Graham Introduces Background Check Legislation

[Waitone]

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/03/06/graham-introduces-background-check-bill-with-nra-backing/

Evidently with the blessing of the NRA. 

The bill from Sen. Lindsey Graham and three other bipartisan lawmakers expands the scope of mental health information submitted to the background check system used by gun sellers. It has the backing of the National Rifle Association, and background check-related legislation has been considered the most likely of the various gun violence proposals to survive the legislative process.

It does not address a second loophole in the background check requirements – the gun show loophole – which critics say provides an avenue for people who know they cannot pass a background check to buy firearms.

OK, so evidently the legislation focus is on mental health issues which was predicted.

Two exit questions.  First, will there be provisions designed to hinder PTSD sufferers (who just happen to be military types) from obtaining firearms, something our Betters have repeatedly signaled.
Second question, will there be a clearly defined and easily implemented means of challenging and / or removing one's name from the list.  We spend lots of time putting names on lists but spend precious little time in creating mechanisms for removing them from lists.  I remember Ted Kennedy twice was on a no fly list.  Easy enough for him to get his name removed but just about impossible for Joe Sixpack.

[SteveS]

The previous NICS improvement act (from 2007?) contained federal provisions for challenging mental health admissions to the list. There were incentives for states to develop means to get off the list, but I don believe most have done this.

Unfortunately, I don't think there will be much done. There is a lot of support for keeping guns away from "crazy" people and not much support for the rights of the "crazy" people. I suppose if this list was overly inclusive, it may be different.

[SADShooter]

I was going to comment, but I don't seem to have anything productive to add. I would observe that I'm feeling like I'm about to get screwed by someone who thinks he is smarter that he really is. The result is a vague unease and sense of impending betrayal.

(edit for typo)

[roo_ster]

I was going to comment, but I don't seem to have anything productive to add. I would observe that I'm feeling like I'm about to get screwed by someone who thinks he is smarter that he really is. The result is a vague unease ansd sense of impending betrayal.

That's only because  McCain and Graham plan on betraying you.

[Cliffh]

That's only because  McCain and Graham plan on betraying you.

My thoughts exactly.

[AZRedhawk44]

“We have legislation that will make sure that in the future, people who find themselves in this legal category of having gone to a federal court and plead not guilty by reason of insanity, having been … judged by (a) federal court to be dangerous to themselves and others, would no longer be able legally to pass a background check,” he said. “There are a lot of emotions about the gun violence issue. But I am hopeful this (is) one area where we can find tremendous bipartisan support to fix what I think is a gaping gap in our law.”

This bill would expand the scope of the current federal database – the National Instant Criminal Background Check System – to flag individuals who have used an insanity defense, were ruled by a court to be dangerous, or were committed by a court to mental health treatment.

It includes, for example, individuals found not guilty because of mental illness in a criminal case, those “found guilty but mentally ill,” and people found “incompetent to stand trial,” according to a summary of the legislation provided to reporters by Graham’s office.

The National Rifle Association announced its support for the legislation saying it would “improve” the current background check system.

Also:

“In addition, the bill will strengthen the rights for people with mental health illnesses,” he said. “It provides a specific definition of mentally incompetent … that only includes individuals involuntarily committed to treatment.”

Anyone have actual text of the bill?

The above doesn't sound bad at all.

I hate Graham, and I don't trust the NRA at all.  But this doesn't seem bad if that's all it truly is.  Beware the midnight rider and all that jazz, but in its current form I'm not opposed.


I'm very leery of a nooz article that attempts to summarize a bill for my own understanding but neglects to tell me the actual bill number (or a link to its actual text) so I can attempt to confirm the validity of the summary.


(ETA:  By "not opposed" I mean it's no worse than not allowing released felons to be barred ownership of arms.  I still think a free man is a free man, and an officially adjudicated insane free man has just as much right to not be murdered/battered/robbed/raped as any other free man.  But if this is the worst we get burned with over Sandy Hook and can wait another 20 years for another gun control battle, I'm good with that.  Fairly sure the Ship of State will be underwater by then from debt and all this will be irrelevant.)

[dogmush]

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/D?d113:2:./temp/~bdi27m::|/bss/|

You can search Thomas.loc by the reps name.

Havn't had a chance to read it yet.

ETA: Apparentlly no one else has read it yet either.  The GPO hasn't forwarded it to LOC yet.

[AZRedhawk44]

I like links with smileys in them.   

Link with no smiley

[Fitz]

I'm not seeing cause for alarm YET, but I'll be watching closely...A slight shift in language can be disastrous

[Hawkmoon]

That's only because  McCain and Graham plan on betraying you.

It must have been a really nice dinner Obama threw for them.

