Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Never let a crisis go to waste.
Sen. Harry Reid wants expanded background checks: “Is that asking too much? Couldn’t we at least do this little thing to stop people who are mentally ill . . . from purchasing guns?” Reid said on the Senate floor.
Den. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va) specifically mentioned an effort aimed at keeping guns out of the hands of people diagnosed with mental illness.
President Obama noted last week that once again, someone got a gun who shouldn’t have had access to it.
The South Carolina church shooter sparked the talk but he wasn’t mentally ill, not according to existing law. So Democrats are using bait-and-switch tactics to argue for restrictions on people who have Not been diagnosed with mental illness but who act strangely, hold unpopular opinions or have few friends. After all, we must Do Something, before those lone-wolf weirdos snap and kill people. Sounds perfectly reasonable, right?
One small problem: it’s unconstitutional.
The Second Amendment was adopted to ensure Congress would not regulate firearms, because the Founders feared an arbitrary and powerful central government like the one they’d just thrown off. In the Founders’ time, it was universally understood that children, felons and the mentally ill shouldn’t have firearms and those limitations continue, under District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 US 570 (2008). But who are “the mentally ill?”
Federal law prohibits ownership by a “mental defective.” There are court cases discussing whether “mental defective” is different from “mentally ill” for gun control purposes (mental defective might mean “retarded but not dangerous” and thus not be a disqualifying condition). Leaving aside that hair-splitting, Federal law defines “mentally defective” as having been adjudicated such or committed to a mental institution. 18 USC 922(g)(4). The Code of Federal Regulations, 22 CFR 478.11, further clarifies that “adjudicated” means a determination made by a court.
Yes, but so what? Federal law, federal regulations, Congress can simply change them, right? That’s where it gets tricky. There are a long line of Supreme Court decisions holding that when the government acts to deprive a person of a fundamental Constitutional right, that person is entitled to Due Process consisting of, at a minimum, notice of the charges and a meaningful opportunity to be heard before a neutral decider. That means a court must make the decision, after hearing, at which the burden is on the government and the accused has a chance to rebut the state’s case.
You’ve heard it’s nearly impossible to get a person committed these days, no matter how much they need it? Clayton Cramer’s book “My Brother Ron” is a heartbreakingly frank, scrupulously researched account of how civil liberties lawyers created the case-law that now controls. And the case-law is not limited to civil commitments: Due Process extends to mental illness for purposes of gun control, which means the government cannot deny guns to people merely because they are weirdos, act strangely, hold unpopular opinions or have few friends.
What the President and Democrat Congressional leaders propose to do is precisely what the Founders explicitly designed the Constitution to prevent. The plan is unconstitutional on its face. Of course, that’s never stopped Democrats before.
Joe Doakes
As we saw last week, the left isn’t above writing new law from the bench to suit “community” demands.
Reminiscent of Margaret Sanger’s “Social Hygiene” which also proposed a solution for “mental defectives”. For progressives some goals never change.
When “mental defective” becomes a label forbidding gun ownership, it should also be used to limit ownership of books, CDs, movies, etc – because, obviously, he/she cannot distinguish between poison or medicine.
Oh hell yeah! Now is exactly the perfect time to start a gun grab campaign.
Eschewing the company of others is a mental defect, but men marching down the street with your junk hanging out of assless chaps or dressed as a fairy princess, or as whore wearing a Catholic nun’s habit is perfectly natural.
Well we have a Supreme Court where the majority are all Humpty Dumpty and words mean whatever they want them to mean at the time.
And never forget the the kangaroo courts of the USSR found many a dissenter mentally ill.
Under what standard was Roof insane? Reid stupidly invokes the Fort Hood shooting, carried out by an Army psychiatrist. Get that? An Army psychiatrist. Oh yeah, Reid invokes the misattributed Einstein aphorism “insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result” as, in sanely, he repeats his failure of calling for increased gun control.
How about if we keep idiots from being elected Senator, Reid? Even the citizens of Nevada must have their limits.
Sen. Chuck Grassely of Iowa claimed in April that 93% of the names on the Mentally Defective Cannot Purchase Firearms list were veterans, because the VA interpreted so many requests for assistance to mean the veteran was a danger to himself or others. The one group of people who actually know how to handle firearms . . . .
” . . . because the VA interpreted so many requests for assistance to mean the veteran was a danger to himself or others.”
Didn’t Reid lose a boxing match with his own exercise equipment? Maybe if the gun control movement had fewer buffoons as spokesmen, they would have greater success.
Why did Dylann Roof have a gun?
He purchased it, supposedly illegally because he had been charged, but not found guilty, of a felony. This is troubling because it means that people can lose their 2nd amendment rights when they have not been shown to have been guilty of anything. The reason Roof was charged was a random run in with cops where they found him in possession of narcotics. It wasn’t a weapon charge. Details about Roof, his racial obsession, and the murder weapon are foggy. I assume that this is because they don’t fit the narrative.
What is the narrative? Obama said this in response to the Charleston shootings:
“legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination in almost every institution of our lives, that casts a long shadow and that’s still part of our DNA that’s passed on.”
Compare this to what Obama has said about Islam and Islamic terrorism:
“They are not religious leaders; they are terrorists. We are not at war with Islam. We are at war with people who have perverted Islam.”
We have a well established tradition that the rabid dog is free to get the first bite. It’s a price we are apparently willing to pay.