Over the weekend I read a statistic which appalled me. Three fourths of the guns used in mass shootings are legally purchased. Most mass shootings involve assault-style weapons and large capacity magazines, which have been banned in the past, but are now legal for purchase.
We let a lot of dangerous people legally buy guns, people whom it is basic common sense should be prohibited by law enforcement from doing so - including previously convicted felons who committed violent crimes and crimes with guns.
From CNN:
No surprise, the ATF, which conducts those FFL inspections, has a skeleton staff, and has consistently had their funding cut by the Republicans, and are actively lobbied against by the NRA, to make those inspections as few and far between as possible.
from the same CNN article:
Yesterday, we had another mass shooting; this time in Wisconsin, which has recently made their gun laws much more lax in their gun laws, and is a 'shall issue' state, including for concealed carry. Shall issue, instead of may issue, means that except for the most extreme cases, people who want guns can get guns and carry them publicly.
Wisconsin made it easier to obtain and carry firearms as part of the Republican legislative agenda after the 2010 election cycle, funded in part by the NRA through ALEC legislation, where the NRA as part of ALEC drafted gun-related legislation for Republican legislators, including the shoot first laws, rather than the legislation being drafted by Wisconsin legislators or Arizona legislators or Texas legislators. The legislation is the almost word for word the same from one state to the next. The NRA sponsors and promotes these legislative bills, because it increases sales for their real constituents, the special interests they serve are the gun manufacturers, as well as major firearms retailers like WalMart, the largest seller of firearms and ammo in the nation. It is not an accident that Jared Loughner bough his ammo at a WalMart the morning of that mass shooting; it was a statistical probability.
During the period after making their gun laws more lenient, there were decreases in crime reported, but increases in homicides, and increases in non-fatal shootings. The increases in cities like Milwaukee were largely attributed to domestic violence. Domestic gun violence often takes the form of murder suicides, where more than one person is killed, or there is an attempt to kill; we average three or more of these murder suicides EVERY WEEK.
Six people are dead, others are hospitalized, including a law enforcement officer who has had multiple surgeries for 8 or 9 gun shot wounds, including to his neck.
Not everyone should have a gun; those who are questionable because of known drug use, mental instability, or violence and anger control issues and domestic violence issues should not. These are preventable crimes, these are avoidable crimes, these are crimes that other countries do not have with the frequency that we have.
Tomorrow, Jared Loughner is to plead guilty in a plea bargain deal. He has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and bi-polar mental illness. Jared Loughner had shown such marked mental illness well before he shot Gabby Giffords and 18 other people, six of them fatalities, that he had been forced by his college to either withdraw or get a mental health assessment that cleared him as a danger to himself and others. At least one teacher and students indicated they feared he would become become a mass shooter, possibly a school shooter committing a mass shooting at that school.
And yet Jared Loughner passed the kind of background check allowed under shall issue, where because no court removed his gun rights, he had to be allowed to buy a gun and ammunition - when he was clearly a danger, and clearly had mental health issues. Arizona had only submitted 4,000 names of the KNOWN, COURT DETERMINED VERY WORST CASE MENTALLY ILL PATIENTS; most were not submitted. Many states have never submitted ANY of those names.
They don't have to, because courtesy of the lobbying by the NRA, the NICS data base is optional, not mandatory. Lots of states, especially the pro-gun Republican majority states don't submit ANY names for the prohibited categories of dangerous mental illness, felony convictions, or drug use. An estimated 60% of gun sales goes through Federal Firearms Licensed dealers, who run an NICS data base check; but those checks are useless if less than half the known ADJUDICATED mentally ill people's names are in the data base, or most of the felons or drug users names are not in there either.
Law enforcement was aware of Loughner's mental health issues; two law enforcement officers delivered the letter to Loughner and his parents that required the mental health assessment for Loughner to continue at his local college, and which required a meeting wth the college between the school, his parents and Loughner. Law enforcement does not ordinarily deliver letters on behalf of the college to students and their parents. The college police had five separate encounters with Loughner when he was engaging in his mental health problem episodes, and they had discovered a video made by Loughner about the school which raised issues for them about his mental stability and the possibility that he would be a danger to the school, staff and students. Local law enforcement also knew about Loughner's drug use, use which was sufficient to prevent Loughner from being accepted into the military at a time when it was not unusual for recruiters to waive having a criminal record to meet quotas based on admitted drug use by Loughner - drug use which would have turned up on drug testing.