All this makes me realize that there really are people out there who can predict the future. I don't recall where for certain, but I believe it was on the old The High Road forum, many years ago, that someone posted the suggestion that if you ever need mental health assistance, go to a psychiatrist or psychologist in another city, pay cash, and use an assumed name. In the current political climate, it seems that would be excellent advice for anyone who can afford it.

[longeyes]

A society that is crumbling from within because of institutionalized lying and rampant moral vagrancy thinks it can solve the "random violence" problem with background checks?

Sadly amusing.

The real "massacre" of America is not the work of Adam Lanza but of people who to all too many Americans not only seem sane but with the best intentions.  Many of those people are successful, imitated, lionized.

By the way, would Maj. Hassan have passed the background check?

[Fitz]

A society that is crumbling from within because of institutionalized lying and rampant moral vagrancy thinks it can solve the "random violence" problem with background checks?

Sadly amusing.

The real "massacre" of America is not the work of Adam Lanza but of people who to all too many Americans not only seem sane but with the best intentions.  Many of those people are successful, imitated, lionized.

By the way, would Maj. Hassan have passed the background check?

Probably. he wasn't crazy, he was a murderous jihadist.

I get what you're saying... but I hate that Hasan is passed off as "crazy" and his massacre was "workplace violence"

mother *expletive deleted*er was a terrorist, plain and simple, and the gov doesn't want to admit that one of its own could be so.

[Scout26]

Hasan did pass the background check to purchase for the reason that Fitz stated.


(Can we put Hasan up against the wall after his trial?  Please.)

[SADShooter]

Hasan did pass the background check to purchase for the reason that Fitz stated.


(Can we put Hasan up against the wall after his trial?  Please.)

Why risk over-penetration damaging the aesthetics of a sound wall? The nearest ditch will do.

[longeyes]

Well, that is just it: Hasan wasn't "crazy," just having a bad day at the workplace.  Nobody thought his prior behavior was dangerous to himself or others.  We can all think of a few people in power who fit the same exact decription.  Diversity trumps insanity.

And that is my point: the semantics have become just a camouflage.  What matters is the agenda.  Hassan was an IED placed inside that fort by people who either knew better or should have known better.

Who is going to do these background checks and what will the criteria be?

[kgbsquirrel]

“In addition, the bill will strengthen the rights for people with mental health illnesses,” he said. “It provides a specific definition of mentally incompetent … that only includes individuals involuntarily committed to treatment.”

Anyone have actual text of the bill?

The above doesn't sound bad at all.

http://www.businessinsider.com/brandon-raub-suing-government-2012-8

Yeah, couldn't be abused at all. [/sarcasm]


Saving further outrage for when the text of the bill is released.

[T.O.M.]

Can't wait to see what happens when this runs smack into HIPPA's privacy rules.  What will a judge do when faced with those two options???

[Waitone]

I would be cautiously in favor of such legislation IF inclusion in the database was limited to those people who have been adjudicated by the legal system as being nuts (whatever that means).  I would want a disinterested third party (judge in a bonafide court) to make the determination.  The legislation may well start out pure and clean and All American but it will quickly morph into a tool of oppression of targeted groups.  I just don't trust fed.gov and I sure don't trust Lindsey Graham or his enabler John McCain. 

[AZRedhawk44]

http://www.businessinsider.com/brandon-raub-suing-government-2012-8

Yeah, couldn't be abused at all. [/sarcasm]

KGB:  What's wrong with this?

On August 20 a judge ordered Raub to spend up to 30 days in a psych ward, but on August 23 a circuit court judge dismissed the government’s case and ordered Raub's immediate release because the petition for his detainment was “so devoid of any factual allegations that it could not be reasonably expected to give rise to a case or controversy.”

The process worked.

1.  Cops think guy is dangerous.
2.  Alleged dangerous guy goes to court, judge says "yep, he's dangerous."
3.  Adjudicated dangerous guy appeals while in treatment for being dangerous, is found to not be dangerous after all.


The system worked.  A judge made the determination.  And a judge later fixed the wrongful determination.

If that doesn't work for you, it's time to take your rifle, and your friends with rifles, and their friends with rifles, for a little walk.  If you can't find enough friends, then it's not yet time for that walk.

[Hawkmoon]

KGB:  What's wrong with this?

The process worked.

1.  Cops think guy is dangerous.
2.  Alleged dangerous guy goes to court, judge says "yep, he's dangerous."
3.  Adjudicated dangerous guy appeals while in treatment for being dangerous, is found to not be dangerous after all.


The system worked.  A judge made the determination.  And a judge later fixed the wrongful determination.

