Lindsey Graham's bill to disarm people based on medical records; NRA approves

[04DarkShadowGT]

The NRA has almost no choice but to back this bill, they have been saying since Sandy Hook that the Dems are going about this all wrong by trying to take guns out of the hands of law abiding citizens and saying that we need to go after the mentally ill. Well if they would oppose this, the left and anti gunners would jump at the chance to call them hypocrites.

 

[HenryWallace]

When they can deem who's mentally unfit (anyone who is prepped, anyone who has certain bumper stickers, people that home-school, People that have a garden, soldiers that are Stressed because of the battles that they had to fight overseas without personal interest, anyone with emotions, or eats a pop-tart into a triangle) THE REPUBLIC HAS BEEN LOST! The question isn't 'will there be over reaching' it's "why are we setting ourselves up for an obvious power grab away from the already crippled American Community"!?!

Glad I never signed up for my NRA Membership now. No Control is good control.

 

[Redtbird]

[Quote: The bill would apply to:

• People found by a judge, court, board or commission to present an imminent danger to themselves or others.

• Criminal defendants who have been found guilty and mentally ill, not guilty by reason of insanity or incompetent to stand trial.

• People who have required involuntary inpatient treatment at a psychiatric hospital.

Those meeting at least one of those standards would have their names added to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System,
or NICS. :End Quote]


What concerns me is, what happens after .gov takes care of the people listed above? Will they REALLY stop there? Who knows, .gov might think, "Gee! We took care of all of these people/guns, what medical disability can we attack next?

How about diabetics? They might have a sugar crash or sugar spike and start shooting people! Can't have that!

Oh yeah! Cardiac patients. They might come to think they have nothing left to live for and go on a wild shooting rampage. Can't have that either!

It's been said many times, give .gov an inch, and they want a mile. Can't have that!

Just a concerned diabetic/coronary artery disease patient and gun owner...

Redtbird

 

[drillsgt]

Is there recourse to eventually get your rights re-instated?

 

[rambone]

The NRA has almost no choice but to back this bill, they have been saying since Sandy Hook that the Dems are going about this all wrong by trying to take guns out of the hands of law abiding citizens and saying that we need to go after the mentally ill.

The NRA has been campaigning for this and I'm sure they are embracing it with enthusiasm. This is what they wanted. Its sad that they use tragedies to advocate for new gun control laws, just like their "opponents."

Well if they would oppose this, the left and anti gunners would jump at the chance to call them hypocrites.

Unfortunately their statist positions leave a lot of PRO-gunners calling them hypocrites.

 

[rambone]

I don't begrudge anyone for the defenses they choose to use in our Criminal Injustice system. If "insanity" works, then more power to the defendant. Stripping the rights of everyone who mounts a particular defense in court is incredibly unjust.

Blanket solutions like this are mindless and lazy. Just like zero tolerance policies and mandatory minimum sentences.

 

[JeremiahJohnson]

That's a tough one. I agree that if a person uses the insanity defense, they're done.

I do not agree that a persons private medical records are open to the court (and by default losing one's 2A rights). This bill doesn't say that, but it could be easily amended.

I get that the NRA is backed into a corner...guess we will all have to be vigilent keeping wrong amendments off this one.

 

[Classic]

So lots of you are saying this won't work. Fine. What will?

Or is your position to do nothing to prevent mentally ill folks from owning guns?

 

[Expat]

I don't begrudge anyone for the defenses they choose to use in our Criminal Injustice system. If "insanity" works, then more power to the defendant. Stripping the rights of everyone who mounts a particular defense in court is incredibly unjust.

Blanket solutions like this are mindless and lazy. Just like zero tolerance policies and mandatory minimum sentences.

If someone gets off by pleading insane, I don't have a problem with them not being able to buy a gun.

 

[jbombelli]

To everyone who agrees with the bill:

Do you agree with universal background checks and full registration too?

Here's why I ask.

