To those of us who value justice and the principle of “innocent until proven guilty,” this argument sounds like madness. At any rate, such an erosion of our right to privacy and freedom from unwarranted suspicion is much more chilling (to me, at least) than the extra 0.00002% of dying each year we can attribute to madmen with guns. I just don’t think the problem is serious enough to justify the cost or the burden of such a program.
And I have to correct you when you say “government-given right.” The government described in the United States Constitution does not grant rights to its citizens, nor powers to its states. The liberties in the Bill of Rights exist not by enumeration but by omission from the powers granted the federal government, though it seems that if they hadn’t been written down we soon would have been without them. Can you have forgotten the arguments of the Federalists, and Hamilton in particular?
If you want to get a gun, you submit to a test of some kind. You do this willingly, so how can you argue about the right to privacy? Now, you might not think any test is necessary, but that’s another part of the issue.
As I said to DocCathode, I am not a (constitutional) lawyer, so my language about the right to bear arms listed in the Constitution may be off the mark. Whatever. The constitution still doesn’t prevent legislation being passed to administer its contents. As an example, the 18th amendment regarding prohibition specifically says Congress and the states shall have the “power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” I present this to illustrate that the ability to pass laws regarding the 18th is evidence that there is nothing in the Constitution to prevent something similar for the 2nd (Constitutional lawyers, have at me!)
So you are in favor of making those who wish to exercise their second amendment rights pay for it.
The government doesn’t give away free guns, true. But, at present it does not charge you a few hundred bucks in addition to the purchase price and sales tax.
This is very different. No one is arguing that the government must provide free tickets to DC, free internet, or free guns. What I am arguing is that the government should not erect hurdles (like fees in the hundreds of dollars) in order for citizens to do things guaranteed by the Bill O’ Rights.
My last comment applies equally to this.
Buying and owning a gun is a free exercise of a right.
None of these hurdles costs the voter a dime, let alone a few hundred dollars.
People like me? You mean left-leaning, bleeding heart liberal democrats who would never actually own a gun, and could never shoot an animal let alone a human being???
They can indeed enact into law any regulation they want, so long as that regulation is constitutional. I maintain that charging a few hundred dollars in testing fees when you buy a gun, and then charging the same for periodic re-testing would be unconstitutional.
The second amendment is vague and open to interpretation. I certainly don’t see any point where the level of regulation permitted by the government is clearly defined, nor do I agree that regulation that includes fees for gun ownership would be “unconstitutional.” There’s no such thing as a free lunch. Then I also don’t have a problem with requiring a state or national ID to vote, which also costs you money. There’s very little one can do without paying something.
Very imprecise tests. And the treatments are mostly empirical at this point, and have variable degrees of success.
True - but you were proposing that everyone who want to own a gun should be forced to undergo some sort of psychiatric pre-screening. What’s wrong with doing it the other way around - letting mental health professionals notify the NICS database if they have a patient they feel is a likely danger to others and should be denied firearms ownership? As Condescending Robot noted earlier, the people who go on shooting sprees are usually already identified as mentally ill, they just haven’t met the current very strict criteria for inclusion into the database (involuntary commitment).
I think it would. OTTOMH “. . . the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” I’d say charging a few hundred bucks to exercise that right constitutes infringement.
That would be a de facto poll tax. IIRC The supreme court found poll taxes unconstitutional.
Well number one is to eliminate the disincentives. I’m not okay with involuntary commitment at all, unless it has been agreed to by a jury. And I’m not okay with stripping people of their constitutional rights based on the results of a mental exam.
Incentives might be to make mental health care free, or at least covered by insurance. Beyond that, we just have to make mental health care better.
I’m sure I’m biased, but I’ve never seen a mental health success story. Ever. Best case scenario is that it’s totally ineffectual, but I’ve seen plenty of drugged out zombies come out of it too. I’ll admit my schizophrenic cousin behaves much better on his meds, but a) he isn’t himself, and b) he hates taking them and goes off his meds several times a year and goes back to being completely crazy. So I can’t count that as a success.
So probably the best incentive for mental health treatment is to make it worth doing. About the only thing it has going for it now is that we can keep tabs on people who may be dangerous, and it gives psych students something to study. Let’s provide some benefits to the patient, and maybe more people who need it would seek treatment.
