A new definition of 'Gun Nut'

January 11, 2002 2:00 PM

A new definition of 'Gun Nut' Alaska state appeals court says a judge "erred" when she removed a gun permit from a man who "claimed someone had implanted a computer chip in his head and injected him with deadly chemicals". Apparently "general concerns about mental illness" are not allowed to be considered in such cases.
posted by kokogiak (25 comments total)

I actually had a gun pulled on me by an intoxicated native in Alaska in '95. I identified him, he was arrested and booked for illegal use of a weapon, but was acquitted. I saw him in the village I was working in 2 months after the incident. He still had his handgun. I was floored.
posted by culberjo at 2:13 PM on January 11, 2002

Wow. Alaska is asking for a lawsuit. That's not only grossly irresponsible, it shows zero care for the best interests of the person.

If the legally insane can be given the right to bear arms, isn't that like a mandate allowing them to legally kill people?
posted by xammerboy at 2:23 PM on January 11, 2002

Hmm. I find myself in an interesting position here.

I firmly believe that I have the right to keep and bear arms; you have very little chance to convince me otherwise. I say this not to spur on a debate on the 2nd amendment, but to state how I approach this.

At the same time, with rights come responsibilities. This is a right that, when used incorrectly, can have horrible results.

It sounds to me like the Alaska Legislature needs to revise this law; I certainly believe that "general concerns about mental illness" should apply in these cases. No, it can't be just one accusation by an estranged spouse, but this case sounds like it would be prudent to look very closely at this persons mental state. And, armed as he is, it strikes me that he very likely fits the definition of someone who should be hospitalized: A danger to himself and others.
posted by hadashi at 2:26 PM on January 11, 2002

I think Alaska has this (lawsuit responsibility) covered by the laughable requirements that permit applicants disclose their mental state: From the article - "The Alaska law requires applicants to disclose only whether they have ever been committed to a mental hospital or found mentally incompetent by a court. 'Yes' answers are grounds for denying a permit."

So basically it boils down to this - "Are you crazy?" "Nope" "Okay, here's your permit."
posted by kokogiak at 2:26 PM on January 11, 2002

The best immediate solution would be to commit him to a mental institution. And why the hell don't they have that information stored in some sort of background check-able database.

*makes mental note not to move to Alaska

I agree this mentally ill guy shouldn't have a gun.. I think the primary reason that in 1998 they removed the mentally ill requirement was to prevent people from broadly and unfairly applying the term 'mentally ill' to applicants trying to get handguns.
posted by insomnyuk at 2:31 PM on January 11, 2002

Maybe the guy was telling the truth. Have they X-rayed his head for the chip? Tested his blood for chemicals? I see that he was released after he was interviewed.

(note: I am not claiming that the guy was sane. However, this article gives insufficient data to render an opinion.)
posted by mr_crash_davis at 2:50 PM on January 11, 2002

Apparently "general concerns about mental illness" are not allowed to be considered in such cases.

Well that's not a problem so long as "general concerns about mental illness" are cases in and of themselves. As it stands, our country upholds the civil liberties of the mentally ill in general. The right to bear arms is one such civil liberty. Therefore the mentally ill are free to bear arms, just as much as the next guy.

Honestly that doesn't really bother me. I am just as concerned about frustrated, repressed, angry, frequently intoxicated people who are perfectly sane (i.e. 90% of our citizens), as I am about the very few mentally ill citizens. Y'all seem to assume that statistics would show that the mentally ill are more prone to do harm to themselves or others with guns than the sane are. That may not necessarily be true, especially of those mentally ill people that are not committed to institutions and are walking among us.

By the way, I do believe in the right to bear arms, but I have "general concerns about" the mental well-being of 99.999% of the people I've met who choose to bear arms as private citizens.
posted by zekinskia at 2:58 PM on January 11, 2002

If the mentally ill are free to bear arms, then why in the world would Alaska (let alone any other state) even pay lip service to the idea of restricting their access to guns? Apparently there are a number of laws that exist specifically to nullify the 2nd amendment right of the mentally ill. Do I have a problem with that? Nope.

I didn't want to start a huge 2nd amendment brouhaha here, and I'm glad it hasn't devolved into one, but for the record, I'm not a gun owner, guns scare the Hell out of me, I've been shot at by a misguided hunter once, and I have a very hard time understanding why anyone needs a gun. (Note I say 'need', not 'want').
posted by kokogiak at 3:09 PM on January 11, 2002

Portions of Alaska are probably the last place in the US where you really 'Need' to carry a gun.
posted by Tenuki at 3:13 PM on January 11, 2002

Yeah, but downtown Anchorage is rarely a place where you might need one ;) culberjo may disagree though.
posted by kokogiak at 3:18 PM on January 11, 2002

Damn preview and my bad HTML - I meant to link to the first comment in this thread.
posted by kokogiak at 3:18 PM on January 11, 2002

Bears did it to him. Alaska has these super-smart bears that escaped from a military experimental breeding facility. This is the now first step in the great bear conspiracy to control the salmon trade.

First step, get the populace to disarm......
posted by Salmonberry at 3:29 PM on January 11, 2002

...then guarantee the right to arm bears.
posted by kokogiak at 3:33 PM on January 11, 2002

i thought ronny reagan declared an end to mental illness and turned all those people loose. they're sane, really. a republican said so. yes master, i understand. take the gun to work. jesus wants the boss dead. no, master, i did not know the neighbors were the spawn of satan. we really must do something about that.
posted by quonsar at 4:15 PM on January 11, 2002

I have a very hard time understanding why anyone needs a gun. (Note I say 'need', not 'want').

