Congress Poised to Strip 2nd Amendment Rights

Congress Poised to Strip 2nd Amendment Rights
By TheTower -

H.R.2640 has passed the House with an unrecorded voice vote, and is slated to enter the Senate under a unanimous consent agreement to limit debate. This will, in effect, steamroll the passage of a bill that will serve to strip 2nd Amendment liberties away from citizens diagnosed with mental illnesses.

The bill aims to ease the transfer of mental health records into the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) database. It will effectively criminalize "a person has been adjudicated as mentally defective or committed to a mental institution" and permanently revoke their ability to own or purchase a firearm. This overly-broad term will criminalize a wide range of mental illnesses, including ADHD, Alzheimer's Syndrome, or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Another source of data will be the records of students identified with behavioral disabilities under the IDEA Program.

This bill is being referred to as the "McCarthy Bill" and is on its way to the Senate floor.
http://www.thought-criminal.org/2007/10/01/congress-poised-to-strip-2nd-amendment-rights

In other words, alarmist rhetoric in the story is completely overblown. Besides, the Second Amendment in my Constitution says that the right to bear arms is to be "well-regulated." I think mandatory attendance at an annual two weeks' training session per firearm would not be an unreasonable infringement on anyone's right to possess a shootin' iron.

Where in the 2nd Amendment, does it say *any* infringement, reasonable or otherwise, is allowed?

Could someone please read this to our apparently illiterate friend?

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Damn, I hate Second Amendment discussions; one side never makes any sense.

here, let me help:

"shall NOT be infringed

Now, once again, please explain how you're "I think...attendance...would not be an unreasonable infringement (read: reasonable infringement) on anyone's right" fits within the construct of the 2nd Amendment, as written?

I think two weeks' mandatory attendance per firearm would fulfill the "well-regulated" clause of the Second Amendment, and would not infringe on anyone's right to keep and bear firearms, and such a requirement would withstand court scrutiny. After all, we all want the people who have deadly weapons to be responsible in their use, don't we? And considering the number of accidents and incidents that are reported every day, the private sector isn't doing a very good job as far as I can tell.

According to Hamilton in Federalist 29, well regulated means well qualified, not restricted. The difficulties in holding such training sessions is the reason that citizens were allowed to keep their guns in the first place.

--IMM

Mandatory training to exercise your 1st amendment rights?

:rofl:

WTF!?!

I'll wait for a more reliable source--perhaps from the legal community....

...from people like the Virginia Tech killer is a bad thing.

I wonder if the poster "TheTower" is a fan of Charles Whitman.

but if it ever did go into effect it would be challenged in federal court by the nra and mental health advocates. the second admendment is coming up in the supreme court soon....

arming the mentally ill, or that they'd want to.

'Arm the mentally ill'.

That would leave everyone who read it totally and completely confused as to what on earth you were talking about and would make not a few people laugh at the absurdity of it.

Some mean it to include persons who have never been mentally ill.

but the NRA is apparently in favor of it:
http://www.nraila.org/Legislation/Read.aspx?ID=3097

I'm trying to understand why this is so bad.

right to vote as well as RKBA?

Why not just deny all civil rights to those with mental illnesses?

:rofl:

rights?

And worthy of being laughed at. Do you think convicted felons or the diagnosed mentally ill should have -no- hurdle to gun ownership? Do you believe those people should have the right to vote? Note that the two civil liberties aren't the same, don't carry the same risks, and therefore regulating one doesn't necessary mean regulation of the other is implied or necessary.

should have good reasons for taking away that right. That applies to all the rights enumerated in the amendments and unenumerated rights protected by the Ninth Amendment.

No one has justified why people diagnosed with a mental illness should be denied an inalienable right.

Moreover, no one has come up with a process paid for by government that will quickly redress a wrong if someone is erroneously entered into NICS as a threat to society.

For example, if a person has served their prison sentence and had their full civil rights restored, that act includes the right to keep and bear arms. That happens often at the state level along with restoring a convicted felon's right to vote.

It's a Catch 22 at the federal level however because congress has never funded a system to restore a federal prisoner's civil rights and that includes RKBA.

The grenades themselves, though, are almost impossible to obtain legally due to the high explosives they contain.

I shudder to think of him with a gun. In fact, during his irrational rants, he has not infrequently threatened to "go get a gun" and get even with those many people he believes to be persecuting him. He did in fact once try to buy a gun and thankfully was turned down because of the several-day waiting period, in which it was discovered that he had spent quite a bit of time in mental hospitals and had a record of violent outbursts.

Some laws and, yes, "denial of rights" are simply common sense and benefit society as a whole. For example, why limit the right to vote to those over a certain age?

together and he is not a danger to society.

Under the proposed law, he could be denied the right to keep and bear arms.

since Congress denied my first amendment rights to scream "fire" in a crowded theater.

diagnosis would be denied the right to keep and bear arms.

Moreover, the bill does not provide for an effective, efficient, government funded process through which people falsely diagnosed with mental illness could have their records cleared.

You might trust psychiatrists and psychologists to diagnose mental illness and a threat to society and have those findings entered into a government data bank but I do not.

finished stripping our First Amendment rights?

First things first, eh?

Anyway, keeping guns out of the hands of people who may not even be able to get a driver's license is not necessarily a bad thing.

The problem is that "they" may well decide to define mental illness as "anyone who is not with us is agin us".

The next edition of the DSM will incorporate peace activism and a record of supporting democratic candidates as indicators of mental illness.

That's the question I'm not seeing answered - where's the point at which a person is deemed to be incompetent to own a firearm? Is it when he's involuntarily hospitalized? If you're sent to the psych ward to treat schizophrenia, that's not unreasonable.

But not all mental illness is that serious. Lots of people visit a psychologist or get counseling for more minor cases, like depression, or ADHD. They're perfectly safe and competent to own a firearm. Should just receiving a diagnosis get you on the NICS blacklist? I don't think so. I was under the impression that you would only be barred from owning or purchasing firearms if you were declared by a judge to be mentally incompetent (say because you were involuntarily hospitalized.)

Where's the line?

Has this actually expanded the pool of people unable to purchase firearms? The way I read it, it doesn't.

(Please link to precedent for ADHD patients to be legally declared "mentally defective.")

and stripped of their right to arms.

She was paranoid and violent during her illness. They had to keep her sedated so she wouldn't attack the staff at the home. My sister was well versed in the industry and was satisfied that they were acting appropriately and not keep her drugged only to make their job easier.

this will wake up the dumb fuck conservatives who shrug at the stripping of our other rights.

i say good.
bout time we had more responsible gun laws.