slightly smaller than the state of Oregon. You could fit all of the UK in the Mexican state of Chihuahua.

The UK is a perfectly proportioned country. Anything larger is just excessive.

More than an Oregonful is wasteful?

Yes. I think we could make Oregon the bench mark.

(Here's hoping the Congress woman makes a full recovery.)

So now you want universal psych screening before people can buy weapons? I think you're way over the line of "shall not be infringed".

What guarantee is there that psychiatrists will get it right? My father had a fair bit of exposure to psychiatrists via working in a prison, and he was of the opinion that most of them couldn't find their ass with both hands when it came to understanding who was dangerous. He did classification and intake on new prisoners for several years, and his opinion of psych evals just kept dropping. There were some good doctors out there, and after awhile he learned who to pay attention to, but there were a huge number of total shysters.

Psychiatry, not being a hard art, strikes me as an exceptionally bad screening mechanism for access to a concrete right. And if we try to impose any kind of measurement on the discipline, we will only know when they grant access to weapons incorrectly, meaning that the standards will only tighten, until we no longer effectively have the right to defend ourselves with a gun.

NathanialG wrote:

Baron Of Hell wrote:

The congresswoman is now updated to serious. She was taken outside for the first time today.

They plan to amend the rules so she doesn't lose her job. AZ has a rule in place where if you don't perform your job as a congressman for 3 months you can be replaced. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

Couldn't they just reappoint her? Or is it a different process? Or maybe just pass a resolution saying she can keep her benefits even though she is a non performing Congressperson.

I don't know how it works with the House, but state governors usually appoint US Senate replacements. With a Republican in that post in Arizona, that's not likely to happen.

I am pretty sure that the state has no say in regards to who is a member of the US House of Representatives. The House is the sole judge of who is a member and a state law should have no jurisdiction.

See here.

An obscure bit of Arizona law has some people wondering if Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is in danger of losing her seat in Congress if she has to undergo an extended recovery:

A statute buried in state law says that if a public officeholder ceases to “discharge the duties of office for the period of three consecutive months,” the office shall be deemed vacant and that at such time, a special election could be called to fill the opening.

But in Washington, lawyers quickly concluded that the statute does not apply to members of Congress. The U.S. Constitution provides the qualifications for service in Congress and makes the House the sole judge of those qualifications.

Courts have consistently held that states cannot add qualifications to those in the Constitution and have rejected efforts to remove members of Congress, even through term limits and recalls.

“Legally, it’s not a close call,” said Brian Svoboda, a lawyer for the Democratic Party. “You have a history of interpreting these constitutional decisions and the courts have consistently struck down state laws that have tried to impose additional qualifications beyond those that are set forth in the Constitution.

Malor wrote:

So now you want universal psych screening before people can buy weapons? I think you're way over the line of "shall not be infringed".

What guarantee is there that psychiatrists will get it right? My father had a fair bit of exposure to psychiatrists via working in a prison, and he was of the opinion that most of them couldn't find their ass with both hands when it came to understanding who was dangerous. He did classification and intake on new prisoners for several years, and his opinion of psych evals just kept dropping. There were some good doctors out there, and after awhile he learned who to pay attention to, but there were a huge number of total shysters.

Psychiatry, not being a hard art, strikes me as an exceptionally bad screening mechanism for access to a concrete right. And if we try to impose any kind of measurement on the discipline, we will only know when they grant access to weapons incorrectly, meaning that the standards will only tighten, until we no longer effectively have the right to defend ourselves with a gun.

Not screening, but a list of disqualifying conditions. Use a combined panel of whatever type of experts you want to determine what conditions, psychiatrists, psychologists, police, wiccans, I don't care. As I said, it's important to get folks endorsed and/or recommended by the NRA involved so both sides feel represented. Just establish a list of diagnoses that should be prohibited from owning guns, the same as you have for criminal offenses.