Law enforcement knew about Loughner's deteriorating mental illness. Loughner's parents knew. But no one was able to deny Jared Loughner a firearm, which they would have been able to do in a 'may issue' state, because Arizona was a shall issue. The NRA and pro-gun advocates hate 'may issue', but the bottom line is that it allows law enforcement to exercise the kind of judgment that would prevent people who obviously should not have weapons from getting legal weapons.
There is a fear bordering on paranoia among the pro-gunners who are largely conservatives of some stripe, that law enforcement will prevent mentally healthy, non-violent people who don't have serious anger and violent impulse control issues, or mental health issues, from obtaining guns on mere whim. There is no evidence to support that fear, but the right has a lot of unfounded crazy fears. They are the conspiracy theory constituency. The NRA opposes any limitations on what guns can be purchased, like assault-style weapons, or how many, or how much ammunition, or what capacity magazines or other accessories which make mass shootings easier for the shooter to carry out so as to wound the maximum number of people, and then they make it impossible for law enforcement to deny the purchase of those things by people who will be dangerous to themselves and others with them.
Copycat shooters to the Aurora, Colorado shooting were arrested in the past two weeks, both with arsenals of weapons and ammunition. One man in Maine who wanted to commit a copycat mass shooting to the Aurora shooting had a machine gun in his arsenal. Another man in Maryland with mental health issues who wanted to commit a copy cat mass shooting at his place of employment had mental health issues, and was sent by law enforcement for psychiatric evaluation when they took him into custody, after he threatened his former employers and co-workers.
We have poor availability of mental health care in this country, especially for those who are mentally ill to the extent they cannot work in jobs that would provide health care. Our gun-promoting conservative politicians cut what funds there are for mental health care and screening that would diagnose and identify these people who are dangerously ill. The same conservatives want to repeal the ACA aka Obamacare, which would improve that mental health care and diagnosis for millions.
The shooter in Milwaukee has been linked to white supremacist hate groups; apparently his tattoos indicate issues related to those political views. Another reason that NRA and their conservative political puppets resist legislation on quantity or types of firearms, is that it might impede the accumulation of arsenals of weapons and ammunition by their supporters - including the wacko militias and other paramilitary groups who love the sniper 50 cals and the assault style weapons and the high capacity magazines like the 100 round one used by Holmes in the Aurora mass shooting.
Making THOSE more difficult to purchase, for example by renewing the assault weapon ban, would cut into a lot of gun sales. It would also make all of us safer from crazy people, especially law enforcement which has been seeing an increase in firearms deaths in their ranks.
But the right and the NRA and WalMart don't want to let law enforcement stop those dangerous people. It would cut into their profits if states became may issue, but it would make us all safer, and more free, not less. Blame the NRA. Mass murderers more often than not use assault style weapons and large capacity magazines; the NRA is responsible for those being legal. Mass murders most often use legally purchased guns; blame the NRA, they make it possible for people who should not be allowed to buy guns to do so, by making may issue states shall issue states where law enforcement has their hands tied behind their backs to stop people they have good reason to believe are dangerous.
Our mass shootings are largely preventable, except for the efforts by the NRA, who through ALEC buy and sell conservative politicians so as to profit gun manufacturers and retailers like WalMart. Our laws should be consistent with the Constitution, they should respect 2nd Amendment rights, but that does not mean our laws should be stupid, or that we should deny law enforcement the authority the need to keep US safe, and themselves safe, from crazy people buying and carrying and using guns, especially assault weapon style firearms with large capacity magazines.
We let a lot of dangerous people legally buy guns, people whom it is basic common sense should be prohibited by law enforcement from doing so - including previously convicted felons who committed violent crimes and crimes with guns.
From CNN:
We should not brush aside discussions of gun policy as too politically difficult to expect meaningful change, or "the price for our freedoms." Instead, we should reflect on why the U.S. has a murder rate that is nearly seven times higher than the average murder rate in other high-income countries and a nearly 20 times higher murder rate with guns. And we should consider how flaws in current gun policies contribute to this disparity.
Standards for legal ownership and permits to carry a concealed gun are relatively lax in the U.S.
In most states, a person with a long history of arrests and convictions for misdemeanors (often pleaded down from felony charges), prior restraining orders for domestic violence and history of drug and alcohol abuse can own as many military-style weapons as he can afford to purchase, and can legally carry concealed guns almost anywhere.
