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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   32174 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 23, 2025

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A culture-war-adjacent court opinion that @The_Nybbler may find entertaining:

  • An 80-year-old man applies for a permit to buy a rifle. The permit is denied, solely because he was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital for four days forty years ago. He applies for expungement of the records of that commitment, so that he can get the permit.

  • The judge denies the application for expungement.

T.B.'s problematic interaction with LifeStream staff raised questions in the court's mind about T.B.'s "candor to the [c]ourt and fundamental issues that are here."

[T.B.] told the people [at LifeStream] that he was suffering from anxiety and depression. And he said he did that because that’s what he thought he had to say in order to get this appointment so that he could get the evaluation. And a concern to me is that he was not particularly honest with these folks about why he wanted this evaluation.

In that vein, the judge took issue with T.B.'s dismissive characterization of the nature of his hospitalization at Ancora versus the hospital record—namely, that after questioning the staff released him.

In the report it says, "unable to contain on open unit; violent outbursts; threatening; severely agitated; threatening others; yelling; demanding; attempted to strangle his wife at home; violent outbursts; tried to tear side rails off of the [bed]". So, this is not a man who showed up at Ancora mildly agitated or upset, but was described by the doctors down there as threatening behavior, so agitated they couldn't talk to him and violent outbursts towards the people on the staff there.

Regarding his present condition, the court noted that despite the medical reports stating he was stable, T.B. exhibited signs of memory problems and a lack of awareness regarding his own medication regimen.

[T.B.] doesn’t even know what medication he’s taking for his [d]iabetes or for his high cholesterol situation or his [h]yperlipidemia. And that, to me, speaks volumes about not that he’s dangerous to the public safety, but why would we give an 80-year-old man, who can’t even be responsible for his own health, access to a firearm that he wants to use for target practice with his friends. You know, is he going to forget to put the safety on the firearm when he isn’t at the range doing target practice? Is he going to forget to secure it in his home so that people who come to visit don’t have access to it? That’s what’s really of concern to this court.

  • The appeals panel affirms. "The trial court reasonably determined that defendant failed to meet his burden to demonstrate the expungement was in the public interest." No second amendment for him!

On the one hand, this is a horshit denial of 2nd ammendment rights based on bullshit case law that actively makes everyone involved less safe (its the same debate being had right now in the pilot community- when you punish people for seeking mental health care, no one is going to seek mental health care). The courts should be fucking ashamed, and the justices involved run out of town on a rail.

On the other hand, the amount of times I have been muzzle swept by old boomer fudds at the range who cant remeber the 4 rules of gun safety much less their blood pressure medication is way too damn high, and I am all for not letting them have guns.

A way around this is to institute more competency tests, and make them rigorous. This will naturally raise the spectre of jim crow era literacy tests, but fuck it, if you cant recall basic facts like rules of the road, rules of gun safety, or what congress/the president actually do, you shoudlnt be able to shoot, drive, or vote.

On the other hand, the amount of times I have been muzzle swept by old boomer fudds at the range who cant remeber the 4 rules of gun safety much less their blood pressure medication is way too damn high, and I am all for not letting them have guns.

I've said before that the quickest way to lose your 2A absolutist beliefs is to work the gun counter at your LGS for a weekend.

A competency test is not the same as the "is this person mentally ill and capable of violence test".

I'm not at all against them, but it's not enough for someone actually admitted to a mental institution for violent psychopathy to take his meds one day, pass a test and then get to own a gun.

Yes, at some level, we are going to have to exclude people that seek mental health treatment from some parts of society. They should probably not be surgeons or airline pilots or foster parents. That's just reality -- pretending that the right answer is that we have to totally close our eyes to their actual history is just bonkers. It's like some progressive screed that a bank can't screen job applicants on the basis of being ex-felons -- it's divorced from the actual reality of human experience.

My fantasy system is one where the right to buy almost any gun is licensed, but the licensing procedure is devolved to a local County Level gun club.

Virtually every gun owner I know thinks that some people shouldn't have guns, they just don't trust the government to make that determination. The anti-gun fanatics and the local range guys would agree on 95-99% of cases, but we can't get there because of agency and trust problems. If the anti-gun crowd granted gun owners the right to self-police gun licensing they would get most of what they wanted without a fight.

