Executive Powers & Mental Health

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So Jimdandy you support universal background checks? It seems like that from your answers. None of these laws work without them, the person just buys from a non documenting source and all the effort is wasted.
Even with that as a given you just break it up into two crimes, one to steal/illegally buy the guns, one to commit the violence.

The reason I used the example's (French resistance, Warsaw Ghetto) I did was to show that determined people will get the weapons some other way.
With a little creativity 8 or 10 gas cans, gasoline, and chains for a buildings doors I could out do any of these guys in death toll.

We're going to have to treat the person or stop/kill the person. Trying to remove complete access to deadly weapons just isn't practical.
 
Yeah, I do. Not because they're perfect. But because they're good enough to be worth it. We can devolve to the basic reductio ad absurdum argument, that homicide statutes don't prevent murder either, but we're both mature enough to go beyond that and admit that a law that does it's job isn't going to solve everything it's supposed to, so the question is actually does the law do enough, without intruding too much.

I don't personally see a difference in legal standing between an FFL shopkeeper and John Q Public that means they must be treated differently. While we have so far chosen to, I don't believe we have to. Which I hope neatly skirts the issue of whether the check itself is constitutional to address a subtle but distinctly different argument on whether they can apply to second-hand as well as retail sales.

IF the check itself is constitutional, a question I am also open to, then it is legal for both types of sales, to my understanding. I've asked this question before, and I haven't seen anyone proclaim that either the parties involved or the firearm for sale are legally differentiated enough to make the transaction different with any confidence and cites to back up that assertion.
 
Sounds like the call of anti-gun person, "safety concerns of the whole" very dangerous ground, it is also very difficult for any health processional to determine if someone mentally ill is dangerous.
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Then let's stay with the current system where they do nothing and refuse to report anybody for anything. It's working great.
 
Let us put this in perspective - overall violent crimes are down since 1980; overall gun crimes are down since 1980; we have had some mentally unsafe people commit some high profile crimes, but media attention notwithstanding, those remain statistical outliers.

So, my opinion is that UBCs and non-adjudicated reporting to NICS are cures that are worse than the disease they would allegedly cure.

Edit: We gun owners often criticize the media for ardently supporting the First Amendment while trying to gut the Second. I find it quite hypocritical to support the Second, while trying to weaken the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth...
 
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Jimdandy, if we go down the pathway of universal checks, then these laws do make more sense.
I think I see where we are disagreeing though, you see the argument that these people will just simply step around the restrictions as a much more unlikely thing than I do.
I've had a lot of experience with addicts and the Mentally ill. 20 years in nursing, as well as immediate family members with serious problems. After that much experience I just don't see reasonable restrictions stopping those type of folks.
It takes pretty drastic measures just to slow them down in my experience.
At that point it just doesn't make sense to take what seem to be sensible mild measures.

Now throw the time and effort into our scary broken mental health system you might have some shot at stopping these folks. Overhaul it completely with hard questions asked and answered with hard solutions you might very well have a shot at drastically reducing the problem.

If I ask you if you want to spend weeks in an inpatient facility with monitoring and outpatient treatment mandatory afterwards or I can let you go and you will become a mass murdering suicidal maniac, if you're sane which alternative do you choose? We fail the person doing the shooting first, then the others die over our lack of resolve and the restrictions that come with the current rules.

If we decide that there is too much loss of freedom (those fourth through sixth amendment problems mentioned)to solve this statistically small problem,
then we've made that decision and it is what is so we go on.
In my opinion common sense, low level, gun restrictions do nothing to address the root issues and problems.
 
Close. I ackowledge some will get around. There will always be crime guns. I believe UBCs will further slow the rate legal arms become crime guns, however.
 
And I believe UBCs would just represent another erosion of 2A/RKBA. This would be unacceptable even if they were effective - which I do not believe they would be.

I don't like erosions of ANY core rights in the BoR, and believe that if anything we should be trying to get rid of NICS, rather than expand it.

