Reply #61: again ... you seem to be talking to me ...

[iverglas]

As for the guy getting the gun, what crime did he commit prior to this one which would have prevented him from exercising his civil rights?

You know, I keep expecting better of you, I keep being disappointed.

You're familiar with that NICS thing, I assume? I'm not, actually. But I gather that some sort of background check is required when people buy a firearm from a licensed dealer. And I gather that people who have been ... how did that go? Oh yeah ...

Individuals who have been INVOLUNTARILY COMMITTED to a mental institution **OR** determined to be mentally incompetent

-- and the Michigan CCW rules seem to say that "involuntarily committed" stuff too.

Would you REALLY advocate removing people's civil rights because they voluntarily seek treatment from a mental health professional?

What is it about the words "INvoluntary" and "voluntary" that prevents you from noticing the difference between them? Who the hell said ANYTHING about people who "VOLUNTARILY seek treatment"? Surely you're not suggesting that *I*, or any of the sources I quoted, did.

If they're dangerous to pose enough of a threat that they are to be deprived of their liberty, then they lose other civil rights too.

Yeah, and amazingly, I'll bet THOSE will be the people we're talking about here, eh? Kinda because, like, the things I quoted said INVOLUNTARY.

I don't have a clue what these "other civil rights" you're on about might be, and I fail to see the relevance of them to anything we're talking about. You can call firearms possession a "civil right" if you want; I'll be hearing something resembling Swahili when you do it.

Entitlement to possess firearms is not automatically lost, in the US, as I understand it, by virtue of involuntary commitment and as part of some package deal "loss of civil rights" that occurs as a result of some particular status having been acquired. Entitlement to possess firearms is lost, as a result of an involuntary commitment, only by statute. Absent that statute, that entitlement would NOT be lost.

You people and your 18th century chatter about "losing" "civil rights" ... it reminds me of the history of the Civil Code of Quebec I was just having to read, and the business of "civil death". It really has been abolished all over the civilized world, you know? There just is no such thing as a person who does not have civil rights.

People do NOT "lose" "civil rights" in the modern world by virtue of their status. People are denied the ability to exercise certain rights by due process. If this 18th-century language you're speaking really is the lingua franca down there, we simply can't communicate. I can no more speak that lingo than I can discuss how many angels can be crammed onto the point of that needle. It's like Latin. It's a dead language. It doesn't convey the meanings of the modern world.

I just have to keep asking. Fundamental rights are "unalienable"; how can they be "lost"?? Oops, I mislaid my liberty. Darn, I sold my life for a mess of potage when I wasn't quite awake.

As such, it was legal for him to own guns.

Yes -- and that indeed seems to be the crux of the problem, isn't it just?

Good god, I say again. The man was a raving paranoid lunatic with guns. He wasn't dangerous because he had guns -- he obviously had guns because he was dangerous -- because he was a raving paranoid lunatic. The guns were evidence of his dangerousness, not merely the source of his dangerousness.

He SHOULD HAVE BEEN involuntarily committed when he was first taken into a treatment facility. He wasn't. If he had been, it would NOT have been legal for him to own guns. It was ONLY legal for him to own guns because someone didn't do his/her/their job. If that job involved applying for a judicial determination and a judicial order of commitment, in the jurisdiction in question, so be it. That was what they were pretty obviously required to do.

And saying that it was "legal" for him to own guns is pretty much like saying that it's legal for a murderer to walk free because the judge forgot to sign the warrant of committal to a place of incarceration after passing sentence. Or that it's legal for me to walk out of a restaurant without paying because the server mistakenly place a blank piece of paper on my table instead of the bill. It was ONLY "legal" because of an oversight or refusal to perform a duty.

And very obviously, what this suggests to me is that considerably more control is needed over who gets guns, starting with a permanent record of qualification to get guns, i.e. a licence -- for which the proper investigation is done, first, to determine not whether someone is disqualified, but whether s/he is qualified to own guns.

And that, of course, is NOT a "loss of civil rights", it is a justifiable restriction on the exercise of a right. Just as in the case of any other activity that society reasonably and justifiably requires its practitioners to hold a licence permitting them to engage in.



(edited to replace a vague pronoun)