Posted on 03/08/2013 1:41:26 AM PST by neverdem
Republicans don’t control the U.S. Senate and they don’t have the presidency. Instead of wasting time and energy in doomed efforts to defeat President Obama’s Cabinet nominees or sucking up to illegal aliens, why not focus on issues where Republicans can be off-the-charts popular while forcing Democrats into taking stupid positions?
After the slaughters at Virginia Tech, Aurora, Colo., Tucson, Ariz., and Newtown, Conn., every sentient person knows we need to do something about institutionalizing the mentally ill and — at the very least — keeping guns out of their hands.
That happens to be impossible right now. Involuntary commitments even for the severely psychotic went the way of vagrancy laws. Although federal law technically requires background checks to include records of mental illness, the states and mental health industry refuse to provide that information.
Of course, the vast majority of mentally disturbed individuals are not dangerous. But looking at it from the other end, more than half of all mass murder is committed by the mentally ill. Gun ownership doesn’t lead to random murder rampages; mental illness does.
And the good news for Republicans is: Democrats will only pretend to support keeping guns out of the hands of dangerous psychotics, while working frantically to gut and undermine such measures. Liberals fear “stigmatizing” the mentally ill more than they fear another mass murder.
Instead of proposing serious reforms, the Democrats play politics by demonizing responsible gun owners and the Republicans who defend them.
The Democrats’ gun proposals are like the joke about the drunk looking for his keys under the lamplight:
“Is that where you dropped them?”
“No, but the light’s better here.”
Preventing crazy people from buying guns is hard. The ACLU will sue and we’ll be tied up in lawsuits for a decade, at which point a Democrat-appointed judge will rule that including records of paranoid delusions in FBI background checks is unconstitutional.
As former federal judge H. Lee Sarokin (a Clinton appointee) might say, “We should revoke their condition, not their gun permits.”
The light’s better over by the sane, responsible gun owners, who wouldn’t hurt a fly — unless it’s a schizophrenic shooting up a shopping mall.
Since the deinstitutionalization movement got under way in the 1970s, the mentally ill remain mentally ill, but now instead of living in warm, safe institutions, they live out on the streets, in homeless shelters and in soup kitchens, or drift back to their helpless families, occasionally showing up in “gun-free zones” to commit mass murder.
After the Virginia Tech shooting, an ABC poll showed that while Americans remained dubious about the effect of more gun control laws, 83 percent supported requiring states to provide information on the mentally ill for gun background checks.
Since then, the mentally deranged have continued committing mass shootings. There is still no way to prevent them from buying guns.
At the risk of joining the Republicans’ circular firing squad when we ought to be fighting Democrats, here’s how I think Republicans should be looking at things:
– Pushing amnesty for illegal aliens: 80 percent of Americans ferociously oppose you.
– Pointlessly opposing Obama’s Cabinet nominees: 99 percent of Americans need a constant supply of NoDoz just to listen.
– Staking out an Amnesty International position on a president’s hypothetical ability to use a drone against an “American citizen” (named Anwar al-Awlaki) about to launch a devastating terrorist attack on U.S. soil: 70 percent of Americans are against you.
– Opposing the Democrats’ idiotic proposals on gun control: 60-70 percent of Americans support you, but the other 30 to 40 percent will hate you because they want to “Do Something.”
– Proposing the involuntary commitment of dangerous psychotics and implementing measures to prevent them from obtaining guns: 83 percent of Americans support you and will be furious at Democrats for trying to undercut such laws.
Liberals can’t help themselves — they’re like Dr. Strangelove with the Nazi salute. The Democratic base will wail, “Who’s to say who is crazy? Maybe we’re the crazy ones!” and bleat about stigmatizing the mentally ill. Or, to quote Judge Sarokin, again: “(O)ne person’s hay fever is another person’s ambrosia.”
Your choice, Republicans: Take positions that will make you extremely popular, reduce mass murder in America and simultaneously reveal the insanity of the Democratic Party, or keep prattling about topics of interest to no one. Take all the time you need. 2014 is a whole year away.
