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BTW, here's current Virginia law:

§ 18.2-308.1:2. Purchase, possession or transportation of firearm by persons adjudicated legally incompetent or mentally incapacitated; penalty.

It shall be unlawful for any person who has been adjudicated (i) legally incompetent pursuant to former § 37.1-128.02 or former § 37.1-134, (ii) mentally incapacitated pursuant to former § 37.1-128.1 or former § 37.1-132 or (iii) incapacitated pursuant to Chapter 10 (§ 37.2-1000 et seq.) of Title 37.2 and whose competency or capacity has not been restored pursuant to former § 37.1-134.1 or § 37.2-1012, to purchase, possess, or transport any firearm. A violation of this section shall be punishable as a Class 1 misdemeanor.

(1994, c. 907; 1997, c. 921; 2004, c. 995.)

§ 18.2-308.1:3. Purchase, possession or transportation of firearm by persons involuntarily committed; penalty.

A. It shall be unlawful for any person involuntarily committed pursuant to Article 5 (§ 37.2-814 et seq.) of Chapter 8 of Title 37.2 to purchase, possess or transport a firearm during the period of such person's commitment. A violation of this subsection shall be punishable as a Class 1 misdemeanor.

B. Any person prohibited from purchasing, possessing or transporting firearms under this section may, at any time following his release from commitment, petition the circuit court in the city or county in which he resides to restore his right to purchase, possess or transport a firearm. The court may, in its discretion and for good cause shown, grant the petition. The clerk shall certify and forward forthwith to the Central Criminal Records Exchange, on a form provided by the Exchange, a copy of any such order.

So how do you propose re-examined the standards as they are now? By making sure everyone who suffers from depression is involuntarily committed?

To me the root of the problem wasn’t that he was allowed access to firearms, it’s that he was out walking around in society. The system broke when it allowed him to retain his freedom and stay in society. Cho probably would have killed even without access to firearms. Yes the death toll may have been lower, but there still would have been a death toll, and it would have been eliminated by removing Cho from normal society.

In my opinion, this particular incident is not a case for further increasing the level of the background check for firearm transfers. Rather it’s a case for involuntary incarceration.

From what I've read on-line about Cho (and it could be wrong):

Cho was temporarily detained for a psychiatric assessment; he was never committed. I don't think everyone that is temporarily detained for a psychiatric assessment should be committed. Lots of people who suffer from mental illness are not violent towards others so we shouldn't assume that anyone who's a little off in the head acts like Cho.

No one really knew what exactly was going through his mind. I think he should have been locked up as well, but based on what I've read about him, there was not one specific incident prior to the massacre that would have gotten him locked up for a long while. We didn't know that he should have been locked up until AFTER he committed the killings.

He had a psychiatric assessment for a threat of suicide, not murder. Not even the psychiatrists who dealt with him really knew that he had violent thoughts towards others, and they focused on his depression and suicidal tendencies. You can't put disturbed people away for a long time if they haven't made any particular threats to people and I sure as hell don't think the government should start treating everyone with depression as a potential serial killer.

The only real effective thing we could have done is allow CHLers to carry on campus in Virginia.

There is absolutely no way the government can read the minds of individuals and know what their intent is for a firearm. That's all a mental background check attempts to do. Besides, Cho was not eligible for a Virginia CHL anyway, but that didn't stop him from carrying the guns on campus.

You don't quite get it, do you.

That's quite a bold thing for you to say when your own arguments have conflicted with each other.

Psychos SHOULDN'T have easy access to guns. In an ideal world, someone like Cho should not have been able to have simply walk into a store and bought a gun. In fact, people like that shouldn't (IDEALLY) have guns at all. I think we can all agree on that. At least I hope so.

And who defines what "psycho" is? Not even the psychiatrists who treated Cho really considered him to be a threat to others based on what's he did in the past, and that's all they could base their findings off of.

There wasn't anything in his mental background to give concrete evidence that he had an intent to kill. He got treated for suicide and depression, NOT for making violent death threats towards others. So a mental background check would NOT have done a bit a good in this situation anyway.

And if you are suggesting that ANYONE who gets treated for depression or in-patient/out-patient treatment should be denied a firearms purchase and treated like a serial killer, then you have no clue what you are talking about at all.

In an ideal world people like you would quit blaming the guns for the murders caused by individuals. Cho could have killed just as easily and as effectively with many other things besides a gun, yet you haven't asked for mental background checks on everything else.

Frankie, it sounds like you have no clue about mental health in general. You want to lock up psychopaths but don't offer any sort of defintion of what a psychopath really is or how to find out who is a psychopath. What's even funnier is that some of you, like yourself, want to make drastic changes to the law and make a new background check, which will become a massive PITA for EVERYONE, based on the actions of ONE person.

