My BiPolar daughter could get a CCW in Florida

[HockeyMom]

She has no felonies. She was never adjucated mentally impaired. She was not involuntarily checked into an institution; that she did all on her own. After 7 years on mood stabilizers, she no longer takes them, or sees a doctor for treatment. The only drugs she has taken in the past 7 years has been for back surgery 2 years ago.

I looked at the Florida questionnaire and the only issue she would have is no gun training, which can be satisfied with an hour gun safety course at a local range. I know they have licensed instructions who will give one hour training that meets that requirement. My husband told me this when he thought I would do it. No, thank you.

Even with this, my daughter might even still be able to take the PO Civil Service Test too. She moved OUT of Florida and back to New York where she not only cannot own a gun, but never could become a PO. When I told her all this, she started laughing. "I think I would rather be in New York, without a gun, where I can at least marry who I want."

She has a major point on that one. Besides, I don't think I want still want her to be anywhere around guns, or be a cop. Better she marries her girlfriend, which Florida WON'T allow.

[truedelphi]

1. Thank you for this discussion.

Most people are unaware of the fact that we are all just one slip in the shower, one blow to the head away, from having some type of mental disturbance. In my area of California, hell, in most of Northern Calif., mentally ill people are usually shot and killed by the "trained" police, and then questions are asked later.

I have no idea if a bipolar person can get a gun here or not. I do know my head and heart hurt for about a week, after reading how this one lady in her mid-sixties, needing a break from her mentally unbalanced son, went off for a week. (She did this after decades of caring for him.)

While she was gone, he went on a small rampage. Neighbors heard him tearing up and smashing things in his trailer home. The police were called, and the police shot him. Within minutes of arriving on scene.

He had not left the home; he was not a danger to anyone except himself. But he didn't get to hurt himself - because the cops did it for him!

[Hoyt]

2. Exactly. I had to take them away from my FIL when he started having hallucinations, etc.

[Tejas]

3. Which has what to do with bi-polar disorder?

[Hoyt]

8. Put your guns down a moment. Both are conditions where guns are not a good mix.

That's true of a lot of medical and mental conditions. For example I knew a guy with diabetes who would have blackouts and disappear for a couple of days and not know where he had been -- I don't think it would be a good idea for him to carry guns. People with Alzheimer's and similar conditions probably shouldn't carry guns. Substance abusers shouldn't. Those with seizures, etc.

I hope someday if you start developing some issues, you will voluntarily turn you guns into someone, be it family or whatever.

Hope that clarifies things for you, and I am surprised you could not see the connection. I also hope you have a little better insight when you walk out your door with a gun or two.

[Tejas]

13. Oh, I see, bi-polar people should be locked away.

YUP, no way they can be treated with meds like many other disorders!


Thank goodness YOU don't have the say-so!

[Hoyt]

15. Tejas, I really don't think you have the acumen to be carrying guns.

[Tejas]

18. Still thankful that you are not judge/jury/executioner!

You do realize you aren't, don't you?


Here Hoyt, take this green pill, it's for your own good...

[Hoyt]

20. I can not believe someone who carries a gun and practices shooting people would ask that?

What are you playing if you shoot someone by standing your ground?

[Tejas]

21. Quit sidestepping Hoyt, YES or NO, bi-polar people can or cannot own firearms?

[Hoyt]

28. I think it would be dangerous depending upon severity -- just like lady said.

I thought that was clear, but I forget that some of the gun culture are quite myopic.

Do you think someone taking prescription drugs that affect your judgement should carry a gun? Do you think someone with hallucinations should be walking around with a gun?

[Tejas]

50. Your chainsaw-carrying-lunatic scenario aside,

what is your problem with bipolar people (that take their meds) being out in public, much less with access to a firearm?

Or a car?

Or a chainsaw?


Are you wishing for them all to be locked up in padded cells? Are they a danger to society?

[Hoyt]

53. That is bull. I think carrying a gun is too dangerous for a lot of diseases

Last edited Wed Mar 28, 2012, 09:01 PM - Edit history (1)

And people on certain meds. Like I said, I took guns away from my FIL when he was sick.

