[per instructions]
thanks, guys. you did a good job.

i still think i’d rather take my chances with the crazies. even if they do get it together enough to get a gun, they don’t always remember the bullets.

Of Course, one of the problems of challenging inclusion on the lists, is that you get your name on another list. This is the technique used by some spammers that allow you to have your name removed from one list, but gets you put on a list of confirmed good e-mail addresses.

* A list that gets you jailed on an executive order is pretty damned severe. (Don’t get me started.)

* A list that prevents you from flying in a commercial aircraft has the potential to change your life a great deal. (I honestly don’t know if I’m on the no-fly list, because I haven’t tried to fly in a long time, but I’ve read and heard that people who regularly participate in antiwar demonstrations frequently find themselves on those lists. My evidence is admittedly anecdotal.)

* A list that prohibits you from owning or carrying a gun has consequences that depend a great deal on your need for a gun.

I don’t own a gun, let alone carry one, because I have made a conscious decision not to “need” one. I.e., all other things being equal, I’d rather be killed than kill someone with a firearm, only to discover that I shouldn’t have. I’d make a terrible law enforcement officer: my indecision would be the death of one or more people, probably including me. YMMV.

And yes, I support the Second Amendment, as interpreted by the courts over the decades. But I wish that not so many people would exercise the right, and that among those who do, they would have sufficient internal stability to self-restrict when appropriate. Perhaps that is a foolish hope on my part, akin to hoping for a “group hug” solution to an armed robbery.

It does seem to me that restricting firearm ownership in at least those cases in which people have shown violent tendencies or a violent history… yeah, I know, that’s awfully vague… is a fairly minimal civil liberties infringement compared to no-fly lists or “enemy combatant” designations.

There was only one patient that I made sit in the back, but that was because he would start taking things apart to see how they worked, not because he was a threat.

That’s why I want the call made by a professional and not a bureaucrat. There are plenty of things that would cause people to seek professional help that have nothing to do with their being a threat to themselves or others.

The problem with all of the current lists is that it is easy to add names, but damn hard to remove them. That has to change. There needs to be a formal protest procedure to correct errors on the list.

If it’s a good things for trained officers, it’s a good thing for untrained citizens.
i’ll look like an idiot for arguing with this one, but i’m going to [somewhat] anyway.not with the counseling part; if i were king of the world, there’d be a free walk-in mental health clinic on every other street corner, and the counselors would be paid handsome salaries. but keeping databases on folks? we’ve seen how well that works with no-fly lists and sex offender registries.

Killing people is not an easy thing
what i used to do. i don’t know if it was a national policy or not, but the chapter i belonged to included in its list of clients any police officers, firefighters, or dispatchers involved in a traumatic situation.

….suicide by cop… no prior criminal history…
but too often i’d bet these same people have no prior history of treatment for mental illmess, either. we could start keeping lists of “people who act oddly sometimes” just in case, but i’d top every last of them.

i lean towards the “wine and canapes and group hugs” form of self-defense myself. my associations with mentally ill people have never been in a professional capacity, but they’ve been varied and frequent and they bear out cat daddy’s point: damned few of them are that violent.

Killing people is not an easy thing, even when it is totally justified. A lot of cops quit after a shooting, even though there was no doubt that it was the only way of bringing the situation to closure. It is really hard when looking at the situation afterwards you conclude that you had been an unwilling participant in “assisted suicide.”

There is no reason for a gun shop owner to know why someone isn’t permitted to buy a gun, only that they can’t. I would leave the call and flagging to mental health professionals, who would also have the right to remove it. We do it for cops in a lot of jurisdictions, requiring desk duty and mental health counseling after a shooting. If it’s a good things for trained officers, it’s a good thing for untrained citizens.

Civil Service in New York requires the Minneapolis Multiphase Personality Test and a psychiatric interview as part of the hiring process for law enforcement. It reduces the number of gunslinging whackos who carry badges.

guns for everybody or guns for nobody, i say.

we already demonize the mentally ill in our society, we don’t need to be piling on background checks on them too. incidents like columbine and virginia tech [did you notice michael vick’s alma mater? it’s a lovely part of the country, but is there something in the water?] are frightening and spectacular and stunningly sensationalized by the media, but not a lot of people are actually killed in mass murders staged by crazies.