So if I understand you correctly your stance breaks down to 1) it's statistically insignificant so nothing needs to be done or 2) you can't infringe upon any individuals right to bear arms. Interesting.

Fortunately it appears that some states are a little more proactive about the issue.

If you think that keeping guns out of the hands of folks who are mentally ill is a grab for farther reaching gun control, that's a pretty big logical stretch.

One of my first purchases when I start working again will be a nice tactical shotgun and a good handgun, so I'm just as invested in maintaining gun rights as you. But I would rest easier knowing that someone with severe psychiatric issues doesn't have easy access to firearms. They are a right, but each citizen has a duty to utilize them responsibly.

Malor wrote:
Apparently, he just hasn't demonstrated any behaviors so threatening that they warrant incarceration.

As a society, we punish actions, not thoughts. You're saying, in essence, that we should be getting all Minority Report on his ass.

Throwing a troubled teen in jail is likely to turn him into a hardened criminal. That's the absolute last step that should be taken. Many problem kids grow up to be perfectly functional adults. Many don't, but tossing them all in jail as soon as they scare us would be an extremely bad idea.

He needs help, not punishment.

If someone engages in behavior that indicates that he or she might be in need of psychological help then the very LAST thing he or she should be allowed to do is buy a gun. Just because someone hasn't gone far enough to actually be arrested doesn't mean that their behavior shouldn't be taken into consideration. Do we really have to wait for the school shooting to occur before we start to assess behavior. There's plenty of warning signs, maybe we should focus on recognizing them.

Maybe what we need to establish some type of public notice for anyone wishing to purchase a gun. If we're going to allow all but those arrested or convicted to buy firearms maybe we should give the general population a chance to figure out who among them might not be the best recipient of a piston permit.

I'm not sure how comfortable I am will open access unless you've formally incarcerated. Maybe that's part of the problem.

Someone who is adjudicated mentally ill won't pass the federal gun check as long as the info is in the federal database.

The Virginia Tech shooter had been ordered by a court to undergo outpatient mental health treatment, which under federal law disqualified him from buying the two handguns he owned. But his name was never entered into the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).

The problem is getting that information into the database. Not all state courts that legally declare someone mentally ill enter the info in the federal system:

Supporters of the new law say that it will fund the addition of millions of mental health records to the NICS, thus increasing the chances that guns will be kept from seriously mentally ill people. However, 17 states provide no mental health records to the background-check system, according to the Justice Department. Some states refuse to submit mental health records to federal authorities because their attorneys general have concluded that doing so would violate federal privacy laws.

So if I understand you correctly your stance breaks down to 1) it's statistically insignificant so nothing needs to be done

Which is true. Having guns in the general population is not a problem. It's when they get used inappropriately that there's a problem. If you remove suicides from gun deaths, the homicide and accidental death rate is extremely low among all racial subtypes except blacks. This is particularly striking when you consider that there are something like two hundred million guns in general circulation.

Unless you think that blacks are inherently violent or some bullsh*t like that, this means that guns aren't the causative factor. I think it's the drug war.

you can't infringe upon any individuals right to bear arms.

Not if they haven't been convicted of a crime. We're only supposed to punish actions, especially when you're dealing with an enumerated Constitutional right.

Should we only allow people who pass a psych screening to run for office, or to write articles for the paper? These are equally protected by the Constitution. If you're not happy with silencing the mentally ill and searching them without warrants to make sure they're not breaking the law, you shouldn't be happy with preventing them from owning guns.

Mental illness is an extremely nebulous thing. It's hard to diagnose with accuracy, and you can get multiple opinions from multiple doctors. We like to think it's a science, but it's not much better than economics.

Remember: if you only have a right when you're popular, you don't have it at all.

So a couple of years ago, no one openly gay would be able to have a gun, they, after all, were mentally ill by the standards of the times.

The idea that "crazy" people can buy guns is a pretty disturbing one, however Malor does have a point about psychiatric diagnoses having a suspect history, even in recent decades.

