Maybe taking a guy with PTSD to the shooting range wasn’t such a good idea.
Just a thought.
Sorry, I’m not trying to be insensitive here, but this is absolutely what is wrong with American gun culture. You have people who think guns are benign instruments, even “a kind of therapy” for “troubled veterans,” or a way to help their autistic son “fit in.” They are not. Guns are for killing. Period.
I mean, Jesus. The lack of common sense among self-professed “gun enthusiasts” is astonishing. I’d like to know why we need to have a fucking registry for the mentally ill when gun people are putting weapons in the hands of people they already know are mentally troubled? Don’t take a guy with PTSD to a fucking shooting range, okay? Don’t take your disturbed kid to a shooting range, either. When your boss orders a mental health day, maybe the shooting range isn’t what he had in mind. Aren’t these the people we’re saying need to be put on a national registry to make sure they can’t get their hands on guns? Then why are gun loons taking them for target practice?
God I’m sick of this shit.
[UPDATE]:
Guns-in-parking-lots bill sponsor Jeremy Faison admits he illegally keeps a gun in his car, nor does he have a concealed-carry permit. I agree with the NRA that we need to start enforcing the gun laws we have, and let’s start with this asshole.
I sure hope someone doesn’t break into Faison’s car, steal his gun, and use it in a crime.
And this is reason number 1,432 why we need mandatory liability insurance required of all gun owners. Because dude, your insurance premium just went through the roof with you flaunting not one but two laws. I mean, I’m pretty sure you’ve lost your right to call yourself “law-abiding” when you admitted to this.
idiot.
Southern Beale 
[insert hyperbole here about how you liberals suck because you hate guns and eagles and ‘murica.]
You can’t win an argument with a crazy person. Maybe that’s the problem.
You can if you have a gun! D’oh!
Thank you, SB. And using the “mentally ill” is so hypocritical…WE HAVE NO ‘mental health policy’ in this country, very few mental hospitals to house the publicly insane, and there are NO CURRENT laws on the books that allow ‘putting people away’ just because they are “acting crazy”. AND this situation is directly connected to the GOP’s cutting most all funding that would treat the mentally ill going back to Reagan. This mentally ill crap is just another diversion, smoke screen that gun MAKERS have used in the past…I am sick of it all, too. But I won’t stop fighting for true policies that will be common sense attempts to reducing the killing…We had 3 shootings here over the weekend, and the gun supporters had illogical statements that ‘covered’ each one. Seeing the children from Newtown sing at the Super Bowl should remind all the losers like LaPierre that we will not stop.
Well in fairness to those who suffer from “mental illness” the courts are very reluctant to take away someone’s freedom just because a doctor labelled them as “crazy”. We don’t want to force involuntary commitments just because someone might pose a danger to themselves or society. There needs to be evidence of danger beyond a reasonable doubt; the same standard as a criminal conviction, and that’s hard to get based off of a psychiatrists opinion alone.
There was a fascinating New Yorker article about mental illness and committment a couple months ago about a homeless woman in NH who was discharged from the state hospital. Due to privacy laws, etc. the hospital was barred from telling her daughter that she was released or where she was going. Eventually she broke into an abandoned farm house and eventually starved to death. The question was whether the state did anything wrong. It’s really hard to say because the woman’s rights are completely opposed to the interests of the state and her family in keeping her safe.
“I wanted everyone to know I was a Christian,” Kyle wrote. “I had it put in in red, for blood. I hated the damn savages I’d been fighting. I always will. They’ve taken so much from me.”
Wow, wotta KKKristian.
I thought we were supposed to be over there HELPING these people gain a democracy…….silly me!!
He also said in a video that ” Obama was slowing taking our rights away, one at a time, starting with guns…”
I can’t understand this fascination with guns. Really I can’t.
renxkyoko:
It involves being unable to deal with people that you disagree with–unless you can kill them.
Unfortunately…..that is the urge I have sometimes………having to DEAL with these fools!
Comments about this story are saying that PTSD isn’t a mental disorder and that we shouldn’t take gunz away from people with PTSD.
Sheesh. Isn’t it in the DSM-5?
Even a big majority of NRA members agree that universal background checks are a good idea. That can’t be successfully implemented unless there’s a hi-quality system for accumulating data about people with domestic restraining orders, a history of violence , or mental health issues that make a licensed mental health professional doubt that an individual is stable enough to properly use and care for a weapon.
A properly designed system for gathering and accumulating this data isn’t going to be free to build and it isn’t going to be free to operate either. We’re talking hundreds of millions of dollars to connect every gun dealer and law enforecement agency AND mental health provider together with the central NCIS system currently in use. And making sure that all these outfits use the system properly is a whole ‘nother issue, as many won’t cooperate unless they are backed into a corner and made to participate.
I have some guns (Not assult rifles, just handguns and a shotgun) and enjoy target shooting with friends and relatives. I have since my Grandma taught me how in the late 1950s and realy ’60s. She taught all her grandkids to shoot a .22 rifle. None of us has ever been in trouble with the law or caused anyone harm with a gun or anything else.
I have used my weapons to protect livestock from predators, and to protect myself from predators, specifically big cats in the mountain west. Once you’ve smelled a big cat in the dark mountains you begin to understand where fight-or-flight reflexes come from.
But mostly, we just kill plastic pop bottles out behind the shop building.
I’m not entirely sure I agree with this but apparently we’ve got the funds to put an armed security guard in every school in the country, which would cost ten times that amount, so I don’t see what the problem is.
My point, which you’re ignoring, is that it makes no difference what we do in terms of “keeping tabs on the mentally ill” when yahoos are taking mentally ill people to the target range and handing them loaded weapons.
The problem is not with the mentally ill. The problem is with the gun loons who seem to view guns as some kind of benign toy. The problem is ACCESS TO GUNS period full stop. Because if an armed, trained “good guy with a gun” on a shooting range — a guy regarded as the country’s best sniper shot — couldn’t protect himself and his friend from a “bad guy with a gun,” then clearly that entire argument is utter BULLSHIT.