Posted on 12/02/2007 11:40:18 AM PST by Zakeet
WASHINGTON -- Since the Virginia Tech shootings last spring, the FBI has more than doubled the number of people nationwide who are prohibited from buying guns because of mental health problems, the Justice Department said Thursday.
Justice officials said the FBI's Mental Defective File has ballooned from 175,000 names in June to nearly 400,000, primarily additions from California. The names are listed in a subset of a database that gun dealers are supposed to check before completing their sales.
The surge in names underscores the vastness of the gap in FBI records that allowed Seung-hui Cho to purchase the handguns he used in April to kill 32 people and himself at the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg.
A Virginia court found Cho to be dangerously mentally ill in 2005 and ordered him to receive outpatient treatment. But because Cho was not ordered into hospital treatment, the court's order was never provided to the FBI and incorporated in its database, which two gun dealers checked before selling Cho the 9-millimeter Glock 19 and Walther .22-caliber pistol used in the shootings.
Federal law has prohibited gun sales to people judged to be "mentally defective" for nearly four decades, but enforcementhas been haphazard.
A 1995 U.S. Supreme Court ruling barred the federal government from forcing states to provide the data, and 18 states -- including Delaware and West Virginia -- provide no mental health-related information to the FBI.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
I can see it now. The willingness to own or bear arms makes you unstable--BY DEFINITION. /s
Sounds like a clear case of “Catch 22” to me,,,but then if I knew it was,,,,,,never mind..
I agree completely with the latter statement. And I disagree just as completely with the former.
Mental stability is not a single-dimension bi-valued function. It is a spectrum of behaviors and responses which varies from person to person, from situation to situation, and from time to time.
Only the most serious of these situations, those which call for involuntary detention, should qualify for this treatment and such treatment should end when the involuntary detention ends. Anything else is incompatible with maintaining our freedoms.
Didn’t you tell me Eaker appears on the list about a dozen times? :-)
More seriously though, anything and everything will become a reason to say someone is unstable, including wanting a gun.
As the government expands its powers and intrusiveness even more,,,
authoritarian "big brother" types like Rudy ("big sister" types with Hillary) will continue to redefine and expand the DEFINITION of unstable--to the point where ANYONE that even THINKS of gun ownership--is by definiton, unstable.
Government (and its intrusion) just grows and grows. As Ronald Reagan so eloquently stated, (paraphrasing here) "No government in history has ever voluntarily reduced its size".
Of course not. As Orwell said, "Some pigs are more equal than others."
And who decides questions of "mental illness"? Why, liberal psychiatrists who are anti-2nd Amendment, that's who! And then liberal judges who accept a shrink's testimony deprive ordinary citizens of their right to armed self-defense. By the way, even shrinks admit that the vast majority of those diagnosed with "mental illness" are no threat to anybody.
Once they get their 'foot in the door' on this one--the definition of 'unstable' will be redefined, expanded and broadened on a regular basis until we achieve that Orwellian Dream World of no guns. /s
An authoritarian, big government, bully like Rudy is the RIGHT TIME AT THE RIGHT TIME to accelerate that process.
In my state you have to be convicted, not just accused, of DV to lose your 2nd amendment rights. Regardless, I agree with you. The several states’ legislatures will keep tacking on different misdemeanor and gross misdemeanor crimes that will result in the loss of the 2nd amendment right.
LOL! Good picture. That woman, Hillary, looks nuttier than a fruit cake.
Every regesitered republican will soon be on that list.
If these people are considered too dangerous for society, shouldn’t we put them all in jail?
I mean, what if they get a hold of a kitchen knife, or a large paid of scissors?
There’s also all sorts of explosives you can get pretty easy, so if we really think these people are just too dangerous to be allowed to have access to a gun, maybe we should take away their driver licenses, at least if they are driving large SUVs. We all know how dangerous they can be.
I certainly don’t want any of these people manning the 911 phone system, because if they are so dangerous they could mess up. Or operating any heavy equipment.
No, I think I was right — we should just put them all in prison, for our protection.
And their minders in various levels of government, from city through federal.
Awww Eeeeek’s Ok .....it must have been those 4 years he spent in 3rd grade that got him on the list !
Mostly my name is listed because of association with Squantos and Tijeras_Slim!
There are so many other ways that this list can be expanded too.
Whatever it takes to make us subjects.
It was 3 years in the 4th grade ya numbskull!
This might not be such a bad thing. We could start with one's political orientation....
Republicans Report Having Better Mental Health Than Democrats, Poll Finds
Fox News ^ | December 1, 2007 | Fox News
Posted on 12/01/2007 5:23:06 PM PST by Luke Skyfreeper
Don't worry, be happy: If you're a Republican, those words should be easy to follow. A roundup of Gallup health polls over the past four years finds that Republicans are far more likely than Democrats to report having excellent mental health. The survey found that 58 percent of Republicans polled reported having excellent mental health. Only 38 percent of Democrats and 43 percent of Independents reported the same
“Only the most serious of these situations, those which call for involuntary detention, should qualify for this treatment and such treatment should end when the involuntary detention ends.”
If you only knew...
When the involuntary detention ends, the severely, chronically mentally ill are released to one or another place, like a permanent monitoring facility, an out-patient facility, or even to their family.
It’s a matter of course that so very many of them suffer severe relapses, with major psychoses, and frequently become violent, with nobody around who is able to control them, even when they’re unarmed.
You really don’t want them to have access to a firearm.
Until you’ve seen what truly crazy is, you can’t begin to imagine just how crazy a person can be. Movies and TV don’t begin to capture the real nature of insanity. It’s worse than even the stereotypical mad-man you see in Hollywood insane asylums.
And they can all go home, if there’s anyone who’ll accept them.
Hah! That’s because they always get to see the patients when they’re surrounded by the hospital staff, and outnumber them 6-1.
When they outnumber you 5-1, it’s a whole different story. Remember the old saying about the inmates running the asylum? That’s pretty much how it goes, in or out of the asylum.
I think you hope for too much. Of all the people the grabbers would like to disarm, those with military experience, but operating as private citizens, have to be high on the list.
Unfortuately, it doesn't work that way. Many people have problems, are depressed, or any number of other things, very few of those are a danger to others, no matter what sorts of implements they might have.
But the gun grabboids aren't interested in such minor distinctions. They are interesting in taking guns, your guns, my guns, our neighbor's guns.
"We're going to hammer guns on the anvil of relentless legislative strategy! We're going to beat guns into submission!"
--U.S. Rep. Charles Schumer NBC Nightly News 11/30/93
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