I am not opposed to expanded mental health care. I am not opposed to adjudicated, due process commitments - but I think we have to be very careful in how we define adjudication.

Some here seem to think that any official method used in any jurisdiction is acceptable. To those people, I would point out that only a few decades ago, electric shock therapy and lobotomies were considered acceptable in some parts of the US.
 
We're so much better at treating mental illness than we used to be that I really think a lot of this is treatable.
My heart goes out to the families of shooters as well as the other victims of their mental illness. I'd sure like to try and see if we could find a balance point that protected more people while still leaving the Bill of Rights intact. I think there is room for movement.
If I'm protecting your right to murder people and then take your own life I don't feel like I'm actually helping you.
That being said, I do not think that there is any way for laws to stop all evil or illness.
 
Jimdandy.

"As I've already mentioned, there are more mental deficient records than felons."

So, if they have been properly adjudicated, what exactly is the problem? That there are too many instances? That is not an excuse not to report; if anything it makes it more important.

"With our dual sovereignty system, the Federal government has VERY limited ability to mandate the State government do anything. They can only offer money, and prevent grants/federal services in states that don't comply in an effort to cajole states into compliance, or shame their citizenry into demanding compliance from their state lawmakers. "

Then exactly how does the apparent complete reporting of felony convictions, DAs and ROs get regularly reported to the NICS database? Just put the mental health adjudications and involuntary committments under that same regulation. Is there a problem with that? If so, why?

Scrubcedar:

I fully understand that the effective outcome of any of these "prohibiting" laws is highly questionable. That is not a reason to ignore having them any more than the fact that we continue to have murderers that we should just recind laws against murder. Yes, it's reductio ad absurdum and intended as such.

We're stuck with the #4473; I don't ever see that going away. That given, I see no reason that the mental health component would be any less effective than the other "disqualifiers" in section 11 and to blow it off as being "non-productive" means that all of section 11 should simply be eliminated for the same reason.

Presently, the lack of provision for putting adjudications and committments on the same footing as the criminal convictions not only makes no sense, it serves to make an already weak system even more worthless. Simply put, if you not going to require the data be provided, what is the point of having 11f on the form?

I am adamantly opposed to using any other information of a medical nature as a disqualifier for a citizen to be able to freely exercise his/her individual, fundamental rights ... not without due process. If you are inclined otherwise I only suggest you substitute the right to vote for the right to own a firearm and ask yourself if you still fee the same way.

As to (Not Really) Universal Background Checks, before I jump on that bandwagon, I want to see the effect of vigorous investigation and serious prosecution of felony violations on the #4473. Willful and intentional falsification of information, straw purchases, attempts of prohibited persons to acquire a fiream, and the like. I also want to see serious consequences as well(read that as maximum sentences to be served consecutively).
 
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If someone uses an insulting term for a person who is mental ill, I will ban them. I have deleted one such post after my first caution. Another and you will no longer contribute to TFL.

Glenn

 
That being said, I do not think that there is any way for laws to stop all evil or illness
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Scrub- Can you explain why a law has to stop all evil or illness?

So, if they have been properly adjudicated, what exactly is the problem?
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The problem is your next assumption:

Then exactly how does the apparent complete reporting of felony convictions
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The reporting of felons and serious misdemeanors is by no means anywhere near complete. I have ZERO evidence to support it other than the huge disparity of numbers and the anecdotal evidence of lawyers telling us pleading Temporary Insanity is Hollywood legend more than every day fact- But I suspect more people are prohibited for convictions than mental deficiency adjudications. The database itself is horribly undersourced.

And the reporting of mental adjudications and criminal convictions are under the same carrot and stick regulations- especially as some "adjudications" are automatic when someone is found a couple versions of non compos mentis.
 
Romeo33, I think having these people use firearms they are unfamiliar and unskilled with is a limiting factor on their deadliness.
Force this down another pathway and they might very well find something a lot more deadly. What if the Boston bombers had worked up more effective IED's and all the injured had ended up dead instead? The thought scares the crap out of me.
I'm amazed it hasn't happened already and the reason might be because guns are available. Sit down, spend five minutes and think about how you could cause more damage than they did with common materials and a little internet research.
It's pretty obvious you're an intelligent guy, I have every faith you could be more effective without a firearm than they were with a firearm. As far as I'm concerned this comes under the "the devil you know theory".
 
