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Posted on 08/14/2007 12:10:54 PM PDT by neverdem
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| Find this article at: http://www.shotgunnews.com/cramer |
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Not to mention that those who have been convicted of a crime serve a particular length of sentence. A person who is mentally ill, and dangerous to others, should be held until they cease to be dangerous to others. These are very different situations, and putting mentally ill people in a prison is unnecessarily cruel to a mentally ill person.
This isn’t just a California problem, although California led the way. You may recall a shooting spree in Moscow, Idaho, a few months back. The shooter was a Jason Hamilton. He had been arrested three weeks before the killings, after a suicide attempt. He told the psychologists who evaluated him that next, he was going to take a lot of people with him. So they released him.
I still don’t know why he was released, but in general, while California and New York State led the way on this, a combination of ACLU zealotry and some deeply stupid delusions by certain political activists largely destroyed the public mental hospital system in the 1960s and 1970s. In the mid-1950s, there were 559,000 people in mental hospitals in the U.S. By the late 1980s, in spite of a 50% increase in population, the number of such inmates was just over 100,000.
Some of the decline was because senile elderly were moved to nursing homes, and syphilitic insanity largely ended because of penicillin. But large numbers of insane people were released to the streets, or never hospitalized because of the changes in the laws. I can give a list a mile long of people who committed mass murder (often causing new gun control laws that applied to EVERYONE) with long histories of mental illness that the authorities knew about—but couldn’t hospitalize this person before they started killing people.
"-- at the sole discretion of BATFE and the FBI, this bill would compile the largest mega-list of personal information on Americans in existence -- particularly medical and psychological records.
But information on the mega-list could not be used to battle terrorism and crime… only to bar [prohibit] Americans from owning guns.
And, incidentally, it's the medical records themselves, not just a list of names, that would turned over under section 102 (b) (1) (C) (iv). --"
Why back a bill that acknowledges a nonexistent 'power to prohibit'?
It isn’t once in a while that a madman beats our system. It is almost continuously. Remember the guy that shot up the mall in Kansas City? He attempted suicide the previous October. He was hospitalized for 6 1/2 hours, then released.
Patrick Purdy? Long history of mental illness—and when he finally did something “serious,” it was to murder five children, wound 29 others, and provide the impetus for passage of the various assault weapon bans of the 1989-92 period.
Does the name Larry Gene Ashbrook ring any bells? Killed seven people in a church in Texas in 1999. Long history of mental illness that would have locked him up in 1960.
Does Russell Eugene Weston, Jr. ring any bells? Long history of mental illness and short commitments for violence, before he shot to death two police officers at the Capitol in 1999.
Remember the guy who shot up the Jewish community center in Granada Hills, California a few years ago, scoring many points for the gun control crowd? He actually tried to get himself into a mental hospital, but a judge refused to listen to his talk about mass murder, and released him, rather than hospitalized him.
1. A number of people looked at the success of psychiatric first aid stations for helping soldiers during World War II who were suffering from combat fatigue and decided that what worked well for sane people in an insane situation would work just as well for insane people in a sane world. Hence, the Community Mental Health Centers Act of 1963, which was part of the campaign to close public mental hospitals.
2. The ACLU put a young attorney named Bruce J. Ennis in charge of one of their mental health projects in 1969. Ennis didn't know anything about mental illness, except what he found from reading a book by Thomas Szasz--a psychiatrist who by his own admission has never treated a psychotic, even when he was in residency training--and believes that schizophrenia does not exist. Ennis decided that the goal was to make involuntary commitment almost impossible--and he came very close to succeeding.
3. A bunch of sociologists decided in the early 1960s that mental hospitals made people crazy--not that crazy people were placed in mental hospitals. (I'm serious--they were convinced that the institutional nature of a mental hospital caused the behavior of the people that were locked up there.)
A gun is just a tool, like a hammer is. They could smash your skull if they so desire. You know this is true. Don’t fear the gun. Fear the person most of all.
This bill actually removes the 98,000 veterans with PTSD that the Clinton Administration added to the ban list, and specifies that medical reasons alone are insufficient reason to add someone to the ban list.
When you say, "nonexistent 'power to prohibit'" I am a bit confused. Are you saying that the federal government lacks authority to disarm those who have been adjudicated mentally defective? Or do you mean that the states lack that authority?
I will agree that when the Framers wrote the Second Amendment, these issues tended not to come up. Partly this was because psychosis was much rarer in early America than it is today. Psychosis rates, for example, increased about 9x from 1880-1980.
Partly this is because most Americans lived in towns of a few hundred people, and you pretty much knew which of your neighbors was a bit odd, and shouldn't have a gun.