Without mandatory universal background checks, you cannot possibly ensure that these people won't buy a gun from a private party. And without full registration, and mandatory regular reports to the government about who owns what guns, and has bought and sold what to whom and when they sold it, with failure to report or inaccurate reporting being punishable, universal background checks will not work.

Step back and look at the big picture. See what you're helping pave the way for. If you think they'll stop with THIS, you're nuts. They've never stopped before, and they won't stop if they get their way on this. Stop compromising away your rights a bit at a time.

 

[Classic]

So you advocate no background checks? No method for keeping guns from criminally insane individuals? If not, then what will work?

 

[Sticks]

Everything the government gets its hands into starts out being "reasonable", then ends up in overreach.

You know how this is going to go: wanting to own a gun=unstable=not allowed to own a gun.

People will be classified based on past medical history. Ever been to counselling? Ever had a serious illness or injury that could make you "depressed"? With the Affordable Care Act requirements that all medical records go electronic it will be very easy for homeland security to compile the list of people to deny the right to own a gun.

 

[drillsgt]

So you advocate no background checks? No method for keeping guns from criminally insane individuals? If not, then what will work?

I don't think anybody advocates that but we've only been doing this whole background check thing for a few years relatively speaking, the world didn't end the previous 200 years. I doubt the distribution of criminally insane individuals is much different now than it has been previously, controlling for population growth there probably is no sure fire way to keep them out of some peoples hands, you will never have a 100% prophylactic society.

 

[jbombelli]

So you advocate no background checks? No method for keeping guns from criminally insane individuals? If not, then what will work?

If they're free to walk the streets, there is no way to keep firearms out of their hands. Period. Every attempt to do so without taking them from everyone else as well is doomed to abject failure. The only thing you can do to keep firearms out of the hands of the criminally insane is to either 1) lock them up for life, or 2) execute them. But as long as they're free to walk among us, you cannot keep guns out of their hands.

And no. I don't agree with universal background checks. If they pass such a law, and I sell a firearm, I won't call to do a background check. I won't register my firearms or tell the government what I've bought, or what I've sold, or who I've done business with. And nobody will make me do it, either.

 

[chraland51]

I do not trust our federal government to be doing anything but trying to figure out new and innovative ways to keep track of and monitor every facet of our lives. I am tired of "compromising" our 2nd Amendment rights away. It seems that with each and every compromise, it is the gun owner who is always losing something and giving ground. We never seem to be gaining anything, ever. I am sick of the path that we seem to be taking that will eventually lead to making something that was legally acquired and legally possessed into something that will either be so tightly regulated that we might have to keep them stored at great expense at the nearest law enforcement site or taken away from us altogether as we lose ground compromise after compromise after compromise. Lindsay Graham, Mitch McConnell and John McLame are not our friends. They are all supporters of big government that will oversee the everyday lives and activities of its citizens. I do not know who are our friends as positions seem to be pretty fluid in Washington D.C. these days. I wish that I had even an inkling of an idea of what we could do or who we could trust to be on our side in this battle. I do not. I am also worried about the huge stock-piling of 9mm and .40 ammunition by the federal government agencies, the acquisition of over 2700 rehabbed mine resistant armored vehicles by the DHS and the agreements between the US with Canada and Mexico to get assistance from their military should conditions within the US require it. With our present leadership and the fed printing more and more money that is put into the stock market to make it artificially look really good, who knows what will happen when the foul-smelling fecal material harshly impacts the rotating wind-generating blades. Our leadership in Washington will not have to worry about any of this since they and their families will be wisked away by FEMA to well guarded and fortified places of security while the general population is left to fend for itself, possibly without defensive firearms. Don't laugh. Cities and states also have such contingency plans to assemble and protect those that have been deemed as essential. Just look at what happened when the hurrican hit New Orleans. Just my two cents which ain't worth much.

 

[Classic]

I don't believe universal background checks are a part of the subject bill, at least not right now. I'm not a fan of the NICS system either really but a significant number of improper persons do get screened out every year. The NRA is fighting a public relations battle in the best way they know how and so far have fended off everything the Dems have thrown at them. Making it SOUND more difficult for crazies to get guns is probably going to get some traction but they may not even get that passed anyway.