Do you believe almost anybody should be allowed in public with a gun or two.

Just to entertain you, walking around with a chainsaw will get you at least stopped for investigation unless it's clear why you are carrying. I think that is probably smart, especially if it's a city street and saw is running at bone cutting speed. If you want to carry one at home, who cares.

[provis99]

57. who cares if the gun owner is dangerous?

they have a right to keep and bear arms. Whether they are dangerous or not is irrelevant. Heck, guns should be dangerous; that's the point of owning one.

[AH1Apache]

41. Uh Hoyt

oh, never mind.

[ManiacJoe]

7. If more people took responsibility for their family members,

there would be fewer problems in this world. Good job.

My family went through a similar situation with my grandfather regarding the guns and the cars.

[Hoyt]

10. I've been trying to explain to some younger people that guns are like cars when people get older.

Sometimes you have to say "dad or mom, I don't want to do this, but . . . . . . .".

[Common Sense Party]

11. I hope you also took away his car keys.

[Hoyt]

14. No, I sold his car instead long before the gun issue arose.

I'm probably lucky he didn't shoot me then -- he was retired military and a retired policeman with over 50 years combined. But, he was very sick and on dialysis to boot.

[ileus]

4. From what you describe sounds like she's GTG.

Tell her to avoid pocket 45's.....

[Johnny Rico]

5. And in Alaska, Arizona, Vermont, and Wyoming she could carry concealed without a license.

Good.

[HockeyMom]

6. As her mother who loves her,

I wouldn't want her anywhere near guns, but the state of Florida would be fine with it. But she is a danger to soceity because she is a lesbian who wants to marry the love of her life.

You tell me what is wrong with this picture?

[DonP]

9. You're in the wrong forum if that's your issue for discussion.

[Hoyt]

12. She makes a good point. You might not like it because it is critical of lax gun laws.

And critical of backwards relationship restrictions too.

[DonP]

23. This, from the guy that commented on concealed carry when the discussion was about M1 Garands

No one trusts your judgement on anything even vaguely firearms related, since you've proven multiple times to have absolutely no understanding of the technology or grasp of the the issues beyond quoting bumper stickers in front of the local coffee shop.

And of course, your oh so vivid imagination.

[Hoyt]

27. And, you are so paranoid that you can't walk out of your house without a gun. Not a good mix.

[DonP]

48. No I don't. Unlike you I don't have rights - I live in Illinois.

That's about the 6th time you've accused me of breaking Illinois law.

But since you've proven to be little more than a verbose online hypocrite, and do nothing to repeal CCW or support gun control of any kind in your own state, who are you to advise anyone else what their laws should or shouldn't be?

We'd probably get a more intelligent and considered opinion from a general survey of the #151 bus on Michigan avenue at 5:15 on any give day.

[beevul]

37. Are you saying hes capable of judgement? N/T

[Atypical Liberal]

17. It all boils down to due process of law.

First of all, the second amendment has nothing to do with marriage, so stop conflating the two. Everyone should be able to marry whoever they like. It's not likely you will find many people on this board who disagree with that.

In the United States, there are rules for who can exercise their Constitutional right to keep and bear arms.

As a Constitutional right, depriving one of it is serious business, and requires due process of law.

Right now, federal law states that you cannot posses a firearm if you have any of the following qualifiers:

A person who has been convicted in any court of a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year or any state offense classified by the state as a misdemeanor and is punishable by a term of imprisonment of more than two years.

Persons who are fugitives of justice—for example, the subject of an active felony or misdemeanor warrant.

An unlawful user and/or an addict of any controlled substance; for example, a person convicted for the use or possession of a controlled substance within the past year; or a person with multiple arrests for the use or possession of a controlled substance within the past five years with the most recent arrest occurring within the past year; or a person found through a drug test to use a controlled substance unlawfully, provided the test was administered within the past year.

A person adjudicated mental defective or involuntarily committed to a mental institution or incompetent to handle own affairs, including dispositions to criminal charges of found not guilty by reason of insanity or found incompetent to stand trial.