The Rosenhan experiment is the most famous example.

Ballotechnic wrote:

You can continue to interpret the 2nd amendment as an unequivocal right and approach it as uncompromisingly as you'd like.

While it's true that there is wiggle room and interpretation for the constitution in general, you are going too far when you compare the second amendment of the bill of rights to being allowed to be a police officer or a ship captain. You should really be comparing them to other amendments of the bill of rights to fully appreciate the complexity of the issue. It seems reasonable that kleptomaniacs should forfeit their immunity to unreasonable search and seizure, after all they are way more likely to be guilty of a crime than normal people. Maybe the first amendment shouldn't apply to racists, because their speech isn't of any value. Crazy old cat ladies have plenty of room in their houses, no reason they shouldn't be able to quarter soldiers.

When you're at the point where you're suggesting that even people who have been determined to be mentally ill have the right to buy a weapon because we can't tell who is crazy or not...well, even the NRA doesn't agree with this interpretation of the second amendment. No court does either.

No place for a constitutional argument here.

I don't think I need to burnish my gun cred, but I will definitely say this. If there is ever a situation in which I feel I need to buy a gun RIGHT NOW, I would be best advised to think of better solutions for my problem.

That poor, lonely Gun Control Thread needs some love.

Malor wrote:

Which is true. Having guns in the general population is not a problem. It's when they get used inappropriately that there's a problem.

I guess the question is: how many gun deaths is OK? How many kids, how many innocents, how many bystanders need to die before they become relevant? The inappropriate use IS the problem that has to be dealt with.

Malor wrote:

If you remove suicides from gun deaths, the homicide and accidental death rate is extremely low among all racial subtypes except blacks. This is particularly striking when you consider that there are something like two hundred million guns in general circulation.

Unless you think that blacks are inherently violent or some bullsh*t like that, this means that guns aren't the causative factor. I think it's the drug war.

The drug war had nothing to do with Arizona, Binghamton, Va Tech or Columbine. Not to mention a dozen other mass shootings that have occurred in the last few years.

Malor wrote:

Not if they haven't been convicted of a crime. We're only supposed to punish actions, especially when you're dealing with an enumerated Constitutional right.

It's an enumerated Constitutional right if you are actually a member of a militia or actively involved with the security of our nation. If that's the measuring stick then the vast majority of gun owners no longer qualify. Last time I checked there is no provision in the Constitution for people who act like they're preparing for a zombie apocalypse.

Malor wrote:

Should we only allow people who pass a psych screening to run for office, or to write articles for the paper? These are equally protected by the Constitution. If you're not happy with silencing the mentally ill and searching them without warrants to make sure they're not breaking the law, you shouldn't be happy with preventing them from owning guns.

Mental illness is an extremely nebulous thing. It's hard to diagnose with accuracy, and you can get multiple opinions from multiple doctors. We like to think it's a science, but it's not much better than economics.

Yes, people running for particular offices or positions should absolutely have to pass a psychological screening. The same applies for gun ownership. I'm sure we can all agree that we'd like to be sure the acting President isn't schizophrenic, paranoid/delusional or psychotic. That seems like a fairly common sense requirement to hold office. The same this is true of gun ownership. You're talking about protecting the greater population and in order to do that you have to infringe upon the rights of the few. Passing a psych screening before you're allowed to buy a Glock and 9 clips is fine with me.

Nothing in the second amendment states that you can't wait 12 months to get your gun and have to pass rigorous screening.

MaverickDago wrote:

So a couple of years ago, no one openly gay would be able to have a gun, they, after all, were mentally ill by the standards of the times.

I thought it was pretty clear I meant violent psychiatric disorders or those with a propensity towards violence, but I'll reiterate that to be clear. If you have OCD or agoraphobia, by all means, buy a firearm.

Malor wrote:

Not if they haven't been convicted of a crime. We're only supposed to punish actions, especially when you're dealing with an enumerated Constitutional right.

