Restrictions Gun Owners Want?

As pointed out, a "mental health check" is not just a slippery slope, its the Highway to HELL.

Not much more than 50 years ago, homosexuality was a recognised mental illness. It was listed in the medical texts as such. While it seems implausible, it is not impossible that should enough like minded doctors and "mental health professionals" get together, gun ownership (or the desire to own a gun) could be listed as a mental illness.

A lot of people in the old Soviet Union were tried for "crimes against the state" and when not outright convicted, found to be "mentally ill", and sent to "treatment" in re-eduication camps.

Along the the all too real possibility of individuals making the "mental health" determination having personal agendas of their own, there is an ever present problem with any evaluation of mental health.

And that is two fold, firstly, it must rely entirely on the answers given by the interviewee. And second, (and possibly even more importantly) it can all too easily become a "when did you stop beating your wife" situation.

If you don't answer all the questions the "right"way, you are found mentally ill. AND if you DO answer all the questions the "right" way, you are gaming the test, and found to be mentally ill. The real potental for it to all too easily become a lose/lose situation makes any (supposedly) "objective" mental evaluation test for firearms ownership a very, very risky thing.
 
Firearm ownership is a right. If we require a pre-test, it isn't a right. Someone can loose their right through the court system. They can be convicted as a felon or adjudicated as mentally unfit but we don't need people's rights taken away without courts being involved.
 
What about people you use shooting sports as theropy for depression? I was diagnosed with PTSD years ago and found shooting and firearms to be a great theropy. If we had a mental check, I'd most likely never be able to buy a gun and get into shooting
 
mhuxtable said:
I'm actually FOR a mental health check....rarely are people suffering from mental illness aware of it, and I don't think someone who is clinically depressed/bi-polar/etc should be handling a firearm.

Is there a reason why that viewpoint is out of line or anti-gun?
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Yes. Mental illness isn't a legal term, so you shouldn't use it to alot a legal right. If someone is adjudicated incompetent, cannot drive or vote, I can see a rationale for denying other rights as well.

A doc wants me to take a pill for anxiety? That's a mental health issue, not a legal one.
 
Sometimes I think we try and explain away pure evil by using mental incompetence as an excuse.

Therefore, we label those who are just plain evil as mentally ill. It helps us rationalize to ourselves how someone could commit horrendous crimes.

Should we simply have a "firearms means test" that determines if one is evil rather than mentaly ill?

Slippery, very slippery.
 
Sometimes I think we try and explain away pure evil by using mental incompetence as an excuse.

Therefore, we label those who are just plain evil as mentally ill. It helps us rationalize to ourselves how someone could commit horrendous crimes.
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This.

Also - most people diagnosed with a mental illness do recover. Should someone who was briefly depressed ten years ago, but who recovered after a short round of treatment, be prohibited from owning guns for the rest of his life?

Also - laws or regulations that discourage mentally ill people from seeking treatment are a Bad Thing in and of themselves. If someone's feeling a bit crazy, I want them to race over to the doc's office and get treatment before they snap -- which they will not do if there's a law saying we'll take your guns away if you need treatment. I don't want them to hide their symptoms. I want them to fix what's wrong before they decide to take a samurai sword to the local school and chop the heads off all the kindergartners, or before they decide to nail the doors shut at a popular nightclub and set the place on fire. I want these guys seeking treatment, not hiding the crazy until someone's dead of it.

Also - Just as mentally ill people do usually recover with treatment, healthy people sometimes come down with a case of the crazies. How often would you want to check that all existing gun owners are still sane, and how many of their basic human rights are you willing to trample to make that happen?

pax
 
i don't believe a large number of gunowners want the mythical "gunshow loophole" "fixed". All my gunowning friends prefer selling their legally owned property without government interference.

All the anti-gunners jump on the "gunshow loophole". Most of the mass murderers bought their guns from licensed gun dealers. i can't think of one who bought his gun from a private individual.

Closing this absurd loophole would not be political suicide for politicians who fear losing the support of gun owners. A recent survey found that more than 80% of gun owners and 74% of NRA members want this loophole fixed. It seems likely that Giffords and Kelly, both gun owners, would be among this large majority favoring this reform.
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http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/14/opinion/webster-giffords-guns/index.html?hpt=hp_c3

IMO: This modern day Daniel Webster is absurd to the extreme. This explains it all:

Editor's note: Daniel W. Webster is professor and director of the Center for Gun Policy and Research at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.
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I think articles like the above sell as many "AR's" as the gun magazines, much as the Clintons motivated me to buy my EBR back in the day. I don't mind having to behave myself, but this domestic violence thing is a factor, and has made me modify my behaviors. People who CC understand how important it is to conduct yourself. The fact that misconduct can separate us from our rkba is no laughing matter. A lifetime ban for an infraction (misdemeanor) as trivial as raising your voice is one of the unlooked for consequences of a law that had good intentions. Then there's that road to hell paved with good intentions.
Can we get some freedom from good intentions?
 
