[claytoncramer]

Let me tell you a little story about mental illness and persons that shouldn't be walking around in public. Some years back, my pastor asked me to talk to someone that had been showing up at church, who was camped out in the fields outside of town.

This guy was clearly mentally ill--very confused, disconnected thinking, as is symptomatic of schizophrenia. He had this tale of governmental oppression, how his kids had been taken away from him, compared it to Waco, etc.

Then he showed me the paperwork--and the fact that he showed me this paperwork without trying to explain the claims in it was a pretty good indication that he was mentally ill.

He had two children. His wife had been committed for physical abuse of the kids. His children had been taken away from him because he was showing them pornographic movies and molesting them.

So why was this guy out on the streets? Why was he not locked up in prison? The children were 4 and 6. My guess is that a prosecutor had looked at the trauma of putting these children on the stand, and concluded that it would have been hard to get a conviction. It was simpler just to have the courts permanently terminate his parental rights. (This is not something that courts do lightly.)

Should this guy have been out wandering the streets? No. But our current legal system doesn't give us a lot of good alternatives.

[looscnnn]

So your saying that we should expand an unConstitutional law? Justifying it by stating “our current legal system doesn’t give us a lot of good alternatives” is as bad as “for the children”. It does nothing to solve the problem for the mentally ill person, for gun owners or most importantly for the Constitution. Why did I include the Constitution, because this just enforces the notion that gun control laws are Constitutional.