That’s all fine and well but the democrats will just have conservatives declared insane.
Thanks Skeletor!
“...more than half of all mass murder is committed by the mentally ill.” Well, Ann, then, who is sanely committing the the rest of the mass murders? Good grief... No, she is not sounding like her old self. Not even close.
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She needs to get back to her cocktails with McCain and Graham and shut up.
OK. Ignore important constitutional questions. Pander to the lo-fo’s. Got it.
Ann, go back to dreaming about Chris Christie’s love handles.
She has no family to call her own. She is unstable.
Nothing she says or writes interests me anymore. She’s part of the inside-the-beltway ruling class.
“...like the joke about the drunk looking for his keys under the lamplight:
“Is that where you dropped them?”
“No, but the light’s better here.”
Now, THAT’s funny!
“Since the deinstitutionalization movement got under way in the 1970s, the mentally ill remain mentally ill, but now instead of living in warm, safe institutions, they live out on the streets, in homeless shelters and in soup kitchens, or drift back to their helpless families, occasionally showing up in “gun-free zones” to commit mass murder.”
Except that is no where near true.
Lanza was allowed access to guns because his mother didn’t lock them up even tho she was fearful of his mental state.
The Aurora shooter was a non-descript student until something snapped inside, apparently. Yes he sought help and was brushed aside [maybe]but he in no way resembled Coulter’s description.
Dumbles are cynically using thease very public tragedies and hope you won’t notice their proposals won’t stop any of these acts...they only affect the law abiding and the responsible in freedom sucking ways.
Republicans should stop trying to curry favor or seem “reasonable” and stand united in stopping these attempts to disarm us and make us slaves.
That would require (elected) Republicans to be sentient beings instead of amoebas.
Most elected Republicans like to hide under the desk and hope that nobody notices them. Cowards.
(Elected) Republicans are worse than Democrats. Democrats know what they want, power, and go about systematically obtaining it with no moral scruples at all. Lie, cheat, steal is the way of the power luster.
On the other hand, I can't tell if the (elected) Republicans are stupid, incompetent or both. They say some things to get elected, they show zero energy going about to accomplish their stated goals and if they "fail", ie government increases in size and scope, they personally end up with more power. Weasels. Backstabbers. Weak people concerned solely with their own miserable little careers. No one cares or remembers, who was the 39th chairman of the ways and means committee. Delusional.
Pointlessly? Sleep all you want, but Senators have a moral obligation to oppose nominees who won't keep their oaths.
Most of the Republicans are just as subversive as the Democrats.
Let’s get real.
Politics is showing us how ugly and destructive a lifestyle it really is. It is a drunk, codependent, strung out lifestyle.
All politicians are insane. Rand Paul and the others who filabustered showed us that not all the people in the government are playing politics.
That is correct. Liberals think wanting to defend yourself is insane. They have officially classified second amendment activists, “domestic terrorists.” Holder and Jan the man would have a field day with that Soviet “mental health” power.
Ann should unpack her brain and put it back in her head. Why does she think a Federal mental health witch hunt regime would be “popular?” With whom? Idiots who do not know history.
What a useless article.
Exactly. To take the most obvious example, homosexuals used to be on the list of people with a mental disorder. But the American Psychiatric Association took that disorder of the list. And they will continue to do similar things. Because not all, but most psychiatrists are part of the academic/liberal tribe.
You can bet that they would be perfectly willing to certify conservatives as crazy, if that was part of the plan. There is already a lot of gobbledygook out there about crazy right-wingers and fundamentalists and militias. It was there in the clinton years, and they'll pull it out any time they need it.
Do we want leftist psychiatrists on government grants to decide who is crazy? That's what Stalin did.
I’m over Ann Coulter also.
Statistically, about 1% of the population is diagnosed schizophrenic. If we were to institutionalize them all, it would mean something like 3,000,000 people. That’s almost double the number of people in prisons in the US today. Can anyone imagine what that would cost?
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