Should we only allow people who pass a psych screening to run for office, or to write articles for the paper? These are equally protected by the Constitution. If you're not happy with silencing the mentally ill and searching them without warrants to make sure they're not breaking the law, you shouldn't be happy with preventing them from owning guns.

Really? This is how you're rationalizing this? Perhaps you could cloud the issue a bit more. What are you talking about silencing and searching without warrants? I'm sorry, I just don't view those as equivalents.

People are disqualified from a wide number of professions if they have been diagnosed with certain psychiatric illness or are required to take certain times of medication. In the maritime industry those standards were just tightened further, prohibiting pilots to operate under certain scrips, because a pilot drove a ship into the Golden Gate Bridge. I'm pretty sure that police forces, most military branches, etc have a list of disqualifying mental disorders. Is this a violation of their constitutional rights? Should they be allowed into those positions regardless of how severe the illness?

Yet you're say that no circumstance, short of a felony, should prohibit someone from owning a gun? Were in the second amendment does it even say felons can't own guns? Aren't we infringing on their Constitutional rights?

The next time someone writes an article for a newspaper and 6 people are killed, I''ll think back to this discussion. If you think that the founding fathers would have gladly put firearms into the hands of folks with potentially violent mental illnesses, well I think you're really doing them a disservice.

The Constitution is a framework, not a set of immutable natural laws, so can we please stop pretending it is? Presidents, Congresses, Supreme Courts have interpreted and enforced its tenants differently since its inception. You can continue to interpret the 2nd amendment as an unequivocal right and approach it as uncompromisingly as you'd like. Eventually an incident of gun violence will happen that is so heinous the rights gun owners are stripped away for good.

In the meantime I'll be sure to live somewhere that the folks are reasonable enough to have these laws on the books.

Yonder wrote:

The idea that "crazy" people can buy guns is a pretty disturbing one, however Malor does have a point about psychiatric diagnoses having a suspect history, even in recent decades.

Absolutely. Ideally a flexible system would allow appeals and the guidelines would drawn up by a broad spectrum of experts. I think NRA involvement in such legislation would also go a long way toward making non gun owners feel that the gun lobby isn't unreasonable.

I'm less put off by the issue knowing that many states in fact do prohibit individuals who have sever mental illness from purchasing firearms.

I haven't been reading every article on the matter as of late, but I have to ask this? Was Loughner actually ever diagnosed as "mentally ill"? Did he buy the guns himself legally? I recently heard he was using an extended clip (33 shots) which I thought were illegal (which means he didn't buy the gun through legal channels)?

There seems to be all this talk about should people that are mentally ill be allowed to buy guns, but I think this is just another case of, trying to solve the problem by solving a different problem. Correct me if I am wrong.

The gun was legal under AZ law, no state or Federal Law would cause mental disease or instability to flag a person on a background check.

The overall case here is the best and worst of our social safety nets. His college handled his mental troubles textbook perfect and may have prevent him from harming students or faculty. But our greater societal shortcomings come to the forefront. It is a kind of preventive care that we do not have in the US, or most of the world. And this is not about returning to the Bedlam system or incarcerating the mentally ill. Would it have been so bad if after Loughner was effectively banned from school property, that a therapist or social worker step in and evaluate him; steer him towards treatment?

KingGorilla wrote:

Would it have been so bad if after Loughner was effectively banned from school property, that a therapist or social worker step in and evaluate him; steer him towards treatment?

Why should being kicked out of school be enough to force someone to see a therapist? Who is going to pay for all these therapist?

Baron Of Hell wrote:
KingGorilla wrote:

Would it have been so bad if after Loughner was effectively banned from school property, that a therapist or social worker step in and evaluate him; steer him towards treatment?

Why should being kicked out of school be enough to force someone to see a therapist? Who is going to pay for all these therapist?

