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Public Puts Mental Health, More Police above Gun Control
National Review Online ^ | December 21, 2012 | John Fund

Posted on 12/21/2012 12:01:26 PM PST by neverdem

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1 posted on 12/21/2012 12:01:34 PM PST by neverdem
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To: neverdem

People on BOTH sides of the weapons ban issue often agree on the need to provide active defense for schools, i.e., armed school staff. This is something that should move forward, and IS doable. Teachers and school staff members have already passed criminal background checks. With training and recurrencies, MOST AMERICANS, including half the liberals, would favor this.

We have armed staff at our schools (we’re in Colorado-—NOT the “gun-free” Denver area), including some teachers, not just “security staff.” It actually makes it a MORE relaxed, LESS uptight place. Kids (and parents) feel MORE secure.

The teachers at Sandy Hook, God bless them, stepped into the breach with courage to defend their students. Sadly, they were unarmed.


2 posted on 12/21/2012 12:14:50 PM PST by cookcounty
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To: neverdem

We don’t need more police.
We need more police doing actual police work instead of revenue generation. (I got a ticket last year for 34mph in a 30mph zone. I got the ticket on the way to work at 5:05 am.)


3 posted on 12/21/2012 12:16:21 PM PST by BuffaloJack (Children, pets, and slaves get taken care of. Free Men take care of themselves.)
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To: neverdem
A CBS News poll taken after the shootings found just 26 percent of Americans believe stricter gun laws would have done a lot to prevent the carnage. A Rasmussen poll found only 27 percent think stricter gun control would be the most effective preventive measure.

These are the ones who claim they think gun laws would help; the true number who think this would help is probably somewhat lower. Many of these people are trying to shape the debate by lying (like republicans who give Obama an "F" in all areas, while secretly thinking he may deserve a D- in one or two of his stronger areas). Keep in mind that the public is getting more sophisticated on polling, and quite a few answer based on what effect they want the polls to have, rather than what they really believe.

4 posted on 12/21/2012 12:17:25 PM PST by Pollster1 (Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. - Ronald Reagan)
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To: neverdem

“Currently, “privacy” laws block doctors from telling parents what is wrong with their kids or what treatment they need.”

Is this statement really true?


5 posted on 12/21/2012 12:22:36 PM PST by ILS21R (Everything is a conspiracy. No? You're living in one.)
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To: neverdem

As soon as elections were held in Colorado, showing a sweep of both houses by the Democrats, their Democrat governor immediately invited several gun control organizations to his mansion to discuss what gun control laws they were going to force on the people of Colorado.

They promptly came up with a list of 20 possible gun control laws, that they culled down to the 4 most likely to quickly pass in the legislature.

I mention this because it shows how *ready* the left is to make gun control laws.

However, with a clear majority of the people blaming this event on problems with mental health care in the US, where are the proposals to *do* something about these problems?

To start with, notice how the question is framed, as if it is the “mental health care” of the violently insane that matters, *not* “protecting the public” from the murderous outrages committed by the violently insane?

So let’s change the question. Re-prioritize it. It is *more* important that the public is protected than that murderous, mentally sick people be treated. Which should be just a secondary thought, at best.

If the question is changed, then the changes to the law are clear. Priority #1: Get the violently mentally ill off the street and into state run institutions, where they cannot harm others.

And no, “violently mentally ill” does NOT mean “Veterans with PTSD”, no matter what the administration thinks.

But in any event, we have to put this issues on the front burner, each and every time the leftists and their media allies mention gun control.

“Why does the left insist that dangerously mentally ill people be allowed to run around free?”


6 posted on 12/21/2012 12:29:22 PM PST by yefragetuwrabrumuy (Pennies and Nickels will NO LONGER be Minted as of 1/1/13 - Tim Geithner, US Treasury Sect)
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To: ILS21R
“Currently, 'privacy' laws block doctors from telling parents what is wrong with their kids or what treatment they need.”

Is this statement really true?

I believe it's true once the kid becomes 18 thanks to HIPAA.

Summary of the HIPAA Privacy Rule

I couldn't find it there with a quick scan. The link in the original article spells it out, IIRC.

7 posted on 12/21/2012 12:45:55 PM PST by neverdem ( Xin loi min oi)
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To: neverdem
Here is a fact that not many people are talking about.

The Brady/Clinton "Assault Weapons Ban" was in effect from 1994 until 2004.

Columbine happened in 1999.

8 posted on 12/21/2012 12:48:58 PM PST by red-dawg
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To: BuffaloJack

Sorry about your speeding ticket. It’s so exasperating. Come to my county and you can drive as fast as you want to: all the cops are parked in front of the schools. This would be a great day to stick up a bank here in Maryland, since no cops are available for duty off of school grounds. (Admittedly, we have a disproportionate number of loons here.)


9 posted on 12/21/2012 12:56:12 PM PST by ottbmare (The OTTB Mare)
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To: yefragetuwrabrumuy
But in any event, we have to put this issues on the front burner, each and every time the leftists and their media allies mention gun control.

“Why does the left and the BS media insist that dangerously mentally ill people be allowed to run around free?”

We're in a propaganda war. We need to phrase it for the low information voters. The BS media needs to become totally discredited. The BS media is not just biased. After Benghazigate and Fast and Furious, it's corrupted at its core.

10 posted on 12/21/2012 12:59:58 PM PST by neverdem ( Xin loi min oi)
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To: ILS21R
From that link:

2. Write exceptions into the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) so parents of mentally ill children can get access to medical records and receive information from their children’s doctors on what is wrong and what the children need. Right now, for reasons of “confidentiality,’ doctors won’t tell parents what is wrong with their kids or what treatment they need, even as they require parents to provide the care. As a result, when a child goes off treatment, the parents’ hands are tied. They have all the responsibility to see the person is cared for, but none of the information or authority to see it happens. We have to change the patient confidentiality laws so parents can help prevent tragedies rather than become a punching bag for the public when something horrific happens.