Under federal law, anyone wanting to purchase a firearm from a licensed gun dealer must pass a background check. But in most states, the gun dealer who stands to profit from a gun sale, rather than a law enforcement agency, determines the authenticity of purchasers' identification cards. Gun dealers face little consequence if they fail to account for dozens of guns upon inspection.
No surprise, the ATF, which conducts those FFL inspections, has a skeleton staff, and has consistently had their funding cut by the Republicans, and are actively lobbied against by the NRA, to make those inspections as few and far between as possible.
from the same CNN article:
Data indicating which gun dealers sell the most guns linked to crimes are kept from public view and cannot be used in decisions about the dealer's license. Illogically, federal law and most state gun laws allow firearm purchases from private sellers with no background check or questions asked. As a result of these policies, it is far too easy for dangerous people to own, carry and ultimately use guns.
Yesterday, we had another mass shooting; this time in Wisconsin, which has recently made their gun laws much more lax in their gun laws, and is a 'shall issue' state, including for concealed carry. Shall issue, instead of may issue, means that except for the most extreme cases, people who want guns can get guns and carry them publicly.
Wisconsin made it easier to obtain and carry firearms as part of the Republican legislative agenda after the 2010 election cycle, funded in part by the NRA through ALEC legislation, where the NRA as part of ALEC drafted gun-related legislation for Republican legislators, including the shoot first laws, rather than the legislation being drafted by Wisconsin legislators or Arizona legislators or Texas legislators. The legislation is the almost word for word the same from one state to the next. The NRA sponsors and promotes these legislative bills, because it increases sales for their real constituents, the special interests they serve are the gun manufacturers, as well as major firearms retailers like WalMart, the largest seller of firearms and ammo in the nation. It is not an accident that Jared Loughner bough his ammo at a WalMart the morning of that mass shooting; it was a statistical probability.
During the period after making their gun laws more lenient, there were decreases in crime reported, but increases in homicides, and increases in non-fatal shootings. The increases in cities like Milwaukee were largely attributed to domestic violence. Domestic gun violence often takes the form of murder suicides, where more than one person is killed, or there is an attempt to kill; we average three or more of these murder suicides EVERY WEEK.
Six people are dead, others are hospitalized, including a law enforcement officer who has had multiple surgeries for 8 or 9 gun shot wounds, including to his neck.
Not everyone should have a gun; those who are questionable because of known drug use, mental instability, or violence and anger control issues and domestic violence issues should not. These are preventable crimes, these are avoidable crimes, these are crimes that other countries do not have with the frequency that we have.
Tomorrow, Jared Loughner is to plead guilty in a plea bargain deal. He has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and bi-polar mental illness. Jared Loughner had shown such marked mental illness well before he shot Gabby Giffords and 18 other people, six of them fatalities, that he had been forced by his college to either withdraw or get a mental health assessment that cleared him as a danger to himself and others. At least one teacher and students indicated they feared he would become become a mass shooter, possibly a school shooter committing a mass shooting at that school.
And yet Jared Loughner passed the kind of background check allowed under shall issue, where because no court removed his gun rights, he had to be allowed to buy a gun and ammunition - when he was clearly a danger, and clearly had mental health issues. Arizona had only submitted 4,000 names of the KNOWN, COURT DETERMINED VERY WORST CASE MENTALLY ILL PATIENTS; most were not submitted. Many states have never submitted ANY of those names.
They don't have to, because courtesy of the lobbying by the NRA, the NICS data base is optional, not mandatory. Lots of states, especially the pro-gun Republican majority states don't submit ANY names for the prohibited categories of dangerous mental illness, felony convictions, or drug use. An estimated 60% of gun sales goes through Federal Firearms Licensed dealers, who run an NICS data base check; but those checks are useless if less than half the known ADJUDICATED mentally ill people's names are in the data base, or most of the felons or drug users names are not in there either.
Law enforcement was aware of Loughner's mental health issues; two law enforcement officers delivered the letter to Loughner and his parents that required the mental health assessment for Loughner to continue at his local college, and which required a meeting wth the college between the school, his parents and Loughner. Law enforcement does not ordinarily deliver letters on behalf of the college to students and their parents. The college police had five separate encounters with Loughner when he was engaging in his mental health problem episodes, and they had discovered a video made by Loughner about the school which raised issues for them about his mental stability and the possibility that he would be a danger to the school, staff and students. Local law enforcement also knew about Loughner's drug use, use which was sufficient to prevent Loughner from being accepted into the military at a time when it was not unusual for recruiters to waive having a criminal record to meet quotas based on admitted drug use by Loughner - drug use which would have turned up on drug testing.