Jimdandy, you and I were posting at the same time. I don't expect the laws to stop all of a problem. I do expect them to have a positive effect. Either in deterrence or punishment.
In this case deterrence might end up causing a worse problem in my opinion, see my post above.
I don't see the people determined to cause problems allowing themselves to be caught this way. Mentally ill doesn't mean stupid. On the contrary sometimes mental illness allows the person to use every bit of their potential intelligence, cunning, and problem solving abilities.
 
You know what I'd like to see? Laws and/or executive orders giving more money and support to our mental hospitals, rehab centers, and outpatient facilities. I'd like to see rehab and mental health counseling treated the same as other medical issues by insurance carriers and employers.

In other words, I'd like to have the conversation on mental health we were promised before they derailed it with futile and divisive attempts at gun regulation.

We treat mental illness by stigmatizing it, punishing it, or doping it. It's a very 18th-century way of going about things, and it does us no credit as a modern society.

The thing is, this wouldn't be a nasty knock-down drag-out fight in the legislature, and it wouldn't be hard to make these changes. We don't need to violate HIPAA or deny rights to people; we need to encourage them to get treatment before things get bad.

Would it prevent every Cho/Holmes/Lanza? Probably not. But I'll take a page from the antis' playbook and suggest that it's worth doing if it saves a few lives.
 
Tom I think you underestimate. I think an effective overhaul of our mental health system would stop most of these things and a lot of other numerically smaller instances of violence and death.
When you are around someone this badly disturbed you know it. If you are a parent or mental health professional you know it for sure (even if as a parent you are in denial). If there was an effective method to step in and deal with the problem at that point a lot of this gets short circuited.
 
Tom I think you underestimate.
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I would be delighted to be proven wrong :)

Even if such a measure didn't reduce violent crime, it would improve the quality of life for a great many people, leading to a net benefit for society. I'd also go out on a limb and predict lower rates of suicide, substance-abuse related crime, and neglected/abused children and spouses.

...or the politicians can waste our time on bad social science like gun control.
 
You know what I'd like to see? Laws and/or executive orders giving more money and support to our mental hospitals, rehab centers, and outpatient facilities.
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One does not inherently prohibit the other.

UBG's will effect far more than those rare individuals who go on a spree.
 
JimDandy, how well did prohibition work with regard to alcohol?

How well has the war on drugs worked?

So, why are you so optimistic about UBCs? And why are you willing to cede the 2A rights of others in order to see UBCs implemented?
 
UBG's are not prohibition. The choice is not criminal gun, or no gun, leaving comparisons to Prohibition, and the War on Drugs as strawmen.

Much like the "cedeing 2A rights of others". You're not asking the government for permission to purchase a firearm. You're giving them an opportunity to object for just cause. If they don't have just cause, they don't get to say No. This isn't May Issue a Firearm. It's Shall Issue a Firearm.
 
JimDandy said:
UBG's will effect far more than those rare individuals who go on a spree.
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Will they? Criminals, by definition, flout the law. How would one more statute deter them?

JimDandy said:
You're not asking the government for permission to purchase a firearm. You're giving them an opportunity to object for just cause.
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In theory, you're correct. In practice, we would find those two things to be very much the same. The bar for "just cause" would be lowered after every major tragedy, or at the whim of a hostile legislature.

The prohibition analogy is interesting, though. Prohibition was ostensibly meant to reduce societal ills stemming from alcohol abuse. There is ample evidence for punitive enforcement of statutes, but I've never heard of any efforts by its advocates to treat alcoholism. (The best progress on that front was AA, an organization with no government ties or support.)

Prohibition focused on punishing the offenders rather than addressing the underlying problem, and it was an utter failure. We don't need to repeat those mistakes.
 
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