A person who, being an alien, is illegally or unlawfully in the United States.

A person who, being an alien except as provided in subsection (y) (2), has been admitted to the United States under a non-immigrant visa.

A person dishonorably discharged from the United States Armed Forces.

A person who has renounced his/her United States citizenship.

The subject of a protective order issued after a hearing in which the respondent had notice that restrains them from harassing, stalking, or threatening an intimate partner or child of such partner. This does not include ex parte orders.

A person convicted in any court of a misdemeanor crime which includes the use or attempted use of physical force or threatened use of a deadly weapon and the defendant was the spouse, former spouse, parent, guardian of the victim, by a person with whom the victim shares a child in common, by a person who is cohabiting with or has cohabited in the past with the victim as a spouse, parent, guardian or similar situation to a spouse, parent or guardian of the victim.

A person who is under indictment or information for a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year.

State laws may have additional restrictions.

For mental illness, the only way currently you can be deprived of your Constitutional right to keep and bear arms is if, through due process of law, you have been adjudicated mentally incompetent or if you have been involuntarily committed to a mental institution.

If you want to try and change the law so that people diagnosed with certain medical conditions are also prohibited from exercising their right to keep and bear arms, one of the first things you are going to have to do is give up your medical privacy to the government, so that the government can keep track of everyone with disqualifying medical conditions.

[Callisto32]

36. The problem is people like you, HockeyMom.

People who are happy to give control to the state.

People who are happy to allow the state, a more-or-less unaccountable organization, to make our social decisions for us.

People who are willing to let faceless bureaucrats who don't know you, usually don't care to know anything about you (ever try to actually contact a rep?), and are convinced they know exactly what is best for you (and everyone else) to decide such things as what you can buy, and whom you can marry.

People who think like this:

"Government (the organization that creates and protects corporations) needs to save us from the evil corporations."
"Government (the organization that has killed more people than anybody else) needs to save us from the people that want to kill us."
"Government (the organization that tells terminal patients they can't have potentially life-saving medication because it may KILL THEM) please provide our health-care."

That is what is wrong with the picture, HockeyMom. People, people who have convinced themselves against all evidence and reason that governments are somehow benevolent (or at least benign).

[Clames]

16. I'm sure there is a point trying to be made here...

...

[Hoyt]

19. The point was clear as could be to me.

[Clames]

22. Well for you...

...that isn't particularly surprising. For those of us who have a better grasp on gun laws and real world effects it is a bit lacking.

[rl6214]

32. Of course it is to someone with a vivid imagination

[Hoyt]

33. At least I don't see boogeymen that aren't there.

[rl6214]

34. Obviously you are seeing something out there that isn't there

[shadowrider]

49. Oh the irony

[Glassunion]

24. Guns aside, do you think she is a danger to society?

[Union Scribe]

25. If she no longer needs medication or a doctor's care

(and has no felonies even during the period she did) then I don't see a need to restrict her rights. Do you?

[HockeyMom]

26. Yes, because she has a temper if nothing else

Usually, she takes it out on her pillow, or an object near her, but who knows? Why take that chance? I, myself, just shurg things off far more than she does.

We are all individuals. What bothers and upsets others, like my husband or daughter, wouldn't even cause me to blink an eye. I couldn't work in the occupation that I do if I let anything like that ruffle my feathers.

[Union Scribe]

29. Yes, we are all individuals

Basically here's where I'm at: if she is an adult with an under-control condition, I'm personally not any more against her having a gun (or a kitchen knife, a car, or a drink at a bar, or a pilot's license, etc.) than anyone else. I'm coming at this from the POV of a person who actually takes medication for OCD. I know a CCW board would deny me based on that. I don't think it's particularly fair and maybe I could fight it on appeal if I inclined to want a license. But I accept that the mental health rules can't take the nuances of each person's condition into account, and as a result I think they block more people than they let slip through. It's those with undiagnosed and never treated conditions I'd be concerned about.

[AtheistCrusader]

30. How would you go about crafting a law

that would inhibit access for people you feel (but have not demonstrated) should not have access to a firearm, but allow those who are 'fine'?

