That is some next level .... whatever he has going on (Mass shooting in Cali)

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**Dreadclaw69**

sebster wrote:
To clarify, I'm not defending the creators of those gun laws. If they were written in the heat of the moment there might be some excuse. That they were written over time, with consideration and debate, and were so stupid, and even years later they still can't see the problem... well that's damning.

That said, picking individual state laws as noting that they're ineffective is a bit of a nonsense. You can't ban a good in one state, maintain open and free trade with other states, and then expect that ban to achieve anything. That just denies common sense... of course the good will flow freely from where it is legal to where it is not. The only gun ban that makes any sense is one maintained across the whole of the nation.

Note that I'm not arguing for a gun ban. Just that the failure of any gun ban at the state level means nothing in terms of how it would work federally.

I know you aren't defending hem, if it came across that I somehow thought you were it was not my intention. I blame an early morning and lack of caffeine

In a lot of cases trafficking guns across State lines from a less strict jurisdiction to a more strict jurisdiction, say from Indiana to Chicago, to sell on to someone with a criminal history is criminal at both State and Federal level. But people still do it regardless of the possibility of punishment. We already have a large number of illegally held weapons in the wrong hands. An outright ban will not solve that. We also have a very porous border on our south where everything from guns, to drugs, to people are smuggled in. Again, an outright ban on firearms will not impact that. To pretend that banning something will solve the problem is absolute folly - as evidence I submit prohibition, and the War on Drugs. As I said, I grew up during the Troubles. Firearms were very tightly regulated, and yet rifles and explosives still made it into the country in huge quantities. Banning guns from being legally held by the public just puts power into the hands of criminals, and robs people of the ability to effectively defend themselves.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
An interesting piece that undermines my previous point about mental health as the main focus going forward, but is in favour of self defense.

http://nypost.com/2014/06/01/why-psychiatrists-fail-in-stopping-mass-killers/

More money for mental health won’t stop these mass murderers.

With the Santa Barbara killings, mental health is again the central focus. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) is pushing for more resources on mental health “to make sure that these kinds of horrific, insane, mad occurrences are stopped and the Congress will be complicit if we fail to act.”

But the killer, Elliot Rodger, had already been receiving top-quality mental-health counseling for years. One of his psychiatrists, Dr. Charles Sophy, is nationally known and medical director for the LA County Department of Children and Family Services.

Rodger had, in fact, been seeing multiple psychiatrists. Some blame the sheriff’s deputies for not doing more to investigate an initial complaint, but Rodger’s psychiatrists ultimately had the responsibility to ensure he had the proper treatment. It’s not obvious how more money would have helped.

It’s very common for mass killers to be seeing psychiatrists before their attacks, including Ivan Lopez (the recent Fort Hood shooter), Adam Lanza (Sandy Hook elementary), James Holmes (“Batman” movie theater) and Seung-Hui Cho (Virginia Tech).

NO ONE WANTS A DANGEROUS PERSON TO HAVE A WEAPON. BUT OUR MENTAL-HEALTH SYSTEM SIMPLY CAN’T BE THE LAST LINE OF DEFENSE.
For Lopez, the Army psychiatrist who last saw him found no “sign of likely violence, either to himself or to others.” In Holmes’ case, while his psychiatrist warned University of Colorado officials about his violent fantasies, she “rejected the idea” that the threat was sufficiently serious for him to be taken into custody.

Seung-Hui Cho was deemed “an imminent danger to himself as a result of mental illness.”
Yet he was determined not to be “an imminent danger to others as a result of mental illness.” The judge stated it was not necessary to have him involuntarily committed.

Again, these prominent mass killers certainly didn’t lack mental health care. The problem was that even top psychiatrists failed to identify real threats.

Yet psychiatrists have strong incentives to get the diagnosis right. Besides their own professional pride and desire to help, they have legal obligations to inform authorities of a threat. Families of those killed by Holmes sued his psychiatrist for not recommending that Holmes be confined. Similar legal action may face Rodger’s psychiatrists.

The psychiatric profession is aware that it is very difficult for mental-health professionals to accept that a patient could pose a serious violent threat. They tend to deny it to themselves. In other words, psychiatrists frequently underestimate threats to safety.

The problem is severe enough that a whole academic literature is devoted to it. Explanations include psychiatrists trying to prove their fearlessness and becoming desensitized to the dangers. It’s possible that added training to understand these unusual cases may help improve their diagnoses.

Yet it’s also simply hard to predict these extremely rare outcomes.

Monday morning quarterbacking is always easy. What seem like obvious telltale signs in retrospect are not so obvious before the attack, even to the experts.

Nor is there much benefit to overly stigmatizing mental illness generally. Extremely few of those with mental illness go on to become killers. Even among schizophrenics, we’re talking about a rate that is much less than one person out of every 100,000.

Renée Binder, the president-elect of the American Psychiatric Association, advocates “a Gun Violence Restraining Order, a mechanism that would allow those closest to a troubled individual to act when there are warning signs or indications that person is at risk for violence.”

Sorry, that won’t really help. Set aside the fact that half of Rodger’s killings were stabbings; it’s just not hard to get guns illegally in this country — especially if you’re willing to spend months or years planning your attack, as virtually all of these killers do.

There are no cheap or easy answers. If someone poses a true danger to others, why not lock them up? Or provide outpatient care-givers to monitor them?

No one wants a dangerous person to have a weapon. But our mental-health system simply can’t be the last line of defense. There are just too many mistakes. Potential victims need to be able to defend themselves.

