02-18-2018, 03:18 AM
(02-17-2018, 06:34 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: It seems like a lot of blue folks believe their opinion should override the Constitution. Rule of Law is being dumped in favor of prohibition.
It seems like the shooter exposed symptoms that might well count as mental disability. If some form of due process is met, an individual could have an enumerated right stripped, assuming some way around the problematic "shall not be infringed" wording.
Yet the blue are trying to impose their values on the red. They are not meeting a properly democratic procedure for changing what amounts to government imposed and enforced values. As such, they should expect opposition from a group that has the numbers and beliefs to block. The founding fathers intent is clear. No amount of following the money trail will change the basic fact that the red and the founding authors of the Constitution agree.
What sort of due process would have caught the shooter without being too political? Would people be willing to pay the emotional and financial cost of said due process? Other that stating one loves life over freedom, is there a specific proposal? I assume a mental health specialist and a judge would be willing to put their careers on the line?
In the case of Nikolas Cruz, a terrorist threat should itself have been treated as a cause for keeping him from getting or keeping any firearm. Yes, he had other signs of trouble, beginning with cruelty to animals (part of the McDonald Triad that predicts sociopathy -- the other two are bed-wetting and fire-starting, of which I have heard nothing in his instance). Cruelty to animals is a likely precursor to cruelty toward humans because the ethical line is so close.
But sociopathy is not recognized as a mental illness as are such mental conditions as low intelligence, schizophrenia, and autism. (In the case of autism it is not a mitigating factor in criminal sentencing, and I do not advocate that it be a mitigating factor).
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.