NYT: Some With Histories of Mental Illness Petition to Get Their Gun Rights Back

[enough]

A long article in the New York Times today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/03/us/03guns.html?hp


By MICHAEL LUO

PULASKI, Va. — In May 2009, Sam French hit bottom, once again. A relative found him face down in his carport “talking gibberish,” according to court records. He later told medical personnel that he had been conversing with a bear in his backyard and hearing voices. His family figured he had gone off his medication for bipolar disorder, and a judge ordered him involuntarily committed — the fourth time in five years he had been hospitalized by court order.

When Mr. French’s daughter discovered that her father’s commitment meant it was illegal for him to have firearms, she and her husband removed his cache of 15 long guns and three handguns, and kept them after Mr. French was released in January 2010 on a new regime of mood-stabilizing drugs.

Ten months later, he appeared in General District Court — the body that handles small claims and traffic infractions — to ask a judge to restore his gun rights. After a brief hearing, in which Mr. French’s lengthy history of relapses never came up, he walked out with an order reinstating his right to possess firearms.

The next day, Mr. French retrieved his guns.


<much more at link above>

[spooked911]

1. of all the problems in the world, why add another one?????

this is completely farked.

[msongs]

2. 2A does not require sanity or a clean criminal history nt

[Tesha]

4. Eventually, everyone will have guns.

Why here in New Hampshire, our fine Legislature will
consider in its next season whether or not the state,
which can't afford to do anything else, should be
required to provide a gun, ammo, and training to
every woman who obtains a restraining order.

Eventually, everyone will have guns, starting with
little children getting their very own "My first Uzi"
and eventually growing up to own a gun even Harry
Callahan could be proud of. "My, that's a big one!"

Tesha

[RSillsbee]

6. Beat the rush buy your's now NT

[friendly_iconoclast]

7. So what? Easy access to guns hasn't caused many problems in next- door Vermont.

I know you lot like to go on about how the laxness of gun laws in certain places is problematic, but I can't help but notice

that my Brady-approved state of Massachusetts has higher rates of violent crime and murder than Vermont.


In fact, ISTR that last year not one of the seven murders in Vermont was committed with a gun. Here in Mass, we get about

one a week...

[gejohnston]

8. Would you prefer NYC or LA County where

a true legitimate need such as that gets a no simply because she is not rich and white? While rich racist coke head Don Imus gets a CCW with no problem?

[Tesha]

10. As I've made clear multiple times. I'd prefer a country where *NO ONE* has a handgun.

And possession of long guns is licensed and strictly
regulated.

And it would there fore be, a priori, a major crime
if anyone is caught with an illegal gun and that crime
alone would see them removed from society for a long,
long time.

If you want to eliminate gun violence, that would
do it. But we as a country don't really want to
eliminate gun violence; we want to glorify it and
revel in it.

Tesha

[gejohnston]

11. as it has been pointed out before

and demonstrated by UK, Canada, Jamaica, Mexico and other countries that is not how the real world works.

It is already a federal crime to be a felon in possession, to use a machine gun, sawed off shot gun but they are rarely prosecuted.

[oneshooter]

12. Where and when would you be forming your country? n/t

[Tesha]

13. No need -- what I suggest is the actual state of affairs in many (most?) civilized countries. (NT)

[oneshooter]

14. Please name a few. n/t

[gejohnston]

15. first define civilized

You mean UK, which is among the highest violent crime rate in the world and the highest murder rate in Europe?
Japan is a soft police state, also their homicide rates do not compare to ours. For example the way they count murder/suicide rates. Here if dad kills wife, three kids, then himself we count four murders and one suicide. Japan counts it as five suicides. There is a different word to distinguish the difference, but it is still labeled as suicide. Those are more common there than school shootings here.
All of the 88 countries that have higher murder rates than we do, have very strict UK and DC style gun control laws. Here is a sample:

Our homocide rate is 5 per 100K in 2010

El Salvador-71
Russia-13
Mexico-18
Jamaica-60
South Africa-34
Belize-33
Brazil-22
North Korea-19
Costa Rica-11
Cuba-5.5
Indonesia-8.9
Haiti-22

All of them have "civilized" gun laws according to your dream.

Countries where private ownership of guns is relatively common, including handguns:
Norway-0.61
Finland-2.5
New Zealand-2.2
Switzerland-0.71
France-1.31
Canada-1.81
Czech Republic-1.94
Somalia-3.2
Yemen-4.0

of course, the laws in each country is different.

[friendly_iconoclast]

16. I might point out that Japan's sucide rate is higher than our murder & suicide rates combined.

Very few of which are committed with guns- yet the victims are just as dead.

Substitution of method in this case is hardly an indication of "civilization"...

[gejohnston]

17. This is true too, about 22 per 100K or Brazil's homicide rate. That is using their definition.

[SteveW]

18. I see your preference, though I disagree. I own a handgun...

It is unlicensed, and my preference is that it remain that way. I further see no need to license and strictly regulate the possession of long guns.

I do agree with you that the use of a firearm in commission of a crime should be grounds for a long term in prison. It would not "eliminate" gun violence, but perhaps it would lessen it. Currently, thugs and crims who are picked up on various crimes, and who are found to be in possession of a firearm, are often given a "deal" by the DA to bargain away the gun charge. Then, there is the trimming away of the original charge.

I feel you are a bit cynical about the "country eliminate gun violence; we want to glorify it and revel in it." Maybe there is considerable glorifying on T.V. crime drama, video "games," and a host of violent movies. And maybe there is considerable "glorification" of car chases, since most of these "C.O.P.S." crims don't do much time for loosing a 2-ton projectile through urban areas, though they should get at least as much as a thug using a gun in a crime. Sometimes the laws has a little difficulty catching up; sometimes a D.A. doesn't want those big gun-related sentences when he/she is looking at an over-worked office with staff cutbacks. Things often are far more prosaic than glorified.

[gejohnston]

9. Current federal law does, and no one tried to overturn it

so your non-point is moot.

[TheCowsCameHome]

3. I feel safer already,

you never know when you might need to get out of a jam.

:sarcasm: :rofl:

[gejohnston]

5. bipolar or Schizophrenia?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001925/
I am guessing part of the judge's decision was based on no history of violence. If he has not been violent before, odds are he won't be in the future. Question is, does that restore his rights under state law only, or does it under federal law as well?
As much as you folks like European gun laws, he would have no problem legally owning a gun in the Netherlands. Mental health records are not part of the background check, in fact the police don't have access to them. Of course, each country has their own laws.

At the risk of sounding like a high school freshman comp teacher, you lose points for improper word usage

cache   
Show IPA
noun, verb, cached, cach·ing.
–noun
1.
a hiding place, especially one in the ground, for ammunition, food, treasures, etc.: She hid her jewelry in a little cache in the cellar.
2.
anything so hidden: The enemy never found our cache of food.
3.
Alaska and Northern Canada . a small shed elevated on poles above the reach of animals and used for storing food, equipment, etc.

[Union Scribe]

19. Let the grouping together and demonization of the mentally ill commence!

[X_Digger]

20. Nah, it's a veiled attempt to get two groups pitted against each other.

Mental health advocates / families of those facing mental illness and those that want to stop the 'civil death' practices of the past v. gun owners and those that advocate for the right to keep and bear arms. If they can keep those two groups at each others' throats, both will swallow something from a 'disinterested third party' with a solution to the 'problem'.