Armed and Crazy

This can also be filed under Scumbag of the Day as well, but we’ll get to that in a minute…

For those who missed it this past Sunday, 60 Minutes ran a piece called Armed and Dangerous which looked into the laws and processes around getting a firearm in this country, and how being mentally ill – especially when declared and committed by a court of law – affects a persons ability to own and bear arms in accordance with the 2nd Amendment. Of course, all of his discussion comes in the wake of the Virginia Tech shooting disaster.

Some very…VERY…shocking information was presented in the session, at least from albeit my limited point of view. First, it is against the law for a person with a history of severe mental illness to own a gun. It was the first federal gun control law on the books, dating way back to 1968. However, if that’s the case, then how on Earth is it possible for only 235,000 mentally compromised people be registered out of a total of at least 2.7 million?!? If that isn’t proof positive that whatever system is in place to register and track these people isn’t working, nothing is. The sad thing is over 1,000 homicides are committed by people that, by law, shouldn’t be owning a firearm. That’s the outcome of the broken system.

Here’s the real kicker – that isn’t even what really got my blood boiling. That got me shaking my head at our government, and wishing for once we could get a group of people who as a whole could get the job done on slam dunk issues such as this one. Nope, what really pissed me off was when they put on today’s Scumbag of the Day Michael Faenza, former president of the National Mental Health Association. According to this dickwad, "We feel that people with mental illness should not have special restrictions regarding firearms." He even goes as far as to say the statement applies to someone who has been involuntarily committed!!!

Let’s get something straight here folks – if the National Rifle Association, arguably the single largest lobbying group in Washington gets behind one form of gun control – as they have with this particular issue – then it should be done, period. The NRA will never support any form of gun control that isn’t so far in the right that even claiming 2nd Amendment rights doesn’t hold water.

I’m not one who typically dabbles in politics, but this is something that were it an election item for any particular candidate, they’d get my vote so I could feel sound that I’m making what little difference I can towards the better good.

B.