Saturday, May 18, 2013

Mental illness

so CJ, in a thinly disguised attempt to say that supporting laws that restrict people with mental illness from firearms ownership proves that the Second Amendment is not absolute fails to overlook the obvious portion of my reply:

We are a nation of individual rights, and it doesn't matter if everyone else committed a certain act yesterday, I didn't.

 Today, there is a story from CBS Atlanta that proves my point: 1 in 5 children in the US has a mental disorder, according to the CDC. Now this doesn't mean that our kids are any different than we were, or even than our grandparents. What it means is that the definition of what constitutes a mental disorder is being expanded to include nearly everyone. That is why trying to predict who should have their rights preemptively removed is wrong and will result in a short ride to tyranny.

If you are so mentally ill as to be a danger, then you are too mentally ill to be out in public. If you cannot be trusted to own a firearm, then you can't be trusted to have gasoline, fertilizer, matches, or pointy sticks. In other words, you can't be trusted to be without a custodian.

2 comments:

TOTWTYTR said...

The feds use the standard of "adjudication" for denying someone their 2A rights. Adjudication is not some BS diagnosis by some doctor or "mental health work". It's a legal determination made by a judge.

The reason for that is that 2A rights should not be denied lightly.

The so called clinicians who mostly hate guns can't be trusted to make the determination. To them every thing is a mental illness.

Divemedic said...

Not any longer, at least not in Florida. Now, if a doctor says that you are a danger, you lose your rights to own a firearm. Period.

You no longer get a hearing. It is the doctor that decides. I think that this violates the hell out of due process.

As used in this subparagraph, "committed to a mental institution" means involuntary commitment, commitment for mental defectiveness or mental illness, and commitment for substance abuse. The phrase includes involuntary inpatient placement as defined in s. 394.467, involuntary outpatient placement as defined in s. 394.4655, involuntary assessment and stabilization under s. 397.6818, and involuntary substance abuse treatment
under s. 397.6957, but does not include a person in a mental
institution for observation
or discharged from a mental
institution based upon the initial review by the physician or a
voluntary admission to a mental institution, unless the
voluntary admission was for outpatient or inpatient treatment of a person who had an involuntary examination under s. 394.463, and:
(I) The examining physician found that the person is an
imminent danger to himself or herself or others;
(II) The examining physician certified that if the person
did not agree to voluntary treatment, a petition for involuntary outpatient or inpatient treatment would have been filed under s.394.463(2)(i)4.;