On one hand, half of George Smith’s article today in the Morning Sentinel, makes sense. On the other hand, the other half is absolutely illogical.
George Smith, outdoor writer and political activist in Maine, often eager to team up with environmentalist groups, presents himself as a supporter of the Second Amendment. Whether he is or isn’t leaves one always scratching his head due to the fact that Smith, on one hand, makes good sense and yet in the same article sounds more like a representative of the Brady bunch who hate guns and people, always wishing to squash their rights and put more authority into the hands of government to force regulations upon us.
Smith’s title to his article reads like a good one: “Smart laws can limit damage firearms do in the wrong hands.” By the way, what’s a “smart law?” Any law that takes away my inalienable rights for no good reason is a law that isn’t worth the paper it is written on.
The activist reveals from his writing that to prevent gun violence, such as the shooting of former Rep. Gabby Giffords, the shooting in Aurora, Colorado and Sandy Hook Elementary, we need to figure out how to stop these mentally deranged people from getting guns. Brilliant!
Smith suggests that Maine should take better care of the mentally ill, forgetting to remind readers it was other mentally deranged people who threw the other mentally deranged people out on the street several years ago. How did that work out anyway? But that’s water under the bridge isn’t it.
There exists one common denominator in all of these violent gun crimes mentioned and for many years previous – they were all mentally ill and/or on some kind of drugs for mental illness and/or depression. And yet we insist on attacking the guns and not the real problems.
However, while I applaud Smith for at least addressing the mental health issue, which few others before have done, I can’t say that his suggestions are the best. Smith wants to make sure that all mentally ill people are included on the NICS background check list to ensure they can’t purchase a gun. Smith writes:
We also should submit, to the federal background check system, the names of those mentally ill individuals who were prohibited — beginning six years ago — from possessing guns. Immediately.
I’m not sure exactly what Smith is thinking here. Preceding this statement is a very disturbing comment in which Smith says he likes the idea. It reads:
A friend suggested an idea I also like: We should create a system that will provide families who think a member is mentally ill a way to receive quick, comprehensive help and remove guns from the home until the weapons can be returned safely.
What could possibly go wrong with this? Now we are going to suggest that non qualified individuals make a determination as to whether or not a family member (or neighbor or acquaintance?) is mentally unfit to own a gun? Here’s a novel idea. If you think a layperson is qualified to determine the mental capacity of another, then shouldn’t that same family member have enough brain matter to realize that they better make sure all guns are out of the reach of someone they think is mentally ill? Why does anybody have to bring in government to remove the guns? This kind of irrational thinking, that a person is capable of being cerebral about one issue and not another, is typical irrational poppycock by shallow thinking people.
There exists standards that President Obama has created concerning mental illness, that if they were fully implemented, most Americans would not like. For instance, returning military veterans who seek psychiatric treatment to cope with and reenter the world the rest of us enjoy after many months on the battlefield, should not be allowed to posses a gun. Really?
The point is, and this has been discussed often, there already exists the tools to determine mental health issues. The problem is all the names aren’t making the NICS background checklist. So do we further give up rights to somehow offset incompetency? Doesn’t it make more sense to fix that broken spoke rather than having family members committing their own blood to a list declaring them incompetent and mentally deranged, while inviting in government opening us up for further governmental overreach?
But the terribly disconnected statement comes after all this. Smith writes:
While extending the background check requirement to all private sales will be inconvenient and unnecessary for many Mainers, it is something we gun owners should be willing to support to stop the sale of guns to the bad guys.
This is wrong on several levels. It wouldn’t be “inconvenient and unnecessary” for “many” Mainers. It would be so for all Mainers and for what real purpose? And when you consider the final statement, “to stop the sale of guns to the bad guys”, tells us that Smith actually believes that “bad guys” obey the law.
Smith certainly leaves me scratching my head when it comes to people control issues like guns. On the one hand he has for some time supported the idea of getting rid of Concealed Carry Permits, stating, “concealed carry permits waste money and time and are useless in fighting crime and violence.” I couldn’t agree more, but his nonsense of expanding background checks because it will catch the bad guys, is unproven prattle.
Why do free Americans always seem to be pressured into giving up their rights, mostly because incompetent people can’t do their jobs? And in continuation of that question, why do we give in? We’ve turned into non thinking sheep.
Even consider the latest event in Boston. It doesn’t take a degree in criminology to determine that the FBI failed in keeping a watch on a person that should have been a high profile target. People died and consequently the police, disregarding our constitutional rights, illegally invaded homes and forced people onto the streets, where a real armed murderer was still at large. Who have considered the risk these lawful citizens were subjected to? Why?
We know what happened to the suspect but the aftermath rhetoric is very disturbing and I hope it will be for millions of other Americans. People like New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg is saying that we need to reinterpret what the constitution says about privacy and rights. And this is because why? BECAUSE OF GOVERNMENT INCOMPETENCY!
NO! NO! NO! The answer should be NO! Fix the damned problem and the problem isn’t that I have too many rights.
When someone makes a statement or something similar to it that, “it is something we gun owners should be willing to support”, I say no way. I balk whenever I am told by anyone that I should be willing to give up and compromise and be reasonable about my God-given rights, and that includes self protection.
We shouldn’t be willing to give up anything when the problem doesn’t involve you and your rights. Have you considered that it might possibly be that one of the reasons we are seeing what appears to be more of this kind of heinous violence is because we have “reasonably” given up our rights and been “willing to support” the effort to chisel away at our rights?
