[Sackett]

Originally Posted by Ledgem

I remember when the case with James Holmes shooting up a theater in Colorado occurred, a bunch of people immediately brought out the pitchforks against the psychiatrist who saw him, claiming that she didn't do enough. It later turned out that she had done all of the proper reporting required of her, and that the police had arguably dropped the ball. So now you're upset because too much emphasis is being given to mental health?

No. I'm upset that instead of denying gun ownership to people that a psychiatrist has found to be a current danger to themselves or others, the police have decided that anyone who has ever taken anti-anxiety or anti-depression medication in their life also cannot own a gun. Some how I don't think that's what Americans meant when we wanted medical health issues addressed.

We want to stop crazies like James Holmes and Adam Lanza. Not the woman who once suffered from baby blues, or a man who became depressed because a child died.

Here's an interesting comparison for you. In the health field we're trained that if we see any hint of child abuse we are to detain the child, separate them from their parents, and get child services involved immediately, no questions asked. This has resulted in a situation where roughly every other report of child abuse has no real abuse taking place. Yet this is what we want - the law is set up such that a physician who doesn't report child abuse can get slammed with civil and criminal charges, yet they are shielded by law if they make a report that turns out to have no true abuse behind it. We would prefer to be overly cautious and to catch as many cases of child abuse as we can, because despite these efforts child abuse is still occurring in rather large numbers today.

Oh that's great. Justify a tyrannical action by pointing to other tyrannical actions. The current attitude toward child abuse accusations is completely unconstitutional, violates the right to be innocent until proven guilty, deprives parents of their children without proof of wrongdoing, and horribly traumatizes children. All so you can feel good about yourselves for "preventing" child abuse, while you are actually engaging in it. Yes. Stealing children from their parents is child abuse.

You call that "abundance of caution", but your caution only runs one way. What about the caution of not stealing children from loving parents for no good reason? You self appointed crusaders for children act like no harm is done when you grab children and keep them away from their parents, all with no proof of any wrong doing and then demand the parents prove they aren't bad parents before you return their kids.

Our entire system of law is based on the idea that it is better to let the guilty go free then to wrongly punish the innocent, yet that is simply ignored in child abuse cases. Which is bad for both parents and children.

That was child abuse. Now let's get back to guns and killing or seriously injuring people. You're telling me that you would prefer not to take the cautious approach, that we should allow deaths to occur and after the fact blame some aspect of the system for not stopping it? Or that we should just accept that the deaths will happen and can't be prevented?

Owning guns does not equal killing people. Why does caution only operate one way? Aren't we supposed to exercise caution in declaring people guilty, and depriving them of their rights? Aren't people entitled to due process?

Emotional appeals to justify real harm right now to innocents in order to protect against some greater future possible harm just doesn't pull much weight with me.

Being free is dangerous. I prefer freedom and danger to tyranny and safety.

In the state of Pennsylvania, at least, physicians are mandated to report patients who are no longer fit to drive to the Department of Motor Vehicles, thus nullifying their licenses unless the patient re-tests and confirms that they are still fit to drive. It's obvious why this is done, isn't it? We're trying to remove the possibility of an accident from occurring, even though this is greatly restrictive and debilitating to a patient. Cars may not be in the Constitution, but we're talking about changing someone's life and taking away a lot of their freedom, their ability to live on their own. Would you seriously argue that guns should be handled differently?

If the police where taking someones guns because their psychiatrist reported them as imminently dangerous, then I wouldn't be upset. As long as there is some process by which that can be appealed. Police digging through everyone's past medication history and then deciding to go to a man's home and seize his guns is not acceptable.

Originally Posted by Kyuu

American Fascism. And everything that I argue with goes against that.

When I read crap like this article I have to agree with you that fascism (as a political theory) is a real threat.

EDIT: And yet another fine example of how students are encouraged to be politically active, but only for the right causes.