looking for source to NRA position on gun control topic

Koda94

New member
can somebody help me out and provide a web link to any article that proves something I've always assumed....

...or politely point out that Im wrong...

Its been my impression that for many years even before Newtown the gun lobby, specifically the NRA, has been stating that we need to address the mental health care system and fix the NICS system.


this is regarding recent current events of two high profile shootings where the NICS system failed to prevent a prohibited person from buying a gun used in the crime.
 
The NRA fully supported the NICS Improvements Act of 2007 (2008). This act was in response to the murder of 32 folks at VA Tech by a guy with known mental problems. The act deals with the reporting of adjudicated mental cases to NICS.

However, federal agencies ignore the the requirement that only adjudicated mental cases be reported to NICS.

https://www.nraila.org/articles/20071005/the-nics-improvement-bill-myth-and-rea

Text of the act:

http://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0LE...l180.pdf/RK=0/RS=3sUYYdpkeYZU8TZzspzgdvE4P9k-
 
It's been found that focusing attention on banning guns to the mentally ill is effective at getting politicians' attention away from banning guns after these things. Perhaps not entirely just, but it is what it is. The problem is that, like assault weapons, the antis are seeking to use broad categories, to which their pet politcians hold the keys for arbitrary definition, to bar firearms from ever greater classes of people with little recourse. It was a convenient tactic for a few years though, as assault weapons gained public favor after the ban's expiration.

TCB
 
In nearly every case I can think of, when the NRA "supported" something ineffective and instrusive, it was when they believed their chouices were either bad or worse. The NRA did not support NICS because they thought it would work, but because it was more tolerable than the extensive waiting periods, and every local head of law enforcement dictating the terms that was being proposed at the time. Another example is that they are being credited with supporting the NFA weapons ban which was attached at the last minute to the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986.

I switched my membership over to Gun Owners of America years ago, because I did not like the "compromising" the NRA had to do, which often comes back to bite us, like NICS. I do understand why they did it, and do not consider it "supporting" these legislative decoys thrown out to appease a public that wanted to take much more. Young people today have no idea the atmosphere of anti gun sentiment that seemed to prevail across the country back then.
 
What worries me is who the person is that actually decides who is not mentally incapacitated and or who is actually ill. The way it is now is wholly subjective based on the beliefs of the one determining the diagnosis. Moreover, the way it seems to be going, as in further down the proverbial slippery slope of subjectivity, I find the devil in the details to be extremely alarming to the point of being able sidestep around the protections of the law abiding citizens in America.

For instance, in my lifetime parents have had to deal with the likes of Dr. Chester M. Pierce, Psychiatrist, whom stated the following while speaking at the Childhood International Education Seminar (1973), and did so with a patently personal conviction, "Every child in America entering school at the age of five is insane because he comes to school with certain allegiances to our founding fathers, toward our elected officials, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being, and toward the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity. It’s up to you as teachers to make all these sick children well – by creating the international child of the future."

(Do you believe this guy, or those like him, would allow you and or your children to own guns?)

Personally speaking, I neither want this "doctor," nor others like him or with a similar worldview to determine which American is "mentally able" to own a gun and which is not so able. I believe that what is in place at the present time is sufficient as most of the recent "mentally ill" criminals shooting people were already known to be so far gone that they should not have had a gun in the first place.

Besides, when rendered down to the most basic essentials, the higher death tolls are not caused by mentally ill shooters, but instead, these high numbers could be blamed upon those certain politicians and anti-gunners that have created gun free zones, which instead of being places of safety or refuge due to the lack of legal guns, they turn out to be the primary killing fields of proven criminals.

While I dearly love and support what the NRA does on the whole, I see the NRA's stance on the "mental issue" concerning gun control being so easily swayed by the anti's to the point that they could ultimately strip every American of their gun rights simply by getting "their people" appointed in the right places. As for me, I have to draw the line and state, "No thank you on this one."
 
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What worries me is who the person is that actually decides who is not mentally incapacitated and or who is actually ill.

You have every right to worry.

Poor people are crazy. Rich people are eccentric.

Depending on where you set your parameters, everyone is "mentally ill" in one way, or another.

Who guards the guards???

While fading, still within living memory is the fact that at one time, recognized science and the medical profession categorized homosexuality as a mental illness.

reflect on that...
 
We are not talking about large numbers of folks being denied the ability to purchase a gun based on mental health issues. In the period 30 November 1998-31 January, 2014 NICS rejected 13,316 gun purchases by adjudicated mental cases. In 2014 NICS denied 3,557 requests due to mental issues.

Click on Operations Report 2014

https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/nics
 
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