Thanks for the great educational resources and for engaging in this discussion with me. I would agree that the current background check process is quite detailed. I think it would be great if these checks could be expanded to include mental and psychological assessments.
Most of the recent shootings in the US and around the world were done by people with mental / psychological issues of some kind. On a more human note, I think a psychologist spending an hour with such a person should be able to tell if they are going to shoot responsibly or not.
I don't want this psychologist to be the judge and jury of whether someone should be able to get a gun or not, but I do feel that we can make a lot of progress by making purchasing a gun more like an interview rather than a transaction.
The issue I have with that is it is an incredibly slippery slope. Where is the line drawn in terms of mental disorders? Do we nullify someone's 2A rights because they've been diagnosed with depression? Probably my bigger concern is how they would go about denying or approving it. If it's at the discretion of a psychologist or psychiatrist, there's a lot of personal bias that would be involved--especially since many in that industry lean heavily to the left. It's kinda like red-flag laws. They circumvent both your 2nd and 4th Amendment rights. They take away your ability to defend yourself on the premise that you may commit a crime. To me that's incredibly dangerous territory because the government and elites will use that to their advantage to disarm many, many law-abiding citizens.
In a perfect world it would be great to be able to be able to prevent mass shootings. Unfortunately, it would lead to a lot of corrupt disarming of the people. A lot of those mass shootings were carried out by people who acquired the firearms illegally (whether through the black market, theft, or otherwise) and would not have passed a background check regardless.
I think a more effective method of deterring mass shootings would be more citizens carrying (as well as the training I mentioned) and getting rid of "gun free zones." The vast majority of shootings occur in these "gun free zones." Criminals don't care about laws so GFZ's offer a prime target for defenseless victims. Conversely, a well armed society is a polite society. Take the attempted church massacre in Texas. The gunman was taken down by a citizen who was carrying and many other church-goers pulled their guns on him as well. They prevented what would probably have been a blood bath.
That's the issue you come across with a lot of Democrat or "common sense" gun laws. They make people feel good because it seems like something is being done, but really they just punish law-abiding citizens while the criminals end up having more soft targets.
Thanks for the great educational resources and for engaging in this discussion with me. I would agree that the current background check process is quite detailed. I think it would be great if these checks could be expanded to include mental and psychological assessments.
Most of the recent shootings in the US and around the world were done by people with mental / psychological issues of some kind. On a more human note, I think a psychologist spending an hour with such a person should be able to tell if they are going to shoot responsibly or not.
I don't want this psychologist to be the judge and jury of whether someone should be able to get a gun or not, but I do feel that we can make a lot of progress by making purchasing a gun more like an interview rather than a transaction.
Yeah, absolutely! Thank you for engaging as well!
The issue I have with that is it is an incredibly slippery slope. Where is the line drawn in terms of mental disorders? Do we nullify someone's 2A rights because they've been diagnosed with depression? Probably my bigger concern is how they would go about denying or approving it. If it's at the discretion of a psychologist or psychiatrist, there's a lot of personal bias that would be involved--especially since many in that industry lean heavily to the left. It's kinda like red-flag laws. They circumvent both your 2nd and 4th Amendment rights. They take away your ability to defend yourself on the premise that you may commit a crime. To me that's incredibly dangerous territory because the government and elites will use that to their advantage to disarm many, many law-abiding citizens.
In a perfect world it would be great to be able to be able to prevent mass shootings. Unfortunately, it would lead to a lot of corrupt disarming of the people. A lot of those mass shootings were carried out by people who acquired the firearms illegally (whether through the black market, theft, or otherwise) and would not have passed a background check regardless.
I think a more effective method of deterring mass shootings would be more citizens carrying (as well as the training I mentioned) and getting rid of "gun free zones." The vast majority of shootings occur in these "gun free zones." Criminals don't care about laws so GFZ's offer a prime target for defenseless victims. Conversely, a well armed society is a polite society. Take the attempted church massacre in Texas. The gunman was taken down by a citizen who was carrying and many other church-goers pulled their guns on him as well. They prevented what would probably have been a blood bath.
That's the issue you come across with a lot of Democrat or "common sense" gun laws. They make people feel good because it seems like something is being done, but really they just punish law-abiding citizens while the criminals end up having more soft targets.