From where I stand, Florida's stance on her ability to marry is just as disgusting as NY's firearm laws. Both an abrogation of a civil right.

Your daughter seems, from your description, to be just fine, and capable of not purchasing a firearm if it isn't in her best interest.

[eqfan592]

55. HockeyMom, I really think you need to study the concept of "due process"...

...in greater detail than you might have to date. You regularly advocate restricting the rights of people based only on feelings and intuition, and that's simply not how a free society operates.

[rl6214]

31. I'd rather you or she not carry a gun as well

I sounds like neither of you can handle it.

[gejohnston]

35. there are other options

Vermont and Iowa. She can have both. In Vermont, don't even need a CCW.

which can be satisfied with an hour gun safety course at a local range. I know they have licensed instructions who will give one hour training that meets that requirement.

Hell will have to break out the snow shovels, because you might agree with me on this. If a state is going to have a training requirement, they should at least do it right. From what I understand, Texas does it right. You have to give them credit for that. Especially in places like Florida and urban parts of Arizona where you have a lot of transplants from the northeast. Like Joe Arpaio for example. I took Florida class and was kind of disappointed in the training quality. Other than a couple of rednecks and myself, everyone else were older folks that I could tell were not familiar with guns. A couple seemed uncomfortable even. The instructor provided .38 revolvers for the firing. Most of the folks could not figure out how to open the cylinder to load it. They thought the release was the safety. Citrus County is kind of Long Island/Queens south, I get that. To you it would be "no shit, that's normal" For a country fuck like me, it was

[Remmah2]

38. My bi-polar sister-in-law bought a car.

She's also manic depressive. She's spent a month here and a month there in mental hospitals in NY, NJ, MD, PA everytime she gets into trouble. There are things way beyond road rage.

In the end she gets discharged, she gets her car back or buys another car and it's off and running down the highways again.

Her sis (my wife) has pleaded w/the DMV and state police to pull her license but nobody will heed the potential threat she is.

Mental health laws and civil rights seem to work against one another.

People who are a threat to the public should not have access to devices with large amounts of potential energy.

[Tejas]

51. Define "large amounts of potential energy".

Should they be locked away to keep us safe?

[oneshooter]

52. Would it be defined as a 2500lb vehicle moving at a high rate of speed?

[slackmaster]

39. Mentally ill people have rights too. If she hasn't been declared incompetent, she can own a gun.

And get a CCW permit.

[cleanhippie]

40. Are you arguing that she should NOT be allowed to get CCW license?

I'm failing to see your point at all.

[HockeyMom]

44. Yes, and she herself would agree to that

[slackmaster]

47. Then there is no problem

She is free to get one or not, and she chooses not to.

[cleanhippie]

54. Ok, I can see what you are saying.

I must add though, that legally, she has the same right as anyone else to get a CCW, and that right should not be taken away without due process.

[iverglas]

42. so could I

And as I've mentioned before, I would honestly say that this is not a good idea.

I have PTSD from a life-threatening (near-death) experience of sexual assault and abduction, coupled with a significant childhood experience that made me vulnerable and subsequent experiences that have exacerbated it.

I am a classic case of the women that gun militants target their message to: free-floating fear is my constant companion in life -- sometimes (most of the time, and most times) well below the surface; occasionally, in stressful situations -- momentary or longer-lasting -- very raw. I sense danger where there is none -- situations and words and actions that are hostile but in no way threatening can bring on the fight-or-flight response. I have responded inappropriately, although never physically, in the past. The response isn't irrational; it is very rational for someone whose real experiences have taught that the world is a dangerous place, and who fears loss of control over their life.

People like me are ripe for the picking by people trying to sell guns and the gun militant agenda. I need a gun. I need to be able to defend myself from the bogeymen who inhabit my world.

