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Move to get more mental health records in Brady database
From AP:
"Not one of their names was in a database that licensed gun dealers must check before making sales — even though federal law prohibits the mentally ill from purchasing guns.
Most states have privacy laws barring such information from being shared with law enforcement. Legislation pending in Congress that has bipartisan support seeks to get more of the disqualifying records in the database.
In addition to mandating the sharing of mental health records, the legislation would require that states improve their computerized record-keeping for felony records and domestic violence restraining orders and convictions, which also are supposed to bar people from purchasing guns.
Similar measures, opposed by some advocates for the mentally ill and gun-rights groups, did not pass Congress in 2002 and 2004."
I was at a planning session (made public by the Federal Advisory Committee Act) for the Brady Act database back in the mid-1990s. The planning group even then was seeking to consolidate mental health records (they figured the VA records would be easy to get, state records much harder), domestic orders, renunciations of citizenship (small number of files, kept by State Department), etc. I found the thing rather appalling ... as was the general disinterest in the matter by "privacy" advocates. I'd have expected even antigunners among the last to alert to the fact that the Brady files cover all Americans, whether they own guns or not.
Sarah Brady needs to 'move on' and get a life other than one which consists of tilting at the rights, lives, and property of law abiding American citizens.
She needs to admit that her anti-gun laws have saved not one life - not one.
She wants mental health records? Is that all? How does it feel to want?
Shouldn't she demand to files on citizens' eating habits as well? Didn't the thug who shot up San Francisco City Hall ca. 1978 use the 'Twinkie Defense' and blame his crimes on Hostess snack foods? Well, shouldn't we deny citizens their rights based upon what they eat?
How 'bout it, Sarah? Why not crab our food purchases generated by those grocery store discount cards?
Shouldn't you monitor our drinking habits as well? Seriously, didn't those decaf coffee ads of yesteryear warn about 'tension' caused by caffeine?
Shouldn't our reading habits also be listed in Big Sarah's Petty Database? Aren't law abiding citizens who read mystery novels or - Yikes! - the Bible considered to be more dangerous than mohammedan terrorists?
Who's Brady to impugn someone's mental health? When a person receives treatment for 'mental illness' - "laughter" is a mental illness, according to the Diagnostic Manuals - doesn't that mean they acknowledged their condition, obtained help, and are living a stable life?
Isn't it a fact that the truly dangerous 'mentally ill' persons are those who vehemently deny their illness while expressing bizarre beliefs - such as the falsehoods that 'guns kill' and 'guns cause crime' and 'gun control works'?
The time for fooling American Citizens is over. The Net, Talk Radio, fine print matter, and increasing citizen awareness have exposed your anti-gun shibboleths for the Big Lie which clearly it is.
There. I said it. Feel free to put me in your 'database'. As if I or anybody cares.
Paul Vincent Zecchino
Manasota Key, Florida
18 March ,2010
"The fear of weapons is a hard sign of emotional
and psychological arrested development."
- Sigmund Freud, M.D.