If that doesn't work for you, it's time to take your rifle, and your friends with rifles, and their friends with rifles, for a little walk.  If you can't find enough friends, then it's not yet time for that walk.

The process worked?

If the petition for his detainment was “so devoid of any factual allegations that it could not be reasonably expected to give rise to a case or controversy,” why/how did the first judge ever adjudicate him as in need of involuntary commitment in the first place? Good that he got out, but I wouldn't say this case is a poster child for a system that worked. An application for involuntary commitment should be reviewed carefully by the first judge who sees it, not rubber stamped because he's late for his tee time.

[Waitone]

The important point is the fight took place in a court.  Replace the first judge with a bureaucrat in DHS.  Send the second judge out of coffee.  Now let the first bureaucrat be the sole determiner of fact and ultimately for inclusion in a database.  Nothing about the scenario gives me the warm and fuzzies.  Yeah, one could say the defendant should have never been brought under charges to begin with.  But at least there was a check and balance on judicial screw ups with the appeals court.  I consider that to be infinitely better than trusting in some civil service bureaucrat with an agenda and off the record payments.

[Battle Monkey of Zardoz]

I would be cautiously in favor of such legislation IF inclusion in the database was limited to those people who have been adjudicated by the legal system as being nuts (whatever that means).  I would want a disinterested third party (judge in a bonafide court) to make the determination.

I don't even trust that. Sounds good. But......it wouldn't end up that way

[kgbsquirrel]

KGB:  What's wrong with this?

The process worked.

1.  Cops think guy is dangerous.
2.  Alleged dangerous guy goes to court, judge says "yep, he's dangerous."
3.  Adjudicated dangerous guy appeals while in treatment for being dangerous, is found to not be dangerous after all.


The system worked.  A judge made the determination.  And a judge later fixed the wrongful determination.

If that doesn't work for you, it's time to take your rifle, and your friends with rifles, and their friends with rifles, for a little walk.  If you can't find enough friends, then it's not yet time for that walk.

Once again for the slow kiddies.

“In addition, the bill will strengthen the rights for people with mental health illnesses,” he said. “It provides a specific definition of mentally incompetent … that only includes individuals involuntarily committed to treatment.”

It specifies only that someone was involuntarily committed. It does not exclude those found to not be a threat.


As an example of the result of this sort of system: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-12/california-seizes-guns-as-owners-lose-right-to-bear-arms.html?cmpid=yhoo

They had better luck in nearby Upland, where they seized three guns from the home of Lynette Phillips, 48, who’d been hospitalized for mental illness, and her husband, David. One gun was registered to her, two to him.

“The prohibited person can’t have access to a firearm,” regardless of who the registered owner is, said Michelle Gregory, a spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office.

In an interview as agents inventoried the guns, Lynette Phillips said that while she’d been held involuntarily in a mental hospital in December, the nurse who admitted her had exaggerated the magnitude of her condition.

Todd Smith, chief executive officer of Aurora Charter Oak Hospital in Covina, where documents provided by Phillips show she was treated, didn’t respond to telephone and e-mail requests for comment on the circumstances of the treatment.

Day 1: AZRedHawk, you post seditious material on an extremist right wing website. Obviously you're a threat to the community so we're going to take you down to the hospital for an evaluation by a psychiatrist. No you don't have a choice in the matter.

Day 2: Since AZRedHawk was involuntarily committed he's now a prohibited person and we're confiscating his guns. We're also confiscating the guns belong to anyone else that lives in the same house as him because he might gain access to those.

Day 3: AZRedHawk gets let out of the Hotel of Padded Rooms because exercising a 1st amendment right does not constitute probable cause. But his guns, and the guns of everyone in his home are still gone. AZRedHawk, you may now hire a lawyer for several thousand dollars and begin the multiyear process of getting your lawfully owned firearms back from the police.


See how this works?

[SteveS]

I would be cautiously in favor of such legislation IF inclusion in the database was limited to those people who have been adjudicated by the legal system as being nuts (whatever that means).  I would want a disinterested third party (judge in a bonafide court) to make the determination.  The legislation may well start out pure and clean and All American but it will quickly morph into a tool of oppression of targeted groups.  I just don't trust fed.gov and I sure don't trust Lindsey Graham or his enabler John McCain. 

I share the same concern.  I have participated in more than a few involuntary admissions and some judges do a good job and take their responsibility seriously.  Others are lazy, substitute their own personal biases for expert advice, and should otherwise be doing traffic hearings.  That being said, I am not sure I could come up with a better system.

[AZRedhawk44]

I getcha, KGB.

So we want a smaller subset than just those who were involuntarily committed.  We want actually adjudicated mentally incompetent and involuntarily committed by a judge, as opposed to a mere LEO or hospital action.  Agreed.