I like John Lott, but to answer his question - maybe. I would never prohibit gun ownership absent due process, but I wouldn't necessarily say someone had to be convicted of a crime.
For example - Britney Spears. Britney was such a danger to herself or others, that she was institutionalized and her rights were substantively stripped from her and placed with a conservator. She was not convicted of any crime before those steps were taken.
In the days immediately surrounding the period she shaved her head, would anyone argue that young woman was in a state of mind to handle firearms - or even butter knives?
Even the NRA agrees with the provision for being adjudicated a threat to yoursel or others, but in NY you need two physicians to swear to it, IIRC, and maybe one has to be a psychiatrist.
I have trouble with Lott’s statement, too.
But I think the problem does not rest with the FBI, who cleared him because he had no arrest record, but with Sheriff Dupnik, who received numerous complaints from credible sources, including the college that gave him the boot, that he was crazy, dangerous, and had threatened to kill people, but who did nothing because Loughner’s mother was an influential fellow Democrat in the County government.
If there was a big mistake, it was Dupnik’s. The FBI just followed the rules.
Seesh, you would think we could learn from history, a hundred million killed in the last century alone in places where government was allowed to supersede God given rights.
I guess I didn’t realize what a gun-grabber Kathryn Jean Lopez is. So many of these so-called Republicans in politics and in the media are not Whole Constitutionalists and as such are not our friends.
YES!Anti-gun liberals want nothing more than to disarm law abiding citizens so that they no longer have to fear them.
Many people seem to think this is a complicated issue, but it's not. During the time she was in custody, was she a free person? The Second Amendment protects the rights of all free people, but not of those who are not free. It is legitimate to disarm a person if and only if the person may be legitimately deprived of freedom.
Why don’t we pass a law to keep drugs out of the hands of drug abusers?
Now that we have solved all the gun and drug problems in the world we can pass a law that muzzies can no longer murder innocents and must profess their love of Jews.
Not bad work for a few minutes of liberal brainstorming.
I’m all for ANY AND EVERY BODY can carry a firearm. The singers that shave their heads included. This moron in Tucson included. The gang banger just released from prison included, as he will aquire a firearm soon anyway. If truly good citizens take firearms carry seriously, the lunies will either think better to keep their guns holstered, or become a positive statistic in the war against crime.
That, and I don’t want ANYONE to have say over whether or not I can carry firearms. Too many people with that kind of authority are corrupt.