No guns for people on meds for mental disease?

[tman_ndsu08]

Quote by: ZNFYRH If a law limits gun ownership, would it limit gun use by law-abiding citizens?

No.

[Poledancer]

I used to be a bit down after the death of a friend, so I was given some prescription pills for a few months. IN NO WAY is that the same as being psychotic and wanting to go around killing people.


There are different types of mental illness and tarring everyone with the same brush is discrimination. If everyone who is at work with me is allowed to carry a gun for their own protection, why should I be the only one who cannot protect herself?

Just like there are different types of physical illness e.g. having a bit of a cold isn't the same thing as having end stage lung cancer.

[ZNFYRH]

tman,

Idiocy. Your response was pure idiocy.

If the law says that you can't have guns, you think law-abiding citizens would have 0 reduction in gun use?

Amazingly idiotic.

[jose]

Federal law prohibits anyone who has been “adjudicated as a mental defective,” as well as those who have been involuntarily committed to a mental health facility, from buying a gun.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/21/us...hp&oref=slogin

[Poledancer]

tman, Idiocy. Your response was pure idiocy. If the law says that you can't have guns, you think law-abiding citizens would have 0 reduction in gun use? Amazingly idiotic.

That would be because if the law says you cannot have a gun - a law abiding citizen would not have a gun.

If you have a gun , that would immediately make you not a law abiding citizen.

Therefore, there would be no reduction in the number of guns that law abiding citizens have.

[Technosoul]

Quote by: Poledancer I used to be a bit down after the death of a friend, so I was given some prescription pills for a few months. IN NO WAY is that the same as being psychotic and wanting to go around killing people. There are different types of mental illness and tarring everyone with the same brush is discrimination. If everyone who is at work with me is allowed to carry a gun for their own protection, why should I be the only one who cannot protect herself? Just like there are different types of physical illness e.g. having a bit of a cold isn't the same thing as having end stage lung cancer.

Good point. The same drugs might be prescribed for different reasons.

And it is true that using the drug will not make you shoot people with a gun. At least the percentages provided demonstrated that only a very small percentage of those on a particular drug will become involved in a violent activity. It might be the responsibilty of the doctor to make sure they prescribe the those drugs to people where negative results cannot happen. That would mean we need a law to regulate whom a doctor can prescribe the drug too. And a better educational program for doctors.

But also we can look at the logic of percentages this way. Not everyone who has a car registered will get involved in a violent act with that vehicle, or a "hit and run" incident. Not everyone who gets a gun registered will use it for a crime or for violent purposes. Not everyone who uses a drug that can make you sleepy will end up in a car crash because it would not effect all people the same way while driving.

But how can we create safeguards for the majority of our society to protect us from those few "low percentages" people who might be effected by a drug or gun or car to do the wrong thing? Do you want someone on a speed drug driving down the street where your children are playing or riding a bike?

PS - have your boss hire some security guards.

[Keith Hamburger]

While I'm not completely opposed to the idea I do have some concerns.

1. Such a law could discourage those who need treatment from pursuing it. It may have an overall worsening effect on the situation by such a result.

2. Many of these drugs are WAY overprescribed. Ritalin, as one example, is often used to try to bring kids that are just too active and too bright for teachers to handle under control. Many of the other drugs, the SSRIs, are prescribed for the least little complaint, many of which are actually related to sleep disorders, not to actual mental problems.

3. There has to be a way to get your rights back in such a situation. Especially if a doctor tries these drugs to fix a problem but they eventually find something else is causing the issue. Like the sleep disorders mentioned above. You definitely don't want someone to lose their rights because a doctor wants to experiment.

4. There is a bit of a slippery slope concern here, given item 3. If those who wish to implement gun control push it strongly enough they may work things such that a large number of people lose their rights permenantly because of a short term episode of problems.

Just some ideas.

Keith

[tman_ndsu08]

Quote by: ZNFYRH If the law says that you can't have guns, you think law-abiding citizens would have 0 reduction in gun use?

People who obey the law that closely don't own guns.


Going from zero to zero would be a 0% reduction.

[The Decider]

Quote by: fushigi All in all, I'm not overwhelmed by either side. But I have a nagging feeling that restricting gun sales to those on drugs for mental disorder could be a good idea.

The law should focus on the mental diagnosis, NOT the drugs in question. As stated in an earlier post, most folks on Ritalen and Prozac, both teenagers and adults, exhibit no violent tendancies. They should not suffer a life-long stigma that will affect their 2nd Amendment rights because violence prone individuals who take the same medication go postal every couple of years.

Current gun purchase laws regarding mental illness are actually quite strict, but uneven across state and federal jurisdictions. Federal law prohibits gun sales to "anyone who has been 'adjudicated as a mental defective,' as well as those who have been involuntarily committed to a mental health facility, from purchasing a gun." Under that definition, Cho should have never been permitted to buy weapons. He was "adjudicated" as a mental defective after stalking two women at VT and ordered to undergo psychiatric evaluation.

