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I’m very picky about the ATMs I use. I won’t use an ATM that’s outside at all. I’ll only use ATMs that are affiliated with my bank (no fees), and I only use ATMs I’m familiar with (to protect against card skimmers).
Val Halla awaits, M. McDonald.
I never knew you, but our cause was, still is, and always shall be the same. Our cause is just, and we will all continue fighting in your stead though it will be undoubtedly very hard to fill your shoes.
May you rest in peace.
+ 1000!
RIP. May his efforts be remembered.
Consider this comment self moderated.
Because good people make mistakes.
http://www.threefeloniesaday.com/Youtoo/tabid/86/Default.aspx
1 Million Moms Against Gun Control have more class than MDA SR Watts. You will be hearing a lot more from these real moms soon.
When one reviews the history of Progressive Presidents one finds it replete with examples of Federal mass murders in every tenure
We are forever indebted to you Mr. McDonald. Thank you for your courage and perseverance! Rest in peace.
I’ll raise a glass for the man (or anyone) in the arena.
I live in Chicago. I just got my Illinois concealed carry license in the mail today. I have you to thank. Peace.
His courage and perseverance is a great example for us all. Before it had happened, there were plenty who would have called him a fool for even trying to get things changed. But he did so anyway, and how, Chicago is a safer place because of his efforts. May his legacy live on and my he rest in peace.
Is it just me, or is weird to have the article from Bellevue WA instead of NM?
Felons lose all their rights basically for the rest of their lives which is bs!!! Some people make mistakes as kids and then in their adulthood are discriminated against when it comes too jobs and gun rights! Look at the ppl who grow up in areas that are live by the gun die by the gun….they can walk down the street and get shot….so they can’t have a gun to protect themselves and feel safe cuz their felons and if they do have a gun their going to get locked up for years just cuz their felons…..discrimination!!! If their committing crimes yeah lock them up but this is just to much!!! Once a felon always a felon and they never want you to be anything better then a felon…that’s your label!!!
I prefer to whip out my gun while using the ATM. Nobody tries to rob the guy who’s already pointing his gun at everyone within 20 feet while using the ATM to withdraw cash.
[cheesy DJ voice] Time to slow things down for couples skate.[/cheesy DJ voice]
I propose a required phase-in method for all laws that violate the second amendment:
1) POTUS Secret Service detail
2) Government officials and their security details
3) Federal, State, and Local law enforcement
4) Private security details
5) General population
I admire Officer Hayes for continuing to post here in spite of the anti-cop fanatics who always show up on these threads insulting him and every other LEO.
Kudos, sir.
A true civil rights activist. A man who cared about the common man and stood up to the ruling elitists, such as Bloomberg and Obama, who often violate the rights of the masses. RIP good sir.
…Christ on a pogo stick, I don’t even know where to START…
I couldn’t read all those comments. A lot of people are really comfortable with others losing rights. If a person commits a crime and pays the penalty, and finishes any additional stewarded time like parole, what are they after that? I’m open to learning here. What does the constitution say about this subject?
Whither to Regulate Mental Illness
The LA Times puts the question starkly:
“The reality is that no background checks system can be drawn so narrowly that it only catches those few truly sick people who plan to use their guns for random, mass mayhem. We either follow the lead of the rest of the civilized world and make gun ownership a “well regulated” activity for everyone, as our Constitution says it should be, or we accept that we have become a country akin to Somalia or Iraq where massacres are just part of the scenery.”
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-fort-hood-shooting-20140404,0,34520.story#ixzz2y1B1UjjN
I have to agree with the first two conclusions the LA Times expresses, while taking exception to the last conclusion.
Let’s prescind from the 2’nd, 4’th and 5’th Amendments restrictions – to say nothing of the right-to-privacy of Rowe vs. Wade – to explore the implications of the “background checks” remedy to mental illness. Before any of us embark upon this remedy – whether gun-controllers or gun-rights advocates – we ought to see where it leads.
It’s not difficult to envision, now that we have ObamaCare and the NSA spying on e-mail and phone records. All it takes is the will and the money; of which the latter can still be borrowed at low rates. We simply gather all:
– records of phone calls to psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers
– pharmacy records of prescriptions
– DSM-V diagnosis codes from medical insurance records and physicians’ (now electronic) records
– arrest records which could be scanned for words referencing abnormal behavior, drug or alcohol use
– school and employment discipline records
Forgive me if I’ve overlooked other useful stores of data. All this data goes into a National Mental Health Database, connected to NICS of course. Now, we have very nearly the universe of individuals with signs of mental illness.