Law enforcement knew about Loughner's deteriorating mental illness. Loughner's parents knew. But no one was able to deny Jared Loughner a firearm, which they would have been able to do in a 'may issue' state, because Arizona was a shall issue. The NRA and pro-gun advocates hate 'may issue', but the bottom line is that it allows law enforcement to exercise the kind of judgment that would prevent people who obviously should not have weapons from getting legal weapons.
There is a fear bordering on paranoia among the pro-gunners who are largely conservatives of some stripe, that law enforcement will prevent mentally healthy, non-violent people who don't have serious anger and violent impulse control issues, or mental health issues, from obtaining guns on mere whim. There is no evidence to support that fear, but the right has a lot of unfounded crazy fears. They are the conspiracy theory constituency. The NRA opposes any limitations on what guns can be purchased, like assault-style weapons, or how many, or how much ammunition, or what capacity magazines or other accessories which make mass shootings easier for the shooter to carry out so as to wound the maximum number of people, and then they make it impossible for law enforcement to deny the purchase of those things by people who will be dangerous to themselves and others with them.
Copycat shooters to the Aurora, Colorado shooting were arrested in the past two weeks, both with arsenals of weapons and ammunition. One man in Maine who wanted to commit a copycat mass shooting to the Aurora shooting had a machine gun in his arsenal. Another man in Maryland with mental health issues who wanted to commit a copy cat mass shooting at his place of employment had mental health issues, and was sent by law enforcement for psychiatric evaluation when they took him into custody, after he threatened his former employers and co-workers.
We have poor availability of mental health care in this country, especially for those who are mentally ill to the extent they cannot work in jobs that would provide health care. Our gun-promoting conservative politicians cut what funds there are for mental health care and screening that would diagnose and identify these people who are dangerously ill. The same conservatives want to repeal the ACA aka Obamacare, which would improve that mental health care and diagnosis for millions.
The shooter in Milwaukee has been linked to white supremacist hate groups; apparently his tattoos indicate issues related to those political views. Another reason that NRA and their conservative political puppets resist legislation on quantity or types of firearms, is that it might impede the accumulation of arsenals of weapons and ammunition by their supporters - including the wacko militias and other paramilitary groups who love the sniper 50 cals and the assault style weapons and the high capacity magazines like the 100 round one used by Holmes in the Aurora mass shooting.
Making THOSE more difficult to purchase, for example by renewing the assault weapon ban, would cut into a lot of gun sales. It would also make all of us safer from crazy people, especially law enforcement which has been seeing an increase in firearms deaths in their ranks.
But the right and the NRA and WalMart don't want to let law enforcement stop those dangerous people. It would cut into their profits if states became may issue, but it would make us all safer, and more free, not less. Blame the NRA. Mass murderers more often than not use assault style weapons and large capacity magazines; the NRA is responsible for those being legal. Mass murders most often use legally purchased guns; blame the NRA, they make it possible for people who should not be allowed to buy guns to do so, by making may issue states shall issue states where law enforcement has their hands tied behind their backs to stop people they have good reason to believe are dangerous.
Our mass shootings are largely preventable, except for the efforts by the NRA, who through ALEC buy and sell conservative politicians so as to profit gun manufacturers and retailers like WalMart. Our laws should be consistent with the Constitution, they should respect 2nd Amendment rights, but that does not mean our laws should be stupid, or that we should deny law enforcement the authority the need to keep US safe, and themselves safe, from crazy people buying and carrying and using guns, especially assault weapon style firearms with large capacity magazines.
We can disagree whose fault it is, but we can agree we DO have a poor mental health system and we DO let the mentally ill go too easily.
ReplyDeleteWe should make it simpler for the government to lock up people for indefinite periods, with less proof required and also cut back on the free lawyers and endless appeals.
Locking up more people for longer on less evidence would make the rest of us safer. At least, it would if we could get the ACLU to go along with it. I'm doubtful but hey, it's worth a shot.