11 posted on 12/21/2012 1:09:07 PM PST by neverdem ( Xin loi min oi)
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To: neverdem

Thank you.


12 posted on 12/21/2012 1:09:43 PM PST by ILS21R (Everything is a conspiracy. No? You're living in one.)
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To: neverdem

Thanks again. Amazing that a law like that would ever see the light of day.


13 posted on 12/21/2012 1:14:10 PM PST by ILS21R (Everything is a conspiracy. No? You're living in one.)
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To: neverdem

If anything sensible is done the Marxists would lose one of their favorite excuses for more government power.


14 posted on 12/21/2012 1:19:41 PM PST by SWAMPSNIPER (The Second Amendment, a Matter of Fact, Not a Matter of Opinion)
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To: neverdem
Good article and thanx for posting, neverdem.

Much better than the propagandistic, emotive gut-dumping Soledad O'Brien and other Talking Pinheads have been doing on national television.

15 posted on 12/21/2012 9:52:50 PM PST by lentulusgracchus
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To: red-dawg
The Brady/Clinton "Assault Weapons Ban" was in effect from 1994 until 2004. Columbine happened in 1999.

Hey! Hey! Knock it off -- no unhelpful arguments in here, we're trying to do gun control! </Schmucky Chucky>

16 posted on 12/21/2012 10:12:10 PM PST by lentulusgracchus
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To: SWAMPSNIPER
If anything sensible is done the Marxists would lose one of their favorite excuses for more government power.

One thing that needs to be done by conservative commenters (people like BOR, George Will, and others <flameproof undies on>), is to unbundle the Marxist power-drive from the excuse-issues they've bound gun control to over the last 60 years.

Then use the naked, bereft-of-excuses gun-control issue as a didactic tool, to show people the naked conflict of intentions between Marxist power-drivers, and the Framers' plan for our freedom.

Then set that against the worldwide Communist body count, to highlight the outcomes we can expect from those lying bastards.

17 posted on 12/21/2012 10:19:07 PM PST by lentulusgracchus
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To: neverdem
(Article) Connecticut has the fifth-strictest gun laws of all 50 states, a fact that did nothing to stop Adam Lanza, the Newtown shooter.

So did the Dunblane shooter, who acted out his horrid criminal deed in a gun-law regime similar to Connecticut's, and the British government's policy action was the only one left available to them, to the left of what they had: complete confiscation and destruction of firearms larger than .22 caliber.

The Russian gun laws didn't stop the Beslan massacre for a minute. Didn't even slow the Chechen terrorists down.

And California had gun laws similar to Connecticut's (someone from California, please correct me) when Patrick Purdy's 1989 rampage through a Stockton, Calif., school kicked off the phenomenon of school shootings and prompted California to ban semiautomatic "assault rifles".

On the morning of January 17, 1989, a person called the Stockton Police Department and warned of a death threat against Cleveland Elementary School. At noon that day, Patrick Purdy, a mentally disturbed drifter, with a significant criminal history, set his van on fire with a gasoline filed beer bottle after parking it behind the school. Purdy then moved to the school playground and began shooting an AK-47 from behind a portable building. He shot more than 100 rounds in three minutes killing five children and wounding thirty others including one teacher. All of the fatally wounded victims were Cambodian and Vietnamese immigrants. Purdy then took his own life by shooting himself in the head with a pistol. Investigators would later discover that he wore a flak jacket that bore the words "PLO," "Libya," and "death to the Great Satin" [sic]. Purdy had also carved the words "freedom", "victory", "Earthman", and "Hezbollah" on his rifle.

Investigators would learn that Purdy had attend Cleveland Elementary School sixteen years earlier. A 1987 police report described Purdy as suffering from "mild mental retardation." They would find no evidence of a specific hatred of Cambodians or Vietnamese, instead those who know Purdy described him as a person that hated everyone.


(Source: http://reasonabledoubt.org/index.php/criminallawblog/entry/january-17-1989-patrick-purdy-kills-five-school-children-wounds-thirty-others-today-in-crime-history)

Is it just me, or is this a trend? Shooters tend to be mentally disturbed losers in life who identify generally with Leftist causes and are not Tea Party-type people.

And they tend to be unimpressed by gun laws, or by criminal laws generally.

18 posted on 12/21/2012 10:41:24 PM PST by lentulusgracchus
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To: lentulusgracchus
It's been my experience that most of the "conservative commenters" avoid talking about liberalism as a cohesive conspiracy, they won't point out any particular action or event as being part of a whole.

Much of what we see going on now is orchestrated, intended to manipulate the masses into accepting, I suppose, a "new world order".

Calling someone a "conspiracy nut" is the same as calling all dissenters "racist", or "deniers", it is intended to censor and silence the opposition. It works, because too many people care about what everyone else thinks about them. They stifle their thoughts, and go along to get along.

When most people are conditioned to believe conspiracies exist only in the minds of the paranoid it becomes really easy to manage an actual conspiracy.

Hitler and Stalin weren't one time deals, Hitlers and Stalins have existed throughout history and they exist today. Only the names ever change.

19 posted on 12/21/2012 11:50:45 PM PST by SWAMPSNIPER (The Second Amendment, a Matter of Fact, Not a Matter of Opinion)
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To: BuffaloJack

Don’t speed in Wisconsin.

I got a ticket for going 56 in a 55 zone.


20 posted on 12/22/2012 3:17:06 PM PST by ridesthemiles
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