I think doing nothing is a hard sell and so far I haven't heard any better ideas put on the table in this thread. I don't love what is being proposed but neither do I see it as a major threat in its current form.

 

[HenryWallace]

I do not trust our federal government to be doing anything but trying to figure out new and innovative ways to keep track of and monitor every facet of our lives. I am tired of "compromising" our 2nd Amendment rights away. It seems that with each and every compromise, it is the gun owner who is always losing something and giving ground. We never seem to be gaining anything, ever. I am sick of the path that we seem to be taking that will eventually lead to making something that was legally acquired and legally possessed into something that will either be so tightly regulated that we might have to keep them stored at great expense at the nearest law enforcement site or taken away from us altogether as we lose ground compromise after compromise after compromise. Lindsay Graham, Mitch McConnell and John McLame are not our friends. They are all supporters of big government that will oversee the everyday lives and activities of its citizens. I do not know who are our friends as positions seem to be pretty fluid in Washington D.C. these days. I wish that I had even an inkling of an idea of what we could do or who we could trust to be on our side in this battle. I do not. I am also worried about the huge stock-piling of 9mm and .40 ammunition by the federal government agencies, the acquisition of over 2700 rehabbed mine resistant armored vehicles by the DHS and the agreements between the US with Canada and Mexico to get assistance from their military should conditions within the US require it. With our present leadership and the fed printing more and more money that is put into the stock market to make it artificially look really good, who knows what will happen when the foul-smelling fecal material harshly impacts the rotating wind-generating blades. Our leadership in Washington will not have to worry about any of this since they and their families will be wisked away by FEMA to well guarded and fortified places of security while the general population is left to fend for itself, possibly without defensive firearms. Don't laugh. Cities and states also have such contingency plans to assemble and protect those that have been deemed as essential. Just look at what happened when the hurrican hit New Orleans. Just my two cents which ain't worth much.

Rep Inbound when I have one to give. You said it! "Citizens don't need Assault weapons, they belong on the battlefield" yet our police and homeland security, fbi, cia, nsa, etc have them.... With whome then are they going to war with????

'I'm not a fan of the NICS system either really but a significant number of improper persons do get screened out every year.' 'The NRA is fighting a public relations battle in the best way they know how and so far have fended off everything the Dems have thrown at them'.

1.6 million were stopped last year! Whew hoo! Except that 97% of them were appealed and then let have the firearms.... Hmmm. So, does that mean that 97% of the people that were denied were actually legally able to posess a firearm?!
Look, Stats say crime has went down, what has went up is sensationalism of the events.

 

[LP1]

Graham repeatedly mentioned that there are 14,000 residents of South Carolina that would be immediately federally prohibited from gun ownership...

Let's hope they don't get ahold of INGO's membership list, as they could probably double that number.

 

[buckstopshere]

The road to hell is paved with good intentions and I don't even believe these intentions are good.

I read the these threads and it just makes me sick that my fellow freedom loving gun owners would find any way to support disarming Americans. I just don't get it. You either have rights, or you don't. You really want to empower the government more? You really want someone else determining whether you are mentally fit for gun ownership?

How many mentally ill people shot up a school today? The best solution is still allowing people to protect themselves, not taking rights away from any group. Hell, that's how we started on this slippery slope to begin with. Identify a group of people that shouldn't have a right, take it away from them, wait a few years and add keep adding more groups until everyone is included.

Lindsay Graham and GTH and so can Wayne LaPierre if the NRA backs this bull

 

[danielson]

They will go to central America, where theyve spent millions of your dollars in "assets"

I dont believe the NRA cares as much for rights, as they do for your contributions.

Much like government. Once the NRA got to the size it is now, its all about the money.

Big ANYTHING doesnt work, government, corporations, health care. You name it. When something becomes nation wide, there are too many cracks in wich money either falls, or is snuck out.

That being said, I have NO clue how to fix it, and am not even sure its repairable.