At some point you have to ask yourself why the Obama Administration and the political left are so desperate to separate Americans from their guns. Statistics show that the cities with the strictest gun laws have the highest crime rates, and criminals do not obey gun laws anyway. There is no logical reason to take guns away from Americans, yet the left seems convinced that the Second Amendment doesn’t really mean what it says and that Americans are not smart enough or stable enough to own guns. Well, the left is at it again.
The Daily Caller posted an article today about President Obama’s two new executive actions that would expand the government’s access to mental health records when doing background checks on gun buyers. Now admittedly that sounds like a good idea, and if you looked into the backgrounds of some of the recent acts of gun violence and who committed them, it might make sense. But wait–there’s more. In every case of a shooter (from the Arizona shooter who shot Representative Giffords to the Colorado theater shooter to the Newtown Connecticut shooter), there was more than enough evidence that the shooter was mentally ill long before the shooting incident. The government would not have to have access to anyone’s mental health records–the people around the shooters could have easily alerted local police to the danger.
The problem was not the background check, the problem was a society not willing to put the mentally ill in mental institutions. In the case of Newtown Connecticut, the mother of the shooter was going through the process of having her son committed. The process took long enough for the son to find out and shoot his mother to prevent being committed.
The article at the Daily Caller describes the two Executive Orders:
It (the first order) modifies the HIPAA Privacy Rule to allow institutions “to disclose to the NICS the identities of persons prohibited by federal law from possessing or receiving a firearm for reasons related to mental health.”
The other executive action, issued by the Department of Justice, clarifies what exactly in someone’s mental health history would prohibit them from owning or purchasing a gun. Persons who fall under the category of “adjudicated as a mental defective” and “committed to a mental institution” include those who are “incompetent to stand trial or not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect; persons lacking mental responsibility or deemed insane; and persons found guilty but mentally ill, regardless of whether these determinations are made by a state, local, federal or military court,” as well as “a person committed to involuntary inpatient or outpatient treatment.”
There are some concerns with these Executive Orders. There is a basic danger in allowing the government to be involved in any way in determining a person’s mental health. Is the next step declaring members of the Tea Party mentally unstable?
In April 2009, I posted an article (rightwinggranny.com) detailing a government program targeting veterans as unstable. The article stated:
“The aim of the FBI’s effort with the Defense Department, which was rolled into the Vigilant Eagle program, is to “share information regarding Iraqi and Afghanistan war veterans whose involvement in white supremacy and/or militia sovereign citizen extremist groups poses a domestic terrorism threat,” according to the Feb. 23 FBI memo.”
Our returning veterans are not a threat. They do not represent a domestic terrorism threat. However, the government, at its whim, can declare them as such. At this point in history, I am opposed to anything that limits the rights of Americans to own guns–there are too many freedoms being infringed upon by our government right now, and I think the Second Amendment is more important than it has ever been.