While I'm mostly against arbitrary gun restriction (type of gun, mag capacity) there was one thing I found out recently about a local gun advocacy group that bothered me.

They successfully helped kill a bill in NC that would have required a mental health check for those buying guns (not sure if it was only handguns or any gun) if they don't have a concealed carry permit.

I'm actually FOR a mental health check....rarely are people suffering from mental illness aware of it, and I don't think someone who is clinically depressed/bi-polar/etc should be handling a firearm.

Is there a reason why that viewpoint is out of line or anti-gun? I think any right-minded adult should have a gun...but we are having a serious problem with massacres in this country with firearms by mentally ill people that I think could be prevented if those people are identified.
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It is my considered opinion that the emboldened statement precludes you from owning firearms due to mental incapacity...

See how easy it it would be to abuse such a 'law'?
 
Makes me think of a certain Ohio LEO who get his gun back even though he has bouts of temporary insanity. Talk about selective enforcement!
 
There is no reliable mass screening test that can predict violent behavior. There is no way to administer a reliable instrument to every gun owner and purchaser.

Individual evaluations have been found to be almost useless as a mass preventive measure.

Only if a person is acting irrationally or making threats can we make some judgements.

Any system we could think of would have a tremendous false positive rate. Folks would be branded as a risk and that quickly would be used to deny them of rights and employment. Oh, John can't buy a gun - well, should he be school teacher?

Been studied quite intensively.
 
The efficacy of violence prediction: a meta-analytic comparison of nine risk assessment tools.

M Yang, Wong, J Coid - Psychological bulletin, 2010 - psycnet.apa.org

Their conclusion:

The moderate level of predictive accuracy of these tools suggests that they should not be used solely for some criminal justice decision making that requires a very high level of accuracy such as preventive detention
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Most items in structured risk assessment instruments do not predict violence

JW Coid, M Yang, S Ullrich, T Zhang… - The Journal of Forensic Psychiatry and Psychology 2011 - Taylor & Francis

You can find more through Google Scholar. But you can see that they think using the standard instruments would not be useful for a legal decision such as denying some of their rights. The only thing that has some use was a history of past violence.
 
One of the basics problems, or flaws, if you will, with our mindset and the way our society carries it out is the concept that we ought to be able to prevent violence.

And that is simply not possible until/unless we transform mankind into something we currently are not, (and historically have never been).

Boil it down, what is best, to restrict/punish people for what they might do?
Or accept the cost of what they do, and punish them for actually doing it?

Sure, it's a greyscale, with few absolute black and whites, but in general, which do you think better?

For myself, I think it better to have freedom, and pay the cost. Others think it best to restrict us all (and you can consider those restrictions "chains"), because of what a few people might do.

My issue with this idea is that despite all the restrictions, we get the violence anyway. WE are paying an ever increasing cost in our personal liberty (including what you can own, and what you can do with what you own) for the false promise of security.

Bad men and nutcases still do as they please, no matter what restrictions are placed on us, it does not stop them.

It seems like they are making it against the law to eat pasta, so my house won't burn down. And then some nutjob (possibly in a govt uniform) comes along and burns my house down. And then they tell me it happened because I still have spagetti sauce in my cupboard....or my neighbor still does...or the guy down the block grew tomatoes...etc...

Prior restraint is something adults do to protect children, until the children proove they are capable of protecting themselves. It is not something that should be applied to adults, and particularly not to free citizens. Because if it is, then we aren't.
 
Random violence cannot be effectivey predicted, and never will. There will never be a computer program that will be able to correctly calculate the inestimable variables inherent in such circumstances. The best we can hope for is to limit the effect of such circumstances. Rabid dog, rapid response, rabid dog down.
 
Here is the only restriction I would go for at this time. No more than 1 new gun law could be introduced in a legislative session (state and federal, two different sessions). The antis would be forced to combine all their idiotic ideas into one bill. What politician would vote for such an over reaching, career ending bill? Yes there are some but not many.
 
How about this 'restriction'?

Make it a federal felony for any gov't representative or worker to even discuss/think/attempt to restrict/reduce the right of a lawful US citizen to own or carry any firearm they wish.
 
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