The NYPD’s Active Shooter report from 2012 conveniently shows us where most mass-shootings occur:
Location Number
Type of Incidents Percentage
———— ————– —————-
School 68 24%
Office Building 31 11%
Open Commercial 67 24%
Factory/W’rhs 33 12%
Other 80 29%
—– ——
Total 279 100%
It’s clear that academic and work-place environments represent a plurality of venues for such incidents: 24 + 11 + 12 = 47%. Obviously, the first step is to make available to school administrators and employers sufficient information from our “National Mental Health Database” to prepare them to deal with identifiable heightened risks. Of course, that introduces a risk of likely discrimination against individuals in education, employment and provision of essential services. Therefore, we will need laws to protect individuals with mental illness against such discrimination.
The next most important category of venues is “Open Commercial” with 24%; these include such places as shopping malls. All that is required here is legislation requiring “Open Commercial” venue operators to screen individuals entering premises under their control for weapons. To make this manageable, we will need a national Mental Health Certification ID card which will expedite at least 50% of patrons passage through check-points. (There isn’t much that can be done to cover the “Other” category of 29% of incidents because these venues include public highways, streets and other venues where only governments have responsibility for policing access.)
Naturally, our system of a National Mental Health Database and a Mental Health Certification ID card will require a labyrinth of regulations detailing precisely which nuggets of mental-health information are to be disclosed to law-envorcement, school administrators, employers and what is to be encoded on ID cards. Heavy penalties must be imposed on non-governmental recipients of such information for unauthorized disclosure. Nevertheless, under the 1’st Amendment, nothing whould prohibit the publication of any such information should it be leaked to a government-credentialed journalist.
Let’s assume that the regime we contemplate here is 100% successful. How much might we have accomplished: The NYPD’s Active-Shooter report is informative. For the period studied from 1966 to 2012 the NYPD found 230 incidents reported on internet sources. They tallied an average of 3.1 killed and 3.9 wounded. So, we could hope to have saved:
– 230 X 3.1 = 713 killed
– 230 X 3.9 = 897 wounded
1,910 total casualties
divided by 46 years = 41.5 casualties per year.
This figure – 41.5 casualties per year – is apt to be a gross under-estimate of positive benefits that would accrue from a really aggressive program. Let’s suppose if we count the number of suicides-by-gun and homicides-by-gun (private affairs not counted in the “Active Shooter” report) the total were 10 or 100 times this figure. We might actually reduce the number of casualties by 415 or 4,150 per year. At the very outside, imagine 41,500!
What would the public reaction be to such an aggressive program? Having prescinded from the 2’nd, 4’th and 5’th Amendments restrictions we can also summarily dismiss any judicial scrutiny or legislative response. We need only consider the private reactions by individuals.
Gun owners and those who serve in our armed forces are already aware of the rule: “See a shrink, lose your 2’nd Amendment rights for life”. So far, this rule has impacted mostly our servicemen. Because their medical care is provided by the DoD, they have essentially no right-to-privacy of their medical records. In pursuit of our aggressive program, we could easily survey service members or recently discharged veterans to ascertain the impact on their propensity to seek psychological or psychiatric assistance. To what extent have servicemen refrained from seeking help for mental health issues for fear of losing their 2’st Amendment rights or inhibiting their career advancement in the military? Some subset of these servicemen/veterans must also be considering a post-service career in civilian law enforcement. No doubt, any military medical record of mental health issues is apt to introduce a risk of discovery when they pursue post-duty careers.
Whatever we might learn from servicemen and veterans would inform us in projecting the impact of an aggressive National Mental Health Database program. We would need to know – before instituting such a program – the extent to which individuals’ private responses would be to avoid seeking mental-health treatment. Would the impact be confined to individuals suffering from targeted diagnoses such as anxiety and depression? Or, would it be broader, encompassing a majority of DSM-V codes? Would it creep from an initial narrow set of targeted diagnoses gradually approaching a majority of DSM-V codes? Would the distribution of individuals’ mental health data begin by being carefully guarded as it now is in NICS? Would it expand to disclosure of DSM-V codes to school administrators and employers? Would an individual’s DSM-V codes be disclosed on his Mental Health Certification ID card?
However little our 2’nd Amendment rights might mean to the voters at large, I think the political implications of a National Mental Health Database are far-and-away more profound. Let me put this more pointedly. Let’s address the voters who have some sympathy for more mental-health controls over those who would keep and bear arms. To what extent are you willing to sacrifice the privacy of your medical records? The records of your relatives and friends? Your prospects for education or employment? Do you really trust your Federal government to keep your medical records private while under a mandate to use those records to control the risk that you might injure or kill anyone at school, work or a shopping mall?
There is no sharp line that confines the use of mental-health records to doing a background-check at a gun-dealership or in a private transfer. Even if we naively believed that such a sharp line could be maintained, there is nothing to stop any individual bent on homicide from stealing, buying on the black-market, or making a gun. The gun-cat is out-of-the-bag and it will not be put back-in. The issue we are debating is not “universal background checks”; rather it is whither to have a National Mental Health Database.
Good that ccw holder saved his life. Hopefully this will be a trend in Chicago. I think everytime when a DGU happens in Illinois, we should call it a OD (Otis Defense). In honor of Otis Mcdonald.