This is why one of my favorite policies is when I went for my CCW, I had to write down three references. At the time I thought, wow, what kind of dumbass policy is this, all I need to do to have a gun is have three friends? Then I heard of so many people who either can't find three people who will say they should have a gun and never apply; or who somehow manage to write down people who, when contacted, actively say they shouldn't have a gun! And while that's a minority of the people who shouldn't have guns, they definitely shouldn't have guns.

I'd want to see the same thing with gun clubs. To have a ccw or to buy certain classes of firearms, you have to be a member in good standing and spend time at your local gun club. This would require interacting with other people at the local gun club, who would naturally notice shitbirds or whackadoos or terrorists or the criminally insane in those interactions much more effectively than will the government.

but the licensing procedure is devolved to a local County Level gun club.

Oh, great, bring small-group politics into it, that'll surely make things good.

My greatest fear of all this is that since the records can come back to bite several decades after the fact (in this case the man had been hospitalized 40 years ago) and might not be able to be expunged, this will only discourage people who want to own guns from interacting with the mental health system. It’s bad on both ends — it doesn’t protect the public from crazy people with guns (or at least those smart enough to understand that going to a doctor means losing the right to a gun), and it likewise means that people suffering from those illnesses continue to suffer as they avoid treatment— possibly to the point of self-harm or harming others. There’s no better way, in my view to keep someone from self-reporting a mental health problem than to tell them it will negatively affect them for the rest of their lives.

This only applies to involuntary commitments. If you're feeling suicidal and check yourself into a mental hospital for treatment, it's not going to affect your ability to buy a gun. On the other hand, if you attempt suicide and get 302'd (in PA), it will. The way the law is set up now actually encourages people to seek voluntary treatment before it becomes enough of a problem that the state has to intervene.

For the purpose of federal law, unless theres' been intervening changes to the law or caselaw, 302s don't count, because they're not adversarial or judicial hearings and often run ex parte. They do count for state law, though.

The mental defective side of the bar has been used very widely, if not consistently. And some places will ingest someone who comes to them voluntarily as if they weren't willing (or even treat a voluntary admission as involuntary without undergoing the normal procedures), though thankfully that's one of the few places that courts have been willing to push back on.

But otherwise, yes; federal regulations require that it be involuntary.

I will caveat that many states have separate rules that trigger on voluntary commitment, or don't even require commitment at all (hey, Hawaii!). New Jersey is one such state; applications for a purchase permit require applicants to complete a consent to mental health record search form. While the statute only specifically prohibits giving permits to people with a voluntary or involuntary current committment (no, I don't know why), both state courts and police generally treat it as a blanket prohibition, along with many inpatient procedures. T.B. here isn't even getting to that point, so he can't challenge it, either.

The average person does not understand this.

Because it is not, in fact, true. In New Jersey (and perhaps other states) if you check yourself into a mental hospital you are disqualified from buying a gun. If you're involuntarily committed you can remove the disqualification by getting your record expunged, but I do not believe there is an expungement process for voluntary committement.

In NJ, any commitment or mental health diagnosis is grounds for denial of a gun permit, and once you've been diagnosed the burden of proof is on you to show it's not unsafe for you to own a gun.

(and a 302 or equivalent is a nonjudicial process, which means you get to lose your gun rights forever nationwide on the word of a cop and a doctor)

this will only discourage people who want to own guns from interacting with the mental health system

This is exactly what you should do. If your rights can be taken away permanently by interacting with the mental health system, you should avoid interacting with it. The Catholic Church has it right in this case -- what you say to your confessor is between you, him, and presumably God, and fuck the interests of society. If mental health professionals can't live up to that, they should be avoided.

In New Jersey, being New Jersey, it's even worse. You have to tell them every interaction with the mental health system you have (not just committment, any time you ever saw one), including name and affiliation of the doctor. If you don't have that information you can't even apply for a permit; you can't challenge this because there's nothing to challenge.

See my comment above, but voluntarily interacting with the mental health system isn't what gets you barred from owning a gun; it's avoiding the mental health system until things get so bad you're forced into it.

  • -11

Hé just said New Jersey did ban people from owning a gun for voluntary interactions with the mental health system?

Yeah, they're not even subtle about it.

Not so. New Jersey makes voluntary admission to an inpatient mental health program cause for denial of a firearm permit. They also ask on their firearms form for ANY interaction with a mental health professional:

"Have you ever been attended, treated, or observed by any doctor or psychiatrist or at any hospital or mental institution on an inpatient or outpatient basis for any mental or psychiatric condition?" If yes, give the name and location of the doctor, psychiatrist, hospital, or institution and the date(s) of such occurrence

They're not asking for your health.