Partly this is because the procedures in effect for hospitalization of the mentally ill were much more informal in those days than they are now.
Fine. You don't want or trust doctors or judges to have the commitment power. Neither do I. -- Who then should have the power to [in effect], prohibit our right to own and carry weapons?
If you think a crazy person with a gun is no more dangerous than a crazy person with a hammer, then why do you bother to have a gun? Why not just carry a hammer with you? No permit required!
The fact is that guns are dangerous--that's why decent people carry them for self-defense. If Patrick Purdy had gone into a schoolyard to murder kids with a hammer, you wouldn't know his name, and there would have been no California assault weapons ban passed because of his actions.
I agree that it would make more sense to correct our involuntary commitment laws. I'm working on that, but there's a limit to the number of major social problems that I, working all by myself, can fix at once!
Look, I already did my best to save your gun rights, with my work cited the trial court decision U.S. v. Emerson (N.D.Tex. 1999) and in the dissent in the Mosby Connecticut Supreme Court decision in 2004.
I demolished Michael Bellesiles a few years ago, when his lying book Arming America was starting to be cited by the courts to prove that there were few guns in America before the Civil War.
My paper in the Tennessee Law Review with Dave Kopel played a major part in why a number of states adopted non-discretionary concealed weapon carry permit laws in the early and mid-1990s.
I'm writing a book about the history of deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill right now, but there's only so much that I can do and still hold down my day job getting laser printer firmware to work.
Please be patient.
The government has always had the power to disarm people who were a danger to others. Convicted violent felons. Do they have that power? Of course.
Can the government prohibit sales of handguns to 10 year olds? Of course.
Can the government prohibit sales of guns to people who have a history of violent mental illness? Of course--and they have that authority under current law. This bill doesn't change that power--it only encourages the states to report that information so that the background check will catch more of those with mental illness commitments.
Oh, I am patient. But I do know that one platform of the anti-gun people is “GUNS ARE EVIL”. I disagree.
Regarding removing 2nd Amendment rights of the mentally ill, I am waiting with grateful and rapt attention. I REALLY think this is a slippery slope.
Just for chuckles... are they also going to write federal legislation stating that the blind shouldn’t own guns, too?
I want the government out of my house. What I own and store under my roof should be of none of their concern. I’m not on their radar, yet... but one day they may decide to hinder another group from obtaining guns. And then another, and another...
Some country we live in. No parade, no thanks, and now this crap.
I will never be disarmed. NEVER.
When you say, "nonexistent 'power to prohibit'" I am a bit confused.
Fed and State legislators have a power to reasonably regulate, -- not to infringe upon [or to prohibit] our rights.
Are you saying that the federal government lacks authority to disarm those who have been adjudicated mentally defective? Or do you mean that the states lack that authority?
All levels of gov't have a very questionable authority to adjudicate who is mentally defective, -- particularly when the objective is to disarm 'the people' protected by the 2nd.
I will agree that when the Framers wrote the Second Amendment, these issues tended not to come up. Partly this was because psychosis was much rarer in early America than it is today. Psychosis rates, for example, increased about 9x from 1880-1980.
Good grief; - I'd sure like to see the proof of that remarkable bit of info.
Partly this is because most Americans lived in towns of a few hundred people, and you pretty much knew which of your neighbors was a bit odd, and shouldn't have a gun.
Are you actually claiming that small towns in America used what power [majority rule?] to disarm mental defectives? Again, I'd sure like to see the proof of that remarkable bit of info. Got any?
Partly this is because the procedures in effect for hospitalization of the mentally ill were much more informal in those days than they are now.
Yep, and they should stay that way, imho.
A crazy person with gasoline is more dangerous than either. But a can of gasoline is far less effective as a defensive weapon than a quality pistol.
A gun is just a tool, like a hammer is. They could smash your skull if they so desire. You know this is true. Don't fear the gun. Fear the person most of all.
Well said, and congrats on drawing forth this answer:
claytoncramer
If you think a crazy person with a gun is no more dangerous than a crazy person with a hammer, then why do you bother to have a gun? Why not just carry a hammer with you? No permit required!
The fact is that guns are dangerous--that's why decent people carry them for self-defense. If Patrick Purdy had gone into a schoolyard to murder kids with a hammer, you wouldn't know his name, and there would have been no California assault weapons ban passed because of his actions.
If Patrick Purdy had gone into a schoolyard to murder kids with gasoline, true, -- you wouldn't know his name, and still, there would have been a California assault weapons ban passed because of some other crazy persons actions.