Cheaper than paying for hospital bills for injured patients and the EMTs and response to a killing spree. The price is going to be paid one way or another. We don't take mental illness seriously enough. Period. It's crazy to me that just a few short years ago you had pay almost entirely out of pocket for mental health care on most insurance policies. I once dealt with a severe bought of insomnia brought on by undiagnosed anxiety. Very minor compared to this, of course. But all the same it practically impossible for me to get insurance to pay for much of anything. Thank goodness I was gainfully employed.

This is a giant whole in the social safety net. There are far too many stories of mentally ill people being gunned down by police after threatening police, only later to find out that they've been in and out of treatment, never really tracked properly or institutionalized when needed.

KingGorilla wrote:
Baron Of Hell wrote:
KingGorilla wrote:

Would it have been so bad if after Loughner was effectively banned from school property, that a therapist or social worker step in and evaluate him; steer him towards treatment?

Why should being kicked out of school be enough to force someone to see a therapist? Who is going to pay for all these therapist?

Who pays for the TSA and the dragnet for drunk drivers for New Year's Eve?

Indeed. And in that case you're talking about people who *can* take better care of themselves and should be more responsible.

Baron Of Hell wrote:
KingGorilla wrote:

Would it have been so bad if after Loughner was effectively banned from school property, that a therapist or social worker step in and evaluate him; steer him towards treatment?

Why should being kicked out of school be enough to force someone to see a therapist? Who is going to pay for all these therapist?

Who pays for the TSA and the dragnet for drunk drivers for New Year's Eve? How about we take it out of Homeland Security's budget? Most of what they do is enforce copyright law and search laptops for porn.

Malor wrote:

So we should refuse the kid the ability to exercise a Constitutional right because Ballotechnic has a bad feeling about him?

If our recent history wasn't full of mentally unbalanced people going on deadly shooting rampages I might be sympathetic to your view. But that's not the case.

As it is, I really fail to see why someone's empty right to own a gun should trump the right of dozens of people to, well, live and enjoy all the other rights guaranteed by the Constitution.

I call it an empty right because owning a gun isn't essential to our democracy. Given how every civil insurrection in the history of our country has been crushed by the government, owning a gun isn't going to make you able to fight against perceived tyranny or let you overthrow the powers that be. So while every other Constitutional right does something valuable from the perspective of what being a US citizen is, the "right" to own a gun is devoid of meaning. What scares me is that people seem to think that their 2nd Amendment right is the most valuable of all their rights and, sadly, more valuable than the lives of their fellow citizens.

OG how do you propose denying someone with a mental sickness or possible genetic marker without violating the 4th, 7th, and 14th amendments? More to the point by denying them their rights without a trial, a jury, and an opportunity for defense?

What I was speaking about was more an extension of crisis relief or counseling afforded to people who were victimized by a crime, or exhibit suicidal behavior.

And is this just about guns? There have been unbalanced individuals who have driven their cars into daycare centers as well. Do we confiscate their car keys too?

A couple years back a suicidal person drove on the freeway via the offramp and rammed the first car on the freeway that didn't dodge her. Killed two people in that car.

Yonder wrote:

A couple years back a suicidal person drove on the freeway via the offramp and rammed the first car on the freeway that didn't dodge her. Killed two people in that car.

Which shows that somebody with mental illness doesn't need a gun. I was watching an episode of Battlestar Galactica today and heard an interesting quote. "It is naive to think that horrible things can be explained with simple answers." or something very close to that.

This thread is totally going to be locked when Certis reads it in the morning.

That said, this is the best post of the thread -

OG_slinger wrote:

I call it an empty right because owning a gun isn't essential to our democracy. Given how every civil insurrection in the history of our country has been crushed by the government, owning a gun isn't going to make you able to fight against perceived tyranny or let you overthrow the powers that be. So while every other Constitutional right does something valuable from the perspective of what being a US citizen is, the "right" to own a gun is devoid of meaning. What scares me is that people seem to think that their 2nd Amendment right is the most valuable of all their rights and, sadly, more valuable than the lives of their fellow citizens.