We can disagree whose fault it is, but we can agree we DO have a poor mental health system and we DO let the mentally ill go too easily.
ReplyDeleteHow do you figure we can disagree whose fault it is? The voting record IS a matter of record; it is a fact, a matter of historic documentation.
We should make it simpler for the government to lock up people for indefinite periods, with less proof required and also cut back on the free lawyers and endless appeals.
And YOU are complaining about your consitutional rights being infringed???????????? Do you not see a massive incongruity here? We have a huge problem with convicting innocent people, especially for the death penalty. The innocence project has put the rate above 1 in 4. So.......where does it make sense to you that we should require LESS proof? Or are you being sarcastic? You were waxing eloquent, if factually inaccurate, about the origins and history of the 2nd Amendment / right to self-defense. Are you equally ill informed about the history of the right to a defense?
How do you think locking up more people for longer would work better? Because of course, the evidence shows the opposite. Probably the smartest thing we could do is to decriminalize, but regulate marijuana, and possibly other drugs.
We had a working system that allowed law enforcement to address problems like stalkers, harassers, domestic abusers, drug abusers, and individuals who were known to be violent.
The NRA and the Republicans broke a working system, and they are doing their best to smash what is remaining, notably the efforts to dismantle Minnesota background checks.
And of course it is the Republicans who are trying to keep us from impoving our mental health system with the ACA. The right doesn't propose alternatives, they just want to ignore the mentally ill, and instead fund corporate welfare, and unfair tax cuts for the wealthy, and more pork projects for the military industrial complex, even when the pentagon doesn't want things.
So, do you have any GOOD solutions to the mess the NRA and the Repulicans have made of our working may issue system OR our mental health system? No? So, you only have bright ideas for breaking wht works.
Are you equally ill informed about the history of the right to a defense?
ReplyDeleteSorry, that should have read LEGAL defense.
Joe, you exaggerate 2nd amendment rights, and then try to ignore other, reasonably functional rights. You are clearly not very well educated about ANY of the rights we have.
You should consider a bit of not-so-light reading on the subject of civil rights, both practice and theory. You are singularly ill-informed on the topic, and don't seem to realize your own ignorance.
Prob about the Second Amendment, Doakes, According to the Heller-McDonald decisions Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose. For example, the majority of the 19th-century courts to consider the question held that prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons were lawful under the Second Amendment or state analogues. Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment, nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms, which the court said was not an exhaustive list. I will also add that registration and licensing were allowed by the Court and Heller was originally denied a permit for his gun!
ReplyDeleteSo, you're kinda on shaky ground trying to use the "Second Amendment Right" as a reason to not enact reasonable laws which would prevent disqualified people from getting their hands on guns.
Not everyone has a "right" to own a gun. In fact, prior to Heller, there was nothing preventing firearms from being banned from civilian ownership. Now, Heller-McDonald have said that gun bans are the only thing off the table, but reasonable restrictions are acceptable.
Justice William O. Douglas, who was on the Court at the time of US v. Miller said:
A powerful lobby dins into the ears of our citizenry that these gun purchases are constitutional rights protected by the Second Amendment, which reads, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
There is under our decisions no reason why stiff state laws governing the purchase and possession of pistols may not be enacted. There is no reason why pistols may not be barred from anyone with a police record. There is no reason why a State may not require a purchaser of a pistol to pass a psychiatric test. There is no reason why all pistols should not be barred to everyone except the police.
The leading case is United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174, upholding a federal law making criminal the shipment in interstate commerce of a sawed-off shotgun. The law was upheld, there being no evidence that a sawed-off shotgun had “some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia.” Id., at 178. The Second Amendment, it was held, “must be interpreted and applied” with the view of maintaining a “militia.”
“The Militia which the States were expected to maintain and train is set in contrast with Troops which they were forbidden to keep without the consent of Congress. The sentiment of the time strongly disfavored standing armies; the common view was that adequate defense of country and laws could besecured through the Militia – civilians primarily, soldiers on occasion.” Id., at 178-179.
Critics say that proposals like this water down the Second Amendment. Our decisions belie that argument, for the Second Amendment, as noted, was designed to keep alive the militia. But if watering-down is the mood of the day, I would prefer to water down the Second rather than the Fourth Amendment. Adams v. Williams, 407 U.S 143, 150 -51 (1972)
Douglas is a far better authority on this topic than you are Doakes, or Scalia for that matter.