I’m in total agreement here. There’s almost no upside to going into the medical mental health system, which doesn’t even work that well anyway, and is pretty much used by the state to keep people from exercising their rights.

A way around this is to

go to a different range.

I do, but boomer-fuddville is convenient to me, so if i need to zero a scope or try a new build I can be in an out in under an hour instead of making it a half-day excursion. I make a point of loudly calling out all of these violations to the RSO, and they are pretty good about clamping down on it, but they shouldnt have to intervene in the first place.

A way around this is to institute more competency tests, and make them rigorous. This will naturally raise the spectre of jim crow era literacy tests, but fuck it, if you cant recall basic facts like rules of the road, rules of gun safety, or what congress/the president actually do, you shoudlnt be able to shoot, drive, or vote.

Jim Crow needn't be brought up at all. The countless hoops that New York State has instituted just to be able to carry a pistol (despite being a "shall issue" state now thanks to the Supreme Court) makes it clear that such processes absolutely will be abused (and already are). If we could actually trust our elected officials not to be fuckwad tyrants I'd support measures like the ones you suggest, but until that day (i.e. likely never) I'll stick with near universal gun rights.

Agreed. If you want to own a gun to keep at home as you please you should be required to pass a certain standard of shooting exam at your local range. The test should be at a level that the average person would manage to pass after 3 months of training once a week, no different to how driving tests work.

What if you're a single woman living alone going to college and some guy keeps breaking into your house while you're asleep and he keeps trying to throw acid on your face? And you report it to the police and they think you're crazy and don't investigate?

Can you have a gun in less than 3 months in that case?

Well we make policy for aggregates, not for individuals. X number of possible self-defence use cases obviously cannot outweigh an infinite number of cases of firearms purchased by unsuitable individuals, there are no solutions etc. etc.

Just saying, "this person is too crazy to have a gun" overlaps with "the police are unfairly ignoring threats to this person's life"

In the UK we have the exact same problem. Still no gun necessary.

Pepper spray though is a good alternative (and honestly needs to be more widely available here).

Or equally you can have some sort of emergency gun licencing scheme where you get to have your gun early provided you can prove you have committed to taking lessons and passing your test and there is a genuine need like the case you mention, with a large and serious penalty if then you abandon your lessons without passing but don't hand the gun in.

Ok in my story above after the second time she bought a gun in less than a day and pulled it out on him the third time and there hasn't been an incident since.

Here in America we have FREEDOM (in some states)

I'm on board only if the government pays gives me a gun and ammo to practice with.

You have to pay for driving lessons too with your own car and instructor and fuel, why should it be any different for guns?

Driving isn't a constitutional right

There is also a constitutional right to a jury trial in the US. However for civil cases I believe you still have to pay a jury fee to request one. The fact that something is a constitutional right doesn't mean the government can't make reasonable requests to the person who wants to exercise that right; in much the same way here, 13 weeks (3 months) of once weekly lessons (2 hours) is just 26 hours of gun practice before letting the person keep their gun at home as they wish. That's not excessive at all.

It would be, if the constitution was written today. Much of the bill of right was in responses to specific abuses by the British government, e.g. the third amendment exists because of the quartering acts. If the founders had witnessed the way the current government controls people through threatening their driving licenses, which are functionally required to participate in modern society anywhere outside of New York City, they would have surely included an amendment guaranteeing the right to drive.

the current government controls people through threatening their driving licenses

This is a pretty odd thing to say given how generously drivers are treated in much of the Anglosphere. To actually get banned from driving in the US or UK you have to be preposterously negligent. Recently a footballer here in Britain was caught speeding eight times in as many weeks (and none of them were even close), lied to the police after some of them and was given a driving ban of less than a month. There are perhaps few less sympathetic groups in the Western world than suspended drivers.

All very likely true, but it remains so that driving isn't a constitutional right.

None of that is necessary to keep a car at home.

Yes, but it is necessary if you ever want to drive the car. A compromise here could be that yes you can keep the gun reversibly modified so that it can never shoot (to look scary or whatever) but if you were to ever attempt to remove the modification to use it without a proper licence the law will come down upon you like a ton of bricks, just like how with driving (but much more severely).

You can drive a car on your own land without a driver’s license, vehicle license, seat belt, etc. By analogy, you should be able to use a gun on your own property without any licensing or training requirements.

Thé équivalent to a drivers license for guns is actually a concealed carry license, which in my state does(or did when I got it) require a minimum shooting score.

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