Expand upon that theory and we can eliminate all personal freedoms. You may "want" to be free but you cannot prove that you "need" to be free.

That said I suppose I've exposed myself as a pro-gun supporter yet again. But, as it may be, I whole-heartedly support removing gun rights from persons with demonstrated mental instabilities. Demonstrated mental instablities. Like the guy here in my area who barracaded himself in his house and held off the police for hours because he stopped taking his psychotropic meds and started hallucinating. No guns for him in my state! I, on the other hand, have a squeaky-clean record therefor the state MUST, by law, issue me a permit to carry a concealed firearm. And did. That is as it should be...

By the way, I do believe in the right to bear arms, but I have "general concerns about" the mental well-being of 99.999% of the people I've met who choose to bear arms as private citizens.

Just as I have "general concerns about" the mental well-being of 99.999% of those who feel that an unarmed populace is a good thing. So far, countries who have chosen to disarm their citizens have seen mostly negative results - what sort of insanity makes you believe it would be any different here? Do you believe that criminals are going to line up around the block to turn in their illegally owned weapons?
posted by RevGreg at 4:57 PM on January 11, 2002

I was in Naknek (at the mouth of Bristol Bay) when I had a gun pulled on me. It is a village of about 2000 people, most of whom survive by commercial and substinance fishing. It is very close to Katmai. I think everyone I met there owned some kind of gun, and I would too, if I lived there year-round. But Kokogiak is right, there are few bears in Anchorage.

A funny thing about Alaska is seeing people checking guns in for flights at the Anchorage airport. You see sooooo many of them (all shotguns though).
posted by culberjo at 5:02 PM on January 11, 2002

Having lost friends at Port Arthur, I really hope the Alaskan laws change. Martin Bryant, Australia's most notorious murderer, shot dead 35 and wounded 22 men, women and children on the 28th April, 1996, at Port Arthur, Tasmania.

Bryant is described as simple minded, perhaps a sufferer of schizophrenia, a mentally dysfunctional young man, who has had life-threatening psychotic episodes.

Prison service psychiatrists have stated he is simple and attention seeking with the emotional level of a 2 year old. His IQ has been estimated at 11 years, which is in the low to normal range so low IQ is not considered to be an adequate excuse.

He still shows no remorse for the killings.
posted by Tarrama at 6:35 PM on January 11, 2002

So far, countries who have chosen to disarm their citizens have seen mostly negative results...

Right. So say the gun nuts themselves. Why would they lie?

Easy access to firearms sure made places like Columbine safer. Thanks for Columbine, gun nuts. Then there's this other "gun aficionado" found the other day with something like 350 assault rifles in California, ready to blow up a nuclear plant. Thanks, gun nuts. You're really making the world a safer place with your little fetish.

I'm with zekinskia. 99.9999% of everyone I know who thinks they need a gun are just nuts...or just cowards using a weapon to make up for what they lack in self-confidence...

Or both.
posted by fold_and_mutilate at 6:41 PM on January 11, 2002

You are having a bad day F&M. Get some rest over the weekend.
posted by thirteen at 6:49 PM on January 11, 2002

You know, this story is about a concealed handgun permit, not the right or ability to purchase or have guns. As long as it's not concealed you can have a gun without asking for a permit in Alaska. Really mentally ill people shouldn't have guns, concealed or not, but who decides one is mentally ill, the politicians? Who trusts them?
posted by Mack Twain at 10:01 PM on January 11, 2002

who decides one is mentally ill, the politicians?

i thought doctors did that.
posted by tolkhan at 12:07 AM on January 12, 2002

Woman accused of shooting son inside his hospital psychiatric ward.
The mentally ill also need protection from gun nuts! (via BuzzFlash)
posted by Carol Anne at 6:26 AM on January 12, 2002

i thought doctors did that...The woman in Texas who killed her kids is mentally ill, but according to the politicians she is not legally insane ;'mental illness' is so vague that it has been used as an excuse to exclude or marginalize segments of society. Some fear a protective government could abuse its power.
posted by Mack Twain at 1:38 PM on January 12, 2002

The worst mass slaugher of schoolkids in this country involved no guns at all.....

F&M, you're being foolish to bring up Columbine -- it's purely emotional rhetoric.
posted by dwivian at 8:11 AM on January 14, 2002

Easy access to firearms sure made places like Columbine safer.

No it didn't fold_and_mutilate. And did the strict UK laws save the lives of sixteen children and one adult in the Dunblane school shootings in Scotland? No, they didn't. It seems odd to me that more persons were killed in the Dunblane incident (14) than at Columbine (13) yet gun control activists never seem to cite it at all - could it be because 20+ years of strict gun control didn't prevent such tragedies from happening?

And once guns are banned, what then? No law that I know of has stopped school stabbings either in Alaska or in countries with strict guns laws like Austrailia or Japan.

In every one of these cases there was a common denominator, an individual CHOSE to commit a violent, deadly act. No amount of legislation against inanimate objects is going to prevent these crimes or mitigate their emotional impact on us. In simplest terms, more laws would only create more criminals - and in no way are more laws going to create less crime. The only way to achieve a lower crime rate is to reduce the motivation towards crime and that is an extremely long range goal which has nothing to do with creating laws: we need to change the goals and ideals of the human element at a very basic level. A man with no motivations could be trusted with the ability to destroy the universe, a man with motivations is dangerous with his hands tied behind his back while free ownership of paper clips and pencils is still allowed.
posted by RevGreg at 2:09 PM on January 14, 2002