But the state of Virginia law words the prohibition differently: "someone who was 'involuntarily committed' or ruled mentally 'incapacitated.'" Under Virginia law, Cho's order to undergo "psychiatric evaluation" and outpatient treatment was not "involuntary commitment" to a mental institution. Therefore, the Virginia courts submitted their recommendations on Cho to the VT police based on the Virginia legal definition, not the broader one used by the federal government. It's a loophole that might have stopped the sale. Cho could have bought illegal guns, true, but the state's more lax definitions on mental incapacity made it easier, not more difficult, to get guns in Virginia.

In short, I think gun control opponents and advocates can agree that a single minimum standard should apply across the nation on what constitutes mental incapacity for the purpose of gun purchases. All states should adopt the federal definitions or enact stricter ones as they see fit.

Cho could have been denied firearms - The Boston Globe

[fushigi]

Ah, there you go. The problem was that the Virginia statute somehow overrode the federal one.

Under U.S. law, the Virginia Tech gunman, Cho Seung Hui, should have been prohibited from buying a gun after a Virginia court declared him to be a danger to himself in late 2005 and sent him for psychiatric treatment, a state official and several legal experts said. But Virginia state law on mental health disqualifications to firearms purchases is worded slightly differently from the federal statute. So the form that Virginia courts use to notify the state police about a mental health disqualification only addresses the state criteria, which lists two potential categories that would warrant notification to the state police - someone who was "involuntarily committed" or ruled mentally "incapacitated."

I guess the US statute is better. Should've been used in this case.

[Waychel]

This doesn't prevent people who are suffering from common mental illnesses like depression from purchasing guns. The people it restricts are those deemed mentally ill by the legal system; meaning they have gone in front of a judge on some kind of serious charge and been deemed mentally ill. If someone threatens to shoot their girlfriend and repeat the VT tech massacre at Boston University, I agree that they shouldn't be able to purchase a gun. LOL

What this law will do is impose penalties on the state for not keeping their records accurate. As the law exists now, Cho would not have been able to purchase a gun. The failure happened on the state level because nothing came up on his background check even though he had gone in front of a judge on stalk and harassment charges about a year or two earlier. Despite not being convicted because the girl chose not to press charges, Cho was ruled mentally ill and a danger to himself by the judge. That ruling should have come up in a background check. They didn't put him into the system or keep his record updated and that is what this law is attempting to rectify.

[brien]

How do you assess if a person is still mentally unstable... or if they have been cured?

I don't assess anything, of course, but there perhaps should be safeguards established some what like in voting. In some states, those who can't take care of themselves, are not permitted to vote. I think this has passed Constitutional muster.

Same as in 2nd Amendment rights, there has to be a balance between those who are not mentally fit to possess and use firearms, but they have to be clearly out of touch with reality and diagnosed as incompetent by the medical professionals. The government can't draw an arbitrary line and declare a person mentally unfit without court hearings that have medical evidence to support the claim of incompetentcy. Do medical privacy rights trump the judicial system? I don't think they do, so a judge can make the mental competentcy determination based upon law, and then pass that determination onto the background check information data base if he deemed the medical community proved the citizen was incompetent according to guidelines set by law.

Otherwise, I don't know how you keep firearms out of the hands of the mentally incompetent. I do know that we can't assign this power to judges, the medical community, or any one individual. It should perhaps be arrived at a consensus of professionals who share information as I have suggested above.

[ZNFYRH]

Quote by: brien Otherwise, I don't know how you keep firearms out of the hands of the mentally incompetent. I do know that we can't assign this power to judges, the medical community, or any one individual. It should perhaps be arrived at a consensus of professionals who share information as I have suggested above.

I agree, as there are many different types of mental incompetence. There are people whose disability qualifies them as one thing, even though they don't completely match that profile.

The different levels of autism come to mind.

In the end, with something as variable and different as the human brain, one term for a broken brain doesn't make sense.

[5010]

So let's say there are insane people filled with hate who want to bust caps. The gun stores won't sell to them. What prevents them from just building their own machine guns? Or other ways to get guns: steal them, buy black market. And maybe if it's too much trouble, they can just make bombs?

[Osborn F Enready]

5010 said: So let's say there are insane people filled with hate who want to bust caps. The gun stores won't sell to them. What prevents them from just building their own machine guns? Or other ways to get guns: steal them, buy black market. And maybe if it's too much trouble, they can just make bombs?

Hey look, common sense does still exist!

Good post, I agree.

[ZNFYRH]

5010,
Osborn,

But maybe the point is that by removing something so easy as a gun, you filter out those who aren't willing to commit the effort required for murder.

In the end, the people you're left with would have killed regardless, gun or no gun.

