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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   21991 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!

Thank you for sharing this!

I enjoyed that in a large part he seems to be sunk by the fact that he can't name his blood pressure medication.

This is vindicating to me, given the number of times I have asked a patient what life saving medicine they are on and gotten the response of "dunno."

I had the opposite reaction medication names are the fucking worst.

If you want me to remember the name of a medication name it something that makes sense like "blood pressure fixer" not something that looks like a latin vomited up a few different flower names. If there is more than one blood pressure fixer pill then start adding numbers or company names after the initial part of the name.

I understand that drug names are not necessarily intuitive and while they have some tricks those will be impenetrable to patients.

That said, you need to know what you take, when, how, and why - otherwise you are at significant risk of increased bad outcome (although this obviously depends on what conditions you have).

What we usually recommend the elderly do is have a sheet with that information written out and store it in your wallet so it becomes easier to read out, can be retrieved if you are not arousable and so on.

This advice is good for anybody however.

With respect to this specific patient - we see a class of older men who have a large number of medical problems and put no effort into understanding what those are for, what they are doing about them, how to avoid making them worse and so on. While some of these people are stubborn or anti-medication most just have very low conscientiousness. Not ideal for a first time gun buyer at 80 something.

while they have some tricks those will be impenetrable to patients.

I know that if the ending of the name is the queen of the fae, it's going to be really fucking expensive.

Yes and just like queen mab,* contact with them can be quite hazardous.

I do enjoy the "deck the halls with beta blockers olol, olol, olol, olol" joke.

*Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs).

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