Protestantism

» paper_turtle - Law loopholes!

What follows below was originally posted in the "God and Suffering" thread (message #46)

redback wrote:
Was he mentally ill and simply fell through the cracks due to reckless inertia by government's mental health authorities?
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Was he not mentally ill so the mental illness assessment was simply an abuse of process?
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As I understand it, Cho had been deemed so severely mentally ill that he was deemed to be handicapped (and a denger to himself and others). This, however, was in a civil action (involving two women he had stalked) and not a criminal action. Therefore, when the gun shop owner did a criminal background check (all it is required to do by Virginia law), nothing about the civil action showed up.
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In matters dealing with mental health, the judges are bound, by law, with administering the least restrictive ruling. They cannot force a mentally ill person to receive treatment or be medicated. They cannot even assign a social worker to check up on the mentally ill person to see to it that he/she abides by what was agreed to in court (and/or has not slipped further into mental illness).
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Do US gun shops have reckless indifference to issuing guns to those with court-recorded mental illness assessments?
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There are laws in place regarding issuing a gun permit to a person with mental illness, but they vary from state to state, and are not equally enforced. IMHO, though, gun shops seem to give lip service to the law, but may not be as thorough as I believe they should be.
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How soon will it inevitably become yesterday's news?
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:( Too soon, I'm afraid.
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peace and love,
Paper Turtle
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PS--I agree the present law isn't working and needs a major overhaul. Seems to me one way around medical privavy issues would be to require gunshop owners to request reports of civil actions when they pertain to mental health issues.
PT

-- posted by paper_turtle