All this mental database will do is keep non-violent, law-abiding individuals from purchasing a gun due to being treated in the past for depression or whatever while doing NOTHING to stopping genuine psychopaths from KILLING. Psychopaths do NOT obey the law if they want to kill.

Instead of acting like a bunch of gun control advocates and suggesting the government needs to create more gun control, WHICH HAS YET TO WORK,
you all need to have an issue with the firearms bans across campii all over the country, which effectively PREVENTED someone from killing Cho before he murdered so many people.

In an ideal world Cho would have gotten SHOT AND KILLED before he managed to kill 32 people.

Lucky45 wrote: If psychology which the science of the mind or of mental states and processes and behavior; is considered fuzzy science. Then the medical field which is also associated with this area of science should be considered fuzzy in your estimation...RIGHT???

No.

Obviously you know very little about psychology. Like I said before, take a community college class on psychology and you'll see how it's a spectulative field. Psychologists bickering and disagreeing with either other and various schools of psychology competeing with each other.

Medical field on the other hand, if you walk into a hospital with a hole in your head, you have a hole in your head, no disputing that. Now with rare diseases it's a bit harder but usually you don't have a ton of doctors disputing over what a patient has, unlike Jungian and Freudian psychologists.

Simply put, psychologists don't really know for certain what's going through a person's mind and what's exactly causing their behavior. Nobody can. All they can provide is a diagnosis based on like experiences and research with other people. Psychologists have to fill in a lot of the gaps with their own opinions.

Now in the medical field, if somebody's bleeding out of a hole in his head, you just stop the bleeding and fix it. With rare diseases there's more analyzing but no where as much as psychology.

Psychology really didn't even become an actual field in it's own right until the ninteenth century, when people starting paying more attention to behavior and took notes for further study and reference. The medical field, on the other hand, has been around about as long as Humans have.

FICTION.

Well of course it was fiction but you are totally missing the point. Psychologists base their diagnosis on their PERCEPTIONS about a person. They can't just dig into a person's head and figure out what's wrong with them, UNLIKE medical doctors.

Now if you're telling me that you want someone to make a decision on your gun rights based on their own perceptions and opinions, I don't think you really realize what a dangerous precident you are putting yourself into. I'd rather take my chances and live with the very rare chance that I will be shot by a deranged psychopath than to give the government more unconstitutional powers that they do not need and will simply abuse. Abuse is what's the government's been doing the past 200 years.

Most of times I notice you use fictitious info when giveing examples.

No you don't because the only fictionous bits I have said has been that movie and the second half of Grindhouse, with the psycho killing women with his cars. But if you look up all the vehicular manslaughter cases which resulted in convictions, that's NOT fiction.

Those movies reminded me of situations that occur in REAL LIFE. Only reason I brought them up is to give you a visual example based on something you might have seen.

I would love to see a real example that everyone have encountered before, not Hollywood movies.

Everyone have encountered before? What does that mean? Not everyone has encountered everything.

But if you want, do some research on your own. I'm not going to sit here and spoon feed you information. A lot of this stuff you can find on your own:

Constitution of the United States
The Bill of Rights
Past abuses of government power
Murders and manslaughter using objects besides firearms
Etc.

Also, we shouldn't assume that everyone here is on the intro level and haven't finished their Master's Degree Level.

What is that supposed to mean? Anyone who has a master's degree is used to looking up information on their own anyway.

Geister wrote: FICTION. Stick to the facts in response. Nowhere in previous posts have it been even suggested the penal requirements for a person with mental illness.

Gosh dude, you're funny to write responses to because you never really understand what is written and you go off on rants about some subject that only you think we were talking about.

I never attacked anyone on here for suggesting that mental patients should be locked up. I don't know where that came from. What I was talking about is the violent, deranged types that you are afraid will purchase a gun, even though you totally ignore the fact that they can kill people in numerous other ways. Shouldn't those types be locked up already?

What I really find hilarious about you and Frankie is that you think this mental database will actually work. What will happen is that mental patients will simply steal guns or use other tools to kill while normal people are denied firearm purchases due to a database error. That's what's been happening with NICS.

Quit relying on the government for your personal defense and rely on yourself.

There is MENTALLY INCOMPETENT but NOT FUNCTIONALLY INCOMPETENT. Same way you have many posters that knows people who ILLITERATE and FUNCTIONAL, and then those who are NOT FUNCTIONAL. Some work with many on a daily basis. They can build houses, fix cars, operate machinery, but put a manual in front of them or have them fill out a form, then they are in ALOT OF TROUBLE.

You've just described most of our government. Put the Bill of Rights in front of them or have them balance the budget, and they are in a lot of trouble.

And you want these people to decide whether you can have a firearm or not?

Anyway, I'd prefer it not to discuss this subject to you anymore. I think I've said all that needs to be said about the subject and yet you still want to support kneejerk responses. Next time anyone uses a gun to kill I'm sure you'll support another piece of gun control legislation even though the last bit you supported did absolutely no good at all.