It seems as though you're confusing eliminating guns with eliminating all crime altogether.

And another thing... what does being insane have to do with building guns, or bombs, or stealing guns? Nothing.

Deny them a tool and you force them to find another means to accomplish that to which they are already inclined.

[Osborn F Enready]

ZNYFRH said: But maybe the point is that by removing something so easy as a gun, you filter out those who aren't willing to commit the effort required for murder.

That is a big IF, and it certainly is no IF worthy of removing the rights of others, which you would be doing by removing a legal avenue for aquiring guns. Proof, data, facts? I don't see any to support the argument being made.

ZNYFRH said: In the end, the people you're left with would have killed regardless, gun or no gun.

Assumption, at best. Where is the deductive reasoning, where is the process of explanation that acknowledges and deals with ALL variables?

ZNYFRH said: It seems as though you're confusing eliminating guns with eliminating all crime altogether.

Not at all. I am not concerned with crime, as I am armed and will remain armed until I die along with the knowledge I possess for self defense using those arms, and my understanding of rights, which enables me to determine when I can expect legal backing for my use of force, and when I can't.

No law, no majority, and no "conscensus" by any group, will remove my arms short of force, in which case they will be rendered force in equal and opposite direction, to the best of my ability.

The "TECHNOLOGY" and the KNOWLEDGE exist to make guns, so guns will always be with us as long as people can act on their own intent.

Why would it be less burden to construct a gun from plumbing material and household goods, than to buy one from a legal dealer? If anything, it is easier to cover your tracks, and remain anonymous if using a homemade gun for killing, and it is most certainly easy if you have access to basic education, physics, or the internet.

ZNYFRH said: And another thing... what does being insane have to do with building guns, or bombs, or stealing guns? Nothing.

Quite a bit. Its the application and the context that tells all.

ZNYFRH said: Deny them a tool and you force them to find another means to accomplish that to which they are already inclined.

Exactly. By denying my rights, you will force me and people like me to take corrective action, by whatever means necessary.

Is innocent death by those attempting to pass that law and enforce it (banning guns) more justifiable than simply accepting the deaths that come from use by irresponsible people INTENT on committing irresponsible deeds?


You can't ban guns.

You can ban legal production.
You can ban legal sales.
You can ban legal access.
You can ban legal purchase, of guns and ammo.

Guns and ammo will still exist, as long as the market for them exists.....

I am part of that market, and I ain't going anywhere.

[The Decider]

Quote by: Osborn F Enready Not at all. I am not concerned with crime, as I am armed and will remain armed until I die along with the knowledge I possess for self defense using those arms, and my understanding of rights, which enables me to determine when I can expect legal backing for my use of force, and when I can't. No law, no majority, and no "conscensus" by any group, will remove my arms short of force, in which case they will be rendered force in equal and opposite direction, to the best of my ability. By denying my rights, you will force me and people like me to take corrective action, by whatever means necessary. You can't ban guns.

Could you clarify your position, Osbourne. Are you saying that if you enroll in a college, you will carry a firearm into the classroom in violation of gun-carry laws and school rules? Or is your argument about banning guns you own on your private property?

[ZNFYRH]

Osborn,

Drop the crazy and militant uber-tough guy attitude and consider that allowing people to carry with them one of the most efficient weapons in history might be a bad thing.

If you're so tough, why do you need a gun to defend yourself?

Don't put up the pretense that you want to defend yourself when what you're really saying is that you need a gun to do it. You can defend yourself without one.

Taking away guns doesn't take away your precious right to self-defense. It just means you have to fight a little harder.

[Osborn F Enready]

Decider said: Could you clarify your position, Osbourne. Are you saying that if you enroll in a college, you will carry a firearm into the classroom in violation of gun-carry laws and school rules?

I am saying that if I have reason to carry, meaning I have reason to feel at risk during my day, I will carry if I so choose, regardless of the law.
I am a law abiding citizen SECOND, I am a RIGHTS HOLDING AND RESPECTING CITIZEN FIRST.

Why the word college?

I am guessing due to the recent college shootings?

If more of those RIGHTS RESPECTING ADULTS had carried guns, the chances of this many deaths as a result become exponentially lower.

Decider said: Or is your argument about banning guns you own on your private property?

I have a right to KEEP and BEAR arms. My body is my property.

I had planned on getting a CCW license in my home area, until my local mayor decided to take gun matters into his own hands and start creating gun bans and gun laws that were absolutely unconstitutional. (and proven so with the latest federal reversal of our local gun laws)

The only gun I ever register will be a newly purchased one, and I don't plan on buying anymore.

Look at how the government protects your personal information......how much do you want them knowing about you?

The military and the IRS have been made to look like fools in their competence of information, as has the intelligence agencies with Iraq.

No thanks, no big gubbmint for me thanks.