The fact is that the only time in my life when a gun might have been any use to me at all -- the only time I have ever had to take action to save myself from harm at someone else's hands -- was that incident many years ago. And if I had been carrying a gun around with me while I hitchhiked the highways of southwestern Ontario, then I have no reason to think that the man who abducted me, who had done the same to two young sisters two days earlier and tried it on with three young women the day before and was clearly escalating, would not have had the foresight to equip himself with one too. In Ontario then, as now, the likelihood of that being the case is pretty close to zero; legal access to handguns is very restricted, and illegal access is expensive and not easy to arrange, and he was a strange loser who went way off the tracks one day, not a gangster. As it was, he was able to threaten the sisters that he would kill one with a wrench if the other tried to run, and the three teenagers threatened him with a hairbrush and he let them go. And I used my nerves of steel and my wits and my bare feet and escaped. So unless I had held the gun in my hand from the time I stuck my thumb out to the time I got home, making it improbable I'd get any rides at all, it would not likely have done me much good.

Not hitchhiking would have been my best defence. On that occasion, I was with a male friend so did not have my suspicion meter set at high. It was when he left the ride at one city and I continued on that it kicked in, and then it was too late.

To take me fresh from that experience, which is when a woman -- any victim of a violent crime -- feels most vulnerable and is looking for ways to make the world feel safe again, and hand me a handgun to carry around in public with me, would have been the height of stupidity. And no, CCW classes are not psychotherapy, and would not have made me a "responsible" gun carrier. They would simply have fed my fear.

Anyone with a condition that colours their perception of the world and skews their judgment of other people and their assssment of situations, in ways that make them feel unsafe when they are not, is not a good candidate for instantaneous access to weapons that kill.

And there are a lot of people like me and your daughter, and people with various other "challenges", from lack of impulse control to full-blown delusions, in this world.

[HockeyMom]

45. I agree

Young women, and very old women. They consider us "defenseless" without a gun. It's just propaganda by the NRA and gun manufacturers.

As I have mentioned before, I work with the mentally impaired, which includes adult men 6' and over 200 lbs. I worked in a Group Home with 5 of them, overnight, and all alone. No gun. I would be arrested if I ever brought a gun into that situation. I have been trained in not only self-defense techniques, but how to verbally disfuse a potential violent situation, which I have done, in the middle of the night, alone, between 3 adults males. You do know Swat teams do this too? They don't just storm in, bang, bang, when their are hostages. They try to talk the perp down first.

My husband himself, the gun guy, has said many times, he could never do what I do. It has been a part of my life for decades. People in fear of their lives without a gun wouldn't last a day in a Group Home.

You cannot show FEAR. You have to be calm and use your BRAIN. What what you gun people do being all alone in the middle of the night with 5 potentially violent men without your guns? Why don't we hear of staff working this population being killed all the time because they cannot be armed?

[iverglas]

46. Swat teams

Are you a fan of Flashpoint?

It's Canadian, so of course I tout it when I'm not touting Trailer Park Boys. It has fans in this forum too. It's an heir to our Night Heat a generation ago: cops who don't shoot people.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1059475/

From reader reviews:

This show is grounded in moral motives that will pierce the heart of it's viewers. Let the Rambo's have their shows, and let us tread the thin, ever moving and twisting thin blue line of Flashpoint. In the show's own words, "We're not here to target practice, we're here to save lives".

Just a note in case I wasn't obvious: "you gun people" doesn't include moi.

Welcome!

But of couse I can't resist a little Trailer Park Boys ... it wasn't as much fun before embedded video was so easy!

[Model_T]

43. She could also become President of the United States of America

n/t

[BiggJawn]

56. So glad I live in Indiana for once.

usually I hate this sister-fucking backwater.
But, With an affidavit from my therapist, I was judged a "Proper Person" and issued a license to carry a handgun.
I have never been adjudicated mentally deficient, I've never been involuntarily confined.

Me and Churchill's "Black Dog" have been together for many years, and he's on a snug leash now. I see no reason why i should not be permitted my right to own a firearm.

But, being Indiana, if I wanted to marry another guy, well, that's not right in the state's eyes...

[Tuesday Afternoon]

58. Florida needs to get progressive with its matrimonial laws and NY needs to get progressive

with its gun laws. Win/Win