Like DocCathode, I’m not counted among those lining up to seek stricter gun controls, especially not as a knee-jerk response to the recent CT tragedy.
Guns and gun control: part of me likes the idea of everyone on this planet having personal access to their own thermonuclear stockpile. (Don’t coerce me, I can take out the whole species.) Then maybe we’d treat each other with appropriate levels of respect and governments would be of the people and so on. But part of me fully understands the fear of what some people might do with that capability, including deciding for no coherent or predictable reason to kill us all. Which brings me to…
Psychiatry, mental illness, insanity and guns: Being found to be fully incompetent (you are found to lack decision-making capacity and a guardian is appointed for you and your legal status is akin to that of a child) is not easy and shouldn’t be easy. Burden of proof needs to be on the party alleging incompetence and it has to be perpetual and severe, not just a pattern of some moments when you’re kind of fuzzy about things.
I bring all that up to distinguish competency from psychiatric diagnosis. Being diagnosed with a psychiatric condition is easy. Anyone can have one. Folks want their depression pills or whatever and doctors hand them a diagnosis since otherwise insurance won’t reimburse. Or someone’s behavior is disturbing to their parents or spouse or the employer or the neighbors, even though they aren’t doing anything particularly illegal, and they get held, and a diagnosis is applied because… well, psychiatrists just don’t have much inclination to chart someone who was brought in as “no pathologies found, no diagnosis, release immediately”. Lawsuits, you know. Why not just hold them for the stipulated 72 hours then release them with a recommendation of outpatient treatment? They probably would benefit from some mood stabilizers and whatnot… Or someone comes in because they aren’t altogether happy and satisfied and they want to FIND OUT if maybe they have a mental health problem. Far less stigma about that these days, you know. Again, the doctor’s going to provide a diagnosis to enable insurance reimbursal even to see the person long enough to do a decent evaluation.
In short, a psych history doesn’t mean shit as far as whether you’re fucking bonkers.
If I want to protest in front of the White House, the government is not required to give me poster board and markers so I can make a sign. I have to buy those on my own. The government does not charge me a few hundred bucks before letting me protest.
The government does not hand out free guns. You have to buy one yourself. It also does not charge you a few hundred dollars before you can buy a gun.
A national ID may well replace state issued ones. But, I do not expect to see a national ID you have to pay for if ID is required for voting.
No, but it does limit, or regulate, or even infringe on your right to free speech in certain ways. Why can’t it do something similar for the ownership of guns?
I like how you just slip that in there as if its true. Oh you’re a sly one aren’t you?
That is only because you favor an unrestricted, unregulated “super” right of gun ownership. As if out of all the rights inherent in the Constitution, this one thing is absolutely untouchable. Once you tell me why its ok for religions to not sacrifice people even though we have religious freedom, I’ll answer your argument
I don’t believe in god so…yeah, sorry, the government grants you those rights. If they don’t enforce the laws, you have no rights. Our society is built upon this mutual cooperation between those in power and its citizens. Once you take one side away, its pretty much survival of the strongest
The government has the right to restrict even your basic freedoms. They can and do erect hurdles, as you call them, that cost a citizen some amount to exercise a right. Many felons lose their right to vote AND their right to own a firearm. You can claim all you want about how they brought it upon themselves and that its “different” (its always different :rolleyes:) but the simple fact is that what you and others are advocating is absolutely no restrictions on gun ownership. Well, sorry to burst your bubble, but it is legally, morally, and Constitutionally allowed for the government to place hurdles in your path to exercise a right.
Curfews in place for minors, for certain emergency situations are barriers to perfectly law-abiding citizens telling them they can’t assemble. Claims like crowds are disturbing the peace have been used for decades, and I agree that they can be used, to move or restrict the movement and staging area of protestors and generally disagreeable people. There is a whole justice system of meandering laws and opposing jurisdictional ordinances covering the 4th Amendment and I guarantee you that the entirety of criminal defense doesn’t rest on only “that was unreasonable” when it comes to search and seizure. Impartial jury, witness confrontation, and other rights in the 6th Amendment do not cover certain types of trials because certain types of trials have different criteria and a regular citizen’s rights can and do take a back seat to those other priorities. Anyways, that’s just a small sample, there are a lot more examples that I can find if I actually tried. Lets stop pretending like there is no way the government can place regulations to the free exercise of your rights, I’m not going to keep discussing this lie. The government can, does, should, and will always be able to regulate the exercise of your rights that they give to you, should they decide a competing priority is more important.