You're giving up your freedoms for nothing.

Another thing, Charles, is that the judge can rule a person to be mentally incompetent regardless of what the psychologist says.

Please give a factual incident where someone was adjudicated without having mental illness.

Happens all the time. Do some research on your own because I don't have time to bicker with you day and night. While you're at it, read the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and learn WHY they were written the way they were written. Use statements from the Founding Fathers in your studies, not what some present lawyer or judge says like Frankie.

You're just arguing for a gun control law that's unconstitutional to begin with. You're worried so much about an extreme less than one percent of the population that you're willing to give up more of your God given Rights to a bunch of morons in government and subject yourself to a psych evaluation before you can even own a firearm, which is just a piece of metal that shoots little metal and/or lead propellants.

It's funny how you are asking for the government to decide who can have a firearm when it's been governments all over the planet for centuries starting wars. Hell, just throw in the Ruby Ridge and Waco incidents and you are still telling me the government should be able to say who own a gun?

Governments have caused far greater damage with firearms than any mental nutcase out there.

Lucky45 wrote:
I OBJECT, your honor.

SPECULATION. The same way the poster says we cannot speculate what a person with mental illness will do in the future; therefore the poster cannot speculate what the goverment will take or demand in future. Either rephrase or strike it from public record, your honor (Moderator).

Hahahahahaha!

Hahahaha!

Hahahahahaha!

Yeah, I CAN speculate that the government will get BIGGER as the years go by as it has been doing the past 200 years. Doesn't even matter who's in office; both the Democrats and Republicans are guilty of it.

Unless we have a huge war and have to start the government all over or if some libertarians get voted in en masse, the government will always get bigger. It gets bigger every day.

BTW Lucky, you can be adjudicated incompetent without suffering from any mental illness. In all honesty I don't think you really understand mental illness or psychology in general. But I can explain this to you: psychology is a VERY fuzzy "science." There are no clear cut definitions of who is mentally ill, who is not, what person has one disorder and not the other (they tend to overlap), what disorders make violent thoughts, who really has violent thoughts and who doesn't, if a person is going to actually act on violent thoughts, etc. Combined with the fact that the psychology field in general is anti-gun, it would be pretty stupid to allow psychologists the ability to strip people of their rights.

Just take a intro to psych college class and maybe you'll see what I mean. Psychologists generally speculate on what's wrong with someone and a lot of the times they are totally wrong. Hell, it's reminds me of that movie Terminator 2 where everyone thought the chick was crazy and threw her into the loony bin, even though she was not.

Besides, all these extremely violent mental patients you speak of (which is somewhat rare in itself), why are they out on the streets to begin with? Shouldn't they be locked up? More than likely they've already committed an act of violent. Those people need to be controlled, not the guns.

Frankly I'm just sick of seeing all the kneejerk responses over a shooting situation that was so rare it had national broadcast time on TV. President Bush himself spoke about the VT massacre. Obviously it's a pretty rare event. It'd be even more rare or even non-existant if more people carried guns and were able to stop an attacker like Cho.

I agree 100%, Kevin.

Lucky45, why exactly are you on the mental database bandwagon? Your chances of ever being shot by a deranged individual are pretty slim. In fact, since you are from Missouri City, you have a greater chance of dying due to a car accident or gang bangers. In fact, you have a far greater chance of being killed in a car accident caused by a deranged individual. So why focus on guns? Why aren't you out there demanding a mental database for people wanting driver's licenses? Why aren't you out there demanding a mental database for people wanting to buy a car or knives?

You will not be any safer at all with a mental patient database. All you are doing is giving up more of your freedom to the government so they can make you feel safe without actually doing so. You might not think a mental patient database will affect you, but every little inch of power you give to the government, they are always going to take it and demand more and more. Soon you'll find YOURSELF unable to own a particular firearm.

It's pretty ridiculous that we even have background checks for firearms when most people use them in a safe and non-violent manner.

Lucky45 wrote: Hey Chas,
isn't that what most of those not opposed to using a mental database in these few discussions have been saying all along? So basically, we are in the same line of reasoning as the NRA,....right???? ONLY THOSE THAT WERE ADJUDICATED AS INCOMPETENT BY A MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL. We were not calling for complete open records.

What makes you expect that that's all they are going to do and it's going to stop there? My experience with government is that they continuously attempt to expand their power and they're pretty successful at it.

I agree with longley, this database will not do a thing to curb violence but it will keep citizens from purchasing arms due to database errors.

Lucky45 wrote: hey,
my understanding of the whole thing, is that this issue was already before the Supreme Court who said it was voluntary to submit that information to the federal database. So I don't see where the force is, because it has been on the books for all these years.

And when was the last time the government had the power to do something like that and decided not to?

Can't expect the government to police itself.