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List soars of those called too unstable to buy a gun
LA Times ^ | November 30, 2007

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 ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Crime/Corruption; Government; News/Current Events; US: Virginia
KEYWORDS: 2ndamendment; backgroundcheck; banglist; cho; guncontrol; guns; orwell; vatech; virginiatech
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To: Anti-Bubba182

They’ll expand it to

“if you think you need a gun, you’re too paranoid to own one”


61 posted on 12/03/2007 10:42:34 AM PST by MrB (You can't reason people out of a position that they didn't use reason to get into in the first place)
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To: jim35
"Hah! That’s because they always get to see the patients when they’re surrounded by the hospital staff, and outnumber them 6-1."

No.

It's because the vast majority of the mentally ill have no record of arrest or conviction for violence.

62 posted on 12/03/2007 10:56:01 AM PST by Bonaparte
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To: Rick.Donaldson
Give? No one "gives" anyone a Right. What needs to happen is that government needs to get out of the way of our Rights and to stop infringing them.

We'll handle the nutcases and felons with far greater efficiency than government ever could.

63 posted on 12/03/2007 11:01:28 AM PST by Dead Corpse (What would a free man do?)
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To: Rick.Donaldson

“I dunno. I was hoping the government would do it. :)”

A Giuliani presidency ought to be right up your alley.


64 posted on 12/03/2007 11:56:03 AM PST by Poison Pill
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To: Poison Pill

Nope. I’m a Fred Thompson kinda guy.

Where’d you this weird idea? I’m being funny here Poison, and sarcastic. Good grief. No, Giuliani isn’t my kinda guy, sorry


65 posted on 12/03/2007 11:57:42 AM PST by Rick.Donaldson (http://www.transasianaxis.com - Visit for lastest on DPRK/Russia/China/Etc --Fred Thompson for Prez.)
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To: Dead Corpse

DC? Where did I say anything about “rights”? I said GUNS.

I was being sarcastic!

I DO agree with you. What I was saying was.... give everyone a GUN. Screw who is mentally unstable, give them one too. When they use it, the rest of us will fix the problem.

I think everyone, right, left and in the middle politically ought to be ARMED - and trained in using their weapon. Period.


66 posted on 12/03/2007 12:01:37 PM PST by Rick.Donaldson (http://www.transasianaxis.com - Visit for lastest on DPRK/Russia/China/Etc --Fred Thompson for Prez.)
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To: Zakeet
"mental health problems... primarily additions from California."

LOL!

67 posted on 12/03/2007 12:03:28 PM PST by spunkets ("Freedom is about authority", Rudy Giuliani, gun grabber)
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To: Zakeet
"But because Cho was not ordered into hospital treatment, the court's order was never provided to the FBI and incorporated in its database,"

No, this is absolutely wrong. Cho was an unqualified buyer, because he was adjudicated a danger to himself and others, by reason of mental deficiency. The State of VA decided not to submit that court finding voluntarily. That's why his name didn't appear in the database.

68 posted on 12/03/2007 12:06:57 PM PST by spunkets ("Freedom is about authority", Rudy Giuliani, gun grabber)
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To: Zakeet

Why should anyone seek any type of psychological treatment if the data is going to be disseminated and used to deny one their rights as an American? Looks like the cure may be worse than the disease.


69 posted on 12/03/2007 12:09:48 PM PST by joebuck
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To: jim35
Yikes, just thinking of ANY of these folks out on their own even UNARMED is kind of scary. Armed? Oh boy. And believe me, most of them are going to be on the outside, sooner or later.

Hillary eagerly awaits their return to society, voter registration papers in hand...

70 posted on 12/03/2007 12:22:47 PM PST by COBOL2Java (The Democrat Party: radical Islam's last hope)
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To: Rick.Donaldson
There's that word "give" again. And who is going to pay for all those firearms?

I realize, now, that you were being flippant. But we really do need to exercise a bit of consistency here. People have a Right to buy them and carry them for their own protection. Getting government out of the way of that is all we really need do.

Anyone with their gears meshed correctly should WANT to be able to protect themselves. Delegating that to someone else is a recipe for disaster. As our "gun controlled" inner cities are proving.

71 posted on 12/03/2007 12:28:16 PM PST by Dead Corpse (What would a free man do?)
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To: Bonaparte

Yeah, I’ve been assaulted twice this year by mental patients who had no police record, or record of assault. And I didn’t bother filing charges, because the D.A. said that there was really no reason to, since they were already being held in a mental institution, and that they’d automatically be adjudicated not guilty by reason of insanity.

Twice. Both of them serious assaults, that I was strong enough to contain without serious injuries, but that did cost me some of my sick days.

And NOTHING was done. They both went into seclusion for 3 or 4 hours, got a shot of something that just got them high, and promptly returned to the general patient areas, no worse for the wear.

You don’t know what you’re talking about, you just know what you’ve heard on t.v.


72 posted on 12/03/2007 7:48:10 PM PST by jim35 ("...when the lion and the lamb lie down together, ...we'd better damn sure be the lion")
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To: COBOL2Java

“Hillary eagerly awaits their return to society, voter registration papers in hand...”

Did you know that in my state, mental hospitals are required to either get the patients registered to vote, or to fill out a form saying why they couldn’t?

No joke, the form is part of every routine admission chart.


73 posted on 12/03/2007 7:50:14 PM PST by jim35 ("...when the lion and the lamb lie down together, ...we'd better damn sure be the lion")
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