I have no problems with you fighting for those other priorities, or any priorities you deem important. But I will not accept misinformation about it, pretending like the government can do nothing, and holding this one Amendment to be some kind of super Amendment.
If you think that there can be no impediment to gun ownership, then yes, people exactly like you.
It may surprise you to know that the “few hundred dollars” claim doesn’t appear anywhere in my posts. It may even surprise you to know that I would be fine if the testing fee is not exorbitantly high. What I want is to have people tested so that crazy people can’t get guns. If that costs a lot, or next to nothing at all, then at least the test is there. It may also surprise you to know that I find it annoying that people will put words in my mouth and then argue against that fictional version of me
Again this argument.
“You can’t do something about guns with 100% certainty so we can’t do anything at all!”
I am ok with the tests for mental illness and treatments we have now in the context of certifying the vast majority of people as suitable or not for gun ownership. And I think that given public interest in not being a bullet-riddled piece of human Swiss cheese, it is morally and legally defensible that for the outliers, we can be more careful and take more time to arrive at a diagnosis of higher precision
I am not opposed to that. I simply think an active approach is better, since it would cover more people, have less people falling through the cracks, and allow a more accurate picture of mental illness.
This is the kind of gun debate we should be having. I think testing them first is better, but you would favor in this context a less active approach. I don’t oppose a compromise between our two sides, I simply oppose people saying we shouldn’t have the conversation at all
What do you mean? That people aren’t considered innocent until proven guilty, or that I don’t actually value that principle? Both are simple truths (or if reality sometimes falls short of the first one, it is a fault that we all should deplore) and I don’t see how it’s “sly” of me to mention them.
I don’t favor this. All our rights are subject to some limits, and I don’t think the second amendment should be any more “absolute” than the first or the fourth. However, I do believe that the bar for imposing any limit should be set very high, probably a lot higher than most people do. That the state has an interest in the limitation, or that the public safety is interested, is not by itself sufficient justification to excuse any limit. The need must be overwhelming and the infringement must not be substantial.
You misunderstand me. I am an atheist and I do not believe there is any such thing as a “natural right,” except that everyone has the right to do anything nobody else can stop them from doing. But you have the situation inverted. The powers of the government are granted to it by the people. Authority not granted it is reserved.
The comparison to voting is a bit spurious. In order for democracy to work it is important that the voting public is as much as possible representative of the public. The objection to poll taxes was that these could be used to disenfranchise a specific class of people such that the interests of that group would not be represented by the government.
As far as guns go, I don’t think there is a specific need that all classes of people have equal access to guns. Unless gun ownership among the lower classes is subsidized, those who have the money will always be better able to arm themselves. The exception will be those who inherit or otherwise are given guns without having to pay for them.
How about if the testing is covered by the government but is subsidized through a tax on gun sales. Provided it isn’t so high so as to effectively prohibit ownership, it would clearly be within the right of the government to do regardless of the 2nd amendment. It would also not create any new financial barriers where none had previously existed, but only adjust already existent barriers to gun ownership.
To get the results you say you want, you’d have to run a few hours of tests. Getting tested in this manner is billed at about $100 per hour. Thus, you want either the buyer or the government to pay a few hundred every time some one is tested.
Is a few hundred “exorbitantly high”?
Please define “crazy”. I want to know exactly who you are talking about.
The idea of mental illness is the only reason to keep someone from owning a gun is short sighted in the least IMHO. Any one having any kind of arrest record should not be able to own a gun. This means being drunk and assulting someone as well. The police have their records of these as well as pedifiles and others who do not need the previlage of owning a gun, and how many times could a life been saved if the arrest records had been checked. These are public knowledge. No special dr appt for it. no extra money spent.
