There are 300 million people in America, 100 Million gun owners. But the NYTimes thinks that a few cases of the mentally ill possessing firearms when they probably shouldn’t is adequate justification to empower government to infringe upon the rights of the other 299,999,988. That they feel this way should be a shock to no one. But what should surprise some, even liberal advocates of the Times, is that such a thinly argued, poorly researched, puff piece of anti-gun activism managed to make it on to the front page of the Sunday edition.
What really gets me is that since year one of the age of Obama, liberals have been telling us that the government is so smart, so noble and so good at everything that it should be managing our healthcare, our ‘investments’ in technology, and every other damned thing in our lives. But now they’ve suddenly decided that it’s actually too incompetent to adequately review a few dozen cases of mental illness.
Here’s my favorite quote:
“Dealing with somebody who suffers from severe mental illness and mixing that with firearms, you really have to cross the t’s and dot the i’s,” said Richard J. Vagnozzi, a deputy district attorney who handles these cases. Mr. Vagnozzi said the process “isn’t perfect, but we do the best we can with the available data and what we’re allowed to do.”
Well for a government as competent and inspired as ours that should be no problem right?
The NRA had the right idea here. If you allowed the anti-gun activists to permanently take away the right to own a firearm for the mentally ill, then we would be one liberal election success away from 200 million Americans being diagnosed with mental illness. It would instantly become a backdoor means of disarming the civilian populace. The NRA would fight it of course, but thanks to the tenaciousness of what’s left of the dwindling anti-gun movement, that would take a decade and a ruling from the Supreme Court.
But the NRA doesn’t want to pass out Uzi’s at the mental institutions either. So they came up with an excellent compromise. Yes… liberals can take away the rights of anyone they find to be mentally ill. But there must be a facility in place to give them back if things change or they discover (heaven forbid) that the government was wrong to take them away in the first place. I can’t imagine a more reasonable compromise. How the Times can take issue with this is really beyond me.
But instead of focusing on what may be the hundreds or maybe even thousands of perfectly healthy people who the government unjustly stripped of their constitutionally protected rights, the Times has instead focused on the half dozen who have mistakenly had them restored. In fact, we don’t ever know if there was a problem with the process the government has used because the Times doesn’t actually talk about it much. All we know for certain is that in a couple of cases it had unfortunate consequences.
But with 300 million Americans and 100 million gun owners, at least a couple of errors has to be expected. Government is the least competent of us, operating with the lowest common denominator as it's standard. That's what 'good enough for government work' actually means. So the fact that they've slipped up a couple of times is no rational justification to put a legal facility in place to forcibly strip the rights from the rest.
In fact, maybe this is really the NY Times trying to find a way to admit to it’s readers that government isn’t omniscient after all. Maybe it’s their way of letting us all know that their editorial board has finally decided that the government shouldn’t actually decide everything for everyone. Maybe they’ve discovered that the ‘one size fits all’ mechanisms they’ve been endorsing for so long are bound to be a bad fit for a least some of the people involved.
Maybe… but probably not. It’s probably just another pass at editorializing the front page, and trying to undermine American’s rights. That’s what Occam’s razor would lead me to believe anyway. This is the NY Times after all.
6 comments:
"...the prohibition is often toothless because many states do not share their mental health records with the F.B.I.’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System."
Back in the good old days, when the USSR was trying very hard to expand market share, a common method of handling dissatisfied customers was to place them into insane asylums.
Perhaps the article went on to explain why states don't share such data with the federales, but I reach my daily limit of the NY Times after about 500 words so I wouldn't know.
A quick glance through the comments showed mucho agreement by the True Believers, so maybe this article made the front page as a way to help reduce declining subscription rates.
I actually had a paragraph on their trying to appeal to the far left 20% to bump subscriptions in the original post and I deleted it because it was really tangential to the point I was making.
since you mentioned it Jim, I went back and re-read some of the comments. Man oh man there are some really wacky folks who read the NY Times. Not a one of them even pauses to consider that their might be a cost to the kind of thing their proposing.
Of course, ignoring the costs is really what liberalism is all about right?
My personal favorite was 'lambchowder' who proclaimed that "reason itself was under siege." Couldn't be more right if you ask me. the mentally ill may be losing their right to keep and bear arms, but they certainly aren't losing the right to comment in the NY Times.
It will come down to how you define "insanity" or "mental ilness".
You want to own - legally - say, 4 handguns, in the borough of Manhattan?
What for?
Clearly, you're insane...
To me, anybody who enjoy bungee cord jumping from bridges is insane.
Or anybody engaged in speed races... or climbing the Everest.
They should be committed, after a careful mental health evaluation by a government panel or sumthin'.
Seriously now, it only takes one court case to establish a precedent, whereas a normal person is deemed "insane" just because he wants one firearm too many.
Or wanting a semi auto shotgun with a drum magazine.
Or just because he wants to own a firearm... any firearm.
JimInTx said: "Back in the good old days, when the USSR was trying very hard to expand market share, a common method of handling dissatisfied customers was to place them into insane asylums."
IIRC, the same tactic was used by the great wartime Presidents Lincoln and Roosevelt, and to a lesser extent Wilson.
The D.A you mention, A Richard Vagnozzi, is a corrupt cretin. He has a deal with the judges and with dirty cops to use the mental Health Court in Los Angeles( Division 95) to lock up the mentally sane if the mentally sane are innocent and want to take thier cases to trial. Richard Vagnozzi uses the state and these fake "mental health courts" to do the state's dirty work.
The judges who ran or now run these courts are on the take. A judge Maria Stratton used to run the court and she would try to hospitalize and forcibly medicate those who she saw as "enemies". Now, A Judge Samantha Jessner presieds and supervises.
Judge Samantha Jessner openly colludes with malicious prosecutions and therefore has now been promoted to supervisor of that court.
Doctors by the name Kaushal Sharma and Francisco Velarde are paid off to write any report ordered by these corrupted and barbaric individuals.
The bailiffs and clerks in the Los Angeles Mental Health Courts all know what is up and seem very disgusted by that court and the crimes that state is committing within.
The DA mentioned, Richard Vagnozzi, is mentally ill and dangerous. The fact that he would be cited in any article gives me chills. Richard Vagnozzi is a maniac and a criminal and should long ago have been put in jail or an insane asylum.
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