Clayton, you've 'bought into' the theory that some guns are especially dangerous weapons, -- and that our various levels of gov't are thereby justified in prohibiting such arms.
You're on that slippery slope, and apparently have the hubris to think you can skate uphill faster than the Brady bunch can drag you down. The history of gun control will prove you wrong.
Me too. But this law doesn't change who is prohibited from gun ownership (except to make a few less people disarmed).
Regarding removing 2nd Amendment rights of the mentally ill, I am waiting with grateful and rapt attention. I REALLY think this is a slippery slope. Just for chuckles... are they also going to write federal legislation stating that the blind shouldn’t own guns, too?
If we had a serious problem with blind people going on shooting rampages....
I want the government out of my house. What I own and store under my roof should be of none of their concern. I’m not on their radar, yet... but one day they may decide to hinder another group from obtaining guns. And then another, and another...
Except HR 2640 doesn't change who is allowed to own a gun--except that it provides a way to undo a firearms disability for those who were committed long ago, and undoes the Clinton Administration's administrative decision that PTSD sufferers shouldn't have a gun.
1. HR 2640 actually reverses the Clinton Administration's arbitrary decision to put 98,000 PTSD suffering veterans on the national background check ban list, and prohibits the federal government from doing this in the future.
2. You have my thanks. I don't know which war you came back from and felt unappreciated, but there are a tremendous number of Americans you will never meet that respect you and your comrades who have fought on behalf of this country. Don't let anyone tell you differently.
3. Your decision to not let PTSD become an excuse is both admirable and probably better for you in the long run.
So there's no authority to disarm convicted murderers? On what basis do they disarm people who are in jail or prison? All levels of gov't have a very questionable authority to adjudicate who is mentally defective, -- particularly when the objective is to disarm 'the people' protected by the 2nd.
Sorry, but even at the time of the Revolution, governments had the authority to determine that a person was mentally ill and lock them up if dangerous. And the primary objective of determining that someone is mentally ill is not to disarm them.
I will agree that when the Framers wrote the Second Amendment, these issues tended not to come up. Partly this was because psychosis was much rarer in early America than it is today. Psychosis rates, for example, increased about 9x from 1880-1980.
Good grief; - I'd sure like to see the proof of that remarkable bit of info.
E. Fuller Torrey and Judy Miller, The Invisible Plague: The Rise of Mental Illness from 1750 to the Present (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2001).
Are you actually claiming that small towns in America used what power [majority rule?] to disarm mental defectives? Again, I'd sure like to see the proof of that remarkable bit of info. Got any?
Actually, what I was claiming was that people that were clearly a bit dangerous had a hard time buying a gun. If you lived in a town of 250 people, and Old Joe was widely recognized as paranoid schizophrenia--blathering on about voices telling him to do things--would you sell him a gun? Would anyone in town do so?
Partly this is because the procedures in effect for hospitalization of the mentally ill were much more informal in those days than they are now.
Yep, and they should stay that way, imho.
Then how do you deal with the problem of psychotics with weapons? Wait until they go on a rampage and kill someone?
So you don't think there's any point to preventing these incidents that strengthen the gun control position?
Clayton, you've 'bought into' the theory that some guns are especially dangerous weapons, -- and that our various levels of gov't are thereby justified in prohibiting such arms.
Nope. My argument is that psychotics with a history of violence shouldn't be out on the street at all. Until we can fix that problem, disarming psychotics is wise from the standpoint of public policy, and as a way of preventing the sort of tragedies that gun control advocates use to get more gun control laws passed that apply to everyone.
You're on that slippery slope, and apparently have the hubris to think you can skate uphill faster than the Brady bunch can drag you down. The history of gun control will prove you wrong.
Except that HR 2640 doesn't change who is prohibited from gun ownership.
No one who can legally own a gun today will lose that right if HR 2640 passes. This is simply a matter of getting the existing commitment records from every state into the national background check system.
There are people whose rights to own a gun will be restored in HR 2640 passes. The 98,000 veterans suffering from PTSD that the Clinton Administration added to the banned list will get their rights to own a gun back. As a condition of receiving funding under HR 2640, states will be required to provide a way for persons who were committed improperly, or who have since recovered, to get their firearms rights back--something that isn't available now. If you were committed in 1970 under a state law, you can't ever own a gun again. GCA68 made this a lifetime disability, with no appeal process.
If Congress funds it (and this is definitely a big "If"), a similar appeal process will exist at the federal level--something that does not exist at all today. If you were committed under federal law in 1970, you have no right to own a gun, and there's no way for you to get it back.
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