Thousand Cuts
By Mitch Berg
A friend of the blog emails:
I got this link in an email from a woke acquaintance this morning who believes that if she can find my mental health records she can use the pending Red Flag laws to take away my guns.
 Now for sale: Data on your mental healthFor years, data brokers have collected and resold Americans’ personal information. But the pandemic-fueled rise … |
she suggested that while it might be problematic for Keith Ellison’s office to purchase and act upon this list directly it would be an ideal synergy for a NGO run by someone like Nancy Nord Bence;
to buy the list,
winnow through all available social media targeting the non-woke,
and “possible” gun owners,
then presenting the courts with Red Flag requests for their political enemies.
She sees this possibility as a promising growth oriented cottage industry.
Count on it.
They want to make owning a firearm too personally, socially and legally dangerous…
…for minorities first. Then, peasants.
February 15th, 2023 at 11:54 am
In Ellison’s dreams will a judge accept a third party, who has never met you, give expert testimony on your mental health.
We aren’t that bad, yet.
February 15th, 2023 at 12:08 pm
UMMP, if the NGO has access to your mental health records they have access to who treated/prescribed for you and that person(that 3rd party) will have standing as defined by the proposed laws with the court to ask for the red flag intervention. If there’s anything the covid experiment taught medical professionals in the last 3 years, its that non-compliance with a request can jeopardize your practice and your license. Welcome to the realm of soviet psychiatry.
February 15th, 2023 at 12:38 pm
n Ellison’s dreams will a judge accept a third party, who has never met you, give expert testimony on your mental health.
We aren’t that bad, yet.
We’ve already had an involved first party report domestic violence at the hands of Ellison, with video, and – poof – it was gone. And now for his next trick ….
February 15th, 2023 at 12:52 pm
Isn’t this….something of a HIPAA violation?
February 15th, 2023 at 1:04 pm
bb
there is a LOT of data that is not proscribed by HIPAA. For instance if your employer self insures they can and do see the invoices they are paying which would identify the medical/healthcare professional and very likely their specialty. In addition they would see all your prescription medications they are paying for. What they wouldn’t necessarily see would be the DRs notes and diagnoses.
February 15th, 2023 at 1:05 pm
Follow the link, the people supplying these profiles are third party data brokers. Who knows how they got their data? How many errors are there? If it is commercial product, the error rate could be pretty high and you would still have a saleable product.
February 15th, 2023 at 2:18 pm
bb
do you think CVS, Target, etc are not aggregating prescription information by zip code and selling it?
I have friends who within 2 days of getting a cancer diagnoses were suddenly inundated with telemarketing cancer research fundraising calls – its not a coincidence.
February 15th, 2023 at 3:08 pm
Cali has a red flag law. I found some sociological research done on its real world effects.
By a large majority the red flag law complainants were on duty cops. Not that many guns were seized, a few thousand IIRC. After a hearing the guns were returned about half the time. When they were not returned, it was usually because the person the guns were seized from did not make the hearing — often because they were in jail or otherwise institutionalized.
Although politicians love to claim that red flag laws prevent gun crimes & suicide, California’s numbers do not support this. Gun crimes & suicides pre and post red flag law are indistinguishable.
February 15th, 2023 at 5:04 pm
Remember that assault on Angie Craig?
Representative Angie Craig wants to know why a Democrat-run city permitted a recidivist violent criminal to be free to attack law-abiding, productive citizens. Wasn’t she a “defund the police” supporter?
So fucking stupid
February 15th, 2023 at 5:06 pm
Messed up the link apparently.
https://ace.mu.nu/archives/403193.php
February 15th, 2023 at 6:12 pm
I think that Craig was an opponent of the “defund the police” movement.
February 15th, 2023 at 7:51 pm
I think you’re right, UMMP, with regards to the “defund the police” policy that was up for a vote in Mpls. The confusion for some may be that she takes in lots of support from groups that do support “defund the police” policies.
February 15th, 2023 at 8:13 pm
Rep. Craig is protecting her position in the once and maybe future swing district of CD2, not CD5. Coming out in favor of Defund The Police may have been enough to put Tyler Kistner into Congress. Craig didn’t clear 50% by much. Even in solid Blue CD4, Betty McCollum didn’t come out in favor of Defund the Police, though that may have just been because no one bothered to ask her opinion.
To BB’s question about HIPPAA, The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 is not about patient privacy, no matter what everything thinks it’s about. Don’t listen to your HR Coordinator, even if she is in Congress. Listen to the Health Care Privacy expert at CCHF that has actually read the Legislation in it’s entirety.
And finally, to the primary subject. I’m looking forward to SCOTUS’ response to all the States and hopefully Agencies that refuse to read the recent Opinions on Gun Control. I want to read the Alito Opinion when he gets exasperated enough write “What part of ‘Shall Not Be Infringed’ don’t you [redacted] understand?!?!”
February 16th, 2023 at 5:47 am
Just watched a youtube video where a female web personality claimed to have had to go to court because a stalker was trying to use her state’s red flag law to get her disarmed.
The issue was that she had publicly identified the dude as stalking & threatening her, and he claimed this was a physical threat to him by her.
Didn’t work. Judge laughed the guy out of court.
Took a bit of reading between the lines because she was a bit vague on the process, probably on her attorney’s orders.
Red flag laws are open doors to abuse of process by bad actors.
February 16th, 2023 at 6:18 am
Sounds like that lady was lucky the Red Flag Hearing wasn’t done without her. I wonder if there was already a restraining order against him or not. Depending on the judge, I’d have liked to have seen the gears turning in his head as he considered the Intersectional Hierarchy. Female has more intersectional points than a guy, but guns are icky and lose her points, compounded by the idea that “words are violence,” while actual violence is just a form of protest. Lots of mental gymnastics needed to traverse the Gordian Knot of Liberal Logic.
The idea of Red Flag Laws being open doors to abuse by bad actors was one of the points we made to our new DFL Senator a couple of weeks ago. It didn’t hurt that we had a liberal, a conservative, and a libertarian all making the same point. Won’t change his vote on Floor when the DFL Leadership gives their directions this Session, but it might peel him off on an amendment or two in the future if the GOP is in the majority. Thankfully, the people that wrote Minnesota’s Carry Permit law made the list of Permit Holders non-public, so those bad actors can’t just file 1 records request and get their list of targets to harass, at least not yet. Shh, don’t remind Dave Pinto about that one last detail.
February 16th, 2023 at 9:47 am
OK, granted, when HIPAA is something like 5000 pages, actual privacy is not on the docket, yes, but one would hope that someone would explain the “4th Amendment” to those who would use this information to discriminate against their fellow citizens.
Perhaps a forlorn hope, but a hope nonetheless.
February 16th, 2023 at 5:10 pm
If the gun-grabbers got access to mental health records, I predict it will in fact worsen the incidence of mass shootings. Worse, it will likely lead to fewer people seeking the help they need if they know some bureaucrat could have their case history and abuse the access to that information.
Then, of course after a few high-profile mass shootings, made more high-profile by the media darlings, the gun-grabbers might say “Ah, shucks, we tried, guess we just have to take all the weapons from everybody.”
I mean, that wouldn’t be their long-term plan, would it?