Arthur Berg, a former associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, is an academic board member at the Crime Prevention Research Center. John Lott is the president of the Crime Prevention Research Center.

**whembly**

And here comes the legislation.

Boxer Introducing "The Pause for Safety Act" to Empower Families Fearing Gun Violence

...
The new legislation – The Pause for Safety Act – will include the following provisions:

• One, it would help ensure that families and others can go to court and seek a gun violence prevention order to temporarily stop someone close to them who poses a danger to themselves or others from purchasing a firearm.
• Two, it would help ensure that families and others can also seek a gun violence prevention warrant that would allow law enforcement to take temporary possession of firearms that have already been purchased if a court determines that the individual poses a threat to themselves or others.
• Three, it would help ensure that law enforcement makes full use of all existing gun registries when assessing a tip, warning or request from a concerned family member or other close associate.
...

This is ripe for abuses...

**-Shrike-**

whembly wrote:
And here comes the legislation.

Boxer Introducing "The Pause for Safety Act" to Empower Families Fearing Gun Violence

...
The new legislation – The Pause for Safety Act – will include the following provisions:

• One, it would help ensure that families and others can go to court and seek a gun violence prevention order to temporarily stop someone close to them who poses a danger to themselves or others from purchasing a firearm.
• Two, it would help ensure that families and others can also seek a gun violence prevention warrant that would allow law enforcement to take temporary possession of firearms that have already been purchased if a court determines that the individual poses a threat to themselves or others.
• Three, it would help ensure that law enforcement makes full use of all existing gun registries when assessing a tip, warning or request from a concerned family member or other close associate.
...

This is ripe for abuses...

This could be abused so easily, I'm not sure what good it will actually do. Also, point two is literally "The Government is taking away our guns!", so this will be interesting.

Just out of interest, what are the existing laws like involving firearms and someone being determined as a "threat to others or themselves"?

**Grey Templar**

Thats pretty extreme, even for Boxer. Hopefully this will finally end her career.

If the media actually reported things sanely...

**easysauce**

whembly wrote:
And here comes the legislation.

Boxer Introducing "The Pause for Safety Act" to Empower Families Fearing Gun Violence

...
The new legislation – The Pause for Safety Act – will include the following provisions:

• One, it would help ensure that families and others can go to court and seek a gun violence prevention order to temporarily stop someone close to them who poses a danger to themselves or others from purchasing a firearm.
• Two, it would help ensure that families and others can also seek a gun violence prevention warrant that would allow law enforcement to take temporary possession of firearms that have already been purchased if a court determines that the individual poses a threat to themselves or others.
• Three, it would help ensure that law enforcement makes full use of all existing gun registries when assessing a tip, warning or request from a concerned family member or other close associate.
...

This is ripe for abuses...

*begin sarcasm

wait what!

its missing the clause that not only your current, but also your EX spouse must sign off on it and...

oh wait, its future americain law, not current canadian ones.. *end sarcasm*

give it some time though, canuckistan was the proving grounds for lots of the anti gun zealotry.

We also had a quintuple shooting in the maritimes this last week, 3 dead cops two injured, not surprisingly, more gun control seems to be the media friendly answer.

**sebster**

Dreadclaw69 wrote:
I know you aren't defending hem, if it came across that I somehow thought you were it was not my intention. I blame an early morning and lack of caffeine

In a lot of cases trafficking guns across State lines from a less strict jurisdiction to a more strict jurisdiction, say from Indiana to Chicago, to sell on to someone with a criminal history is criminal at both State and Federal level. But people still do it regardless of the possibility of punishment.

Sure, it's illegal, but then China has some of the harshest copyright protection laws in the world... there's a difference between something being illegal and something having an actual enforcement mechanism in place.

Point is that everyday thousands of trucks haul all kinds of goods into and through Chicago, it's a major trade point. And there is no customs check for those goods, trying to monitor those goods would be disastrous for US trade and economic health - half the point of the union is to have free trade between states. So all those trucks roll through and it's simply impossible to check them all. You say the border to Mexico is porous and that's true, but at least there is a border through which you have to poke holes... taking goods in to New York or Chicago doesn't even have that.

And thanks for the article on the mental health angle. It made a lot of good points. I think part of the issue there is that people are noting that mental health isn't good enough, and when the suggestion that more money might not deliver better health services people just give up on the issue altogether. At which point I'm reminded of that old saying that you don't get a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant

The point is that throwing lots more money at the issue won't make it happen faster, but it is happening anyway, it's just a process that takes time.

Mental health understanding has improved massively in the last couple of decades, and massively more in the decades before then. Getting better mental healthcare is just a process that takes time.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

whembly wrote:
The new legislation – The Pause for Safety Act – will include the following provisions:

Wow, gun legislation even more pointless and wrong-headed than the "assault weapons" law. I wouldn't have thought that was possible.

**Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl**

whembly wrote:
This is ripe for abuses...

The abuse would be that some poor guy or gal will not be able to get a gun? That is horrible. Call the human rights NGO!

**-Shrike-**

Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
whembly wrote:
This is ripe for abuses...

The abuse would be that some poor guy or gal will not be able to get a gun? That is horrible. Call the human rights NGO!

*sigh* When you make comments like this, explaining the problem seems like such a waste of time.

**Frazzled**

Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
whembly wrote:
This is ripe for abuses...

The abuse would be that some poor guy or gal will not be able to get a gun? That is horrible. Call the human rights NGO!

Are cars go faster then your cars.